Whose woods these are

the view towards our cabin

The quietest new year's eve. Not that my new year's eves were ever so wild. Although I have a few memorable ones tucked in here and there. Like the year that I and A. went to the Young Communist League party...turns out Young Communists are just like everyone else, but with cheaper champagne.

Hedgehog and I rang in 2010 in a hotel room in the Adirondacks--our camp isn't winterized, and it's all snowed in now, so although we drove in and Hedgehog rolled around and made snow angels, I just couldn't face roughing it at night. I really like being warm, and I like hot running water...

Still, the lake looked beautiful in all that intensity of white, with the towering pines against an ominous sky. Very very grand.

And we spent a companionable hour or two next door at my mother's cabin, which, although lacking central heating, is through sheer industry and planning and foresight quite snug for winter. My stepdad is a consummate woodsman, and, along with Sarge, the one I most want on my side in the post-apocalyptic wilderness...Hedgehog warmed up in the armchair by the woodstove, while her red mittens dried cozily on their spokes. Engrossed in the Green Fairy Book, crunching pretzels, she hardly seemed to notice the sudden wind rushing against the side of the cabin.

bare branches against the snow

my mom's lion with a snow crown

mom's woodpile

the wood that got away

woodpile in use--mom heats with a wood stove

ubiquitous snow-covered pine cone

our Adirondack chairs, scene of many a long hot summer afternoon

I know I'm so very Brooklyn, but part of my soul lives here in the pinetops...

Goodbye 2009...

Wishing all you lovely bloggy folk a very happy new decade, full of thrills and satisfactions and sweetness and love...

Writer?

Still a bit under the weather (gods, will it never end???) and it seems like a perfect time to do a wonderful meme that I was tagged for by Tina (check her out, she's really a great writer).

I especially appreciate this meme because it gives me a chance to think about my writing, and the opportunity to take myself seriously for a few minutes. I don't generally tend to take my writing seriously, although it is the thing I do most, besides taking care of my family and the household. I mean, I don't have an agent nor do I have any plans yet to send it anywhere, so it's hard to feel serious...who cares, right? at least it's fun...

And let me add the caveat: this may be of interest only to me!

But,

here goes...

1) What's the last thing you wrote? What's the first thing you wrote that you still have?

The first thing I wrote that I still have is a letter to my best friend. I must have been four. Next is my first-grade journal, full of strange disturbing images and dirty words and drawings. My school really let us fly our freak flag, as apparently no one said anything to stop me.

The last thing I wrote? A sentence in my novel.


2) Write poetry?

Not in a long time. I wrote two poems when I lived in Jerusalem many years ago. Before that, I wrote poetry all the time, ever since I was in first grade. But let me say that I have absolutely no tolerance for bad poetry, especially my own, and leave it at that...


3) Angsty poetry?

Of course, who didn't? But oh holy night it is fucking awful.


4) Favorite genre of writing?

Speculative fiction--gothic horror--steampunk. (these are my favorite genres of writing, not necessarily of reading, although of course I like to read them too)


5) Most annoying character you've ever created?

The most annoying character I've ever created--that's easy. The mother of the hero in my current novel. I realized she was cock-blocking my hero with her annoying presence, and the Oedipal overtones were uncomfortable to read, so I summarily dismissed her from my manuscript, and replaced her with a grandma who minds her own business.

In general, any character that cock-blocks another character is an annoyance. Let's call that an official Rule of Fiction Writing According to Leah.


6) Best plot you've ever created?

Definitely the plot of my current novel. I'm so pleased with it.


7) Coolest plot twist you've ever created?

Holy shit, he's alive?

also

Oh my God, it comes from her!!!!


8) How often do you get writer's block?

Every single time I sit down to write, I'm blocked. I have to get in the mood, set the scene, like for sex. That involves music, rereading old passages and really digging them, rumination, and sometimes a little whiskey or absinthe. I also have a pair of shimmery black fingerless mesh opera gloves that I wear while I'm writing my book. And please never mind that I bought them at Target in the Dollar Spot...

.
9) Write fan fiction?

Is the Pope Catholic? Is Italy shaped like a boot on the map of the world? Did Severus and I wear matching velvet cloaks to the Solstice Ball?

I write such good Severus that you can feel his warm breath in your ear. You can feel his fingers on your neck. I promise he'll be standing behind you as you read or your money back. Yes, I write fan fic.


10) Do you type or write by hand?

I write notes in a little spiral-bound notebook with a dragon on the cover. I like to see my handwriting forming the ideas--it keeps the romance alive. Then I type the meat of it. I type at the speed of light.


11) Do you save everything you write?

Yes. I've only just begun to force myself to throw out shopping lists...


12) Do you ever go back to an idea after you've abandoned it?

Nah, my attention span is short like that.


13) What's your favorite thing you've ever written?

Actually, a few things from this blog:

Here's Why Parents Shouldn't Have Weird Fantasies Involving Characters in Children's Books; The Thwarted Aspirations of a Would-Be Tupperware Lady; More Like a Girl Every Day


14) What's everyone else's favorite story you've written?

Definitely my current work-in-progress.


15) Ever written romance or angsty teen drama?

Yes, when I was an angsty teen. I wrote a book about a group of teenagers who lived in a derelict building (hey, and this was even before "Rent") and had a band called "The Familiars."


16) What's your favorite setting for your characters?

The Adirondacks: its spooky, pine-shrouded, cold, rural small towns.


17) How many writing projects are you working on right now?

Supposedly, two: my dissertation (although I am SO ABD and AWOL that it's not even funny anymore and I'm gonna have to BEG my doctoral program to let me continue!!!!) and my novel.


18) Have you ever won an award for your writing?

Yes.


19) What are your five favorite words?

Susurrus, tenebrous, glint, equilibrium, shade (as in ghost)...

"Fuck" is also a secret favorite. And, as you may have guessed, the expression to "cock block." It makes me laugh.

I love words.


20) What character have you created that is most like yourself?

Funnily enough, the male protagonist of my current work-in-progress. Although he's decidedly male and doesn't seem like me, he is exactly like me. My heroine, much much less so.


21) Where do you get your ideas for your characters?

My own warped imagination. And people, it is warped. Sometimes I am frightened by the depths of my own depravity.

I mean, not all my characters are depraved of course. But it's in there somewhere.

Also just from observing me and Sarge and how we live in the world and interact. I am starting to think that all my characters are some variation on the two of us, with that warped creepy thing thrown in for good measure.


22) Do you ever write based on your dreams?

Ugh, never. Dreams are so deadly boring. Can I tell you something and hope you won't be offended? You know when you tell someone your dream you had last night? Which we are all guilty of at some point? And they seem to be listening with interest? Trust me, they're dozing off behind those bright eyes.


23) Do you favor happy endings?

I do favor happy endings, but with unsettled questions and possible reaching shadows...just like life.


24) Are you concerned with spelling and grammar as you write?

I can't leave a sentence hanging with poor grammar or spelling. It leaps out at me, and must be corrected before I can move on. That said, I don't make too many of those mistakes, unless I'm employing strange grammar or syntax for effect. Not to be arrogant, it's just the truth.


25) Does music help you write?

I must have music. I tend to listen to the same songs over and over again. It's been The Raconteurs for awhile now, same three songs. Before that, The White Stripes. Before that, The Goldberg Variations. I listened to it so many times that I think I know every single note before it happens. And there are a lot of notes in those variations.


26) Quote something you've written. Whatever pops in your head.

"Again he flashed his audience a smile so genuine that it was taken, as intended, for insolence."



I'm not sure how to tag for this one, but if you're working on some piece of writing and you'd like to reflect a little bit, feel free to take these questions and run with them. Just let me know so that I can read it!

An Unwelcome Visitor

As the blizzard covered us softly, stealthily, inexorably in a foot of lovely lovely snow...

I lay sick a-bed with influenza. Still not clear whether it is of the swinish or regular variety, but it hardly matters.

Dutiful wife and mother that I am, I made sure Sarge and Hedgehog had all their shots. Me? No, I'm invincible.

I'm still quite unwell, laid up pretty much completely. I do hope everyone else is faring better!

High School History

click to see the crazy classes I took and the telling coffee stain

Today in a fit of nearly-midlife-crisis, when I pulled my senior yearbook off the shelf and opened it up, my senior year schedule fell right into my lap. Who knew? I don't think I'd seen the thing in decades. Sarge tells me he found it in a box of ephemera, and tucked it in the book for safe-keeping. I had to laugh at the enormous coffee stain in its center--I always had a styrofoam cup in my shaky over-caffeinated hand, and that stain must have been ubiquitous. Good thing I wore so much black in high school. Then too there are the numerous free periods. A whole teenaged life was lived in those blank white squares, when I had free time on my hands and so many dramas and friendships and crushes to tend to...

My favorite classes were Creative Writing, Lyric Poetry and Aesthetics. I loved Latin, although I was lazy about my translations, which were overly poetic and impressionistic with less attention paid to actual syntax. My Aesthetics seminar was quite magical because there were only five of us students and my all-time favorite teacher, and because my then-current crush always sat next to me and had a habit of leaning over to look at my paperback Lukacs until his long brown hair brushed my hand and I tried not to shiver...

The yearbook holds my history too, in its margins filled up with ball-point-penned earnestness, but looking at it now is largely an exercise in deciphering and decoding. Reading what people--what my friends--wrote to me when they signed the pages is almost like picking up my copy of Homer's Iliad in Greek (which I must admit I do from time to time, for it reminds me wistfully that once I could understand it); I had sort of retained the overall structure of the language, but the vocabulary was gone.

Remember the social vocabulary of high school? The obscure references and jokes and secrets?

I have specific memories attached to some of those references: green boots, "free gin," "champagne shampoo." And I have a general understanding of other references: "Viceroys, rice pudding at the Carnegie Deli and late-night curb sitting," as I am able to deduce that I smoked those, ate that, and sat there.

But, what was the ""Husbands' poem"? Who was the guy called "White Light" and what was his significance? How about "Fifth Avenue bars"? "Suicide in math class?" What secrets did we share last Friday? And why must I try the peanut butter?

Maybe I'll never know again, and probably for the best. But anyway I have no choice, for the primer has gone missing now...

Me. Yet Again.

Seven things about me, requested by the lovely Kat (please do check out her blog here, if you haven't already, I'm such a fan of her wonderful writing) in exchange for a bouquet of flowers and some sweetness! I'm never one to shy away from going on and on about myself, so I am happy to oblige. Although in the interest of maintaining some distance, I did initially ask Sarge to do it for me (a new twist on a meme, if you will). He rolled his eyes and said, "you want me to tell seven things about you for a blog post?" "yes." I said. "Can you handle it if I tell the truth?" he asked. I realized right then that the only truth about me would have to come directly from me and not him, otherwise we would be entering marital encounter group territory. And who wants to do that?



Anyway, here's seven things about me:

1. Gosh do I love having my hair pulled. Probably too much information right off the bat?

now for an uncomfortable juxtaposition

2. I still like to cut out paper dolls sometimes.

and a non-sequitur

3. I think the rooftop sex scene between Christian Bale and Ewan McGregor in "Velvet Goldmine" is the most beautiful love scene in all of cinema. The first time I watched it I was overwhelmed to the point of tears.

4. I have watched "Velvet Goldmine" more times than I can count. I mean that literally. Can I somehow convince you to see this movie? If you see it, you'll know what the inside of my head looks like--and I mean that figuratively.

Okay, if number four is getting a little too weird for you, how about

5. I had a true craving for pickles when I was pregnant, just like the stereotype. But the craving only lasted one day. I bought a jar, bit into a juicy cold half-sour, was elated, sated, and done. I never had the craving again after that.

talking about one's pregnancy is gauche. Sorry about that.

6. There is only one person in the world who is allowed to call me a "J.A.P." If anyone else were to call me that I would slug 'em. Even if it were true a little bit. Which it is. Which is why I laugh when she calls me that.

and to end with something that I feel deeply, seriously:

7. To me, the written word is more seductive than the spoken. Oh, far more seductive.


I'm too shy to tag anyone, but feel free to leave me a secret about yourself in the comment section below. I would really appreciate it.

Dvorah and Hemda

Eliezer and Dvorah

In this picture is Eliezer Ben-Yehudah (see the link for his story, if you feel ambitious; he was an enormously important figure in Jewish history, notable for being instrumental in the formation of modern Hebrew), and his first wife, Dvorah. His second wife, Hemda, was Dvorah's sister. Yes, he married two sisters consecutively, and these two sisters were cousins of my Grandma Eva. Yet, cousins could mean anything at all really--and we wonder how exactly Dvorah and Hemda were related to us.

Eliezer and Hemda

Alas, this secret died with Grandma. Although she shared with us few specific details, it was an emotional topic for her. Apparently Eliezer, in his quest to rejuvenate Hebrew as a spoken language, was singleminded and harsh. My sister tells me that Grandma cried when she talked about it, describing how terribly abusive he became toward Dvorah when she continued to speak Yiddish, the language of her home. He demanded that his family speak only Hebrew.

But what strong connection made Grandma feel such empathy that she actually wept in the telling of a story that she could not have personally witnessed, as the Ben-Yehudah family settled in Jerusalem and she and her immediate family in Brooklyn? Had there been a closeness between her mother and this other branch of the family, had she overheard her mother's stories about the abusive tendencies of the charismatic Eliezer? Were there letters, now lost?

Although there is a great deal of information available about the famous Eliezer Ben-Yehudah, there isn't much told about the wives. I'm consumed with curiousity, and wish dearly that I could ask Grandma about Dvorah and Hemda.


photos from online archives

Old Pennies

Tonight begins Chanukah, a minor holiday in the Jewish calendar, but festive and filled with light.

As I polish the menorah and wrap Hedgie's first little gift, I'm in my usual strange December state of mind. I'm Jewish, but surrounded on all sides by Christmas--because, of course, I don't live in an 18th century shtetl. But as I do every year, I begin to feel stirrings of rebellion somewhere deep inside.

It helps me to remember the old pennies. Every year at Chanukah, in preparation for our game of dreidl, my Grandma Eva pulled out the bag, sagging under its own weight. The pennies smelled funny, felt funny. But they held strong symbolism: of our family together, our precious faith and tradition that set us apart from others. A tradition that we had to be brave enough to hang onto in the face of the temptations of over-assimilation.

Our December holiday, though its story is grand and momentous, is truly humble in its celebration--potato pancakes, a game of tops, little presents, candles flickering in the early darkness, and, of course, the bag of old pennies.

No, Christmas is not my holiday. And these little Chanukah traditions are all I want--these, and nothing more, exactly as it should be. I don't mind being different.

Snow

"A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

Really, why is it that the very thought of snow makes me feel so melancholy?



from my favorite short story, "The Dead" by James Joyce.

Shop Girl

Much like Donald Duck, who is pictured in the comics as everything from an industrial gherkin vat skimmer to a sea captain, I have held a wide variety of jobs in my life thus far. I've been a waitress, a college professor, a receptionist, a domestic violence counselor; sorted mail, edited poetry anthologies, dipped ice cream, written encyclopedia entries, sold books, typed letters, taught Hebrew School. I've had temp jobs and careers. But looking back now, I would have to say that my favorite incarnation was as a shop girl in a high-end NYC soap shop.

Of all my many vocations, I was probably best suited to this. I love fancy soap. Love it, use it, and am well-acquainted with its many scents, properties, and varieties. No used-car salesman I, my regional manager once held me up as an example: "Leah has a certain quiet elegance [let's be honest, I was code-switching]. She doesn't use hard sell, but she sells!" High praise, and I've never forgotten those words.

Indeed, I sold. My specialty was the befuddled wealthy young gentleman, who often wandered into this foreign territory in pursuit of a gift. His unease was apparent, the heady floral scents overwhelming his common sense and reason, the boudoir appearance of the place rendering him rather incapacitated.

I had an advantage here in the merchandise for, in addition to the pretty shell-shaped soaps and rose-y creams and talcs and perfumes, we carried a very old and venerable men's line. And chief in my arsenal was the flat glass case containing, like an exhibit in a natural-history museum, the finer implements of consummate masculinity: boar-bristle shaving brushes, straight razors, and leather razor strops. If he seemed especially uncomfortable upon entry into the shop, it was to this case that I would lead him first, before we advanced to the inner sanctum. He, self-effacing; I, murmuring sweet nothings about that manliest of all ventures, the shaving ritual. Once I had wielded that gleaming and dangerous straight razor in my neatly manicured hands, he was usually all mine.

Never mind that his own home habits tended toward a Gillette safety razor and a can of Barbasol. The merest hint that he was the sort who could handle the treacherous task of naked razor against naked skin, could competently sharpen that razor to deadly glint against naked leather, when the need arose...this was enough to bolster his compromised maleness and give him the courage to forge forth.

More than once, the gentleman left the shop with an overflowing basket of pretty ablutions for his lady, in addition to the entire very expensive shaving kit that, in neophyte hands, might end an otherwise humdrum workday morning in severed carotid artery and Italian-tiled bourgeois bathroom re-painted in pint or three of fresh Hedge Fund blood...so easily I conjured the cheerful scene in my imagination as I wrapped the purchases and sent him on his way, hundreds of dollars in the old wooden till, a simple exchange of money for happy delusion. Though as far as I know we never had any true casualties of that razor, for perhaps there was a lesson in its proper use offered by a knowledgeable father or grandfather, or perhaps the wife or girlfriend stepped in at the last moment to save a life...

I will say in my defense that I never lied. I always gave a respectfully delivered caveat: "...but do remember, even for the most dextrous, it takes a little practice..."

Great-Grandma Manya

Great-grandma Manya, Benny's wife.

She stayed behind in their Russian village for several years, while Benny made his way in the new world. When he was settled, he sent for her (and how I wish I had a copy of that letter!), and Manya sailed to Ellis Island, her children in tow. She took little else from the old country save the gleaming brass samovar, carefully wrapped in woolens, destined to join a little army of its brethren all over Brooklyn; the ubiquitous bequest found even today in the modern houses of many families of Russian Jewish descent. At this very moment it sits, gleaming still, in the hallway outside my bedroom, though the black tea leaves have long since evanesced.

My mom remembers her Grandma as a lovely, lovey woman. And when I asked my mother's cousin, she said, succinctly, "there is a memory of a bosom."

I think of Manya squeezing her grandchildren close, pressing them into the flowered decolletee, the powdery scent enveloping.








take a look at some other Sepia Saturday posts HERE!

Friend

Me and A, circa 1972. I'm snacking on something, as usual.

There was never a time when I didn't know her.

I'm turning 40 in January and she has been in my life for 40 years. It now seems apocryphal, but it's not, how our mothers met when they were pregnant with us. We were playmates together, pre-schoolers, grade-schoolers, high-schoolers. There's a flow of years between us, so many stories that I can't even think of one without thinking of them all.

Blonde to my brown (we might have been Laura and Mary, but really we were both Laura).

Keeper of my secrets, my memories, my true story.

How I Named My Blog

This is my favorite book, and I say that unequivocally (the only thing that runs a close second is Laura Ingalls Wilder's "These Happy Golden Years"). It's a sequel to the almost equally wonderful "Invitation to the Waltz".

An old boyfriend, who was himself a writer, read "Weather" on my recommendation and said, "well, I'm surprised. It really isn't very romantic now, is it?" Well, not in the strict sense of the literary term "romantic"; it's a thoroughly modernist work by a woman writer. It has a ragged ending; things don't tie up neatly. Nor even very satisfactorily. The hero is hopelessly weak with shaky morals. The heroine is utterly human. But the book had the greatest impact on my late girlhood, and now my older self; it's that kind of book.

I still wonder a little bit why this boyfriend was surprised at its lack of standard romance--surprised that I would like it so much? Did I come across as a romantic, and the hard edge was unexpected? I'll never really know...

Anyway, I named my blog for this book, and because I just like the expression so much. Last night, Sarge and I were discussing this and I discovered, to my great interest, that we had very different interpretations of the meaning of the phrase "the weather in the streets." I had always thought it suggested dreaminess, daydreaming, staring out the window at the rain, a little removed, looking at things through a pane of glass...Sarge said "the 'weather in the streets' is the real deal, it's what's really going on." I hadn't thought of it that way. Two very different perspectives!

I suppose both interpretations work...

Benny

On the left is my great-grandfather Benjamin. I realized, when I set out to write a little bit of history, that I know next to nothing about him. The bare facts, only: he was my mother's paternal grandfather, born and raised in Russia, came to America by way of Ellis Island and set up a tailor's shop in Brooklyn. He spoke at least three languages fluently (Yiddish, Russian, and English). He must have had an accent. He was married to Manya, he had four children: my grandpa Max, my Great-Uncle Harold, and my great-aunts Libby and Tilly. He died early and tragically, before my mother was born, of his injuries a few days after he was hit by a car on Eastern Parkway.





My mother said he was known for being "austere, but likable."

I suppose I also know that as a young man, he was interested in grooming. Just look at those twirled mustaches, that oiled and rolled hair! He enjoyed a glance in the mirror... or two.

And I'll bet my life on some other things too: that he had a sense of humor (for his sons, both of them, were wickedly funny). That he had a sense of adventure (but then, didn't they all, who came over the long rough waters to Ellis Island). That he had a pervasive sense of gloom (for who in my family does not).

But as for the little details, they're lost to me: What was his favorite dinner? the colors he preferred in a suit? the song he hummed as he ran his sewing machine? the way he smelled and talked and moved his hands as he told a story?







for more tales of the ancestors, visit Poetikat, Alan Burnett, and Betsy (among others) on Sepia Saturday. And if you have an old sepia photo of your own, why not share it?

Thankful, I Think!

I woke this morning at 5 a.m. to a strange feeling that I couldn't quite identify at first. I had to come fully awake to understand what it was...

And so, what was it? Unbelievably, it was an anticipation of the holiday, and I am so happy that I can't go back to sleep! I say "unbelievable" because I haven't experienced happy anticipation of Thanksgiving since I was a girl, and we used to go out to Long Island to my paternal grandparents' house in the suburbs--and my dad was alive, and my grandma and grandpa; and my sister and I would sneak m&ms from the enormous bowl set out in the livingroom, and everyone plus stragglers were arrayed around the dinner table--it was lively and the conversations raucous, then ebbing, then flowing and raucous again--and the relatives asked you about school and boyfriends, and there was a chocolate cornucopia in the middle of the table. We were all there and it was fun. So much fun!

Then there were the long fallow years, when Thanksgiving day was a little bit lonely, and alienating, and just made me miss the lost ones all the more.

Now suddenly it's different. I'm not sure why. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my sister-in-law (technically, my sister's sister-in-law, but we are close and I like to think of her as my own) and I were discussing the food we'll be bringing to my sister's house today. This conversation made me feel happier and happier. We are all good cooks, but I'm leaving it to the others to bring the special fancy dishes ( the brined turkey, the cranberry cornbread, the lovely homemade fruit pies). Sarge suggested that I contribute some white trash cooking in homage to my deep Kentucky roots on my dad's side (yes, I have some Southern Baptist in me!) and to his Texas roots on his mother's side. So my contributions will be ambrosia "salad," frito pie, and green bean casserole. So much fun to make and fun to eat, so quintessentially and generically American, nary a fresh ingredient in the lot.

I shopped for the dubiously tinned and frozen ingredients, and last night, late, I made the Ambrosia, and this morning opened the fridge to lay witness to the fluffy, sweet, pale green clouds of it, nesting in my huge bright blue bowl, ready to go. It took up most of the entire bottom shelf. There was a tell-tale dent where Sarge must have put serving spoon to its depths--just to test it, I suppose. But the bounty remains largely untrammelled and expectantly awaiting the good times ahead.

Sometimes it's wonderful just to let go of existential brooding and let yourself feel the lightness of pure, mellow, childlike satisfaction. I realize that I haven't let myself do that in a very long time, not about anything. My spirit is often burdened with memory and worry. But not today. Not today!

Happy Thanksgiving!

...there grew a golden tree...

Hedgehog is a special girl, serene-looking, waist-length straight hair and fine posture, lovely and composed and well-behaved in school. She reads widely and seriously--an ongoing favorite is Tolkien, which she studies in bed at night like a bible. So when she was assigned to choose a poem or a song to present in class, I was not surprised that she picked Galadriel's Farewell to Lorien, from "The Fellowship of the Ring":

I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold,
and leaves of gold there grew.
Of wind I sang, a wind there came
and in the branches blew.
Beyond the sun, beyond the moon,
the foam was on the sea,
and by the strand of Ilmarin
there grew a golden tree...

and it goes on from there, and of course I had tears in my eyes when she sang it to me, in made-up tune and a little off-key, because she herself is so very Elven (in the Tolkien sense--graceful, brave, upright, and otherworldly) and because I am amazed by her all the time.

Hedgehog is a good girl, but as I've said before, she seems to have an affinity for a certain type of boy...

The afternoon of her presentation, when I asked her how it went, she was much much more interested in telling me about this year's naughty boy (there's always one, isn't there) who brought in lyrics with curse words, and how the teachers told him that he couldn't read them aloud in class.

What was the song? I inquired with great avidity.

She started to giggle, It was the Beastie Boys, Mama.

Ah, I replied. Most of their songs have bad words in them. So which song was it?

My Elven 3rd grader, who recites elegies to lost worlds and worships the beauty of Old English, began to stagger under the weight of her laughter, overcome with the wonderfulness of being bad.

So? Tell me! I demanded.

She was practically falling down with hilarity.

Finally she squeaked out, but with precision:

"B-Boys Makin' with the Freak Freak!"

Oh, indeed. B-boys makin with the freak freak. I could see it all so clearly: as Hedgehog stood to the side and watched in delight, clutching her own poem like a talisman, the bad little boy rode those words in a glory of naughtiness, at least equal in daring and boldness to the heroes of Middle Earth!

Bloggy Hiatus

Hey sweet readers!

Going on a vacation from the interwebs--hopefully it'll be salubrious--


xo

La Boue de Verdun

The last WWII veteran in my family, my dear Uncle Harold, died several years ago. With the passing of the generations goes too the immediacy of the wars of their generations. I have never had visceral experience, not even on the home front; only what was told to me by those who fought, and whose fathers, brothers, and uncles fought: the letters, stories, and memories that offer only hints of what it was like for them.

We live in wartime, but many of us are so removed from the fighting on foreign soil that it doesn't affect our daily lives, except in the political arguments we sometimes engage in from our safe distance. Yet, I know that for many other families here in America, of course, there is not this remove, and their loved ones are "over there." That Sarge, were it not for an accident of age, would have served.

When Sarge and I visited Paris, we spent some hours at the Musee de l'Armee at Les Invalides, where we found a strange little exhibit, an old WWI French Army uniform resting in a glass case. It appeared to be completely caked in dirt. When I bent to read the plaque, I saw that it said, simply, "La Boue de Verdun," the mud of Verdun. I will always think of that uniform, displayed in a corner behind glass, a tangible remnant of the fear, suffering, and the bravery. He was covered in battle, and he saved that muddy uniform carefully for so many many years, and although I don't remember the soldier's name, I remember today that mud, and think of him.

Psychic Hangover

I have come to the grim conclusion that it is not necessarily salubrious to go delving into the dark parts of one's psychological past, especially when one is prone anyway to fits of black gloom. When I was younger, I liked to air the details of the more peculiar aspects of my childhood, to myself in my journals and to any willing live audience. Looking back, I think it was a bit of showing off: my life was like a book, and I the romantic protagonist. I had created a new genre: European Jewish Gothic. It suited me perfectly.

Over the last week, though, I've come to think that revisiting the pain was, shall we put it mildly, most unhelpful. Although I announced to Sarge last Wednesday, after I'd finished with staring at the photos of my old home and writing my last post, that I'd achieved a major catharsis. I stood in front of him and proclaimed it with joy and relief, "Sarge, I just had a catharsis!" to which he replied, skeptically I venture, "really? So you're purged of your weird feelings about Henry Street?" to which I replied, "Yes! I have no weird feelings left in me!"

It turns out that this was not the case (as Sarge had sussed out even in the face of my grand optimism) and in fact, far from achieving catharsis, I have actually dredged up no small amount of sadness and discomfort. You can't imagine how disappointing that is.

All my study of psychology (I even have a higher degree in the field!) has not, apparently, led me to a place of peace and understanding. Just when I think I've begun to understand myself, I find that I'm plain wrong. My past, it seems, is better left in the heavy safe that is locked, combination forgotten or deliberately lost, and stowed deep deep down in my subconscious--or better still, my unconscious. There, stripped of its uncomfortable realness, its metaphor acquires a certain lightness (a paradox, I know, but for me it's true). Let's just say that I feel better when I don't eat such a heavy meal of details.

So here I sit, paralyzed with feelings, the fog of depression clouding my spirit. A pox on my last post.

My current unfortunate state can be summed up in Nigel Tufnel's line from Spinal Tap: "Like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none: none more black."

The Castle

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, there were two sisters with brown eyes and brown hair that they wore in braids, and hand-me-down dresses and scuffed Keds. These girls lived in a very very old castle in Brooklyn with their grandparents, the Patriarch and Matriarch, and their parents. In those days, the regular people, the Russian immigrants and working-class Jews, the teachers and tailors, could live in castles in Brooklyn just because that's the way things were.

This castle was five stories high, and its windows and brick front gazed down on Henry Street where it sat, well-mannered, the street a parlor and the house foundation a silk settee, its stoop the polished mahogany tea table where it entertained an always-varying assortment of guests.




In the walls of the castle, the light was dim, and the air was heavy and smelled of old old things that couldn't be named. The castle had ghosts, too, and a cold spot at the top of the first flight of stairs, so that sometimes when the girls passed there, it felt like walking through lakewater, and they shivered.






In the castle, they lived their lives. They ran up and down the five flights of stairs; they shouted to each other leaning over the bannisters, floors apart; they played in the attic, the old servants' quarters, where no one else ever went anymore, and wore the clothes of their recent ancestors (the dead foxes with faces, the red chiffon nightclub dresses, the pillbox hats).

They slept in iron beds with dancing friezes molded on the headboards, under fancy bedspreads, painstakingly crocheted by the Matriarch. The nights in the castle felt sometimes long and dark, and were full of little noises, and often the sisters would reach out to hold hands across the wide yawning chasm between the beds.





Though the castle was not very cozy, it was their home.


But there came at last a time when a wicked glamour fell over the inhabitants of the castle, though no one knew who had cast the glamour, and the people who lived in the castle wondered continually "why us?" Many sad things began to happen to them. Some died, terribly, and some went mad from grief, and there was bitterness and there were complicated betrayals of the worst sort, one after another after another, like a delicate stack of falling cards. Through it all, the two little girls watched and waited and worried, to see what might become of them.

When there were only three left out of all of them, it happened finally that the little girls and their mother had to leave, and a family of strangers moved into the castle at Henry Street.

The sisters grieved their losses, and it was a very hard and long grief, until finally they could go on and grow up.

But the dreams never stopped, and often to this very day the older sister wakes in the grey dawn in her own house, beside her own husband, confused, not remembering where she is, because all night long she has been walking up and down the stairs of Henry Street, and wandering in and out of its kitchens, catching a pale glimpse of herself in its windows and mirrors, and talking with the dead Matriarch and Patriarch, who seem to sit forever at their dining table, drinking their forever cups of tea and eating their forever toast, and waiting for her to come back to them.





And to this very day, she keeps a strangely shaped key on a sterling chain, the key that fits that door, the door to my castle.

All photos of my childhood home taken by my grandfather, Max Pollack