Alina's Adventures

Conversation #1,888.

HIM: I'm not sure where we are at this point sooo I'm going to consult the GPS.

HER: Pull over honey!

HIM: Whu-- Why are you pinching me?

HER: Because you missed it! 

HIM: Missed what?

HER: Back up. Right there. That train.

HIM: Where are you going?

HER: I need to get on it. Be right back.

Car door slams and female buries the children's voices calling her name in the background. Clambers aboard rear of train where strange things happen insider her head. Runs back to idling car which is damaging the ozone.

HIM: What was that all about?

HER: Pretending to be a hobo and climbing on the back of the train.

HIM: Is this an anesthesia flashback or something? Have you lost your mind? Why on earth do you need to pinch me, jump out of the car, and run around like a nut for a game of pretend hobo?

HER: [pinches him again, this time because he's being mean] So I know how it feels to climb the back of a train- the gape between the rungs, the distance from the ground, the scent of old metal- you know, hobo stuff.

THE ELDEST: Mom, you're funny!

HIM: Crazy. And the sudden hobo urge was prompted by.....?

HER: A story that keeps bumping around in my head.

HIM: (coughing, incredulous) A story?

HER: A hobo story. 

On towards giddyup they go. 

Thinking about Amber and what people think.

Today, between clouds and sunshine, I'm thinking about Amber laying in a trauma unit at UAB surrounded by machines and people and noises she can't quite process.

I'm thinking about how little I know her... and yet, how effervescent and splendid what I know of her has been.

I'm thinking I don't have the right to think about people I barely know and wish them better. 

I'm thinking about the caution we exercise before investing in empathy. Because we do treat it like an investment- not a bloom of fellow feeling but a "should I let myself feel this right now even though there's nothing I can do?".

I'm probing the discomfort we feel before saying we care about people we barely know- whether in our neighborhood or in Nepal. This reticence remains a puzzle to me.  

I'm thinking about my own experience after the accident- how words fell apart when I tried to recover their associations. How I will never remember that year of my fifteen-year-old self. How she remains a puzzle to me. And I'm never done trying to solve and re-solve her.

I'm thinking about brain injury and what I can offer- hope, hope, more hope than any heart can hold alone. Hope at beating the odds. 

And I'm thinking about not thinking. Or how we encounter a friend, a lover, a mother in a hospital bed. How every little word matters.

Sometimes we think people who are unconscious can't hear us. But what I remember from "waking up" in the hospital are people who visited before I had "woken up".

The first face I remember is Alexandria Combs​.

The icon she left in the hospital room hangs by my closet.

I remember light green. I remember beeping noises. I remember the feel of fading colors on my dry itchy skin. 

I'm thinking about how intimate the word "fading" became to me then. 

I'm thinking we can love people we barely know- and love that seems strange only displays our own discomfort with love in general. Or the hidden belief that love should be limited. Encapsulated. A zero sum pie carefully rationed between family and friends.

I'm thinking Amber will recover because the rest is unthinkable. I'm thinking every cell in her body is working with diligence.

And I'm thinking about honeysuckle. But mostly Amber. And hope.

And the honeysuckles to come.

Romanian Orthodox Easter and Marilynne Robinson.

Azaleas and easter eggs at Bunica's house.

Bright red eggs.

The kids dyed eggs with Aunt Sanda. After dyeing, they rubbed bacon grease on each egg to give them a glow. The traditional egg-breaking contest left Prophet on top. 

Gnome eats her egg with mustard.

 

And a thought from Marilynne Robinson's When I Was A Child I Read Books that stayed in my head long after my eyes left the page....

What about us was of interest, if we imagine looking at ourselves in retrospect? That we made civilizations, or that we drove them to the ground, reduced them to rubble? I won't pretend that this is a real question. We  make wealth, and we destroy it. Our wealth is finally neither more nor less than human well-being. There is no necessary hypothesis; there is no value but what we value. The great temptation of money is that it seems to give us token, markers, by which things and people can be truly said to succeed or fail.

Spring sneaks in, arms heavy with inspirations.

Rose of Sharon purchased from dear Sue Blackshear at the
Alabama Wildflower Society's annual Native Plant sale.

 In my head and notebooks right now...

                    Hungarian fairies

            Henri Barbusse's Hell

 Silvina Ocampo in general

                        the night-life of catalpa trees

                 the cardinal nesting outside our dining room window

The Eldest's happy bush bean shrubs

                rainy day nature journals

Prophet's fascinating "shark tooth"

        fuschia: the sound

                                        hellebore, the plant

                    meeting Madelyn this weekend

                                   half-painted rooms

white as egg shells, the expression

Gnome and Prophet's "Sweet Cedar Club"

            the dogwood finale

            wilted azalea skirts

        blueberry blossoms beginning to fruit

love: the costume

Last week of April events in Tuscaloosa.

Without further ado, note that an asterisk marks kid-friendly events. That's not to say kids aren't welcome at all these events but only that kids might be more welcome at some events rather than others. 

APRIL 25TH, SATURDAY

Slash Pine Press Writer's Festival 

 

APRIL 26TH, SUNDAY

Innovation Fair at Alabama Museum of Natural History*

 

APRIL 27, MONDAY

"Love's Labor Lost" film screening at Bama Theatre.
Presented by The Hudson Strode Program
in Renaissance Studies.

 

APRIL 30, THURSDAY

"13 Paintings" by Marc Burnette
Opening Reception at The Abbey
131 41st Street South in Avondale
Birmingham

Two days and nights in Covington, Georgia.

Leather chaps for sale.

My in-laws kept the kids while the King and I escaped to a bed and breakfast in Covington, Georgia. Upon our arrival in this charming small town, we were greeted by loud, incessant revving-up of a biker rally in the square. I considered a pair of leather chaps but decided in favor of a blueberry muffin instead. 

Alas, the King could not find a ring in my size.

Wandering back towards the spaceship we witnessed what could only be described as flash mob happening, possibly organized by a coalition of missionaries and Bikers For Jesus. They did a really good job of looking angry and confrontational. Such a good job that I wanted to get away quick before scene went Hamlet.

We checked in to Twelve Oaks, the home that inspired "Twelve Oaks" in the Gone With The Wind film. To show how clueless I can be about all things Scarlett O'Hara, it was the Eldest who made the connection and informed me there was a "Twelve Oaks" in the book by Margaret Mitchell. I looked it up and sure enough-- he was correct. He's never seen the film and I wondering if he's ready to watch it and apply his critical thinking skills against the romantic portrayal of southern antebellum life.

A sitting area in the common area on the third floor.

The common area.

The King found a fridge in the common area where he could leave a bottle of pinot for proper cooling.

Our luxurious Suite Home Alabama bed.

On the first night, we stayed in the Suite Home Alabama on the uppermost floor. 

Surveying the writing desk in suite.

It was indescribably relaxing to sit down and write without looking over my shoulder to make sure little ones were doing their assignments or playing safely. To do nothing but let the pen run across the page. There are times when the tension rises between who can run free- words or children- for both require my eyes, my watch, my time. Usually, I choose free children. But it was wonderful to free the words without having to make a choice.

I love the light in the bathroom.

And of course there is nothing like lounging around in a bathrobe that feels like a down comforter. I brushed my teeth at all the recommended hours- a rarity for me.

Breakfast table waits.

Breakfast was delicious: fresh eggs and bacon with home-made strawberry pancakes and whipped cream infused with bourbon and vanilla. The food was wonderful but sitting at a table with friendly strangers was even better. Guests from Portland, California, DC, Germany, and more shared our backgrounds- and our reasons for being here- and wound up leaving the table at 11, two hours after breakfast began.

The sitting area where wine and cheese were served at 5 pm.

Lichen patterns on gravestones..

I was reminded again of how enchanting people can be if you have the time to hear their stories. And I had all the time in the world.

Bankers wear very shiny shoes.

The King had to attend a work-related conference in downtown Atlanta so I had the day to myself. As he shined his shoes, I was reminded how fortunate I am to no longer worry about "work clothes" and business attire and hairstyles- he does the part neither of us particularly admires. It is a birthday gift he gives me every day of our lives in common.

A beautiful and rather serious iris.

I borrowed an umbrella and spent hours walking in the rain without worrying about oncoming traffic and frothy children always tippling, close to spilling into busy streets.

I came across a back alley that led into a large and very old cemetery, so I found a few bricks and sat down to scribble for a spell.

The King is all business in the morning.

Around lunch, I returned to move our luggage into The Salvatore Brothers' Study. Then stole the handful of sunshine hours to sit on a blanket in the backyard and read Robert Musil's journals.

A little chandelier hanging from a trellis in the Twelve Oaks backyard.

Little purple flowers opened their faces towards the sun.

When I brought the King back for a sunset cemetery stroll, the little purple flowers had closed their faces. We are vulnerable to light and dark, wind and rain. Our plant friends have needs as well.

Lo and behold, we stumbled across a house with a Hollywood style marker out front. I felt insufficient for having no idea about "The Vampire Diaries"- what are they and what is the show about?

More beautiful flowers along the way.

Neil Postman's "technopoly."

Gardening days... recovering silt.

Reading Neal Postman helps me resist the constant urge to direct my children towards technology. Though I appreciate the technology which enables me to blog-- and to connect to friends who live over the ocean-- I know it is changing my mind, and altering my perception of the world. So I watch it, and myself, with a healthy skepticism. 

A few interesting excerpts from Postman's Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. We'll start with the underlying (and provocative) premise:

“Technological change is neither additive nor subtractive. It is ecological. I mean “ecological” in the same sense as the word is used by environmental scientists. One significant change generates total change. If you remove the caterpillars from a given habitat, you are not left with the same environment minus caterpillars: you have a new environment, and you have reconstituted the conditions of survival; the same is true if you add caterpillars to an environment that has had none. This is how the ecology of media works as well. A new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything.” 

 

"With the rise of Technopoly, one of those thought-worlds disappears. Technopoly eliminates alternatives to itself in precisely the way Aldous Huxley outlined in Brave New World. It does not make them illegal. It does not make them immoral. It does not even make them unpopular. It makes them invisible and therefore irrelevant. And it does so by redefining what we mean by religion, by art, by family, by politics, by history, by truth, by privacy, by intelligence, so that our definitions fit its new requirements. Technopoly, in other words, is totalitarian technocracy.” 

 

“Alfred North Whitehead summed it up best when he remarked that the greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the idea of invention itself. We had learned how to invent things, and the question of why we invent things receded in importance. The idea that if something could be done it should be done was born in the nineteenth century. And along with it, there developed a profound belief in all the principles through which invention succeeds: objectivity, efficiency, expertise, standardization, measurement, and progress. It also came to be believed that the engine of technological progress worked most efficiently when people are conceived of not as children of God or even as citizens but as consumers—that is to say, as markets.” 

Dogwood blossoms collage.

".... in Technopoly, all experts are invested with the charisma of priestliness. Some of our priest-experts are called psychiatrists, some psychologists, some sociologists, some statisticians. The god they serve does not speak of righteousness or goodness or mercy or grace. Their god speaks of efficiency, precision, objectivity. And that is why such concepts as sin and evil disappear in Technopoly. They come from a moral universe that is irrelevant to the theology of expertise. And so the priests of Technopoly call sin “social deviance,” which is a statistical concept, and they call evil “psychopathology,” which is a medical concept. Sin and evil disappear because they cannot be measured and objectified, and therefore cannot be dealt with by experts.” 

"Raiment", a poem by W. S. Merwin.

 

Believing comes after
there were coverings
who can believe
that we were born without them
he she or it wailing
back the first breath
from a stark reflection
raw and upside-down
early but already
not original

into the last days
and then some way past them
the body that we
are assured is more
than what covers it
is kept covered
out of habit which
is a word for dress
out of custom
which is an alteration
of the older word costume
out of decency
which is handed down
from a word for what
is fitting

apparently we believe
in the words
and through them
but we long beyond them
for what is unseen
what remains out of reach
what is kept covered
with colors and sizes
we hunger
for what is undoubted yet dubious
known to be different
and our fabrics tell
of difference
we dress in difference
calling it ours

[Source: Five Points, 10th Anniversary Issue, Vol. 10]

Morning Drive: A paean to Alabama Public Radio.

While the King was dressing for work this morning, the public radio's annual membership drive drifted over my half-sleeping head. Since April is National Poetry Month- and because I woke up in a world of familiar soft voices- I penned a quick paean to APR which added so much value to my life as a child and continues to inspire my adult version.

sunlight in slivers and slants
golden meanish
geometry of car interiors
glimpsed from a familiar backseat
home between silent scandals

on the morning drive to catholic school
the stories i remember are curious
and calm public radio voices
never at odds with what
sunlight can do if only
we listen

dropped off in a classroom of giggles
and whispers, a baroque brocade
edged with babysitter’s club, barbie talk, who
did what and now the boys don’t like her

now confess: i held the morning drive
against ornate pidgeon voices that made life less

wonder if it's wrong
to believe alabama public radio
enlarged a world that often felt
classroom contra world
too little

 

To support Alabama Public Radio, take a few minutes to make the call this morning or visit their website. There are so many ways to help. Patronize the local businesses that help keep APR running. Donate your used car. Donate stocks. Or earmark birthday money for grandchildren and join the Leadership Circle. I think it would be such a cool gift to receive as a grandchild- to be a member of the APR Leadership Circle and sustain the radio programs that linger in childhood memory.

Dogwood buds.

The flower bracts open up.

Last week, the dogwoods began flowering. The flowers themselves are 2 to 3 inches wide, with four bracts. Each bract is notched at the end, leaving the area around the indentation a reddish-brown splash.

 

What passes for petals are actually bracts, a specialized type of leaf. That said, when we admire dogwood flowers with others, we will generally refer to the bracts as flowers. 

The center of what appears to be the flower contains a cluster of the real flowers, small yellow flowers each less than a quarter inch wide. The flowers are monoecious and the cluster size varies from just a few to about two dozen.

Writing and wringing the moments sapless.

Violet heaven behind the house.

Between polishing, editing, and attacking the Defect/or poetry collection, I steal time for seeds and flowers. It's hard to juggle writing, editing, the foreign country of writing/publishing networks (for which I lack a passport), gardens, homeschooling, social life, reading, travel, etc. etc. but there is not a single one of these moving pieces which I am willing to relinquish. Not even the etc.

Especially not the etc.

So the juggling is a clown show and I think of Norman Manea's writer-as-clown analogies which, pen in one hand and shovel in the other, I am perhaps honing into a local variant. 

The year's first grapes-in-the-grass event....

A Sunday afternoon at Lake Nichol.

A windy day on the banks of Lake Nichol where the Gnome secured her first fire ant bites of the year. One lesson I've learned from my nature-hungry kids is that fire ant prevention rarely works. Not with a crew who insists on living and playing at ground level.

MY FIRE ANT REGIMEN.....because every Alabama mom needs one. Here's what works for me.

1. Iodine applications twice a day with cotton-ball. The iodine solution is the best germ-killer around and it also doubles as an excellent drying agent for the liquid pustules. 
2. Band-aids. Because both Gnome and I have been treated for staph infections which began with fire ant bites. Even if you wash your hands, the itch will be scratched. And if you go back outside and continue gardening (as we did), you need to cover those bites.
3. Last resort for little ones who wake up itching and crying: half teaspoon of Benadryl. 

 Beautiful, irrepressible Prophet turns 7.

2015 is not a birthday party year- we alternate years for parties because it keeps them from overwhelming our lives and expectations- and Prophet welcomed her seventh birthday with love letters from family all over the country. Letters and gifts and the feeling of excitement when every package (including the flowers from Bunicu) are delivered for you.

On the morning of her birthday, the kids climbed into bed with me and we talked about how I howled at the moon on the night when she made her appearance in this world. Lunatic. Moon crazy. Crazy for the moon. Moonstruck. All this and more in less than three hours.

Because Prophet was curious, we watched a few videos of puppies giving birth. It was fascinating to compare them with the videos of human female- the same panting, restlessness, and motions as the contractions progressed. Gnome gobbled it up- and both girls wanted to watch again. So we did.

Since the Eldest explained the menstrual cycle to his sisters a few years ago, I've had to settle for second-place in the look-at-what-cool-things-our-bodies-do department. Nevertheless, there was something incredibly tender and sweet about bonding over the story of her birth and reliving with her. It surprised me when she said that was her favorite part of the day- that morning in bed giggling and laughing and talking and sharing.

Prophet craves intimacy, and I love that she can express this without guile or shame. Her presence- this perpetual convergence of head and heart- makes me a better person. Perhaps not always a nicer person.... But more courageous. And happy. Simply happy.