music: Babaloo: En Vivo
I’ve been living on the East coast for nine years and the West coast for one, but Wisconsin is still my home. The winters are brutal, sure, but the summers are divine. Or can be, if you get lucky with the humidity and the blackflies. Regardless, people out on the periphery of the country just don’t get it. Maybe this will help them:
Photos of Wisconsin by Johnny Blood
Then again, maybe it’s better they don’t get it. Next time I head Up North I want some peace and quiet, not sedanloads full of tourists (or worse) Chicagoan day trippers. No, I’m not about to pack it up and move home, as California has its advantages, but I gotta represent. (Especially when the Brew Crew is still in first place!)
music: Phish- 9/12/2000, Mansfield, MA
This one came from duncan, by way of TiMO. It’s very much worth a look.
It is, of course, a shame that Brian’s home would be so forcefully torn down. I’d expect the Law to not give the man much wiggle room, especially after living on the fringes of society for so long, but to raze such a magnificient structure? At the very least they should preserve it, charge admission, and use the money to fund homeless shelters. As TiMO pointed out, there is very little that is different between Brian Joyce’s endeavours and that of Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau’s homestead at Walden Pond, some 15 miles to the West, is now a historical and recreational park. Brian Joyce’s homestead, perhaps more impressive in that he built it with supplies and materials scavenged and found for over 5 years, and did so literally under the noses of a couple million people, is now a patch of dirt.
What is striking to me here is that someone is able to live like this for five years, virtually unbothered and virtually undetected, in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country. When I was in Boston I had absolutely no idea that Brian Joyce existed, but his tenure in his house was almost exactly the same as my own in JP, Allston, Cambridge, and Somerville. Think of all the rent money I could have saved…
This is not a normal picture of homelessness. Many homeless people are homeless not by choice, but by one circumstance or another. Homelessness is a terrible byproduct of a social system where the distribution of incredible amounts of wealth is so uneven, as well as an indicator of certain types of institutionalized prejudices. But in the case of Brian Joyce, a very sharp and strong and willful and lucid figure, I can’t help but romantacize homelessness a little bit. Brian has found a way to work his way between the big teathers of society and subsist on what everyone else has cast aside. This is, no doubt, not an easy way to do things, and is probably uncomfortable at times, perhaps somewhat dangerous at other times, but I support Brian’s efforts. He is a walking practice of what so many have just read about the so-called “Great American Novels.” How many of us have cast down the river like Huck and Jim? How many of us have jumped trains like Jack and Dean? How many of us have dropped everything, built a one-room cabin by a pond, and lived in it for two years like Henry? Damn near none of us. But Brian Joyce has. His homelessness can be construed as unfortunate, but I think in this particular case Brian’s homelessness is the reason for his extraordinary life.
music: none
In a few hours, once I’ve packed up my laptop, sleeping bag, and buttpack and thrown them into the front seat of my car, and after I haul what furniture of mine is left in the pumpkin-colored room at 12 Curtis into the basement, I’ll drive west on I-90. Away from Boston and the East Coast, into the sunset. Five years I’ve been in Boston, and nine years on the East Coast, and it’s time. It’s been time, I think. Since I got back from my road trip two years ago I’ve had my eyes on the Western horizon, waiting for the day when I could pack all my worldly possessions into my car and drive. That day is today.
I think I’ve spent so much time thinking about today that the actual event is a bit anticlimactic. At this point I’ve said my goodbyes-and-see-you-laters, I’ve tied up as many loose ends as life would allow, and I’ve distilled my material goods to that which can fit into my car. I’ve been feeling sort of dissociated from all of it this past week, in a fugue state of sorts, maybe to soften the blow of a major life transition. But even in my leaving some things comfort me; I’ll roll out of here much like I rolled in, with a little cold, a degree of exhaustion, and Peet waving me on from the porch. But this time is quite different; I’m headed into a big question mark for the first time in my life with no real plans or immediate goals. Should be interesting.
Connecticut today, the Midwest by Tuesday, Colorado by Friday, the Pacific ocean a week after that. Some stops in the Rockies and Utah to add some spice to the whole trip. Then some wandering through the Sierra Nevadas, and after that…who knows? The rear of my car is about 3-4 inches lower than it normally is, exhaust pipe clearance is less than comforting. But after 200-odd years of Americans pushing their wagons west to seek their fortunes, that isn’t going to stop much.
There is change in the air. My world in Boston is in a great deal of transition, and it’s not just me. I never did fully take to this city; a good deal of my energy was spent trying to work my way around Boston and it’s idiosyncracies. Staying any longer would have been counterproductive. Perhaps I stayed too long as it was, but nothing can be done about that now. There were some good things here…Chowdahaus, Live Live, Tuesday nights at Matt Murphy’s, grad school, 12 Curtis, the Biosphere, teaching….there will be things that I will miss, and people too. But it’s time. It’s been time. There’s much ahead to be excited about, and I am completely unencumbered and hold no obligations. I can do whatever I want. The freedom is intoxicating.
music: Tori Amos- Crucify EP
I am the oldest of ten cousins on my mom’s side of the family. When we were young we would go over to my grandparents’ house for Hanukkah. It was one of the guaranteed times of year when all of us would be in one place, and we would always look forward to the occasion. The centerpiece for the celebrations was a book that my grandmother put together each year, involving a series of stories and reflections about the Maccabees, the symbolism of the Festival of Lights, and the ten of us. I can remember sitting around after enormous dinners in some new article of clothing that matched each of my cousins and listening to Grandma read from the new Hanukkah book this year.
Since we’ve all moved away from Milwaukee, however, there has been no family Hanukkah celebrations. There have been no new Hanukkah books either, usually just a card from the grandparents. But this year, things are different. My grandparents have decided to sell the house they built and lived in for 45 years. The packing and cleaning are going on right now; no doubt my mom and aunt are beside themselves wtih the work and the emotional toll of cleaning out, boxing up, and emptying the house in which they grew up and the house in which the family had so many celebrations. This year, the Hanukkah card came with instructions: “Now, this December 2005, Seneca Road, our home, is being sold- and its your memories and thoughts that will go on forever. So, this Hanukkah, I want to gather in from you your pages for the Hanukkah book of the year of our Exodus from Seneca Road.”
I spent a good amount of time ruminating over this one-not having Grandma and Grandpa’s house as a family homebase anymore is a pretty big deal. And in stewing over the family transition that is taking place, and in thinking about it in relation to our yearly Hanukkah celebrations, I found myself thinking about my relationship with religion. Which is a rare event. Generally I think that religion is more trouble than it is worth, historically speaking, that more people have died or been persecuted because of religion than would make it worth practicing. Moreover, I tend towards the empirical and have a hard time with faith. But embedded in all of that is a cultural component to religion of which I often lose sight. It’s partially because the representatives of the latest modern American incarnation of my religion live in ways that run counter to many of my values and personal goals. But traced far enough back, I remember that I descend from a tribe of nomadic desert-dwellers, intrepid travellers, and stubborn survivors. The parallel to my family’s immediate transition is striking. My submission for this year’s Hanukkah book follows.
December 18, 2005It has occurred to me that in some small way, we cousins are retelling the story of Hanukkah in and with our lifetimes, and what’s more, the departure of our family from 8595 North Seneca Road is a crucial part of that story.
Allow me to explain.
The larger story in which Hanukkah is framed is one of building a home, losing that home, and finding it again many years later. The first time around involved a nomadic tribe of desert-dwellers (a scrubby and stubborn bunch no doubt) setting up shop on a small strip of barely tillable desert in between Africa and Asia. Despite a host of agricultural problems and mildly unfriendly neighbors, the tribe built an impressive civilization, and with it a pretty intricate culture, remnants of which we carry still. Then somewhere along the line that tribe-come-society lost their holdings in a handful of skirmishes and a couple misinterpreted dreams. Things were usually lost this way in antiquity, and suffering a misfortune such as this was probably commonplace. But the amazing thing was that the tribe didn’t disappear into obscurity. Those scrubby, stubborn nomads scattered to different parts of the globe, tucked themselves into every corner imaginable, and lived. For a couple thousand years, give or take. And more amazing still is was that aspects of that old tribal culture bound them, even at great distances, through political and social barriers and often against the wishes of those lands in which they inhabited. The tribe went with what came to them, did the best they could, had some good years and some bad years, struggled mightily at times, but they never disappeared entirely. After those couple thousand years of wandering through distant lands, and even settling in them long enough to call them home, the tribe seized upon an opportunity. The call went out, and the congregation responded. The tribe gathered in the desert once more, laid claim to that hot, dry strip of land sandwiched in between two continents, and over the past 60 or so years have been rebuilding their home. A great miracle happened there, as we say.
We cousins are that scrubby, stubborn nomadic tribe.
I don’t mean that we are all descended from the Canaanites and the Hebrews, which we are of course. That is far too obvious a comparison. I mean that we are all part of another sort of tribe, what we’ve come to know as a cousin’s club, and moreover, that we are at that point in the story where we are about to lose our homeland. It is a sad occasion from my eyes, one that I never really wanted to see happen, but one that I realize is a necessary part of the story. You see, we are now finished being children. We’ve all tapped our nomadic past, packed our bags, and left town. We’re all out there spread around the country, wandering distant lands in search of our fortunes and our place in the world, trying to find home. We have entered a familial Diaspora of sorts, not unlike our nomadic ancestors. It’s sad in some ways, but if we believe the larger story passed down to us, we realize that it is exactly what is supposed to happen.
My life as an adult in Boston is a far cry from what I remember my life to be growing up with you in Milwaukee. It’s a bit disturbing to me to remember too vividly where we all came from, and even more disturbing to think about the home that Max built in the past tense, but it is an important project. Remember the barbecues? The rotten apples on the back patio? The wicker basket of musical instruments from around the world? Matzo balls with hot dogs in the middle? An enormous green plastic bowl filled with popcorn? A wardrobe so big you could get lost in it? Penny grabs out of wooden bowls? A black chair that spun you around so fast you wanted to throw up? A light fixture that looks like melting ice cubes? Gold and silver pieces on a chessboard? Raspberries and mint leaves along the side of the house and a mysterious fenced-in vegetable garden? Midnight ice cream feasts where your choice was chocolate or chocolate fudge? An old dentist’s chair inexplicably placed in the garage? Pool and ping-pong in the basement? A horizontal rack of wooden coat hangers, one of which bore your name? Remembering these little things is this tribe’s culture, and is our way to find home once we are done wandering. I’ve only realized this recently, that where we are, and more importantly who we are, is a direct result of where we’re from. And all of us are from 8595 North Seneca Road. A great miracle happened there. Of this much I am sure.
So what does this Hanukkah’s Exodus mean for us, the wandering tribe of cousins? For the moment, it means that our place of origin is a place we can not revisit anymore, and that as we saunter away from our years as children we also move farther and farther into a Diaspora.
But remember the story: after years of wandering a homeland is re-established. We have not reached that point yet, and might not for some time. But it will come. And while that might not be 8595, or even Milwaukee, our cousin’s tribe will find a place to call home. The Maccabees of Hanukkah fame were too descended from those ancient nomads, scrubby and stubborn, exiled from their homelands, wandering. And like the Maccabees, we know these hills. And we’ve got a few good tricks up our sleeves. And we won’t go down without a fight. And we’ve got enough energy to keep the fires burning for longer than anybody thought possible. If we trust in the story we’ve been told, and the story of which we are a part, the tribe will congregate and we will find our way back home one day when the time is right. In these days of wandering and in this Exodus from our home faith in the stories of our tribe is all I can hold onto.
Great miracles will happen again, miracles unforeseen, but not now. Now is the time to pause in each of our respective wanderings and bid a farewell to 8595 North Seneca Road. Now is the time to wander to far-flung places, carrying with us that which we share from years past. And in doing so, now is the time to remember where we are from. We are retelling our people’s story with our very lives, you see, but right now we tribe of cousins are only in the middle of the story.
Grandma and Grandpa, I suspect, have known this all the while. I realize as I type deep into a Sunday night in a land far away far away from my home that Grandma, in her own way, has been singing this story to us for years:
Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high
There’s a land that I heard of
Once in a lullabySomewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come trueI very much look forward to writing future chapters of our Hanukkah book with all of you.
Love,
David
music: Strangefolk- 9/1/2002 (Acoustic Set)
“I need to reclaim my identity this weekend,” says Reuben as I swung by his house in Bayside late-night on Wednesday. It was thanksgiving weekend and we were back in Milwaukee. And he was correct: the weekend was all about reclaiming an identity.
The past two or so weeks have been hazy and I have been in varying states of fugue. This is mostly due to my having dental surgery last week-a lovely affair that involved cutting a rectangle of flesh out of the roof of my mouth and sewing it onto my lower gums. I tried to plow through the ordeal and carry on with business-as-usual, but was stymied by pain and complications involving blood blisters. As a result I spent a lot of time convalescing, sucking down applesauce, carrot juice, and avocados almost exclusively. I was underfed and in a good amount of pain and got bent out of shape in a pretty nasty way. The trip home, on a very simple level, was about reintroducing solid food (and good food!) to my diet, and working myself out of invalid status.
Far be it from me to function on one simple level. Digging a little deeper on the flight home I flashed realization of being uprooted and disconnected from my immediate reality in Boston. Many of my people have cleared out this year, I have been spending the majority of my time hunkered down with red pens and lesson plans, I have been doing all I can to avoid the those attributes that draw most people to Boston in the first place. My jaw has been clenched and eyebrows have been furrowed more often than not. I have caught myself anticipating a change on the horizon, waiting for something, but of course there is nothing that will happen unless I make it happen. I landed in Milwaukee very glad to be there, and more than that, very glad to not be in Boston.
I found the place I’m from to be something other than a static entity for the first time since I left. There is a massive push for civic improvement and urban renewal in Milwaukee right now; things I remember being there from my childhood are being ripped out, redone, and fixed up. Even my house is undergoing amazing changes. Mom and Rich are working on an addition to the house that adds a ridiculous amount of space onto it, for the better I think, but it rocks the foundations of what I take to be my home. On a smaller scale the furniture that I remember from growing up is slowly being phased out. It’s just the next step in a series of changes that are transforming home into something more and more foreign. It’s not like I’ve had a room there for years. I never felt more like a visitor at 7630 than this year.
But identity has less to do with the physical plant of Brew City and more to do with the cast of characters that took me by storm this weekend. It happens every thanksgiving break, and I know it will, but I still can’t prepare for it. Seeing the family is a rollercoaster of action and emotion, a tug-of-war of needs, desires, obligations, emotions, and relationships. The extended family is much more simple in many ways, and visiting with family was spectacular this year. It seems to get better as I get older, and seems to be more potent the less I am in Milwaukee.
The nights in Milwaukee hardly end after family dinners, and many of the most honest moments concerning my rediscovering where I’m from happen later into the night at some of the fine midwestern drinking establishments that are strategically placed every block or two. There is an understanding among different social circles that certain places are designated meeting places, and I spent nights bouncing between these places, planning on meeting up with some key members of the inner sanctum but fully expecting to run into more peripheral friends and acquaintances from years past. The camp/high school balancing act was once again carefully staged and executed pretty well. Friends from high school continue to be able to pick up exactly where we left off last time without skipping a beat. And the camp gathering this year was brilliant. More often than not I ended up finding a camp gathering far too young, attended more by my campers than my peers. This year, though, a core group of my peers gathered and celebrated the fact that we somehow have managed to transcend the fact that we all met at camp, and that “camp friends” were now just friends. Through no planning on my own I ended up running into a couple of people that I haven’t seen for about 10 years, and was really glad I did. I was left beaming, proud to know such great people and feeling very lucky for it. My people are good people, no matter how long it has been since we last crossed paths. People have done amazing and not-so-amazing things with themselves, people have changed in some ways, people have moved all over the country and world, but given a couple days to catch up none of that mattered much. My friends and family-these people have a lot to do with my own identity because of the past that we’ve shared. Although that is a hard pill to swallow sometimes I really enjoy getting slapped across the face with it.
I arrived in Boston this afternoon completely exhausted, but feeling better than I have in weeks. And not because I was back in Boston. After a weekend in Milwaukee I felt once again connected to something, even though that something is nebulous and itself evolving. CJ, whose presence in the absence of his family stood testament to the power of all his friends, showed me an internet site this weekend. It’s based on this premise-a dynamic web of identities all connected to one another. A Venn Diagram of incalculable proportions. Taken in sum, the web of people and names and places could represent something like an identity.
One of my tragic flaws is the ability to focus almost exclusively on my immediate present and forget about people and places distant and far-flung, but I was reminded this weekend that who I am has everything to do with where I’m from. Perhaps some of the struggle and disconnection I’ve experienced in Boston has been because I’ve not fully grasped that point.
Back to it tomorrow, and I can’t say I’m excited about it. I can’t say I’m all that excited to be here right now. But as Reuben and I were driving back from the East Side of Milwaukee early this morning, we both agreed that to whatever extent possible identities were reclaimed. And that is reason to give thanks.
I can not have a future ‘till I embrace my past
I promise to pursue the challenge; time is going fast
music: Charles Lloyd- Forestflower Soundtrack
When was the last time anyone was literally at a party all night? I can only remember a handful of those since moving to Boston; the ragers at Skip’s house about a year back saw people out until the sun lumbered its way over Boston Harbor. Last night was one of those nights, except the venue du jour was the 1-2.
I was at a training all morning, but when I got back home things were in full swing: food prep, sweeping, beer runs, rearranging furniture, general bombproofing, and effectively turning the basement into a small music venue. The last feat was the most incredible part-in addition to throwing the double doors to the biosphere wide open we cleared out a good size of floorspace, enough for a legitimite crowd, and even threw together a “backstage” area.
There was music. Matt played a set with his band, and I played a set with mine-our first time playing in front of a live crowd. It was well-received, I think, and I have no complaints about how we played. My conclusions about the whole ordeal post-set were that we need to learn some more songs (with vocals especially) and that our single-chord jamming, while decent — good maybe — has hit a plateau and something new needs to happen. I found that the room itself swallowed some of the sound and it was a bit muted on the outside (a good thing considering concert-level noise level in a residential area would attract police) but all in all things came together nicely. Having one “gig” under our belts I think will make us realize some degree of maturity and legitimacy to this little project we’ve got, and give us some motivation to start to craft our musicianship.
The party itself was a very unexpected affair from my point of view and I spent the entire night walking through crowds of complete strangers. Not even one-off strangers, but people who had no connection with us or our friends or even friends of our friends. A good chunk of the crowd was people who say flyers that my roommate handed out and decided to come. Tmo spun our party pretty hard and as a result we had complete strangers in our basement, lounging on our porch, even crashing on our couches when the morning rolled around. I wasn’t bothered by the fact that there were strangers in my house; most people were considerate and positive and didn’t trash the place too bad, but when we opened things up for an open jam I got antsy. Whether it was carelessness or not knowing, my music gear got knocked around and abused and didn’t make it through the night in perfect working order. Considering we only had two outlets powering the entire Biosphere (2 bass amps, 3 guitar amps, pedals, mixer, vocal mic, lights) I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that we didnt’ have any really bad electrical problems. But still. That room is a haven to me, easily my favorite room in the house, and to see people treat it and our musical equipment with such indifference and disregard knotted me up a bit. The Tragedy of the Commons in action.
I finally went to bed around 6:00 AM, about the time I usually get up for work. There were still a couple people hanging on, and the post-bar wave of people had come and gone. I could have easily gone to bed hours earlier, so I didn’t have much problem face-planting into my pillow. I woke up around noon very groggy and convinced that I was back in college. We spent most of the afternoon cleaning up, and amazingly enough the 1-2 looks better than it did before we started. Things are not only clean, they are put away and organized. We had a leisurely dinner tonight after all was set right again and played some table hockey, so it seems that things are back to what passes for normal around here.
It was a good time. For sure. The night turned to day pretty quickly, but upon surveying the mess in our kitchen and basement at first light I thought to myself that the days of the all-night ragers are not my speed anymore. The mess wasn’t it; my broken guitar amp wasn’t even it. I like hosting gatherings and I like bringing people together, but I’m less up on hedonism and overindulgence and staying up all night. Maybe if the function didn’t have alcohol I would have felt different (but if it didn’t have alcohol, sadly, nobody would have come.) I’m 26 going on 60 it seems. Fine. I now have a gig under my belt and had a chance to see some friends. As for now, though, the 1-2 is quiet and serene after the torrent of Saturday night into Sunday morning. I couldn’t ask for more.
music: Tortise- It’s All Around You
This one was shelved for a couple years for some reason but came back with a fury this past weekend when Patrick rolled through town. It’s quite simple: toast two waffles until golden brown and slightly brittle, then slather generous amounts of ice cream between them, compress, and eat sandwich style. Whipped cream is optional. You now hold the secret to the singlemost positive midnight snack known to modern civilization: the Sandwich of Doom. We’ve already made it a staple item here at the 1-2.
I’m not sure why it’s called the Sandwich of Doom but I do know that it’s damn good. In all fairness, credit is due to my college roommate Rami for this one but I’m sure you can go ahead and try it out for yourself without worrying about copyright infringement. Be ready to eat quickly though, and don’t be ashamed about licking your plate or tabletop or floor or pants or whatever happens to be directly below your Sandwich of Doom. Gross, you say? Far from it. You won’t think twice. You might actually toast up another waffle to mop up the fallen ice cream. The Sandwich of Doom is that good. I promise.
music: Atmosphere- Seven’s Travels
I got my external hard drive back today from TiMO, filled with his and Volker’s music collections. Included in this treasure trove is my new favorite hip hop tune, something that Jojo played for me a while back. This one is an acquired taste, and I’m happy to say that anyone who grew up within a couple miles of an ocean in this country wouldn’t understand. C-Geezey and his boys in Tha 446 keep it real, but Atmosphere has really put Midwestern hip hop on the map. This one goes out to everyone in that vast expanse of land where most people stop in order to change planes on their way to the other coast but never stay. Any song that shouts out Milwaukee is OK by me.
music: Recordings from the Biosphere (with Matt and Sebastian)- 2/18/05
Another week of vacation from school is upon me and my goals this time around are modest: resurrect some of that which I lost to Missa Toss over the past six months. I knew going into this nine day stretch that some sort of ritual was appropriate to mark the reclaiming of my own life that was to take place, and in the days before the vacation proper I considered doing a three-day fast to help clear the cobwebs and to create some mental space from which a more healthy, balanced perspective could take place. The topics of hunger and the inescapable need for food have been rattling around in my head for the past couple weeks, and the idea of a fast appealed to me as a way to manage both my accumulating emotional and visceral clutter. As the vacation hit, though, I realized that I did not need to empty out; instead, I needed to fill up. Enough of my time has been spent in personal deprivation that a physical acting out of that deprivation was not the proper means of making the most of this time given to me. No, instead, I thought to see what I could to to fill time with things of substance. My eating habits are poor enough during the work week.
If I had the inclination, I could easily fill my time from now until the end of break with work for school. I’ll have to dip into it at some point-lessons must be planned for the week after this and an entire curriculum in psychology must be outlined for next year-but for the time being I’m content to do things for myself. And even though break has only been dented by this past weekend, it is of significant substance. Time is being filled with goodness, mostly with that infinitely difficult but unspeakably positive thing I’ve been working towards and pushing on since I returned from my trip across the country: music.
Friday night, by all personal measures, was a watershed moment. I connected with two guys from Craigslist, a bassist and a drummer, and got down to it for about two and a half hours in the 1-2 basement music studio. We threw around some original ideas (I’m re-listening to the 30-minute straight improv we opened things with now), a couple Dead covers, a couple Phish covers, and some other assorted works. It was the first time I got to put the room downstairs to good use, and it was also the first time I got to put the newly-tuned and tweaked Gibson through the motions. Both earned their keep and then some-things came out better than I ever could have hoped for. Considering that it was our first time playing together it was downright incredible now that I’m listening to it again. Peet, a man who knows his music and takes it seriously, said that he’s paid good money to hear music much worse. It occurred to me afterwards that this was possibly the first electric jam session I’ve had on guitar…ever? It legitimized a lot for me: all that time spent noodling in my bedroom playing along to CDs, all that work put into recording demo tracks, all that money thrown into the new Gibson. It also made me glad I dropped some bills on mixers and microphones-we got a great sounding recording out of the session. We three are going to make a habit out of it and hope to eventually bring a keyboardist into the mix. Friday night saw a big goal of mine for this year come to fruition. I couldn’t be happier about it and am already itching to have another go at it.
I’m still staying true to my roots on the music front. I’m working on some more structured singer-songwriter type stuff on acoustic with Jono, a guy who contacted me about playing music a couple weeks back. We met up this afternoon, ran a few of his tunes including some covers, some of my originals and some of his. We’re shooting for an open-mic at the Middle East tomorrow night. It isn’t perfect yet, but it sounds good enough to take out there and let hang in the breeze for a little bit. Another goal of mine to be realized: playing out. My musical horizons are expanding by leaps and bounds given this short time in February and the best part is that these recent aural explosions are by no means limited or isolated incidents; they are beginnings.
Music, no matter how good it can be, is not the sum total of anyone’s existence. This week saw, by my standards, a staggering amount of social movement. C. and I had our weekly Thursday night dinner for the first time in a couple weeks and it was good to catch up with her. We came up with a great hairbrained scheme: I supply the music, and she’s going to make us Hammer Pants. (That’s word, because you know…) I also got a chance to see M. twice this week, a monumental feat considering I haven’t seen her since last September. Jono invited me out for the time honored tradition of drinking beer and then throwing really sharp pointy things last night. And tonight we had a dinner gathering at the 1-2 that blossomed from an offhand comment to Peet this morning into a way cool get-together. TiMO and JZ came back to the 1-2 from dogsitting, Jono stuck around after running through songs and convinced Sam to join us, Matt and Gina came up from downstairs, and Jojo made the trek up from Central Square. We had a good hour or two in the kitchen full of frying, boiling, slicing, talking, eating, drinking…even a good grease fire in the oven. We then did a good amount of lounging and laughing in the common room while we waited for our digestive systems to do their thing. It was a simply beautiful (and beautifully simple) Sunday night at the 1-2. It was a study in what is necessary this break: food. I do not need to be emptied, assuming a passive stance towards my surroundings. Instead, I need to be forceful and purposeful in my actions, to indulge in and enjoy food of all kinds, and as the song goes, share it with many friends. There are seven days left in which I have a lot to accomplish here in Boston. This vacation isn’t about leaving, and that’s important. It’s tough work resurrecting one’s social life after over a year of neglect, but I’m already beginning to taste the rewards.
music: “One Last Vesper” Cassette
We were enjoying a typical Sunday night at the 1-2 earlier: sitting around the kitchen table, listening to The Playground, and tearing through a couple artichokes and lemon-butter sauce when this song came on that really twisted my head around. It’s an old folk tune called The Circle Game done by Joni Mitchell and assorted others, a song I know incredibly well but haven’t heard in years. We used to sing it in music class in grade school, and it was the first song I ever learned on guitar (which was actually my mother’s ukelale). But one of the most vivid memories I have of “The Circle Game” is a performance of the song by a fellow leadership trainee and old friend Chris Dallman at Camp Minikani a summer evening long ago. Hearing the song for the first time in so long opened a floodgate of memories and I’ve been spending the rest of the evening picking through them, as well as old pictures, journal entries, and cassettes.
I’m caught up in my immediate reality more than I ever have been. My fond memories of past years usually consist of the past couple years, maybe college. College seems like it happened in another lifetime. I all but forget that I lived a life in Wisconsin for 18 or so years, and it was a life full of events and places and people. Of course I know that I did live in Wisconsin, and that I was a kid once (declarative), but I forgot what it was like (episodic). I had not forgotten the fact that I had been in high school once, but I had forgotten what it was like to be in high school myself. Upon hearing that song on the radio the feeling of it all, the physical and mental sensation of what it was like to be a child, came rushing back. It was incredible. I flipped through old photos, yes, actual photographs on kodak paper; I put in old cassette tapes (remember those?) that I wore down in the late 80’s and early 90’s. I took a whirlwind tour of myself as a child, and even with the primed sense memory it seemed frighteningly distant. ‘That was then, this is now,’ you can say, and yes, but there is something tragic about no longer being young like that. I realized I miss the child’s eye, the struggle with questions and ideas encountered for the first time, the complete amazement at experiencing things for the first time, the struggle to become a competent, educated, experienced human being. Part of why I thought the National Parks I visited this summer were so spectacular was because they made me feel like a child experiencing Nature for the first time again. It was wonderful. I miss that feeling.
Out of all the corners of my childhood that I visited tonight, I found myself gravitating towards camp. To those that have been there, two anize’ers included, Camp Minikani is a phenomenon that doesn’t need to be explained. To everyone else, it can’t be explained. I have camp to thank for a lot. I find myself in a profession that stems directly from my experiences as a counselor there. I point to camp as one of the primary reasons why I have such an affinity for the natural world. I am reminded almost daily of how camp has shaped my core values and philosophies. And as “The Circle Game” reminded me, camp is mostly responsible for my wanting to play guitar. To remember so clearly what it was like to be a child at camp is overwhelming. Much of that feeling has been lost in the six years I have been away from camp. And since there is no way to go home again, I can only hope to take whatever I found there and somehow find a way to make it work, here, now, as an adult, in inner-city Boston.
The end of every day at camp is marked by a vesper, a quiet time where cabins of children lie in bunk beds, blinking in candlelight, and exchange their thoughts on the universe. It generally starts with a song and a simple question: “What was your best part of the day?” Vesper, to me, was always my best part of the day. The song has continued to the present date, but the question is one that I’ve unfortunately ceased to ask myself, but one I should revisit more often. But vesper has ceased to happen. I try to sit at the end of the day with a cup of tea and process stuff, but it isn’t the same. Were I to have time at the end of the day to discuss the universe under candlelight with friends even once a month…it seems, though, that vesper is not something that happens in the adult world. Perhaps because adult life requires that sort of interpersonal exploration less. I would still welcome it. For my part, though, I have colored pieces of cloth hanging on my wall to remind me, a guitar that made its performance debut over the crackles of campfire and chirp of crickets, and presently a candle lit, a candle that probably hasn’t been lit since my last summer spent in Wisconsin, a candle approximately the shape and size of a dixie cup, a candle with flecks of Crayola scattered throughout the wax, a candle with a small rock embedded in its bottom. To those familiar, it doesn’t need explaining. Remembering where this candle came from, and more importantly that I came from the same place, was my best part of the day. Childhood. I miss it terribly.
Years move by and now the boy is twenty
though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There’ll be new dreams
maybe better dreams
and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through
music: Indigo Girls- 1200 Curfews
We got our annual winter pounding this weekend. Estimates are anywhere between 24 and 38 inches. It was hard to tell exactly because of all the wind, but there is a lot of snow. A lot. The big city was brought to its knees; city and state governments closed down, businesses (save McDonald’s, Starbucks, Anna’s Tacqueria, and the liquor stores) not bothering, school cancelled for two days. Two days! It reminds me of my own freshman year of high school when we had a blizzard the weekend before first semester exams and they were delayed for two days. If this were Wisco, though, we’d be in school today. Boston gets snow, sure, but Boston doesn’t know how to handle it. There’s literally no room to put it all.
I don’t like snow all that much. If I skied I might like snow a little more but I don’t. There aren’t many mountains where I grew up. People in Wisco mostly ski on landfills and I never got down with it. And now that I’m closer to some more legitimite mountains I can’t bring myself to get into another expensive hobby, especially one where you replay a controlled tumble downhill over and over and pay for it. Gravity works. Clearly. No, money and time is better spent on musical instruments. Plus I’d rather strap 50 pounds onto my back and walk up the same mountain all those skiers are falling down. It’s questionable which one is more idiotic.
I also think that I don’t like snow because it means shoveling. I remember attacking our brick walkway back home, chipping off little flakes of red as I hacked through the frozen snow. I had a respite from shoveling during college with no real property that needed my attention, but was back at it with a fury this past winter at the 1-2. Yesterday was epic. We were out back, six strong, digging out of almost three feet of snow. The hardest part was that the wind had blown giant snowdrifts up against the fence at the back ends of our parking lot. At least three of our cars were completely buried, as in you couldn’t see any car at all, and only the top of my car was visible. We got a little help from the plow guy, but then threw our backs into three or four hours of shoveling. All told we probably put in 20 man-hours of work yesterday, but it paid off. We carved out our backyard parking lot and driveway, now a sizeable snow fortress with an eight car capacity and seven-foot walls on every side. Kudos to my housemates, who didn’t stop shoveling even when they felt like quitting, who saw the job to its end, and who were selfless enough to dig out everyone’s car, including JZ and Upstairs Chuck, neither of whom were there to help. Digging out of a blizzard is a test of physical endurance, but it’s also a test of character. Do you just dig yourself out, or do you think of those with whom you share living space? Your neighbors? The work ethic and selflessness at the 1-2 was encouraging. I will say, though, that I’ll be pissed when Jimmy (local pizza joint employee, apparent 1-2 parking lot lesee, and confrontational prick) rolls into our parking lot in his Lincoln Aggrivator as if we dug out a parking space just for him and his big black obscenity of a vehicle. I’ll hand him a shovel and tell him to get to work without much guilt.
So after an epic effort we at the 1-2 are dug out. I can’t speak for the rest of the city, but from what I’ve seen around the neighborhood people are putting in their shovel time. The city is a surreal place with these giant piles of white placed in every and any available free space, but the visual curiosity of it all isn’t enough for me to like it. Snow still means shoveling, and I’m sore today. Sore, dug out, and at such a point where the recounting of the weather occupies the forefront of my mind. Waiting for the thaw…
music: Geoff Scott’s Public House- 5/14/02
Saturday morning at the 1-2. I slept way late after an unusually rough week at work and was happy to emerge at 11:30 or so with bathrobe and bedhead. Peet and Tmo were tearing into a muffin, each working on their respective to-do list for the day. Same-old-same-old for weekends in the A.M. Lazy breakfasts are nice, but I miss the feasts that used to unroll at Chowdahaus on Sundays. Something would inevitably be frying in garlic and onion, Peet would be making crepes, the rest of us chopping fruit or preparing heavy cream to be whipped, and there inevitably would be some pretty strong coffee percolating.
I miss coffee. The sense memory of coffee brings back so much about late breakfasts on the weekends, from college all the way up to now. I cut caffeine out of my diet pretty much entirely about five years ago and miss coffee dearly. I’ve tried coffee substitutes: Celestial Seasonings’ Roastaroma, some other carob-based stuff, but none did the trick. Then AJM and I stumbled across Teccino at the Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco (quite possibly the best co-op in the world), I bought some loose teccino from the bulk section, a cloth drawstring bag that served as the strainer, and had my coffee back. After looking for it for weeks back in Boston, Marla brought a can home one night. We now have a steady supply of teccino at the 1-2, and my weekend mornings are much better.
I usually don’t have any during the week but a mug full of teccino is perfect on the weekends. The stuff is great-so great that people here have started mixing it into their regular coffee. I can’t really tell the difference taste-wise, but then again I haven’t had real coffee in five years. But there’s no caffeine and it doesn’t taste watered down at all. Teccino is singlehandedly bringing back the joy to my weekend breakfast experience. It’s got that deep, slightly bitter, unmistakable coffee taste. It takes well to milk and sugar. Goes great with cereal, bagels, or muffins. It even makes you have to poop just like coffee. Um. Speaking of. I gotta go.
music: Simon and Garfunkel- Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, & Thyme
I’m enjoying a quiet moment at the 1-2 right now. Just got home from another fabulous Wednesday night dinner at Chelsea’s and am nursing the end of a nasty head cold. The house, usually a beehive of this and that, is fairly quiet right now and it’s pleasant. Tmo is tapping away on something involving linux in the next room over, Peet is out of town on a business trip (sidnote: is this a sign of the apocalypse??), Claire still at work. There is some motion afoot downstairs but people are lying low, preparing their dens for the oncoming snow and rain due to hit in a couple hours.
The 1-2 has been a great place to live this fall. I’m finding myself spending a lot of time around the house, partly because I’m a homebody by nature, partly because I’m often too tired to get up and out and do something after a day of work, but partly because it’s a good place to hang out. There’s almost always something going on, some new cooking or bike building or carpentry or music project, but there’s also enough room to find a corner and read quietly or take a nap. Eight people stretched over two floors and the basement works well. What’s more, the cooperation and interaction between housemates works surprisingly well. Last snowfall five of us shoveled the driveway on five different occasions without asking each other about it. The dishes, usually a contentious point in the domestic scene, have been cleaned and put away pretty well. Tmo put up a shelf with hanging hooks for pots and pans which is an excellent functional addition to the kitchen. We have the potential to be loud, especially the musicians in the house, but all things considered are pretty respectful of the racket. Or not…i’m not sure as I’m ususally the one making the most noise. I’d like to think it’s good noise though.
The thing I’m most excited about is Matt’s project in the basement: the music room. We cleared the basement out of 30 years worth of scrap metal, old doors, and broken appliances this fall and Matt’s been busy singlehandedly building a full-fledged room in that space. Laying palletes for the floor, framing the walls, hanging huge double doors, and eventually soundproofing and drywalling. He’s been working like a madman and I feel bad that I haven’t had the time or wherewithall to jump downstairs and help out, because I will surely benefit from the work in the coming months. He’s turning the basement, once unusable and functionless, into music space. The room is the future 12 Curtis Recording Studio and Rehearsal Space. That completion will open up some more space down there for a bike repair center (Peet and Marla are building a fleet of bikes, or building bikes and taking them apart again-I can’t tell which) and workshop (for whatever Ron and tmo dream up). The music room is what I’m most excited about. The room will also lend a sense of legitimacy to the whole music thing; when the space is finished and available I’ll probably throw up a musicians wanted ad on craigslist to see if I can’t really get things going.
Thank the Maker for the 1-2. Besides countering my seemingly natural tendency towards solitude, it’s a social outlet. This is the year of not really having much of a life of my own, so it’s nice to come home to such a sociable place. I couldn’t imagine living in my horrorshow apartment from last year, full of door-closers, alcoholics, shady black curtains, completely unused common space, and $2000 phone bills. It’s nice to share food. It’s nice to set up a house computer network. It’s nice to turn the basement into usable space. It’s nice to add and tweak this and that, throw a plastic “carpet” in the bathroom, turn an old mushroom crate into a sponge-holder, put up a poster or picture, make this place a home.
music: Tom Waits- Alice
Back in Boston after a long Thanksgiving weekend in Milwaukee. This year has been a torrent of activity and emotion, an unrelenting barrage of people and experience. I came back more tired than I arrived, but that is ok. Thanksgiving was spent well this year, although I found that I spread myself very thin trying to make time for as many people as I could. I would have, ideally, liked to spend a good hour or so with everyone I saw this weekend 1-on-1, but given the time constraints I was impressed with how much I got in. I know some really great people.
Spending time with family continues to be a more positive experience as my sisters get older. I have allies and companions at family events now; dinners that used to be tedious and unbearable are now much more lively and engaging. And even though I have very limited time with my cousins, it is always great to see them. I spent a good afternoon plus with the J’s, and Aunts L. and E. this weekend. This year was bittersweet, as it was the first time we assembled for Thanksgiving without Grandma. We took a good amount of time going through Grandma’s stuff at her apartment which was a tough thing to do for us, but important. All things considered, Grandma did not own a lot of stuff so the job was not an overwhelming one, but an act that required a lot of emotional push. How does one properly move a family heirloom into a box? How does one rightfully lay claim to these objects, these constants, that were not ours but will always be a reminder of a loved one? We that remain assumed possession of few of her things that had meaning for us: pots and pans, some of her pictures on the wall, assorted trinkets, necklaces and jewlery for the girls. I personally didn’t take much: a red plastic cup (the ones we always drank from-each of the grandkids got one) and a framed Breughel print that I’m told was my dad’s favorite. It hangs in my room now. Her apartment of over 30 years is being cleaned out, the remnants of her life are now boxed up or given away, and we have our memories and a few odd trinkets. Grandma is no longer here, but I think I’ve grown into a new appreciation for my cousins and aunts in the process of missing her.
While there was a requisite camp gathering on Saturday night, it was not the unabashedly wild and positive experience that it has been in the past. I suppose that I’m no longer part of that immediate world having been out for five years now and that I’m more concerned with the people I met through camp than a social circle centered on that place. I got a chance to visit with Doctor Dray and P-rock, always nice to check in with them, as well as friends from my own LT year: Gehl and Nick. Gehl I’ve seen a little more frequently but I haven’t seen Nick in some years. He is now married (!) and with 10-month old son (!!!) but still made it out for a beer. We didn’t have overwhelming amounts to talk about — I suppose given the time and drift that is to be expected — but it was still great to just be around them. Nick continues to be one of the most down-to-earth and nicest human beings I know. Enough time has passed such that these camp friends of mine have beome just…friends. They are all wonderful people.
The Minikani rendezvous was superceded in many ways by the serendipity common to nights out in Milwaukee: a core group of my high school friends were out at the same place. Because so many of the camp people at the gathering were strangers to me (too young for me to have interactions with them at camp), I ducked out of that scene to spend time with my friends from high school. It was excellent. We gathered the previous night as well and spent some good time together (as well as some scattered encounters with past classmates we would never think to talk to given the choice). I felt, at times, like I was 16 again, except with beer. The group of guys I became friends with in high school are an astounding bunch: intelligent, witty (sometimes too witty for our own good), amicable, outrageous when we gather. We have matured since we graduated, yes, and we all find ourselves in different places, but I was consistently astounded to find that we could all gather and reconnect without a hitch, we could really pick up right where we left off last. It is a low-maintnence, high-octane group. We had a great amount of fun, and I had some pretty sappy nostalgic moments. At one point four of us found ourselves together for the first time since Thanksgiving weekend of senior year, when we made a tradition of driving up to Terry Andrae State Park the Wednesday before the holiday and camping out in the freezing cold for the night. Two of the most memorable nights of high school for me, and the fact that we found ourselves together seven or eight years later on the same weekend was astounding to me. Not everyone was in town, but we had a critical mass. It was wonderful.
As I sit and turn over the weekend in my head, I’m reminded of a line from a song by Reid Genauer that I’ve never heard, but a line AJM has repeated so much I feel intimate with it: “We live in and of each other; We will remain.” It is someting of which I am much more aware after spending four or so days with people from my past, from my childhood and adolescence. We share things with all our friends, but there is a familiarity with our family and friends from growing up that is unmatched. I haven’t felt so comfortable as I had this weekend since I last joined company with these people. In my never-ending quest to push forward into the new and explore, I should be mindful of this. Me and my family, me and my friends from growing up: we live in and of each other. It’s a beautiful thing.
I find myself right now back in Boston, refusing to get real until tomorrow morning when my present catches back up with me. There is a storm of reality on the horizon; Mr. Taus will have to re-emerge tomorrow to confront that storm, but his message is somewhat affected by this past weekend. He will tell his high school students to cherish and celebrate the friends they are making, as while there are friends to be made and people to meet in the future, something about those you know while growing up is essential to the fabric of a person. To all I had the pleasure of seeing this weekend: thank you. We live in and of each other. We will remain.
music: Steve Kimock Band, 12/31/02
When it rains, it pours. Boston is actually due for a two-day rainstorm, the coattails of Hurricane Frances I think, but right now we are suffering through some nasty muggy humidity. Tension, and release.
I returned from an incredibly wrenching and difficult trip home to find the 1-2 buzzing with activity. This place is positive. Ron enlisted the help of pretty much everyone to start unearthing the decades of pile-up in the basement and about two tons of scrap was moved upstairs. The downstairs suite was getting more and more set up. Stereo was in. Gina contributed pillows to the common area that looked like someone killed Cookie Monster for his pelt. Tmo’s stuff began to leak out of his room again-cables and computer boxes flying this way and that. Peet’s stuff was in semi-neat piles in the common room. Kitchen is in its usual state of halfway clean, fully used. This is a place of movement and activity, an exciting place at that, so I shouldn’t expect it to be sterile and immaculate any time soon. I have my room to keep in such an order. Fine.
We are moving forward on projects here, bit by bit. Today Marla, Peet, and Ron started to piece together some of the old salvaged bike parts in the basement while Claire, Matt, and myself cut down the ten foot wooden weeds growing out front and along the side of the house. Ron is plotting the next step for the basement and has Matt and I excited about building a recording studio in the far corner, along with a bike shop and workshop and storage facility. Tmo started clearing out the porch and back hall and tended to all the plants in the house yesterday, also did some rearranging in the kitchen. There is some good momentum here, a lot of energy for sure. We are a force: myself, tmo, Claire, Peet, Ron, Marla, Matt, and Gina. We’re getting there for sure, we just have to be sure to keep our energy directed towards positive ends and be able to remind each other of this. Our goal, short term at least, is to have this place squared by Saturday, October 9, when we host a big party to celebrate the 1-2-oh-my-god. It will also, incidently, be the Funky New Year.
With all that’s going on on the homefront it’s amazing to me that I’ve just started work in earnest and for real. Today was my first official day of work and I have to say that I have a sweet job. People are nice, relaxed, laid back. We are given an incredible amount of freedom and autonomy but also are supported financially and personally in all our decisions. My schedule is excellent. My student load is small. I really couldn’t be happier, all things considered. It’s now a matter of preparing as much as I can, hoping I’ve dotted all my I’s and crossed all my T’s, knowing that something will be left out but that I’ll be able to deal with it.
This is a powerful and exciting time. There’s a lot going on here. And yet, I am forcing myself to keep one ear turned towards Milwaukee and Grandma as she squeezes in her final days on this earth. I’ll have to go home some point in the next couple of weeks, and with that trip will come a good deal of emotional needs, but I feel a secure foundation here. The chaos and uncertainty in Boston is now slowly resolving itself, simmering into a tight rhythm. I feel vitally alive these days, wholly present, even when (and especially when) it hurts.
music: Neil Young, 5/8/03
Two days until the dreaded first of September and I’ve successfully moved my stuff into my room. I now occupy the back room on the second floor of the 1-2-oh-my-god!, painted pumpkin squash orange by Jojo some time last year. It’s a good space and I’m using it well. I’ve actually not been as excited about a living space as I am about this one since Chowdahaus. Now that my personal living space is set up I can go about working on the rest of the house.
More than finally having a couple square feet to call my own after almost three months of transience and milk crates, I am appreciative of having a homebase from which I can launch into several endeavours this fall. The primary and biggest one will be work, something yet to start but looming large on the horizon. Because I’ve been so busy setting up my living space I haven’t really had time to give to getting ready for the school year, and it’s about to kick me in the ass. I’m sure to be taking the end of this week and all weekend to set myself with enough structure and materials to feel a little more comfortable and confident as I start my first years of teaching. An ordered and efficient living space is the foundation for success in that realm, and I’m glad to have my room in order. In order is probably an understatement- this place is humming like an ant farm. Peet and Marla helped me build a bed for myself and I scrounged a pretty nice mattress from the basement. Tmo put up shelving in the pantry while I overhauled the common room yesterday. Vast improvements on each front. Everyone else is trickling into the place, readying to assume control of this building, ready to start building something positive this fall, winter, and spring. The cast of characters is eclectic yet strong, and while we aren’t without our weaknesses we’ll do some good things in this house this year. Myself, tmo, and Chleurrrrr! round out the second floor, while Marla, Ron, and Matt and Gina take on the first floor. Peet will be bouncing here and there from couch to couch for a spell, and Upstairs Chuck continues to hold things down from up top. One, two, oh my god.
And never mind the fact that so many of our friends are moving close by. Dunk n’ Balls up in Arlington, OGD and JZ on the other side of Davis. JoJo and Lil’ Brother in Central. Molly and crew somewhere in Cambridge. Teacher friends all over the place. And an old buddy from college back in JP. He rolls with a very positive crew based off Thompson Island and will be good to have them in the loop this year. Never mind all that.
Things continue to take form as we push into September, and the momentum, for the most part, is positive. This week is a trying one with all the moving and setting up, but getting there. The 1-2 crew does not mess around. The moving has been tough (besides thru-hiking I can’t think of a better workout than moving), but we are getting there. Working together, making sure it all gets done. And for the most part, we are succeeding beyond my initial hopes.
music: Mississippi John Hurt- Frankie and Albert
Today was Sunday, the Great American Day Of Rest. And (for once) rest I did. Slept in until 10:00 am, a great long time nowadays. Had some food, played some guitar (first time in weeks), did some reading for class, did some reading not for class, took a mid afternoon nap, had a stroll around the neighborhood, and came back home to start work for tomorrow. A rewrite of a paper from last semester, An analysis of student work for my program portfolio, and planning for this week’s lessons. Some time was squandered today and I probably could have gotten a lot more done than I did, but I needed to squander some time on doing nothing.
Doing nothing is a strange thing for me these days now that I have been conditioned to maximize productivity and output every waking minute. It was a good exercise in pausing and looking around, in not charging ahead, in not pushing foward. I felt bad about it. Guilty almost. Shouldn’t there be something to show for my time spent piddling about today? By all quantitative measures and by all grad school east-coast scales, today was a waste. Fine. I’m willing to live with that for today, guilt and all. It was nice to lounge around doing not much of anything for most of the day. The one downside was that I did it at home, which is quite a terrible place.
They say you’ll never forget the roommates you had in college. I assuredly won’t forget them, nor will I forget the roommates I had in grad school. But for completely different reasons. Although I don’t talk with them much, I count the roommates I had in college among my friends. People I like to spend time with, people I’d invite to my wedding, that sort of thing. My roommates in grad school are another story altogether.
I came upon this apartment just blocks away from Harvard Yard through craigslist in the spring of 2003. Craigslist had never let me down; I bought guitar pedals and found people to play music with on the weekends. I had the utmost faith that it would find me a nice apartment as well. And the apartment itself, the physical plant, is beautiful by apartement building’s standards. The four people who occupy the space with me leave much to be desired. It makes coming home a very unpleasant experience.
Of the four other members of the apartment, two maintain existences worthy of clinical attention. The other two live more benign yet equally quirky lives. They give me fodder for stories that will make your skin crawl. I think I’ll hold off on the stories here until after I’m out of this place, in case the walls have ears and eyes (one roommate has admitted to prolonged “spying” on neighbors). The short of it is this: having to live with these people puts me in a foul mood. There is stuff that enrages me, and there is stuff that depresses me. Things are quite sad around here most of the time actually; there is very little evidence that any of my roommates has any friends or much of a social life at all, save one roommate’s husband (living in Africa) and another roommate’s girlfriend (in town every 3 months or so). I get the sense that people come directly home from work and retreat to their locked rooms to watch TV. I don’t think any of them ever are out of the house on weekends. If I didn’t resent spending time here so much, I might begin to feel sorry for them.
Luckily, this is not the year where home is something I think about. I’ve been so busy that it’s almost a blessing to not have to worry about investing anything of myself on the homefront. Still, on the few times that I do spend a significant amount of time here, on those Sunday afternoons that I end up lazing about the house, I would like to have an environment that is even the slightest bit pleasant. Today, though, spending time alone in my room was exactly what I was hoping to do. I could shut my door and forget that my roommates were home, except for hearing their tiptoeing around. Fine.
Perhaps this is the year of the strange roommate. I have mine, and my associate to the West has his own bizzare stories from his old home place. Fine. Not everyone can live in Chowdahaus all the time. But having a terrible living situation, living with people who enrage and depress you at the same time, does not make for pleasant lazy Sundays. At least I don’t feel so bad about staying late at school to grade papers…
music: Keith Jarrett- The Koln Concert
We are now officially in the “holiday season,” I guess. Cut away all the economics and this is a time of year to celebrate family and life, to share and give. As is appropriate, I had Thanksgiving dinner tonight with my family in Milwaukee. That, however, doesn’t really say anything interesting on its own. Some thoughts must be unpacked here…
Family. It’s become a tricky word for me. it convolutes things slightly this time of year, and on this Thanksgiving night especially.
Partially because of my protests to our family’s previous Thanksgiving plans, we held Thanksgiving dinner at the house I grew up in tonight, as we have for the past three years. The six Taus/Edelmans were of course in attendance, as were my dad’s side of the family: Grandma L., Aunt L., and the J’s. This is practically the only time of year where I have the chance to see my two cousins and we all find ourselves in the same location. Grandma is beaming because she has all her grandchildren in one place, and we are happy for it as well. It is important to me to stay in touch with my dad’s side of my family; I’m glad that we have Thanksgiving together, because there is little opportunity for me to get some face time in with them otherwise these days.
Tonight’s cast of characters, my family, provided for some intruiging human chemistry. While everybody is smiles and hugs, I still don’t feel 100% good about the whole event. My spirit was restless tonight, my senses a bit on edge. I’m not all that surprised, though, being caught squarely in the middle of such a family gathering. I’ve felt this way for the past couple Thanksgivings, and it has everything to do with the trickiness the concept of family here. Rich, Ari, and Jessie moved in over eight years ago, and I have come to accept them as part of my nuclear family, but I don’t think that attempts to mix them in smoothly with my dad’s side of the family will ever really work. Mom has a heart of gold to try to engineer such a feat, and everyone plays their part as best they can, but things just don’t click. They can’t. They shouldn’t. Family is indeed a tricky word, and will continue to be. This being a holiday to celebrate such institutions, I spent some time tonight digging through the earth in order to better examine my roots. I tried some meditating on my own family, my place in it, and how to best frame those other people with whom I share my life.
It’s nobody’s fault, really, but being in Milwaukee can’t help but be stressful for me. That’s why I’m not here all that much. As a result, I don’t get a lot of time in with family members and in many ways have relationships with them that don’t go far past their relation to me as family members, even though I know better. And then I think: do these people know me as anything other than “son”, “brother”, “cousin”, etc? It’s hard to say, but I’d guess probably not. (That, I think, is one of the biggest reasons why I’m doing this Blog in the first place.) Maybe it is because family is such a tricky concept that we all relate via perceived family role prototypes. Were it not my own family, my own experience, it would make a fascinating psychological study in interpersonal dynamics. But that’s not my goal here. I want to make it my goal to come to understand those people in my family as something other than family members. If that makes any sense.
After my sisters went out to see friends, I opted out of a high school night out, and mom and Rich went to bed, I spent about two hours paging through old photo books. It started with my parents’ baby books, and carried all the way through when my sister was born. The pictures I found myself staring at the most were the ones of my parents in high school, college, and in young adulthood. These were my parents as very real people, free of the roles of “mom” or “dad”, with a good amount of youth in them and a very unknown future ahead of them. There were pictures of dad with his high school girlfriend (not mom) and pictures of mom looking very 1960’s teenager with her brother and sister, who I only know as “aunt” and “uncle”. There were pictures of my mom picking out vegetables at Haymarket in Boston, and pictures of my dad hanging out with some friends in his apartment. There were pictures of the two of them taking trips to Maine, marriage even then a distant concept. There were a couple pictures of mom with her housemates sitting on the stoop. There were pictures of dad in cap and gown at his graduation from Harvard. Then there were pictures of their wedding, and with that, things started to drift closer to my own story. But still, their lives were full of detail in their own right. I wasn’t even a thought then-these two people who became my parents eventually had a wealth of life expreience before I came into being.
The pictures eventually turn to topics more familiar: my birth, my early years, my sister’s birth. I have memories of the rest of the story, but my memories, I realize, are quite biased towards my own perspective. And as a consequence, so is my story. The point here is, though, that my story is not their story at all. Even in the years after 1978, my parents lived their own lives and experienced things beyond their roles as “mom” and “dad”. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to fully understand that part of them because I am their son. Family is a tricky word.
I don’t have the opportunity to ask dad about his life, his individuality, although his and my family members could help fill in some of the missing pieces. From what I do know about his story I think I would have really enjoyed getting to know that part of him that was not just “dad”. Mom is still here, but I still don’t have a good grasp on who that young woman in the pictures is. There is a picture of mom in a hospital bed with me as a newborn, all wrinkled and red and puffy, she holding me and staring at me in that classic mother-newborn way. I sat there tonight wondering how in the world the young lady in the pictures and the woman who picked me up from the airport yesterday could be the same person, and moreover, how that person is the same as the teenager in pictures before. (I might add that I have trouble integrating my own past into my self-concept: was I really that wide-eyed three-year-old in corduroy overalls? Was I really that wrinkled, puffy newborn? It doesn’t connect easily for me, even back here in Milwaukee.)
I think the trick is to realize that they are not the same person-mom’s story and life is still unfolding and she is changing along with it. But she is not the only one. I am now six feet and skinny and almost twenty five years old, hardly the little infant in those pictures. But there is some connection between those people in the pictures and this family today and every time I come home I am reminded of that. It’s easier to forget out there, far away from my first home, far away from my roots. It’s easy to forget, but it’s important to remember. That, above all else, is what Thanksgiving was about for me this year. It makes me sad that such an activity is riddled with complications and obfuscations, but that is the way my story has played itself out. Moreover, it is the way my family members’ stories have gone as well But there is much more than that.
Family is indeed a tricky word, and that won’t change, but it’s what I have been given. And for what it is, to the best of my ability, I should give thanks.
music: Tea Leaf Green- High Sierra 7/4/03
I spent Wednesday through Sunday of last week in Milwaukee. Had a good deal of time to spend with immediate family, extended family, and a handful of friends. Going home is usually a stressful occasion; having it coupled with the holiday seaston makes it especially so. a visit in late August, then, was not nearly as stressful as the visits impending in late November and December. Thus, there was time to stretch out, lounge about, and relax a bit.
The theme every time I go to Milwaukee is the same: I have a past. I know this, of course, but upon each visit, I seem to be reminded of certain corners of my past about which I had forgotten. The big chunks are always clear: family, extended family, high school friends, camp. But more often than not my memory is more declarative than episodic. Visiting home does quite a number on cueing up the ol’ episodic. And this trip was more different.
I had some good conversations while home. Briefly checked in with Trangy regarding his big shift from the ultra-familiar at our summer homeland to the expanses of the American West. (Others at camp are preparing to step up to their respective challenges: Drayna tells me he is digging deeper into med school, A.K. is figuring out how to best approximate the camp experience year round and moving in an easterly direction while doing so, E.H. is about to graduate and get his move on as well.) M.M. and I shared two fairly significant conversations, which really hit the nail on the head as far as all the things I was thinking about in terms of past versus present. The Rapper and I got down to some grimy issues while pacing Milwaukee’s downtown, he getting restless with kicking around Fox Point in his post-med school shift and is taking steps in a positive direction, presumably leading to Chicago. Funny how the theme was the same throughout the weekend: recognizing one’s past and figuring out how to integrate the past’s lessons into one’s present.
For a lot of folks in Milwaukee, this season is one of fairly significant change, voyage, shear, and shift. Same story on the family front. Sarah is setting up her own place and now has a quasi-serious boyfriend (this time her age). Jessie is working towards flying the coop in one year’s time, and is having quite a time figuring out where she’s going to end up. Cousin Benji is about to drive to Denver and become a buff red-haired rat in that wonderful race we college grads tend to run. Grandma Lois is gearing up for a trip out east this September(an increasingly difficult task for her), and (recently-turned 80 years old) Grandpa Max is trying hard to not slow down. Grandma Doris is staying busy keeping Grandpa Max a little less busy. It’s a wonderful interplay.
Considering all: different challenges, Same theme. Including me.
Now back in Boston, after spending a good day sleeping late, eating right, fixing up the Live Live website, working through some post-summer reading for school, and a good three hours on the bike down to Park Street and back, I have had some time to chew over the theme of last week’s journey home. And consider some solutions to its dilemma — and it is a dilemma — how to best integrate aspects of my past into the present?
Part of the problem is physical location. I tend to focus on what is directly in front of me. I tend to concern myself with things and issues with which I can interact on a sensory level. Which is fine. But many issues, situations, people are not physically proximal and therefore get less attention. I think getting a cell phone was a step in the direction of remembering that I carry my past with me. But it’s more than being mindful of such issues and people. I think that it’s important to in some way ritualize these connections to the past, to engage in action with regard to my past, to actively bring it to the forefront and into my present.
Gut-reaction: this seems like an unnatural action for me. It seems forced, contrived, unnecessary. Four years of undergraduate psychology tell me to flag such actions as important simply due to my knee-jerk reaction. Santayana’s axiom about history, then, seems to apply to individuals as well as civilizations.
And as much as I do shunt my past to…well, the past…I do enjoy the moments when it collides with the present. This seems to happen a lot in Milwaukee, which is why the trips home are both stressful and fruitful. No doubt things will just get more beautiful and complicated come December…
