wash
A few days ago, my dad and I went through the car wash in Fairlawn (and it’s been a long time since I’ve gone through because washing your car has been a big no no in Georgia, obviously). Anyway, I decided to film it so that I could try to put a video up on youtube with my new computer. The first take was bad because I wasn’t holding my hands still enough, and the jeep was jittering around. But by some strange grace from the god of revision, the car wash broke at the very end and the soap didn’t get watered off–so we got to go back through.
Either youtube is excessively slow, or the files I’m trying to upload from imovie are extremely large. The latter is more likely the case because it took forever to upload this silly little experiment.
The song that is playing is Steve Earle’s “Fort Worth Blues.” One of my favorites.
2008
There are many things to discuss. Many things I don’t have words for, honestly. And because of this, I turn to photographs instead. I’ve had a wonderful time being back at home. My dad started a blog, and I’m so proud of him, actually, and I’m humbled by how much I don’t know.
I realize how odd and how wonderful my family is–and how much I miss them. Hopefully we won’t spend so much time away anymore, though perhaps that is a fool’s wish. Regardless, here are some photos of the last two weeks. Akron etc…and in between.
ahoy–mist, mountain, merriment
Tomorrow Brian finally comes home. We’ve got Mac networking, Little Italy, and the Winking Lizard Beer Tour lined up for the next week. I may not be back here until the new year. If so, Happy New Year to all. I’ll see you in the eight.
distance d apart (1.6×10x-19th)
I’ve been tagged by Karen and Kelly. This was really hard.
1. When I was young, I believed that if you closed your eyes, you’d disappear.
2. Though I have teased my brother endlessly about his fear of being an American Indian sacrifice, I too, was afraid of a Native American man, in full dress, who was hunting me in our basement on Misty Lane.
3. I decided I couldn’t be Catholic in Catholic school, 2nd grade, when Mrs. Bruno claimed my pen-fed crayons were not crayons. I decided it was Jesus’ fault for not giving her the technological advancement in crayon apparatus memo.
4. I decided I could be Catholic, or must be, after one of my best friends killed herself, and the only peaceful thing I remember about her is our time at Sunday Mass, in Indianapolis, when she was quiet inside of the elaborate ceremony, and I think, not too lonely.
5. I am more proud to be Scottish than I am to be Czech, though I am more proud to be from West Virginia miners, than Pittsburgh steelers.
6. When I am sad, I watch M.I.T Physic lectures on ITUNES and dream about electrons, the content K, and the irony of positive and electric charges. The super position principle, which we believe is so powerful, but in reality, is not.
still life and a world apart
I’ve been back in Akron for a couple days now. Tonight I went to dinner in Kent with Maggie, and while we were there, two trains blew past the tracks outside. That whistle I remember so well from 3ams in my apartment six miles away.
The table rumbled softly, re-foaming the Christmas ale.
It’s the first time I’ve been back in about six months, and I haven’t missed home as much as I missed it tonight. Driving the long way through the valley, the snow-downed trees, the office at night, Alice peeking in from the hallway, me in contemplation and waiting for Maggie to say something that I could rush home, write down, and keep close– to get me through another six months.
And the students in scarves on the icy sidewalks.
And ice-petrified buckeyes and acorns rolling across the unattended parking lots.
And the writing center posters, half chewed by passing unzipped book bags, reading series fliers crooked on bulletin boards, Summer Writing Workshop: Prague. Someone still looking for a non-smoking roommate who doesn’t mind cats.
It’s one thing to romanticize silence, and certainly another to be among it again and realize how much it can be missed. And I’ve written a lot in the last few months about one thing or another in the world of the artist—still life—afterlife—and so on, and I really believe I don’t know anything about anything.
Except that Northeastern Ohio is a quiet place. It’s a place with quiet people—hard working people who don’t try to fill up empty spaces with noise.
And how in six months, I almost forgot that.
better go down upon your marrow bones
Yeats once said: A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
This makes me think about my father.
I am the first born of the first born.
In some places, far from here, and in some times, this means something. To me it means I carry the fire, as Cormac McCarthy is fond of saying. The fire of sentences, of words, of verbs.
When I was young, and the seasons swirled Fall, I was dressed head to toe in Pittsburgh Steelers clothes. Barely old enough to walk, I was from his burgh.
Eighteen years later, when I was at my end, my very last end, at the point where I thought there was creation and there was death, and no place left for a girl from the Cuyahoga Valley, I received a card from my Dad. It was a picture of the marshes. And he said, remember who you are. Always remember.
That card is the reason I am a poet today.
I never knew he knew of it. The valley the way I knew the valley. I didn’t know at the time that he, as a younger man, ran there with his friends–that he spend hours contemplating the beaver-teethed trees, the ducks burring for cover under the ice puzzles.
Or that poets wrote there too. Mary Oliver. James Wright. Hart Crane. Karen Kovacik.
Others who crawled through the gray, Ohio fire.
And perhaps I am waxing sentimental. But my Dad, my hero, the person who I judge all others against, has now started his own blog, which I plan to read ever day. And I think of this stitching and unstitching. The undulation of generations. The way that the world works out, that funny blossom. And how it all, finally, makes sense.
the watcher joins the river
On Saturday my little brother, Brian Matthew Wallace Jewell, turned 25. It’s so hard to believe how fast years pass us by, and even harder to imagine how he was able to actual survive having me as an older sister. Maybe he used the patience that he is now harnessing to carve out a life as a fly fisherman, adventurer, and History Professor. Used it when my parents first brought him home, all wrapped up in blue blankets to protect him from a cold December, and I looked right at him and screamed in his face. Or when I practiced my tap dancing moves so close to him when he was bouncing in that door chair thing it’s a miracle he’s not blind today. Or when I flushed his prized drum sticks down the toilet three years later on Christmas morning. Or the time I convinced him to sled two stories off a deck (to see how dangerous it actually was, obviously!), or how over ten years in our old house I timed him racing into the basement to collect paper towels or napkins or something from the “other” freezer for my Mom, despite his terrible fear of the imaginary Native American taking aim at his back with a bow.
Despite my tortures, he seemed to grow up tough and smart and oftentimes so serious I wonder how many contemplative lives he’s lived before this one. Though he seems to be enjoying it.
Mostly I admire him for being able to live so peacefully in the world, with the world, I guess. And when I think about him, despite distances, this is always the image in my mind’s eye:
My little brother, just a speck in that great out-there-ness, knee deep in living.
I sat there and forgot and forgot, until what remained was the river that went by and I who watched. On the river the heat mirages danced with each other and then they danced through each other and then they joined hands and danced around each other. Eventually the watcher joined the river, and there was only one of us. I believe it was the river. –Norman MacLean
i’ve never been to vegas, but i’ve gambled all my life
someone asked me what my favorite video is, and so i thought i would post it now. i couldn’t find a video of jeff buckley’s “lover you should have come over”–not a good live performance that is, and so i decided to post ryan adam’s “oh my sweet carolina.” this video reminds me how much i love the artistic mind, and also how grateful i am that he got clean last year. this performance really shows him near the end, albeit his brilliance, and i’m so glad he’ll be around for a while.
this is what you get
It’s sort of a gloomy day. And whenever it’s a gloomy day, it’s also a radiohead day. I think it’s an official rule of the universe.
Also, there’s only three more days to get their new album–in rainbows–for whatever you want to pay for it. 0 pounds 0 pence to whatever. Here is the link and I highly recommend downloading it, even if you can’t pay for it.
your first and last lightning
TIPS FOR SURVIVING AN ARIZONA MONSOON
—Tombstone City Council, 1881
1. Bobcats also wait out storms in caves.
2. Learn the sound of a Cooper Hawk’s cry.
3. When the wind picks up and the air cools, a storm is coming.
4. Never stop in a rumbling arroyo or tent at the bottom of a hill.
5. Unhook your horses before they buck free. They’ll find their way back to you.
6. When the horizon darkens, don’t take your eyes off the sky.
7. Bury your belt, gun, reins, tools, and your wife’s jewelry two feet into the clay.
8. If your hair rises up on your scalp, lightning is about to strike you.
