Abandonment and What Was

Abandonment and What Was

Ignorance can be divided into problems and mysteries. When we face a problem, we may not know its solution, but we have insight, an inkling of what we are looking for. When we face a mystery, however, we can only stare in wonder and bewilderment, not knowing what an explanation would even look like.

                                                                                                                                -Noam Chomsky

Monday 5:30 pm.

Trying to identify this dead tree is like trying to give John Doe a more personable name at the Morgue. No shoots of life (leaves) and no name tag. But who am I kidding? I couldn't identify a tree for the life of me (with exception to a decorated Christmas tree).

But here I go. Out of all the slightly hopeful-of-life-in-the-Spring trees, my eyes beeline to the dead one.

Abandonment. Let my obsessions be revealed (like those persistent moles of the Whack-A-Mole variety-- I gotta acknowledge them, or they just keep coming back.)

So below this dead tree (abandonment of life) is an abandoned red car (abandonment of human investment) and behind me is the “Yellow House” (*Garden View manor) with its grounds that are anything but abandoned. But it’s a Red Herring. See, inside its manicured yellow walls walk those whose mind or soul has abandoned their body (or on the verge of abandoning their body-- permanently or temporarily).

And as much as “they” remain a “they,” I can’t help but feel a deep connection to them... as in the whole idea ain’t that unfamiliar to me. The woman who lives below me once said, “Siobhan, the only difference between this house (our apartment building) and that house (the Yellow House) is that we pay for our food.” I laughed a laugh that was polite, but had you been able to read my mind, you could’ve felt my acceptance of her theory.

It’s now 6:00 pm as I type this. Damyon has until 10 pm to receive calls. I just tried calling him, but after a faint voice says “Hello?” he/she hangs up.

Damyon, my 16 year old nephew, is locked down in a psych ward.

I just tried the number again, and it’s busy. I suspect whoever answered and hung up before, didn't want the line clogged up. I can dig that. If I had talked to him, I would've told him I was writing about him in my “nature blog.” He would've laughed and said “what's up” to you.

(((“What's up?” from my nephew Damyon.)))

My uncle died in a psych ward. When his name is invoked at family gatherings, there’ll be head shaking and a ho-hum exhale, “it all started with that spider bite.”

Last year, when taking another family member to a ward, a patient rolled up behind me bumping me with his wheel chair. “Excuse me,” said two gauzed-up and bloody wrists. When I looked into his face he was smiling.

I am trying to connect three rivers here: abandonment, mental illness, and a nature blog, all tentacles of capital N Nature. 

I'm thinking about abandoned buildings, buildings that house abandoned souls and the eerie nostalgia abandonment musters, as in Ted Kooser’s poem:

Abandoned Farmhouse

He was a big man, says the size of his shoes

on a pile of broken dishes by the house;

a tall man too, says the length of the bed

in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,

says the Bible with a broken back

on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;

but not a man for farming, say the fields

cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.

A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall

papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves

covered with oilcloth, and they had a child,

says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.

Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves

and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.

And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.

It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.

Something went wrong, says the empty house

in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields

say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars

in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.

And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard

like branches after a storm--a rubber cow,

a rusty tractor with a broken plow,

a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.

This was the first poem I read by Kooser, you can probably guess I was an instant convert. Why are we so drawn to abandonment? 

I think abandonment gives us (me) an honest expectation of life. We abandon, or everything must come to abandonment (life, this MFA program, you name it). What's more, abandonment still offers strings to the "what was." So the memory of a loved one, the neighborhood that once was, the way a grandparent's eyes gloss over when they hear an old tune. Abandonment feels like an honest way in which to navigate the world, life. In Buddhism, its called impermanence, these concepts are similar.

Today the snow offers me a couple of abandoned objects beyond the tree and car:

 A crushed can of ginger ale.

            He was lied to, said the crushed can of ginger ale.

And box of Robotussin.

            She was ready for the Spring, said the open box of Robotussin.

And finally, if looking at myself from a bird’s eye view:

                She was connected, said the words filtered through her notebook.

                

 *Riding up the driveway to Garden View Manor (formerly Jane Holmes), you can sense 

the historical significance of the building and the grounds to the many people who 

worked or lived there and the neighborhood in general. This significance has been and 

continues to be expressed by residents of Wilkinsburg through thoughtful recollections 

of an organization as a pillar of the community and as a dedicated neighbor.

Dating back to 1869, Jane Holmes provided short-term and long-term assisted living in 

various forms. At different times throughout its history, the home offered a safe haven 

for expectant mothers, and personal care and assistance with daily living for seniors. 

Today, in keeping with the more than a century-old tradition of care, Garden View 

Manor continues to offer adults residential personal care. 

Mercy Behavioral Health is especially proud of the fact that one of the reasons we were selected to obtain the facility was because our mission paralleled that of the former Jane Holmes.

Mercy Behavioral Health (MBH), part of the Pittsburgh Mercy Health System, provides 

community-based mental health, mental retardation/developmental disability, and drug/

alcohol prevention and treatment services through Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Taken from: Wilkinsburg Sun

Questions for Readers

Questions for our readers

Ayres:
1. Physical labor, housework, are important in your discovery process. In your family unit, what is your relationship with cleaning and tidiness today? After your home has been filled and brought to order, do these process's continue (cleaning), or do they emerge in another form in your life?

2. Have you tired of bears since this book writing journey? Have you become an an unofficial spokesperson for bear talk small talk? Give examples, if so.

Bakken:
1. I feel somewhat silly asking this, as it is often a shunned upon question, but it is a question nonetheless. The question is why? Why Greece (I know to study food and to work), but beyond that? Are you Greek? Why the attraction, generally and specifically?

2.  I love the description of the one eyed ewe- an argument for vegetarianism, although it is quite clear you are not a vegetarian. I am interested in your eating/food history. What was you diet like growing up? What is your diet like, now here, in land locked Pittsburgh?

Signs

Signs

I’m at my corner. It’s around 4:30 on Sunday January 19^th-- snow is the overwhelming visual, and through it I am doing some specifically snowy associate thinking.

The way it further disguises history and mystery with another physical layer. How this physical layer makes me work that much harder to uncover “it," how I thrive on challenge. 

So under this layer of snow, I make my dangling clodhopper snow boots dance around, stirring up the slimy brown leaves who neatly lay themselves upon each other like human spooning. I dance my boots until a neon orange slice of trash surfaces, and I instinctively begin creating a narrative. After the narrative sounds right in my head (punk ass teenager letting her litter fall like its nothing, because to her, it is nothing and I feel that because I’ve been there too, thinking like no one cares about this neighborhood, so why should I?) I move on to another visual. It’s interesting my thoughts here ended, or felt complete and ready to move on after a human history was evoked.

 I am a human hugger, holding my magnet up to “nature,” waiting for humans to be pulled into my biased attraction.

 A new object. A red and white “Do Not Enter” sign tagged with permanent marker, “D.S.H.B.” (a violence, "don’t stop hating bitch"). I wait for my thoughts to emerge, first slowly, sleepily like flurries, then eventually ravenous and energetic like a poignant squall.

I am transported to my early childhood. This is rural (rural) Pennsylvania, I got an R.R. address (rural route) and I’m walking to Homer’s pond. Before walking up the small hill to the pond a sign’ll be passed that’s only read when a guest is in toe. They’ll stop. Read it out loud. They’ll inflect humor or disbelief or straight up fear. They’ll laugh nervously, they’ll lower their eyes asking in a low toned seriousness, “are you sure we’re allowed to be here?”

“Trespassers Will Be Shot,” a message from Homer. Now here in Pittsburgh, people are divided into two groups-- those who walk past in familiarity, and those who stop to consider the sign: “Stop Shooting We Love You.”

I am thinking about violence. The violence of words. The violence behind warnings and the way these acts of violence are muted or invisible to those who are used to it. When I first read that sign here in Pittsburgh, I fantasized about riddling it with bullets like a metaphor. 

 “Stop Shooting We Love You,” is a perplexing message. Who is this message directed toward? Shooters…shooters of bullets, shooters of violence, shooters of hate, shooters of negativity. And who is we? The community. We (the whole) love you (the individual, the smallest unit) regardless of the bullets we feel/know/see you shoot (stop shooting).

Associative thinking: I want to share a poem that confronts this violence straight on. This poem was written by my close friend/ mentor/poet, Kathy Sheer Bonnano, in response to the grisly murder of her daughter (she was strangled with a phone cord by an ex-boyfriend).  

Look, violence is nature...here to stay. Like Kathy, I got my art (writing) to understand it-- to consider/question/challenge/agree/deny/avoid/like/dislike/scold/praise/belittle/minimize/maximize it. I welcome whatever thought-- enlightened or not-- that trickles into my brain surrounding the issue.

I’m just talking the talk here. Watch how Kathy walks the walk…considering violence through art, through nature, thus transforming it forever into an untouchable beauty.

Poem about light

You can try to strangle light: 

use your hands and think 

you’ve found the throat of it, 

but you haven’t. 

You could use a rope or a garrote 

or a telephone cord, 

but the light, amorphous, implacable, 

will make a fool of you in the end.

You could make it your mission 

to shut it out forever, 

to crouch in the dark, 

the blinds pulled tight—

still, in the morning, 

a gleaming little ray will betray you, poking 

its optimistic finger 

through a corner of the blind, 

and then more light, 

clever, nervy, impossible, 

spilling out from the crevices 

warming the shade.

This is the stubborn sun, 
choosing to rise, 

like it did yesterday, 

like it will tomorrow. 

You have nothing to do with it. 

The sun makes its own history; 

light has its way.

A Cornering

Here I am in my little spot. It’s on the corner of a sprawling-acred, many tree(d), green grass growing, yellow bricked mansion--estate. This estate is also a Looney bin--something the landlord’s maintenance man left out during the initial walk through.

This corner is a coveted angle: people come from near and far (a radius of three blocks) to sit here and download songs, check email and Facebook stalk. This corner is well known for its free wi-fi: a fringe benefit of the whole purple-elephant Loony bin reality (which stands in direct contrast to the “down keep” of the surrounding homes--homes of the hood).

When I moved here, you couldn’t tell me this was the hood. Coming from Philly, this hood (Wilkinsburg) was low on the tough scale in my book. A fellow MFA’er asked me with a scrunched face and confused horror, “what are you doing there?” Annoyed, I peeled off an edible answer.

But I get it too. As discussed last week, we come to a new place with our personalized realities, fears and lusts. And so it is, I come to this corner excited to “sit long enough…that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to me,” as Ashton quotes Thoreau.

Between the Looney bin (from here forward, the “yellow house” for ethical obviousness) and my apartment building (a three story Victorian beyond its Victorian heyday) is an abandoned street, where blades of glass shoot through uncared-for macadam and direct my brain to an associative thought, a verse from the Talmud:

                Every blade of grass has its Angel that bends over it and whispers “grow, grow.”

This verse seems to align with the underlying reason I chose to take this course. I’d like to, need to, acknowledge/understand/thank the Angel (whoever she/he is) who has hoped and bent over me beckoning me to grow, grow. I can already feel the cells in my brain moving in shaking in a dance of regeneration.

And I realize this keeps coming back to me. But doesn’t all writing? Even nature writing-- where there is no human in sight (traditionally, or at one end of the spectrum)--  is concocted and studied through the filter of the human brain.

I am excited in knowing that denying/avoiding/shunning the human element of nature writing does not need to be common practice, at least it doesn't have to be during our semester as evidenced in the open-minded selected reading/class discussion. Nature writing is more inclusive (as seen through Clifton’s poem) than I imagined, and perhaps I’ve found a place where before I would’ve/could’ve sworn, I’d never fit in (nor did I want to fit in). You don’t know something, til’ you try it, right?

From here I can just make out the tail end of the sidewalk, the sidewalk which from the day I was told, I conjured a lifeless body upon. The landlord’s maintenance man also left out the murder. And as if these two events can be fairly related (like the tree which represents  leisure for some, and ancestral homicide for others) the toughness of the neighborhood was recalculated in my small perception.

 Recalculating perception (which is growth) compliments the understanding -- whatever the understanding is at that moment in time-- of nature. And as my new found girl Pattiann Rogers might agree, is in and of itself anyway.

Respect.