Memoirous

as always this time of year--a repost “December” by James Schuyler December 06, 2012 The giant Norway spruce from Podunk, its lower branches bound, this morning was reared into place at Rockefeller Center. I thought I saw a cold blue dusty light sough in its boughs the way other years the wind thrashing at the giant ornaments recalled other years and Christmas trees more homey. Each December! I always think I hate “the over-commercialized event” and then bells ring, or tiny light bulbs wink above the entrance to Bonwit Teller or Katherine going on five wants to look at all the empty sample gift-wrapped boxes up Fifth Avenue in swank shops and how can I help falling in love? A calm secret exultation of the spirit that tastes like Sealtest eggnog, made from milk solids, Vanillin, artificial rum flavoring; a milky impulse to kiss and be friends It’s like what George and I were talking about, the East West Coast divide: Californians need to do a thing to enjoy it. A smile in the street may...

  Here is a Christmas Day excerpt from  Beyond Paradise  my book ready now for a download. Louise and her mother and several members of the mission are in an internment camp in the Philippines. Christmas Day arrived—my second in the Philippines, my first in captivity. It came without store-bought presents, without Papa, Julie, or mother. Mother mostly lay in bed except for when I took her by the hand and led her to the shower, the toilet, or to meals. She had hardly spoken a word since her outburst about the wedding album. As I looked into her vacant face, I often wondered what she thought about. Was she thinking of Papa? Without Papa she was missing her other half, the part of her that said she fixed good meals, thanked her for being a good wife, held her hand, and smoothed her hair at the dinner table. It was hard watching her crumble a little bit more each day. *** I thought long and hard about what to give Mother. She didn’t need a new cup or bowl. I knew what she wan...

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We greet each other like an echo: Hi Jane! Hi Jane! We’ve known each other for over 50 years. Fifty! Through milestones we’ve stayed connected—if even miles apart. Now separated by a lake. I went through a pile of papers this a.m.—in an attempt to organize, but keep stopping to remember and think. Birthday cards from years past—many of them from Jane. Here’s to fifty more!  

Another Year Of writing. Of shoveling snow. Planting a garden. Inch by inch. One word after another. I’m like those old ladies I used to make fun of. Who keep trying to be relevant. Who think they still have something to say. I’ve been reading literary criticism of Ernest Hemingway—literary and criticism, the author spends the first 30 pages not necessarily defending Hemingway but acknowledging the criticism of the man, the Hemingway myth. Today’s culture wraps the persona into the writing—the two cannot be separated—making it difficult to really examine the literature. Hemingway embraced flash and hybrid before they became a thing. He was king of the declarative sentence. Especially if it focused on an aside. His sparse, naturalistic dialogue was famous for talking around the subject. He approached writing as if it were a job. He called it his “work.” Once he got his work done, he’d drink or box or loaf, go to horse races. As he got older, the process got harder and ha...

Snow Tires   I deliberate . . . Now? Yes, there’s been snowfall already and icy patches camouflaged by piles of leaves. But, now? Murphy’s Law dictates that as soon as I put on the studded tires the temperatures warm up and I’m made a fool, jumping the gun. It also means summer is over. Autumn too. Did I do enough? Maybe there’s one more ride out there where I won’t freeze but can stop and enjoy the herons belly-high in the wetlands or the cranes screeching in the tall grass or the geese pooping next to the robot lawnmower at the Meridian Historic Village. More time is what I wish for, one more week, a squeak, smidgen. There’s no reasoning with weather. It comes on it’s on schedule. I leave the bike at the shop with my snow tires necklaced around the handlebars. Moving on, is what I tell myself.

  Winter Comes Early   Is it the light, seeping through the bare tree branches, early—or slipping below the western horizon, late afternoon? Is it the crisp mornings, the deck white with frost, treacherous to walk? Is it the piles of brown leaves suddenly whooshed off the trees? Is it the piped Christmas/Xmas music in the stores right after Halloween? The scurry hurry of frantic squirrels feasting upon the sodden porch pumpkins. Maybe the 4 inches of snow that fell overnight and frosted the porch, the pumpkins, made the deck a blanket, blanketed the piles of dead leaves, and gave the music context, a sense of cozy familiarity, as we lit candles and warmed our hands around mugs of hot mulled cider. Wintery. It came.

  Foligno, Italy 2004 As anyone who has ever traveled abroad knows, all it takes is a few days of rain to turn the mood, flip the trip into an endeavor of survival. In 2004 the family went to Italy right after the November election. The first greeting at passport control after landing was: Your country has just re-elected George Bush. My husband apologized. Stamp. Out into the chaotic public transportation system that is the Rome airport. The weather was perfect, as was our spirits the first couple days. We had energy for the ruins, the underlit dim churches, for the long lines to see David. We ate pizza on the steps. We ate Nutella-filled pastries called cornetto because they resembled little horns. We ate cheap, saving our euros for the price of admission, the next experience, the funicular. In retrospect, we were slightly on the verge of protein deficiency, always a bit hungry. In a foreign land, it is sometimes hard to interpret what one is feeling. There is always this min...

 Someone You Know is Dying   You haven’t been in touch for years, a connection grown thinner and thinner—yet she once knitted a hat and, because it was too small for her head, gave it to you. You got a blanket after the divorce, hers not yours, that was still to come. She was a fiddle player. Now, when you hear a jig or lively dance tune, you pause, remembering. The band stopped touring a few years back. On one hand you feel angry, then sad, then thoughtful. Nothing feels right. She spins, her spinning wheel sits silent, the remains of the last dyed yarns died. You ask friends: Why didn’t she fight? She wasn’t that old. It wasn’t cancer or some incurable disease. It was your ex-husband who said it best—She was too logical. Meaning—only an insane person contests death. Still, you’re pissed. There’s a picture of her you discovered on your hard drive when changing over to a new computer (another form of death, another story of grieving). Memorial Day 2005 by the lake. Exact...

 Many of us are familiar with A. E. Houseman's infamous poem "To an Athlete Dying Young." It was eulogized in the movie  Out of Africa , when the character Karen Blixen movingly reads it over the open grave of her lover Denys Finch Hatton. I read it as a youth and--without knowing the term exactly--found it romantic in a way that doesn't fit the common concept of that word, but more like the emotive aspect: tragic, ironic, and about destiny. Houseman was infatuated with the idea of life cut short, of youth in all its glory, fossilized, forever caught in the folds of time. To an Athlete Dying Young By  A. E. Housman The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high. Today, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town. Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay, And early...

  From my friend, Lotta: THANK YOU!