Shared posts

08 Apr 04:40

Things Remembered and Things Forgotten

Ian M. MacDonald, Kyoko Nakajima

For Granta Japan online, we will be featuring excerpts from the magazine alongside notes from the translators of the work on the challenges they faced when bringing stories from Japanese into English.

Translator’s Note: Ian M. MacDonald

Most of the information in Nakajima’s deceptively simple prose about the characters’ lives, personalities, experiences and relationships is revealed indirectly through a series of dialogues that alternate between the present day, and the period immediately following the Second World War. This dialogue is often spoken without any attribution as to the speaker, a general characteristic of Japanese writing, but one that is especially pronounced in this story.

In Japanese, the age and gender of a speaker are indicated through verbal clues such as their word choice, sentence structure and context. Because these cannot easily be rendered into English, one difficulty was how to make the relationships between speakers clear to the English reader without inserting extraneous information not in the original. For example, the main character, Masaru, reflecting on his childhood, mentions that he and his mother and brother went to stay with ‘a family friend’ at the end of the war. In the wartime scenes, this ‘friend’ turns out to be an old lady (obāsan, literally ‘grandmother’) who runs a sort of boarding house, but the exact nature of their relationship is never spelled out. Is she really a friend, or is that simply the explanation told to Masaru by his mother, who has no job and no place to live, to spare her children from unnecessary anxiety? Nakajima keeps it deliberately vague. I translated obāsan as ‘old lady’ when she is being described, and as ‘you’ when used as a form of address, although neither adequately captures the flavour of the original. Alternatively, using ‘gran’ or ‘aunt’ as a form of address (as one might in English with an elderly family friend) might have been confusing to the reader, especially as the old lady’s real granddaughter appears as a character later in the story.

Inevitably in Japanese writing, one encounters expressions that are simply untranslatable and one has to find equivalent expressions that do not sound out of place in a Japanese context. In another of the scenes that take place in the past, the old lady and Tomiyo are discussing a job announcement that sounds ‘too good to be true’. The old lady warns her to be careful, using the expression mayu-tsuba (literally, ‘eyebrow spit’). In response, Tomiyo licks her finger and rubs her eyebrows. This alludes to a folk superstition, whereby to avoid being duped by tricksters such as foxes and badgers (which can assume a human form) one should rub saliva on one’s eyebrows. In English, I wrote that the job ‘smelled fishy’ and that Tomiyo ‘pinched her nose’.

Takashi set off, leading his little brother by the hand.

At the end of the narrow alley lined with flowerpots, they came to the grassy expanse alongside the Sumida River. To their left they could see the huge Kachidoki Drawbridge opening and closing.

Beyond it, across the river, stood the hospital requisitioned by the Occupation Army and Hongan-ji with its Indian-style main temple hall. Straight ahead, across Mihara Bridge, stood the old clock tower building in Ginza that now served as the military PX. Takashi, who was eight, and Masaru, who was three, had heard that there were lots of American GIs there who handed out chocolates and chewing gum to children. But their mother had warned them: ‘Don’t go near the drawbridge or the GIs will grab you and line you up for target practice.’ So they had never crossed the river.

The bridge was used by American soldiers going to the PX or GHQ from their barracks in Harumi, on the east side of    Tsukishima (‘where the World’s Fair would’ve been if it hadn’t been for the war’, people muttered), and was said to be teeming with drunk GIs who caused all kinds of trouble. So whenever Takashi’s mother suggested he take Masaru outside, they headed either west to the river to stare off toward Ginza, or north across the scorched grassland that Tsukuda had become, to sit at the foot of Aioi Bridge.

As Takashi and Masaru returned to their neighbourhood dotted with the skeletons of burnt-out houses, a sudden gust of wind knocked over the washboard and bucket that had been left out to dry. The bucket came hurtling toward the smaller boy. Takashi jerked his brother out of the way, and Masaru spun, pivoting on one foot with his arm above his head like a young woman in a dance hall twirling in the arms of her beau.

Masaru was wearing baggy trousers, hand-me-downs from his big brother. Takashi’s were too short and had been worn for so long they were tattered and threadbare.

‘Back so soon?’ said the old lady who lived on the first floor, peering over spectacles perched on her nose. ‘Well, come in and sit with me, boys. Your ma’s not home yet.’

Takashi nodded, urging his little brother forward, and together they went in and plopped themselves down in a corner of the small sitting room.

The old lady turned to the gasman who had come about a leaky valve. ‘You lied to me last month,’ she said.

‘How so?’ replied the man, fiddling with the rubber hose.

‘You said since Japan surrendered “unconditionally”, the Americans wouldn’t take our land or force Japan to pay reparations. Because it was “unconditional”. That’s what you said. Now look at all that land across the river they’ve gone and taken.’

‘It hasn’t been taken,’ said the man, who was in his late fifties. ‘It’s just been requisitioned.’

The old lady tilted her head to one side, repeating rek-we-zish-und under her breath. She didn’t understand the meaning of the word any more than she knew what ‘unconditional surrender’ meant, and in truth the gasman didn’t either. He replaced the old gas hose with a new one and left the old lady frowning at the receipt.

‘My,’ she said, clicking her tongue, ‘what things cost these days!’

No sooner had the gasman left than the boys’ young mother slid open the front door.

‘How’d it go?’ asked the old lady.

‘Bad – really bad,’ Tomiyo replied, waving her hand emphatically over her head. ‘It wasn’t what I expected at all. I couldn’t believe it.’

‘In what way?’

‘In every way. I was completely floored.’

Kneeling down on the tatami, Tomiyo reached over and gave each of her sons a pat on the head. ‘Did you two behave yourselves?’ she asked. ‘I’ll steam some sweet potatoes for you later.’

‘This is what I went to see about,’ she said, seating herself on a cushion at the low dining table and smoothing the curled edges of something she’d cut out from the newspaper. She read aloud to the old lady:

URGENTLY SEEKING QUALIFIED FEMALE STAFF
Excellent pay and benefits – food, clothing and lodging provided; salary payable in advance upon request. Will reimburse applicants’ travel expenses from anywhere in Japan.

‘Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Well, when I told them I had two kids they told me this work was unsuitable for married women.’

‘Smells fishy if you ask me,’ said the old lady.

‘Yeah, real fishy!’ Tomiyo replied, pinching her nose. ‘I should’ve consulted you before going. Want to know what they asked me? “Are you prepared to serve as a sexual breakwater to protect and nurture the purity of our race for the next hundred years?” Imagine!’

The old lady – comprehending this even less than she understood ‘unconditional surrender’ – gave the younger woman the blank look of a Noh mask.

Tomiyo frowned and shook her head. ‘In other words, you know. . .’ She paused and glanced at her two boys. ‘Doing it – with American GIs. Can you believe it? I was in shock. I ran straight out of there.’

‘Did they pay your travel expenses at least?’

Tomiyo shook her head again. Just then she noticed a small child with a runny nose standing outside the front door.

‘Who’s that boy?’

‘No idea. He’s been hanging around since morning.’

‘Looks about the same age as Masaru.’ ■

Translated from the Japanese by Ian M. MacDonald.

This is an extract from Kyoko Nakajima's 'Things Remembered and Things Forgotten', featured in Granta 127: Japan. To read the full story, pre-order the issue or subscribe to the magazine.

Illustration by Takahiro Suganuma

04 Mar 02:44

Sand

John Biguenet

We unroofed our homes, unhinged the doors, threw open our windows to the desert, hoping the cresting dunes of sand advancing on the village would pass through our houses as they migrated toward the coast like a herd of ambling behemoths.

We worked steadily that last day, the women packing what could be carted away, the men laying flat everything that might survive the crushing weight of the dunes drifting toward us. In every house, tables raised their four legs to the blue sky; paired chairs huddled on their sides, seat against seat.

Everyone was uneasy, but no one panicked. Sand, after all, was something we understood. It was the rasp in the breeze, we taught our children, the mote that blinds, the grain that hobbles. We hurried to secure our homes as the light thinned and the evening chilled; still, none of us cursed the impending catastrophe. What would have been the point? Against sand, we knew ourselves impotent.

It found its way into every spoonful of lentils we raised to our lips. Trailing along a sill, our fingertips crusted with it. By day, nestled in the folds of our clothes, it rubbed us raw. By night, it powdered the naked body beneath, the bare body above, so the more passionate the embrace, the more each chafed the other. It hissed in the bottom of a tin of saved letters tipped from a high shelf. It etched ruts every time we cleaned our plates, our cups, our windows, our mirrors. Even in death, it continued to torment us: only a few seasons of sandstorms effaced the inscriptions on our tombstones, which themselves turned to sand little by little until the last traces of our graves were obliterated. No one could live here long without bowing to the force of the infinitesimal, the infinitesimal in which holy men have glimpsed the grandeur of the infinite.

A desiccating wind had swept the miniscule beads into towering blonde mountains that crumbled forward, granule by granule, shuffling toward our village like vast swells in an ocean of grit, relentlessly scouring the land. We did not cower in the shadow of the cataclysm about to inundate us, praying for deliverance – only a fool begs mercy of the inexorable. Instead, we yielded to its might and prepared to flee.

In fact, a kind of elation buoyed our preparations. Neighbours greeted one another with jokes. Giggling children scurried through houses without doors, without roofs. Husbands flirted with their wives. I once read that as conquering rebels advanced on a capital, its citizens joined in an increasingly frenzied carnival. Preparing to surrender my home to the sand, I began to understand their grim abandon.

The hungry man is happy, the poet tells us, because hunger frees one of all desire but to be fed – and this, unlike so much of what we want, is a desire capable of satisfaction. Thus hunger refines life’s many mysteries into a single, answerable question. Like the hungry man, we, too, were happy as we worked through that final night and pondered, looming in the darkness, the sole mystery left in our universe: sand.

*

We could feel it lapping at our ankles even before dawn illuminated the hulking hills, burnished golden by the early light. Already, sand was banked against the low walls of the vegetable gardens we tilled on the outskirts of our village, beyond the last row of houses. Shaking our heads, we surveyed the rising onslaught.

The carpet of fine sand that had swept in silently before first light now deepened moment to moment. By the time we gathered up the last of our bundles and headed toward higher ground, we had to slog through drifts up to our knees.

As the procession set off, we continued to watch, over our shoulders, the spectacle of sand slowly swallowing our town. As if in the presence of death, we spoke softly as houses seemed to sink beneath the golden tide that rose in wave after tumbling wave, inching up door-jambs toward lintels that were themselves soon submerged.

The plateau where we intended to set up camp should have been a few hours’ walk. But burdened by possessions we could not bring ourselves to leave behind, we found it slow going, our progress governed by the weakest members of the village. Children tired, and by afternoon, the elderly needed shade. The sky was streaked purple and pink when we finally reached the base of the cliffs.

With darkness falling we unburdened ourselves of everything but our baskets of food, which were divided among the women and children to carry while the men slung frail grandparents or essential supplies on their backs as we prepared to climb the narrow path. There were tents to pitch and blankets to unpack once we had scaled the cliff. By the time we finally sank down on the flat stones overlooking the moonlit rift and shared a cold supper, it was nearly midnight. Though we strained to see our village, we could make out nothing in the dark distance.

*

The next morning, rising from restless sleep, we squinted into the low sun, the glare searing our eyes as we scanned the valley beneath us for outcroppings of our houses. Here and there in the distance, the peak of a wall seemed to jut from the dunes. But before we could call others to see, the sand had shifted, burying the remnant we might have only imagined.

Already children were whining for their breakfast. The men returned to the base of the plateau to retrieve the belongings abandoned beside the trail while the women stoked fires over which they heated stones and set pots.

The hot food revived us. Eating our simple meal, we debated how long we would have to wait until the dunes cleared the village. Some thought a few more hours; others speculated a day or two. No one, though, could have imagined that by noon, for the first time in memory, the wind would die.

Before, the breeze had teased us endlessly with its mischief – the lit match extinguished before a fire could kindle, the tearing eye lashed by a fluttering wisp of hair even after the stray strand had been tucked behind an ear. While still children, we victims of these daily pranks had complained futilely of the inexhaustible wind gusting out of the east. But little by little, we began to depend upon it, the steady breath always warm on our flesh. We learned to sweep with the breeze at our backs, to walk with our faces averted, to hunch our shoulders when we nibbled a delicacy on the street.

So the wind, which had shouldered the great mountains of sand relentlessly toward us and, thus, bore responsibility for all we had lost, became the first thing we had to learn to live without, the first thing for whose return we longed. The roguish breeze had always insisted upon our attention; now, in its absence, we were aware of nothing else.

No one could say why the wind had died, why the dunes had paused in their westward migration. And with nothing but conjectures to explain our predicament, we continued to assure one another that such stillness could not last, that at any moment the sand would stir.

*

False hopes sustained us. With what excitement did we bristle late that first afternoon when a girl, pointing across the rift, shouted that the dunes were shifting. Yes, we agreed, cupping our palms over our eyes. Yes, we could see it, too. But with what disappointment did we lower our hands a moment later when we realized what the child had actually seen: a vast shadow, pooled on a slope of one of the dunes, suddenly swelling out of its ravine as the sun slipped behind the crest of unmoving sand.

Little by little, this new landscape imposed itself upon our memory until none of us were quite sure under which of the golden mountains lay our homes. After dinner each evening, at least in the beginning, we repeated anecdotes of village life, the misadventures of our neighbours, legendary accounts of famous events – like the night all the goats disappeared – that our grandparents had passed down to us. Yes, chuckling together at our foolishness and little vanities lifted our spirits, but the amusing tales also helped to shore up our memories of the alleys of our town, of the colours of outlying buildings, of the distance from well to garden.

A memory is like a rose, we are taught. To inhale the fragrance of the flower, one must grasp its stem of thorns. Recalling our homes comforted us, certainly, but pricked us, too, as we scanned the changeless contours of the horizon under which lay buried all that we remembered.

In the beginning, the fellowship of common suffering united us, but just as the wind had once worn down stone, the stillness abraded our resolve. Where neighbours had shared their meagre supplies in the first few days of our evacuation, now families hoarded whatever they could gather. To be fair, one should recall that we had expected to return home in a day, two days, three days at most. So we each had brought less than a week's worth of food, a single change of clothes, only our most treasured valuables. Why burden ourselves with more on the long climb to the plateau only to have to carry it all home again the next afternoon?

Like the milk still frothy in its jar from the journey there, our fresh generosity toward one another soon soured into selfishness, and admiration curdled into jealousy under the relentless sun of the barren plain to which we had escaped. As the novelty of our encampment faded into the monotony of involuntary detention, slights laughed off just days before were now recalled to fester into grievances. Forgotten feuds from years ago were revived like dried currants plumped in a bowl of water. And increasingly, the inequality in provisions rankled those running short on necessities – though who could be blamed for having brought more supplies than his neighbor?

*

The catastrophe had not happened to all of us, we began to understand, but to each of us. It did not take long for our mutual reaction to impending disaster to tatter into individual responses to our continuing predicament. Observing who thrived and who wilted under the pressure of our circumstances, even the wisest among us were chastened in their confidence that they knew their neighbours.

Who could have predicted, for example, that the meek seamstress, born with only one hand and a stump as narrow as a broomstick, would organize a makeshift school for the children while our old schoolmaster sulked in his tent and drank the mint tea he had stuffed – rather than books – in the pockets of his jacket? Should we have anticipated that the tinsmith, having lived his whole life enduring the incessant tap of a hammer, would find comfort not in the silence of the windless plain but in drumming his fingers against his leg wherever he stood?

It was the men that seemed most vulnerable to the uncertainty of our situation. The same men who had not flinched from the labours of preparing their houses for abandonment, who had sustained the spirits of others with their good-humoured courage, who had hefted the elderly on their shoulders to climb a high cliff even after a day’s hard march – these same men, some of them anyway, were the first to crumble.

Had guilt unnerved them, guilt that they had failed to protect their families from disaster? It did no good to remind them that one could not have forestalled the advancing dunes, that one could not have foreseen the wind would die. They would agree, nodding. And yet, as they watched their wives and children scavenge a little shade on our dry plateau day after day, they withered.

When adolescent boys prowled the edge of our encampment, anxious to test themselves against their fathers, it was not men but the old women who answered the boys’ insolence with sticks across their backs.

Unlike the men, women seemed undismayed by our circumstances. Yes, one could hear soft sobbing in the next tent some evenings, but the following morning a fire was kindling out front and kneaded dough already waited for the stones to heat.

Maybe there had always been soft sobs at night for us to hear if only we had been awake. Now, though, we were often sleepless. Night after night, hours before dawn, we would awaken as suddenly as if a scorpion had scurried across our blanket and be left just as restless – more restless, actually, since a scorpion, at least, can be crushed. Not so the worries that stung us awake and left us anxious over the buried tools we needed to make a living, the letter we should have destroyed long ago but had forgotten in a box left behind, the old round of wood that capped our only well but might have splintered by now under the weight of the sand.

*

The first family to abandon the plateau had ties to another village and explained their departure as simply a visit to relatives. They would return soon, they assured us, and knew they could count on us to sweep their house clean of the last grain of sand by the time they came home, they joked.

As with the others who followed them, we did not see that family again.

In the beginning, those who stayed confided in one another their contempt for those who chose to leave. But as we wearied of the demands of improvisation and were forced to acknowledge the cost our families paid for the stubborn vigil we maintained over a buried town, what had been dismissed as weakness, perhaps even cowardice, came to be accepted with less vituperation.

Still, it disheartened us to bid farewell to our departing neighbours, friends with whom we had spent our whole lives. We could watch them from our cliff as they trekked through the sand toward far-off destinations, and though their voices faded quickly, the few possessions they carried sometimes clanged in the stillness for a long time as they made their way toward the horizon.

These breaches in our solidarity quickened as days stagnated into weeks and nuisances burgeoned into hazards while we waited for the sand to disgorge our houses. Soon enough, the remaining tents began to sag like sails on a becalmed sea, for no one bothered any longer to shoulder the poles higher and tauten the cloth. Our hygiene suffered, too, and fever spread through the camp. Though we were familiar with the consequences of a village epidemic, we were unprepared for how quickly the aged – exhausted and susceptible to ailments they might have survived back home – succumbed to illness. Without a graveyard, we buried our dead haphazardly.

Rather than risk further infection, those still left decided this morning to dismantle the camp. My family is already on the way to my wife’s cousin; I will catch up with them tonight or perhaps tomorrow since it fell to me to record what happened here in case someone should come seeking us after we are gone.

So all but me have abandoned this desolate plain, now littered with our refuse and dotted with graves overlooking the barren rift. Scattered elsewhere, my neighbours will build new houses even while expecting, at any moment, to return to their old homes buried beneath the dunes.

They are like the Moors driven from Al-Andalus, who hung on the doors of their new houses in the Maghreb the keys to their homes back in Cordoba and Granada. It is said that centuries later, one could still hear the clatter of iron against wood whenever a door was shut.

Or like me, now that I think of it, scratching our story in sand even as I long for the wind to erase everything I’ve written. ■

To read Granta 126: do you remember, buy or subscribe to the magazine.

Photograph courtesy of Alexander Atwater

08 Jan 04:47

This Man Is Not My Father

by Brandi Wells

I’m sitting across from the man who looks exactly like my father would look if my father had lived to be fifty-seven. If my father hadn’t died sixteen years ago when I was thirteen. But he did. And here is this man with his grey-and-brown moustache and swollen face. To be fair, his face probably isn’t swollen. This is probably the weight he put on as he aged. But my father’s rail thin face couldn’t have looked this way. Though, on the day of his funeral, my father’s face was swollen, unnatural. Someone told me this was from the embalming fluid. They just overfilled him. They didn’t know my father was so thin, malnourished-looking.

Whenever I talk about this man I call him “Keith” or “my father’s brother,” though I clearly know this makes him my uncle. But I can only think of him as my father’s identical twin and not my uncle. Calling him “uncle” might imply I have some claim on him. Keith and I sit across from one another at a hamburger place in Birmingham. I order a falafel with pickled vegetables and he orders the same because he figures I must know what I’m talking about. But he doesn’t touch his burger or his fries. He has a bite of each and tells me that he doesn’t eat much, not since he lost weight. I wonder how big he was before he lost weight, because he looks huge to me. Inflated. Like my father, but not like my father.

I have to keep telling myself, This man is not my father. I remind myself not to think about it very much. Let my eyes glaze over, breathe deeply, relax.

My father probably would have gained weight if he had lived longer. He ate fried chicken, fried gizzards, and pints of butter pecan ice cream. The weight would have packed on eventually. His body would have changed. He would probably look exactly like Keith. I use the word “probably” a lot when I think about my father.

***

We look at pictures of my father with Keith and then my father with me. Keith offers to sit on the same side of the booth as me to make this easier, but I don’t want him too close. I tell him, no, this is fine. He offers again because I’m squinting at the sun’s glare and leaning to see the computer screen that I’ve turned sideways, but I say no. No. I’ve already decided that this man and I will not sit on the same side of the booth.

It is strange to look at pictures of myself when I was smaller. I was thinner, cuter. My hair is healthy and shiny. I was seriously a cute kid. But my father looks stern. He doesn’t smile in photos. Doesn’t look friendly, inviting. I wonder what his life was like. I only know what my life was like with him in it. I try to piece it together. He worked swing shifts at a nuclear power plant. He slept a lot when he was home. He and my mother argued. They screamed obscenities. I remember the shouting. I went to school crying with tangled hair because my mother was too upset to brush it for me. I remember feeling surprised the few times I saw them kiss or hold hands. We went camping and fishing, which I hated because these things were not entertaining for a girl of five or six or seven. We sat on a fishing boat for eight or nine hours at a time, and I wanted to play with my friends or watch television. I was bored. Children are sometimes bored.

I remember my father going to play cards and my mother making a big deal out of it, probably because he was gambling and we didn’t have the extra cash. My clothes were from Wal-Mart and the Salvation Army. They had holes in them, and my classmates made fun of me. I tried to hold my hands over the holes in my sweater. I tried to snip away the loose threads so no one would see. My parents argued about the grocery bill. Money was always a problem. But playing cards is one of the few things I can look back on and say, “This is what my father did for fun.” It was a recreation and space that was all his own, in a life where he worked strange shifts and ate meals my mother covered with plastic wrap and sent with him to reheat at work—a life of naps and estrangement and microwaved meals.

bluebaseballMy father also watched baseball on a small television in his bedroom. This space felt fully his. His pajamas would glow blue in the light of the screen, and I’d bring him beers that crackled in my ears if I held them to my face. I wasn’t allowed to go back to his room after he’d been watching TV for a while, because this meant he’d had several beers and was what my mother called “silly.” He seemed happy and relaxed. Maybe that’s what he was like when he was younger, before there were bills and swing shifts at the power plant.

***

Keith talks a lot and smiles at me, trying to maintain eye contact. It feels too intimate, and I look away. I think Keith prides himself on friendliness. This is a desirable trait, he thinks, smiling at me, leaning toward me. He tells stories about how close he is to his daughter and stepdaughter. He is bubbly. I think he wants to be what my father wasn’t.

I call my father reserved, and Keith agrees, but says that probably isn’t the word he would use. He seems like he wants to say something else, but he doesn’t. He keeps saying he doesn’t want to offend me. He doesn’t want to say anything negative about my father. I tell him I wouldn’t have met him if I were worried about that. I tell him I already made my choice. “When I agreed to meet you, I agreed to meet you,” I tell him.

I’ve only met Keith three other times in my life. The first was when I was very small and I ran up to him in my aunt’s house, yelling, “Daddy, daddy!” because I thought my father was at work and was very happy to find he wasn’t. Keith laughed and told me he wasn’t my father, and somehow I understood. I wouldn’t think of this incident until years later. Another time, when I was eight years old, I saw Keith at his and my father’s great uncle’s funeral. Keith approached my family, and my father said, “I don’t think so,” and we quickly walked away. I never asked about it, and I somehow forgot the man who looked like an exact copy of my father.

How does someone forget that? How did I tuck it away and make myself believe it was inconsequential? The day my father died, my aunt took me aside and explained who Keith was and how he would be arriving at my house in a few short hours. My father’s body lay on the floor for over an hour before it was taken away in a black bag. I didn’t watch them put him into the bag, but I knew that he was inside. My father’s body wasn’t in the house anymore, but this man’s body would soon replace it. This man would be upright and talking and alive. This man had the same health problems that my father had, the same high cholesterol, but this man was alive. This man was coming to my house.

I know there were problems between Keith and my father. I’ve heard bits and pieces from different relatives. I don’t know the exact details, but I have enough to piece together a very sketchy narrative. I think Keith slept with my father’s first wife and then he and my father never spoke again. I don’t have any more details, because no one wants to fill in the gaps for me.

I can’t help wondering. Did Keith sleep with my father’s first wife while my father was married to her? Was it right afterward? Was it a long-running thing? What’s this woman doing now? What does she look like? I’d love to know what she knew of my father. Is there an appropriate way to ask about this woman? Would she be horrified to hear from me? I just want to know what he was like. They were married when my father was very young, so like Keith, she probably knows a very different version of my father. I want to know that version. My father is gone, and I can only really have the version I was given. But I want so much more.

***

Keith tried to apologize to me on the phone before we met. He tried to explain what had happened between him and my father, but I asked him not to talk about it. I asked him not to keep asking me if I was going to cry. “I’m not going to cry,” I told him. “I’m not emotional.” I tried to be polite, because he sounded earnest about it. He told me he was worried he would cry when he talked to me. He repeated the same things a lot, like they would be truer the more he said them. Like I would become attached to him if he told me again that I was important to him and that he wanted to know me. This made me uncomfortable. This is why I waited half a year after talking to him before I agreed to meet him for lunch.

I agreed to this mostly because I want the photos he has of my father. I want to see pictures of my father when he was a kid, then a teenager, then a young adult. I want to see pictures of him before I knew him, before he was my father. I want to have some understanding of who he was as a man.

The way a child thinks about their parents is different from the way an adult thinks about their parents. I’ve been robbed of the ability to see my father through anything but a child’s eyes. I can look at his identical twin brother and try to map my father onto this man, but my map doesn’t fit. This man is not my father.

***

I ask Keith to tell me about himself. He says he can cook and he likes to grill. He likes to eat out and seems to like spending money. He talks about all the wine he purchases. He tells me about his large house. He talks about his car. It’s the red car out front, he says. It’s a nice sports car, but I don’t know enough about cars to remember what kind. It is his generic midlife crisis car, and I don’t want to hear about it. Shortcomings in this man are imagined shortcomings in the man my father would have been. The midlife crisis my father might have had.

More realistically, my father would have worked hard all his life and not been close to retirement. He’d have struggled. He’d have two jobs and still worry about groceries and the bills. I remember the second job he took retarring rooftops. He came home blackened and sweaty. He smelled burnt. “It’s hard work,” my mother told me. “It’s going to kill him,” my mother told me. And maybe it did. Something did. His heart gave up, and I woke to my mother shrieking and my father’s stiff purpled face with its blackened lips. I always thought people went pale when they died, but they don’t.

casketIf my father were alive, he and my mother would be married and still loveless. My mother is happily married now. She wouldn’t have found this life or this version of herself if my father had lived. She went back to school, got a job, married a man who laughs with her and works in the yard with her. He cooks her dinner. Does that mean she’s glad for the life she has now? Glad for the person she had the freedom to become? Is she glad he’s dead?

***

When I stand up to go to the bathroom and when I return, Keith stands up too, out of some sense of formality. It’s awkward, anachronistic, but I try to smile and nod, because I am polite enough that I don’t want him to feel weird or uncomfortable. I don’t want to offend. I don’t want him to have the impression that I’ve been raised to be impolite, disrespectful.

He asks if my father was affectionate, if my father hugged and kissed me. I can’t figure out why he’s asking. Does he think my father was cold? Does he think I was unloved? He tells me my father could hold a grudge longer than anyone he knew. He tells me my father had very high moral standards, though he wasn’t religious. And I think, Yeah, my father didn’t sleep with your wife.

I was loved. My father was affectionate. I took naps on the couch with him, threw myself at him every chance I got. Ran to his truck to hug him goodbye when he left for work or hello when he got home. My father wore this khaki work jacket, and when he came in from outside in the winter, he was cold. The jacket was cold, almost wet feeling, but not wet, just cold. These cold hugs are the only thing I can still vividly remember of his touch. I can’t remember his hands or his body. The first thing I forgot was his voice. It was instantly replaced in dreams by Keith’s voice, which wasn’t the same at all. The accent was different. The words were sprawling, less controlled. I wish I had a recording of my father’s voice, but it is forever lost to me.

***

I think Keith believes he can regain some piece of my father by getting to know me. I am my father’s copy. I too have the same eyebrows, skin color, and hair color. I have the same tendency toward the solitary. I am unforgiving. I hold a grudge. I am bitter, resentful, stern, unemotional. I like to sit quietly alone and read. I am not spiritual or religious. I am crass. And I’m happy in all this. I see my father in myself in a different way than I see my father’s visage in Keith. Keith is only a physical replica. So I can’t help thinking that in knowing me, Keith feels like he is closer to my father.

My father died estranged from Keith. He never forgave him. I have the feeling that Keith wants me to absolve him. He thinks I can offer him something of my father’s forgiveness. He offers half apologies that I shrug away. I can’t do this for him. I’m not angry with Keith, but I can do nothing to erase the anger of my father. My father died with this resentment. Who am I to try to wrestle it from his grave? He can have it. It is something wholly and forever his.

***

Feature photo credit

Second photo credit

Related Posts:

31 Oct 16:51

What It’s Like

Anya Yurchyshyn

I hadn’t been on a bus for a year, but it only took a few minutes to feel like I’d been riding straight since then. The air was laced with freshener that smelled like the sherbet I threw up every summer when I was a kid. It felt like summer again, heading out to see my father, but it was already well into fall, and cold.

I’d been telling myself I would get there and get through it. I’d been telling myself I was doing the right thing, that no one could escape doing this thing and that was why the thing was right, not wrong. Everyone had to do it. Everyone agreed. Except me. I disagreed. I was disagreeable. My father was supposed to feel angry and he did. He was performing to his pamphlet. My pamphlet didn’t get it right. I was supposed to feel sad but grateful – unburdened – but instead, I felt heavy and confused.

I slept through the first night and woke during sunrise when we stopped in a town where the only people waiting to board were two grubby teenagers. They refused to check their bags, so we all had to breathe fumes while they argued with the driver.

The girl mothered the boy down the aisle, giving angry instructions to the back of his head in Spanish. The same scowl fixed their faces and the patches on their jackets were sewn by the same crude hand. The boy threw himself into the seat in front of me and the girl threw herself on top of him.

I’d been avoiding nausea by staring through the space between the seats, but they filled it with their bickering and glossy hair. They fell asleep as the morning progressed and were tame when they eventually woke up. Once we hit Indiana they were giggling and gnawing on each other. By the time we stopped for lunch, I was pretty sure the boy had gotten a hand job.

I called my dad while scanning a wall of vending machines. He didn’t pick up. I wanted to call my husband but I was still bothered by what he’d said when he dropped me at the station. He’d handed me my bag and said, ‘Susie, we can’t help what happens to us, all we can do is help other people when bad things happen to them. That’s life. There’s no point fighting it.’

When I tried to say something he hugged me and said, ‘Your father was not the man you pretend he was. You can’t change your relationship now.’

That’s life.

The police found my father sitting naked on his porch last week. A social worker called and said he was no longer able to take care of himself and probably hadn’t been for a while. Was I aware of this? she wanted to know. Was there a plan? Were there arrangements?

I called his neighbour’s daughter, Helen, and asked for her help. His stuff needed to be packed and someone needed to keep an eye on him until I could get out there. I offered money when she hesitated. She didn’t take it because she knew the offer meant I was desperate, and that meant she’d be tacky to take it.

We’d been friends when we were little, pairing off whenever I visited. Then there was high school and college and I only visited during the holidays. Whenever I tried to get together she said she wasn’t around, though it was easy to tell that she was around because she’d moved back in with her parents years ago and her car was always in the driveway. We became comfortable with each other again once we knew we weren’t friends.

She called yesterday to tell me I’d better get there soon. Not only had my father unpacked the few boxes Helen had managed to fill, but he was taking people’s pets out of their yards.

I said, ‘So what?’ and then, ‘I know, I know,’ before she could answer. ‘But where’s the dignity? Where’s the justice? We all end up in last place no matter what. He’s young. How is this fair?’

She sighed. ‘Well, you don’t have to kill the messenger.’

‘Sorry,’ I said.

‘Do you need a ride from the airport?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m taking the bus. But thanks.’

I could hear Helen turning this information over. She was so happy to have something on me. ‘Are you still afraid to fly, Susie?’

‘Yup,’ I said. ‘I am still afraid.’

An elderly woman got on the bus that night. She tucked her cane under her arm and steadied herself against the seats until she got to the one next to me. She took a while to settle in, buttoning her cardigan, adding a sweater and fussing with a hairnet. We nodded at each other and said hello, then looked away – me out the window, her straight ahead.

I woke with the sun stinging my neck. The woman was sitting up straight and polishing her glasses. Without looking at me she said, ‘A cup of coffee would be nice, don’t you think?’ I said we should be stopping soon. We didn’t stop for another hour and only then because she yelled at the driver.

I ate my breakfast sandwich on a bench, and the woman sat next to me and blew on her coffee. The teenagers sat against a cement planter on the edge of the restaurant parking lot. The girl smoked a cigarette and stared at the ground. The boy stared at her.

The old woman looked at the girl. ‘My granddaughter uses cigarettes like smoke is the only thing she can breathe.’

‘I know some people like that,’ I said.

‘You don’t know anyone who’s like what she’s like. She is one messed up lady.’ She cracked herself up with ‘lady’. ‘Her parents think no one can help her. They think I’m wasting my money and my time going to her, but they don’t know anything.’

I said her granddaughter was lucky to have her.

She said, ‘She will never be lucky.’

When we all got back on the bus, the teenagers took seats in different parts of the bus. The boy threw balled up pieces of paper at her but stopped after he hit other people too many times. The woman pulled out a book of crossword puzzles that was intended for middle-schoolers and worked on it for hours. The puzzle included words like hazel, column and aft. She dozed off sometimes, but she never let go of her pencil.

I couldn’t tell if the trip was flying by or taking forever. There wasn’t much to look at. Occasionally there were long grids of cows.

I counted aeroplanes. They crossed in and out of view, and though I knew their white trails weren’t smoke, I expected all of them to explode.

We stopped at Friendly’s for dinner. The woman stayed on the bus. When I offered to bring her something, or buy her a snack, she rolled her eyes and shooed me away.

I ate a burger at the counter and watched the waitresses clean their nails. The driver stayed outside on his cellphone. He ordered right before we left by walking up to the drive-through window.

When I got back on the bus, I saw the old woman had changed her clothes and was drinking a juicebox. She said, ‘There’s no reason to live like animals,’ and picked up her crosswords again.

The next morning I was only ten hours away from my father. I called him and he picked up without saying hello. I guessed he was standing naked in his kitchen with the long phone cord pooled around his slippers.

‘Hi Dad,’ I said. How are you feeling today?’ He didn’t say anything. ‘I’ll be there tonight. If you can’t stay up, please leave the door open. Would you like to write that down? Wednesday night, leave the door open for Susie?’ When he still didn’t say anything, I said, ‘OK. OK. I can’t wait to see you. Bye.’ I waited for him to hang up but he didn’t. I said, ‘I’m hanging up,’ and I did, but he probably stayed on the phone.

I’d felt the old woman eavesdropping during the call. Now that I was done she was calmly smoothing the creases in her pants.

She said, ‘Going to visit your daddy?’

I said that I was.

She turned to me and smiled. ‘Well, that’s nice.’

There was something in her stare, a glint that made her look like she already knew everything and wanted to hear me say it. ‘I’m moving him into a home,’ I said, without being able to stop myself. The words flew out of my mouth.

She gave a few clucks of dispproval. ‘My kids keep on telling me I have to move. I tell them the only way they’re getting me out of my house is if they burn it down.’

‘He’ll probably burn down his house if I don’t move him.’ We both knew I was the enemy. It was stupid to explain.

She said, ‘If he’s going to hurt himself then you have to do it.’ I could tell she didn’t believe it.

I said, ‘I didn’t have much choice.’

She asked where I was coming from.

‘Maine,’ I said.

Her laugh was rough. ‘California’s a long trip,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but it gets shorter every time.’

She looked me up and down. ‘Why didn’t you fly?’

‘Flying isn’t really for me,’ I said and went for a magazine in my purse.

She went back to smoothing her pants and then moved on to picking the lint on her sweater. After a bit she asked, ‘Is it like how it looks in movies?’ Her face was as eager and sincere as a kid’s.

‘You’ve never been on a plane?’

‘No, but I dream about it. I did last night.’ She wasn’t mad at me any more. She wanted my full attention. ‘I’m floating through the sky, going somewhere special. Everyone’s acting civilized.’

I told her that buses were just as good a way to travel.

‘Oh please,’ she said. ‘I decided that if I can cure my granddaughter I will take myself on a trip. I’m not telling anyone. They don’t know what I have left in me.’ She didn’t wait for my questions. ‘I’m going to Ireland. My people were from there.’

The teenagers had reconciled. They were back in the row in front of me but on the other side of the aisle. The girl was clowning for affection, laughing and making faces. Their fights were play. They were still optimistic. They liked making up so much that they weren’t worried about what would stick.

The woman cleared her throat. ‘What’s it like?

‘What’s what like?’

‘Flying.’

‘It’s like you’re floating, like you said.’

‘No. I want to know everything. Tell me from the beginning.’ She closed her eyes and put her hand on mine. Her spotted fingers were miniatures of my father’s.

My stomach hardened. ‘Airports are always really busy. There are people everywhere, and they’re all in terrible moods. You have to wait in a ton of lines, but security is the worst. They make you take off your shoes. When you’re finally at your gate you can see your plane, and a lot of other planes, out the big windows, but when you walk down the hallway to the plane itself you can only see into its belly. Once you’re on, it takes a while to get to your seat because the aisle’s really crowded and everyone’s fighting over luggage space. It’s always way too hot and there’s at least one baby crying.’

The woman’s eyes were still closed, but her face was tense. She was concerned and distracted. I understood that I was shitting on her dream.

I looked down and expected to see that I was trapped under an airline seatbelt. I untucked my shirt. ‘Once you’re sitting you get to relax,’ I said. ‘The seats are very comfortable and trays fold out from the back of the seat in front of you. The flight attendants are very friendly and pretty. The captain makes an announcement and he usually makes a few jokes. The plane starts moving very slowly, then it picks up speed and goes faster and faster down the runway until suddenly you’re in the air, just like that. The plane climbs very high very quickly.’

The woman’s eyes darted back and forth beneath their lids. ‘What’s out the window?’

‘The windows have shades,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to look.’

‘Tell me,’ she said.

The woman squeezed my hand.

At first,’ I said, ‘you see everything you know get smaller and smaller. Once you’re above the clouds all you see is white below you and a bright blue sky that’s bigger than you could imagine everywhere else.’

She took her hand away from mine and tilted her chin to the sky.

My neck hurt and I was sweating. I shook myself to the ground by thinking about my father and a dog and his porch, waiting for what was coming.

‘After a while the plane levels out. You’re up there for a long while and you get food and drinks. You can even get a cocktail. You watch movies or read magazines and chat with other passengers. Eventually you have to land, so you slowly begin your descent.’

‘Don’t tell me about landing,’ she said. ‘I want to stay up here.’ ■

Image courtesy of jeffschwartz

For more After the War, read an excerpt from Lindsey Hilsum’s ‘The Rainy Season’, and listen to her talk on the Granta podcast, read Frances Harrison on a survivor of the Sri Lankan Civil War, Justin Jin’s ‘The Zone of Absolute Discomfort’ and Paul Auster’s ‘You Remember the Planes’.

17 Oct 08:37

134. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

by Gav

134. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Today, October 16, is Blog Action Day, where thousands of different bloggers from all over the world post about the same theme. This year’s theme is HUMAN RIGHTS.

After surfing the net trying to get an idea of what I could contribute, I kept coming across articles about how governments seem to be ignoring people’s human rights more and more these days. The thing was, I didn’t even know what these magical “human rights” were. Where did these rights come from? Who decided what they were? Are they international law? That’s when I came across the Universal Declaration and decided to turn them into an accessible poster because I knew that a lot of people had probably never read them either.

After the horror of World War II, the United Nations was formed in 1945. The UN charter’s main two objectives are ‘to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’ and ‘to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights.’ In 1946, the UN Commission on Human Rights was established. Chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, the commission drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and it was adopted by the General Assembly in 1948 ‘as a common standard of achievement for all people and nations’. Today, it is the job of the Human Rights Council, an important body of the United Nations, to promote and protect people’s human rights around the world.

This poster uses a simplified version of the Declaration. You can read the original wording here. For more information about the history of the Declaration I suggest this article. For more info about Blog Action Day and to find contributions from other bloggers, visit the official website.

RELATED COMIC: Malala Yousafzai I Have the Right

A few readers have since shown me this cool typographic video of the Declaration.

23 Aug 16:42

Seven Back-to-School Strategies to Help You Stress Less and Simplify Your Life

by Thrive

backschoolby, Renée Peterson Trudeau

Whether your kids are toddlers or teens, the start of a new school year signifies opportunity, a fresh start, and a chance to do things differently.

If you’re feeling some anxiety around the all the transitions, juggling, and driving that usually accompany a new school year, take a deep breath, pause, and consider the following ideas for a simpler, less stressful school year. Adopting even one of these ideas could make a huge difference in how you experience this potentially hectic time. Begin with compassion and baby steps as you consider the following:

  1. Identify what’s #1 for your family this fall. What values or new ways of being are most important to you in the upcoming months? Is it having calm mornings, eating dinner together, not overscheduling, having dedicated family time, a good homework routine, or a game plan for regular communication? Consider creating a vision board together around your shared values.
  2. Set yourself up for success by enlisting a support team. What type of support do you and your family need to feel nourished and nurtured as you transition into the new season? Perhaps a parenting coach to support a special need, a new carpool team, a source for ready-made healthy meals, or a couple of backup baby sitters for monthly dates with your partner? Line up support now and post your “support team” list in your kitchen where the whole family can see it.
  3. Schedule replenishing nature respites. Being in nature elicits a relaxation response; it helps us shed worries and restore and replenish our bodies and minds like nothing else. Pull out your calendar and schedule some family hikes, a father/son camping trip, a visit to a country cabin over a holiday break, or a potluck in a state or city park with your neighbors or friends.
  4. Do less to experience more. In our office, we love the mantra, “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” A key cause of stress is ambition and trying to do too much. Researchers in the field of Positive Psychology say we’re happiest when we have fewer options and decisions to make. What can you say “no” to so that you can simplify your family’s life? Our quality of life is enhanced not by adding things, but by letting go of that which we don’t need.
  5. Be mindful of technology. In a recent survey I did, families across the United States said overuse of media was the top culprit for derailing their family’s emotional well-being and sense of connectedness. Consider doing an informal family media use survey (include phones, computers, tablets, TV) and create some clear guidelines for how and when your kids can be online, play video games, or use other devices.
  6. Decide how you’ll communicate as a family. Regular, open, heartfelt communication is key to people feeling heard, seen, safe, and secure, and knowing their ideas matter—especially when schedules are full. Some families have weekly communication meetings (post an agenda on the fridge and have your children add items to the list during the week), some parents have Sunday-evening planning meetings after the kids go to bed, and others adopt practices as simple as everyone sharing a “thumbs up and thumbs down” at dinner each night. Do what works for you.
  7. Designate weekends for rest and relaxation (as best you can!). It’s easy to pack our weekends with errands, household cleaning, social activities, sports, and more—but remember that weekend time is sacred. The primary purpose of this 48-hour break is to rejuvenate and restore your energy reserves so you can return to work and school on Monday with a fresh, excited outlook—ready to learn and take on new projects. While spending the weekend in a hammock may be unrealistic, realize rest and relaxation are essential to problem solving, idea generation, and creativity. At least a portion of your weekend—and maybe all day Sunday—should be devoted to physical and emotional renewal.

Now’s a great time to mindfully reflect on what has worked and not worked in the past for your family and to explore how you might implement some of these strategies now, so you enter the new school year feeling cool, calm, and connected.

More ideas, exercises, monthly meditations and inspiration on how to reconnect, stress less and experience more balance and harmony in everyday life in Nurturing the Soul  of Your Family: 10 Ways to Reconnect and Find Peace in Everyday Life (New World Library 2013) by Renée Peterson Trudeau. Learn more about upcoming events on her website.

Renée Peterson Trudeau is an internationally recognized life balance coach, speaker, and author whose work has appeared in the New York Times, US News and World Report, Good Housekeeping, AARP and more. She is the author of the award-winning The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal: How to Reclaim, Rejuvenate and Re-Balance Your Life and Nurturing the Soul of Your Family: 10 Ways to Reconnect and Find Peace in Everyday Life. Thousands of women around the globe are participating in self-renewal groups for women based on her first book. Renée lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and son. www.reneetrudeau.com

 

The post Seven Back-to-School Strategies to Help You Stress Less and Simplify Your Life appeared first on Thrive - Kripalu Blog.

04 Aug 19:46

Dorsky Museum presents “Anonymous,” an exhibit of contemporary Tibetan art

by Konchog Norbu

Rabkar Wangchuk, "Spiritual Mind and Modern Technology," 2013. Image courtesy Samuel Dorsky Museum.

A rare exhibit of contemporary Tibetan art will be on display later this year at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at the State University of New York, New Paltz. The show, entitled Anonymous, features more 50 works of painting, sculpture, installation, and video art by 27 artists living in Tibet and in diaspora. These will include many works from the private collection of Shelley and Donald Rubin (founders of New York’s Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art) never before exhibited. The show opens July 20 and runs through December 15.

According to curator Rachel Perera Weingeist, “It is only roughly in the last ten years that a contemporary Tibetan visual culture has galvanized.” The museum’s press material further explains:

“Anonymity and self-expression are commonly polarized values and artistic goals within the global art market. In traditional Tibetan art, artistic craft was used to support the transmission of Buddhist culture.  In the present atmosphere, however, art is becoming a vital medium of self-expression for Tibetans—increasingly, artists are creating work focused on the individual. A cautious 21st century visual language steeped in irony, metaphor, and allusion has fully emerged.”

Click here to see representative images from the Anonymous exhibit, and get info on attendant programs such as a lecture by Columbia professor Robert Thurman on October 21.

03 Aug 16:08

Snails Making Music

by Pierre Mâché

01 Aug 14:06

122. CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Roll the dice

by Gav

122. CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Roll the dice

Even though I mentioned in my first Charles Bukowski adaptation that his material is rarely motivational or joyful, he does have some very uplifting poems – and Roll the Dice is among the best. Listen here to a great reading of the poem by Tom O’Bedlam. Another one of Bukowski’s most triumphant pieces is The Laughing Heart (submitted by many of you), which you can hear in this great video read by Tom Waits.

As you can tell, I’m a big Game of Thrones fan (the TV show, I have’t read the novels). I’m not normally a huge fantasy fanboy but I got caught up in the hype (as did the whole world it seems) and have been thoroughly enjoying the series. The idea for this comic came to me a few weeks ago, when I was still reeling from the events of the latest season.

- Thanks to Deep, Kushman and Brendan for submitting the poem.
- RELATED COMICS: Air and light and time and space, Ask yourself, Nature loves courage.