home

What is home?

Is it a structure? Is home the building you live in now, or one you lived in at another time in your life?

Is it what you put into the structure, in the individual rooms? Does being surrounded by lovingly worn objects passed down to you from your parents or grandparents give you a sense of stability? Maybe something your father gave your mother in a moment of celebration, or gifts or art children made with small hands and gave you as they were growing up. Or maybe special books you've thumbed time and again, wearing the edges to threads?

Is home a place? The way the light bounces off water, or how it is filtered through leaves in a certain landscape? Does waking up to mountains on the horizon, or hearing a car pull onto your gravel driveway make you feel at home? Do you prefer a cityscape with crowds, lights and street noises?

Is home family, or certain loved ones? (Ohh, I see we need a new family picture with Brian included. This one was taken in 2005 by my nephew Mark - Ginnie's son - on the frozen lake. That's our family cottage to the left of Peter's head in the photo, up on the hill. That place really feels like home to me, because of all the family memories. Also, it is the closest we have to a homestead since my parents passed away, and our big extended family still gathers there twice a year.)

And how do you know it's home? Is it a feeling of warmth in a place that puts you at ease with yourself more than anywhere else?

I have never felt more at home than here at the farm, where we have lived less than five years. Our children also seem to feel a sense of home here unlike any of the eleven (that's 11, yes, 10 + 1) houses they've lived in, even though Lesley never lived here and Peter only lived here a few months in college. To answer my questions, I feel at home anywhere with my loving husband, and that grows stronger when the kids are home. I feel at home here at the farm because of the outdoor space - the way the trees are situated, the way the house windows face the land and old buildings, how the land slopes down to the meadow and woods, and the way the rustling poplar leaves in a strong wind are audible all the way to the house porch. I also feel at home with the heirlooms I grew up with, and seeing my children's art on the walls and Lesley's fabric projects draped on furniture.

If all this were taken from me, and I had to live with a minimum, I would hope for:

• a pen, a pad of paper, books on a wooden table, a comfortable chair, something beautiful to look at (art, photograph, fabric, a piece of pottery), something old that belonged to someone I love/d, and a view to the outdoors

I'd love to hear what makes you feel a sense of home.

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Freedom? David Foster Wallace 1962-2008

David Foster Wallace 1962-2008

Writer DFW was found dead September 12 at age 46. He wrote what some have called one of the best 100 books of American fiction at age 33: Infinite Jest. I haven't read it. I haven't read anything of his, except some quotes. But his death is a sting anyway. I was impressed with his thoughts, some of which I've copied below. Strangely, he spoke of suicide in this commencement address, which makes me wonder if that is something he always struggled with. Friday his wife found him in their home where he'd hung himself. Today's NYT appraisal here.

DFW said this in a 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College:

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too. . . .

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Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real. . . .

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This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger. . . .

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And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like "displayal"]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. . . .

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That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting. . . .

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The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.

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Beans

Intelligent. Discreet and modest.

Quietly alert, determined.

Pensive. Sincere. Decent.

Tolerant. Sensitive and clever.

Brave. Exuberant. Cheeky. Dangerous.

Beans: a prince, or maybe a god. Except when our niece Kaeley conquers him. Then he is a ragdoll.

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figs on a plate

figs on a plate

reflections on the 11th of September

The first time I tasted a fig (not counting Fig Newtons) was 20-some years ago when we lived in İstanbul, where there was a fig tree in our yard. I was 30. I remember feeling the luxury of it on my tongue. A fresh fig! Not coated in thick, sticky sweet gel with a few gritty seeds for texture (Fig Newton cookie), but the cool flesh of a fruit that is delicately sweet. In Midwestern U.S. homes like mine when I was growing up in the '60s, fresh figs would have been unheard of. We don't have a fig tree on the farm here in Michigan, obviously. Too bad. Don bought these imported figs at our local grocer's. Rarely do we look past the plastic bags of apples at the more exotic fruits. Wonderful things happen when you open up to new tastes and new ways of looking. Don't be afraid of what you don't know, open up. The real deal might be different than you expect, and maybe you'll find it as delectable as figs on a plate.

* * * *

Added at 9:15pm: I did not originally write this part, because I didn't feel like overtly talking about 9/11. But, since it isn't apparent what I'm getting at above, here goes. On this anniversary of 9/11 I am not afraid of more terrorist attacks. I don't even think about it much, until I go through security at an airport. And then I am angry at a few who gave us cause for fear. What happened in 2001 was beyond imagining, so horrible it was. But I refuse to let it close my heart in fear or suspicion of Muslims in general. And now, according to some, there are possibly over a million dead in Iraq since the U.S. attack in 2003. Who should be afraid of whom? This is my point here, that it's too easy to establish a perspective based on insufficient information. We don't understand the vast complexities of another individual, let alone another culture, with thousands of years of history, conflict, wars, arts & culture. I abhor the arrogance of interference we force on the world. I am trying to be open.

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another new gig!

Who is this man snuggling with our daughter?! Clue: he makes her very, very happy.

THIS MAN IS GOING TO BE OUR SON-IN-LAW!

Having him join us as our son and a new brother for Peter makes us very happy too! Brian, welcome to the family! We won't tell anyone about the arrow and the barn (. . . for a long, long time).

Brian proposed to Lesley on a beach at Cape Cod August 30. The wedding will be next summer.

♥

When love opens a new room in your heart, you realize its effortless capacity to increase and multiply.

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The New Deal's new gig

Our son Peter is in a band called Meridian, which I posted about in April. He is also in another band called 'The New Deal,' which plays gigs around the state doing great covers of Bill Withers, Rolling Stones, Motown, Clapton - and others from a wide spectrum of styles. Don and I went to hear them at The Exchange in Lansing for the first time last Saturday. Unfortunately, Mike the vocalist/sax player/keyboardist was away. He's a talented musician - played his sax at the Grammys as a high schooler! It was the first time we heard The New Deal because they start playing at 10, and that's past my bed time. But we went, and I stayed awake! Now I regret not having gone to hear them more often. They are all very talented, and I like how Linsay, Mike and Jeff contribute vocals in turn.



The New Deal: Jeff, Linsay, Mark, Miquel and Peter (Mike was absent) - shot from the balcony at The Exchange (Mark and Peter are both in the band Meridian also.)

Mike got them a gig on a Princess cruise this fall, first leaving NYC up to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Then down to the Caribbean. If, like Don and me, you can't take a cruise this fall and hear them in person, give a listen to the nice 6:42 minute promo video, below, from their myspace site.

I left a little huff today at huffing . . .

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evil eye zinnias

Asteraceae, Z. elegans

Native of Mexico, state flower of Indiana.

Fifteenth century Spaniards who came to take the Americas for their king and queen thought zinnias were ugly, so they called them mal de ojos (evil eyes). How's that for the pot calling the kettle black?

Interesting tidbit: When I Googled mal de ojos I found a downloadable font called mal de ojo, which is type scanned from old letterpressed Mexican religious pamphlets. Fascinating. Oh! By the way, back in Roman times a charm to ward off the evil eye '. . . was called fascinum in Latin, from the verb fascinare (the origin of the English word "to fascinate"), "to cast a spell", such as that of the evil eye' (from the site linked in 'Here,' below).

I realized when we lived in İstanbul that I could be considered to have the evil eye because my eyes are green. Here is a very thorough account of the history of the evil eye.

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