Carrying In: 6th musing

   

    
          Later in the evening, after dusk has fallen and night is here, I search for a small sketchbook I had scanned earlier in the day. The one with drawings of Dad in the hospital in 2007. In that small space I captured it all, him in his hospital gown, weary and cantakerous. Him reciting poetry, the angels of mercy hovering about him and my mother as we waited...as I was used to waiting back in those days...and a fiery outburst of his that I recorded when he yelled and was not a good patient at all. He hated to be confined.
It's all there, but the sketchbook was not in the bag of books of his that I had also scanned earlier in the day.

    So I leaned into the back seat of the car and carried in that rumpled brown paper bag of books, well thumbed through, notated, some covers falling off or held on with a bit of tape....stuffed with papers.
I crossed the snowy yard and felt his presence long ago coming in the back door from a stint at the
Q yard railroad where he worked....carrying in a brown paper bag full of books, his thermos of coffee or something stronger and carbon copies of things he had typed. Tired, he would lurch into the room about 10:30 at night. I still remember the smell of the rail yard about him. I recall how tired, very tired he was as he got up early the next day to teach English classes at MCAD...tired, he poured himself a drink.
    My mother waited up for him. Sometimes they visited, sometimes they shouted and quarreled right away. Sometimes she was asleep, sometimes she was depressed. Other times their friend Viv would be over..the smell of her cigarettes permeating the house and Dad would revive and carry on a conversation long into the night.....with her and my mother.

    And so it went for years...Dad coming in with his trove of books in a bag..carrying in his thoughts, his quips, his overflowing ideas....
    And then it all ended, he retired from the railroad with a good pension and his contract at the Art School was not renewed.....He had time and he typed and typed....papers filling the room, thoughts going here and there and books..more time to read and books filling up every square inch of the house
    Now those very books fill the basement, the back room and parts of my garage. With little effort I've managed to recreate the chaos and wonder of my parents house.
    Persephone looks around in that basement underworld of literary knowledge, art and papers...She takes a deep breath and starts making order all over again.
   

mishegoss 5th musing on descending to the basement

                                                                                                                                                        

Michegoss: Literally insanity, madness. 
definition from Leo Rosten's The Joy of Yiddish. One of my dad's favorite books

1) a wacky, irrational absurb belief
2) A state of affairs so silly or unreal that it defies explanation.
3) A piece of tomfoolery, clowning, "horsing around"

And so I find a definition, a yiddish word for the work that I am embarking on.

It fits.

It fits the piles, the feeling of insurmountable chaos. The books of Jim's that he loved so well and so deeply. It fits the old red schoolbooks of mine with my students names.... they are grown up and married...it fits the old phonograph records piled in a box... the financial outdated records..and in the midst of all that.....a dress I wore just about this time for a friend's wedding...decades ago as they stood in front of her parents fireplace......... now he looks down from his heavenly place and she mourns him as she struggles with a bad hip.
and all my brothers art piled up and miscellaneous boxes of Real Mischgoss, the random papers of a life that proliferate and pile up...
Mishegoss
I guess I am grateful that there is a word to describe all this somehow.

It will take time, insight and simple hard work to move the basement from mishegoss to order.

 My hands will need to not only be my physical hands...but my inner hands that can handle hard emotions and hands like a mystical hamsa that can see into what needs to be done.

I sit now at my laptop...typing in blue..musing... long winter lies ahead...a meloncholoy melody plays..and the task in the basement seems daunting...but armed with my mothers wisdom and the zeal to reveal and heal what and who my father was...yes..I think I can do it..
Yes I can conquer the mishegoss and find a way to make order and communicate the rich life my father led through reading as well as the rich life my mother gave me of finding reflection and journaling the inner life.....
and so I look ahead inwardly and outwardly to what the basement treasures will reveal...and I feel confident that I will find a way to conquer the mishegoss.....somehow.....

Descent into Memory: Book about the Alhambra

 

  I have not made it down to the basement to sort things out...except for one foray into the far corner, yes, where so many of Jim's books are on the shelves and more in boxes and everything every which way. Topsy turvy chaos, not unlike the way it always was in his  room.Perhaps that how the books like it..all in a pile..it was pretty much how he like it...the chaos and wonder of his room and his mind.

INSERT PHOTO HERE OF JIM AT HIS DESK IN HIS ROOM

     It's bitterly cold outside...dipped to minus here as I lay in bed under the covers last night. I looked through a book that had sifted up from the basement and into my hands. A book about the Alhambra bought so long ago when I traveled to Spain in 1969. After a romantic cruise for 5 days across the Atlantic on the SS Michelangelo we docked in Algeiercieras Spain. With Africa at our back we alighted at night. What other way is there to enter Spain but at night. I still recall the mood, the moment and the mystery of that moment.
      There at the dock was Jim's brother Dan who knew Spain like the back of his hand. He had been a missionary there for decades. There he was with his wife Frieda and 3 daughters to greet us. 'We traveled together for the next 6 weeks.
    The two brothes were so different. Like oil and water. My father so expansive, and incendiary. Dan so contained, focused and mild mannered and deeply perceptive. Each brilliant in their own way.
      Dan was our guide to mystery and enchantment and the next day we visited the Alhambra with him.

       Why do we always place our parents at such an undefinable older age?
     I looked in the front page of the book where my dad noted his birthday that we celebrated later in Denia Spain and he wrote 45 years old. I'm older now by year than him. So that would place my mother at age 48.
and so we romped through Spain. Me with my youthful romances..them with their reinvigorated passion at traveling together through an exotic land.

     The billetes from the Alhambra are folded at the back of the book. July 19 1969. 50 pesetas.
and one small crushed flattened red flower. A red flower from the Alhambra. 45 years ago.

       I press the flat red flower to my nose and inhale the scent of memory. Leaving the cold of Minnesota behind, I go back to the heat and mystery of that Spanish day so long ago. There we were wandering the tiled majesty and halls and fountains of The Alhambra....built centuries ago it was the apex of beauty and architecture.
      The colored photos in the book bring back each fountain spray, each expanse of infinite tiled beauty and each moment.

       The carved lions, the flowers and us. 8 Americans, 4 adults and 4 children wandering the mystery and the beauty.

I hold the book and allow dreams to enclose me. Frost glitters on the window forming patterns from an ancient citadel

I explored years ago. Gazing at the back cover I see the water lilies and  red pots of flowers surrounding a mystical pool of serene water. I float there now in my dreams.

    I leave to go to school, driving quickly to get there. Absentmindedly I turn on the radio. Beautiful guitar music fills the small space of my car. I turn it  up as far as it will go, as I head up Ford parkway.. I am carried away by the intensity and familiarity of this tune...and feel lost in the passion of the music..

The music ends and the announcer says.....this is "Dreams of the Alhambra" ...the synchronicity astounds me and I feel affirmed in these musings.........

2nd Descent a Puppet Show "A Little Summer Puppet Show."

SECOND DESCENT
TREASURE FOUND: A SEASONAL PUPPET SHOW!!           note: Images to follow

"A LITTLE SUMMER PUPPET SHOW!"

     Back down to the basement...moving stuff around....

Jim's books on the table.. there are so many more in other hidden bookshelves downstairs, out in the garage....and all my stuff...but somehow all this finding of puppet shows and those times I performed for 2 or 10 or 30 people leads back to him.
My Texas, Railroad Worker, Poet Dad.....who loved to tell stories and jokes and muse on the lives of those he met....and who memorized poems that he recited even when memory has left out the back door and Dementia had moved in.....

     and this task is also about my Jungian dreamer of a mother who taught me to journal and value the Inner Life
"Allow your Outer life to relax so You Can Focus on Your Inner Life... she said so wisely...and in reading her typed differentiation of the four functions..Thinking, Feeling, Intuition and Sensation..I can see that I am dealing with my difficult sensation function by cleaning..and making order....not sure that I will find the wholeness that Jung speaks of..but if I keep at it..I may have a clean basement eventually....

     I move stuff around..fill a garbage bag with junk and then reach for the old plastic bag with my former address fading out....

Reaching in, I find an old puppet show I made eons ago.....its so old and it is so apropo of this time..of last summer..of this cold weather now..of all that we suffer through and enjoy here in Minnesota...

The inspiration for this little show came from a little bag I found that had a clear plastic window in it.  Aha!! I thought!! It's a PUPPET SHOW IN A BAG!!!!  and so I quickly fashioned a puppet show based on summer and winter. I fashioned the small pieces quickly out of my ink pen and watercolors....puppet shows are easy and quik!! sometimes...aaargh cleaning a basement...very slow and arduous...

So anyway.. I fashioned the pieces and taped them on so I would stick the pieces down into the bag...and you see it through the clear window!! Voila!!


and thus I performed it...showing summer heat...cooling breezes...air conditioning....swimming and svitzing... ( the Yiddish word for sweating....as Leo Rosten says..." Yiddish has more Vitamins than other Languages!!!) and then moving to other images of winter....and so on..

I performed it in the moment to various friends...they laughed..I carried it around and then it was forgotten in the busyness of life...and it was forgotten...

only to be retrieved last week...
I changed the pieces around....and switched the order so that the " story" begins with winter and ends with summer....like some kind of Remembered Relief....its THIRTEEN degrees out as I write this..

and I performed it this past sunday for some friends.....4 to be exact..they looked and laughed..
and now it is on the end of my dining room table..I ll carry it around again and make people laugh...maybe the front desk dental clerk I just spoke to at the end of my block needs a laugh.. I stopped in there to chat and warm up before my walk around the block...her husband is in a lot of undiagnosed pain...maybe she needs a laugh...or the people I will see later today at work..maybe they need a laugh...PUPPET SHOW IN A BAG!!!
yeah...we can laugh because the weather is so unrelenting here and so hard to take

and we tend to live for summer...but maybe I am changing my attitude around and I am living for Hibernation and Writing and Musing and The True Life of Memoir as lived out through Cleaning My Basement and Handling All the Pieces of My Past, one by one and remembering and writing...Throwing out what needs to be thrown...keeping what needs to be kept...selling what needs to be sold...giving away what needs to be given away...and remembering..allowing this process to recount my life..allowing the deep muse of Persephone to guide me... deeper..deeper...into the mysterious land of my past as revealed in my basement.

                             
     and it does all lead back to my dad Jim...who wrote on his manual typewriter every day....he wrote out poems he loved....wrote up his daily musings  and then xeroxed numerous copies....and sent them far and wide...who modeled for me the importance of telling stories...whether at a party...or typed out manually and sent to friends ...yes from his heavenly realm I continue the DNA that is in me..to type out a daily story and to send it out far and wide..and to keep telling stories..whenever I can...even a simple tale of the seasons that uses a paper bag for a stage!! 

First descent: puppet shows, Jim's books and flamenco silks

   So, I set the timer for about 1 1/2 hours and go down the steps. There is the jumble and overwhelming chaos of it all. It would be easier to run back up the stairs. But I persevere. My task I decide is to take my dad's many books off the shelves and put the boxes of puppet shows back on the shelves.

    I would rather run back upstairs but I stay. I start moving the books, ....the books, all the books he loved so dearly....poetry, film criticism.....essays, Auden, Yeats and more. It really is like handling the richness of his mind. Each book stuffed with papers and written over on the inside and back cover. Each book bulges with his commentary and deep thoughts.

    I clear off the sturdy table and put the boxes on there. I fill the boxes carefully. Who would ever know whats in each box. I am not anal enough to label them all, just make this order, for this time.

   The shelves clear. 

THE PUPPET SHOWS in Boxes.

     I can hear the laughter, I can see the fast quick drawings, the pieces on sticks. Oh a puppet show and stage for a long ago admininstrator. Oh, the puppet show that I brought to my Jewish Conversion,..hahaha the Quik and easy way to becoming Jewish!! Oh,..what was I thinking...the puppet show called " The Inner Life of My Mid Forties" and therein I find the TREASURES. Amid the watercolors and sticks are 4 small silk paintings I had forgotten about!

    3 flamenco images and one of a fountain. I bring them upstairs and up one floor to my hoard of silk fabric!!! and within a few days they are all magnificently Framed and put on Etsy.

www.anitawhite.etsy.com    No bites, but the pieces are done!! Framed in red fiery silk, enough to withstand Any WindChill. and they now are all on a long rod in front of the air conditioner, the one that blew in cool air all summer to keep us from sweating.

Here they are. My Basement Treasures.

Ole!! Ole!! Ole!!

Persephones First Descent: Description of my basement

The Inspiration for this Blog comes from Greek Mythology. It is the story of how Persephone daughter of  Zeus and Demeter was abducted by Hades of the underworld. Mourning her loss, Demeter searched for her daughter and while she searched nothing grew. The gods negotiated Persephones return..on the condition that she had not eaten anything while in the underworld..Persephone had eaten a few pomegranate seeds, so as a result when she returns to the underworld we have the season of fall and winter. For me, I use the symbol of Persephone and the Underworld as a metaphor for my descent into my basement. There I find relics of my past and I attempt to make order, discard what I no longer need and hope to emerge with order, clarity and insight. It is really a memoir project, since so much of my past resides down there.


  Description of my Basement.
             Winter came in early this year here in Minnesota. Faced with snow and cold 2 weeks BEFORE thanksgiving I carried on as did everyone else, with a feeling of stoic dread. It's Here, Winter is here.... and with that comes a feeling of isolation and Hibernation. What to do?
I always have plenty of creative projects and of course paintings to finish from the end of summer when the Amaranth blazed fiery red in my garden. That's long gone and the dead stalks are laying on the ground.
     It would be easy to feel like a dead stalk too, but in winter something deeper stirs, even as the ice forms on the surface.
     So I walk around my house and glance into my basement with dread. Time hangs a bit heavy, no matter how industrious one is and with the dark evenings coming in...what is there to do. I wonder half heartedly to myself....hmmm can I, will I tackle the basement....its menacing chaos lurks there at the bottom of the stairs as the cats scamper up and down on their way to eat or use the litter box. There was water in the basement this summer, although its perfectly dry now, but odd smells linger.

     I stand at the top of the stairs. It is dark out, about 9 degrees above zero and like Persephone descending to her underworld I go down the basement stairs, determined that when the green leaves are on the trees and when the  flowers grow and when Persephone once again dances in the upper world of greenery and growth. My basement will be clean and orderly....ready to retreat to as needed on hot summer days.
   And thus I decided to treat the CLEANING OF MY BASEMENT as a form of memoir, for my whole life....kinda sorta is down there, ready to be revealed, organized or tossed out. 

DESCRIPTION OF MY BASEMENT
     It's a mess. Long a repository of my whole life stretching back in time, it has become the collection point for my junk, puppet shows, my dearly departed Dad's library, more junk, old records, tax receipts that I have not figured out what to do with, old rugs, art, framing supplies, a real nice old table, washer and non functioning dryer, cat litter boxes, bits of wood, photos, trash, piled up picnic baskets, old tables, school records, more books of my dad's, photo albums of my past, the past clustered in corners, and most of all the years all piled up in the form of stuff and junk. Tall metal shelves hold a lot of the stuff, once upon a time it was kind of orderly, but time passed and I just tossed stuff down there.
I could say more. There are boxes of holiday cards and birthday cards, layers and posters of Heart of the Beast puppet shows, moldy cardboard boxes, files of drawings from our place in Wisconsin, photos of my students who are now all grown up and married. The past, the past, the past.....all piled up. 
   I am overwhelmed by it all, so I just run down and clean the litter box as needed and run back upstairs to the safe routines of my creative life and practical life.... I avoid the basement....
    Oh yeah, there's also a root cellar filled with semi useful glass vases that could hold enough flowers to make me forget winter...there are pots I have cooked in and pots I have not.
All the stuff of a life time and I am alive to be here, to have hoarded it and not used it or used it
and I am alive to have the courage to go down and deal with it .
    What helps me now is to frame it in the form of a memoir.  It often does not feel like it
 even merits the glorious title of MEMOIR...more like hoarded junk and stuff...but I look deeper and there are treasures.  I have had several journeys down to the basement and each time I have felt overwhelmed and exhausted....and yet each time I have found treasures, unbelievable treasures. Each descent of mine, each symbolic descent of Persephone brings a little more order, several garbage bags filled without a thought looking back and treasure upon treasure upon treasure. The past reveals itself.
    Yes, I am alive and I can deal with it..slowly. I set the timer on the stove and I descend into the mysterious realm of my basement....to clean, to sort, to file, to throw. It looks like it's going to be a LONG Winter. I think I'll get it done.

                                              
     I dedicate these first writings and musings to the memory of Brian who died yesterday. He was a vibrant soul who took deep risks in this life. A wonderful fiery, creative guy. Sometimes impossible, always ready to party. A guy who got off his death bed, dragged his morphine drip and catheter bag outside and  powercleaned one side of his house. He took closeup photos of open beautiful flowers. They are beautiful and they linger, reminding us to be open to the blossoming life has to offer us. His death was long expected, but my how chilly the world feels without him. May his memory be only for a blessing. Thank you Brian for all that you were. Now as you soar beyond these earthly realms I think of you, remembering we don't take a damn bit of all this stuff with us, so don't leave it as a burden for those left behind.
Rest well Brian, party down now into eternity. We miss you.