Re:turn 2:5

Some new (to me) terms collected today at the bike store and while playing Bananagrams with M and P this evening:
pannier (side packs/baskets hung from back of a bike or horse), hove (past of heave), rajah (Indian prince), quean (an offensive term that deliberately insults a woman's morality), limn (to draw or paint a picture of someone, to outline or describe in words), git (a contemtible person, often a fool, from British slang), jo, xi, qi (questionable), and I know that ghoul is mispelled. We don't cheat, every game is subject to review. This is what I call one aspect of my competence development while in the US.

Re:turn 2:4

Last night I discovered a Christmas card propped on the desk in the bedroom where I am staying in Berkeley. Because I thought I recognized the naïve winter landscape on the cover I took a closer look to see if the artist was familiar. No, but on the other hand, when a loose page fell out of the card I recognized the handwriting. It was my own, and the ink was still green.

The fact that this was a Christmas card that I had written to M years ago made me not only curious, but obliged to reread. It seemed to be stamped with “Return to sender”. No need for furtive glances, painstaking research or theoretical studies when life in the specious present simply appears before my eyes. What could be a better point of departure for a chronicle of my current Re:turn.

The message inside the card was dated in Stockholm on December 10, 1983, over 26 years ago. Strangely enough, neither the card nor the letter paper had become discolored, nor had the green ink faded. The letter looked as though it could have been written yesterday. Where in the world, but in this old house in Berkeley, might such clear evidence of my past, simply turn up?

To this day, I continue to go back and forth at least once a year between Sweden and the US, gravitating to the San Francisco Bay Area where my parents and their parents grew up and where I went to high school and college. As I began to read the old card, my initial sense was that nothing in my life had changed much. Christmas holidays come and go.

Dear M
Just thought I’d let the good will of the holiday season take priority over your chronically unchronicled (for me) life. So what’s new? Got caught up on you a bit on my visit last March. In fact, that visit somehow helped me to get caught up on myself...

So perhaps I’m getting caught up again on old friends like M whom I visited just six months ago, but more importantly with myself. It appears that M is a harbinger, somehow instrumental in my life. Our relationship began in the fall of 1965 when she was heckling her brother C who had called to invite me to see the Nutcracker at the Hyatt House, off the Bayshore freeway. As it turned out my very first date with C in December 1965 was the beginning of a long and memorable first love that spanned several critical years that would include many more incredible performances at The Hyatt House Theater. We quickly became an institution among friends and family and viewed as ‘intended’.
We were both young and ambitious. I was an energetic young undergraduate student of history at Berkeley, and C was a tall, dark and handsome Stanford fellow who had just begun Berkeley graduate school. His clever tongue, his wit and antics were charming. He was also full of adventure.



...Time flies and we hardly reflect over what is happening. This year seems a bit different. Why? This year marked my first feeling of being able just to "drop in" on the Bay Area...nothing I planned and saved for months to do, but just happened..and can and undoubtedly will happen again...with the job I have now. I pay a price for this mobility...

Re:turning

Re:turn 1:1
Dec. 30, 2009 (Aboard United flight 901)
I am midway in midair between Stockholm and San Francisco as I write, and the sun refuses to set. I am on unfinished business. That it remains light, despite the hour, is a solace. Why flounder and flail in the darkest days of the Swedish year, trudge through snow and slush, and sleep deeply while the sun is shining elsewhere? While it's shining on my roots, to boot?


Re:turn 1:2
January 2, 2010 (Magnolia 29, Berkeley CA)
As we grow older, we need more light, and given the recent displacement of my biological clock this past week of holidays, it suits me well to turn the clock back nine hours or more. I can let the hour hand run amuck, spin like a top or pirouette like a prima ballerina, and apparently still maintain balance. It felt great to cut a rug after midnight on New Year's Eve, hit the sack at 3 a.m. (PST) and wake at noon (PST) on the first. Since high noon here is 9 p.m. in Stockholm my day is suddenly upside down and I feel fine.


Re:turn 1:3
I have been planning this trip for months, preparing as much as I can (not the least getting acquainted with the new computer interfaces that I will be using in my work), and accepting and even welcoming what I cannot foresee.
For years I have had a recurring dream that I had returned to Berkeley to finish my education and get some new degree. I say some degree, because I graduated and received my B.A. degree from Berkeley in 1971. Though I enrolled as a member of the class of 1969, my graduation was deferred to leave room for a year of travel and optional courses. The date on my diploma is even later because my budget didn’t suffice to pay my tuition in full the last term; my 50 dollar debt was evidently waived after 5 years when a diploma was finally issued.
In my dream, however, every time I enroll, I find myself being distracted by the expense, neglecting the required reading, and forgetting the dates of all the exams and papers. Thus, while falling short of all my formal intentions, and obtaining no proof or any credentials I might need to claim some authority, I always enjoy the experience of the dream. I always marvel at all the familiar and unfamiliar sites, the people I meet, the music I hear, how much at home I feel in the unfamiliar, as well as the familiar. I suppose that is a wishful dream. I wake to a real sense that I have been somewhere.
I find it curious that as soon as I decided last summer to take this trip to the US, the recurrent dream has ceased to recur. I suppose it’s because I’m living it, pursuing business, continuing education, embracing the familiar and unfamiliar, knowing full well that it is not another diploma I seek - nor a return – but a turn.
It is now my turn to face the fact that I am no longer a spring chicken, the young woman who had just graduated from the excitement and stimulation of an education at Berkeley, from the confusion of turbulent times for my entire generation as well as for me personally, or from the hope that such education bestows on a young and promising student whose life is mostly ahead rather than behind.
My ‘boss’ has referred to this trip as my obligatory ‘competence development’, as though he had seen my recurring dream, and interpreted it to mean that not only the company I work for, but I too, stand to gain from this excursion. It is high time to turn off of my all too beaten Swedish track and move onto an American...

The Stronger

Mdme X: Why are you silent? You haven't said a word this whole time, but you have let me go on talking! You have sat there, and your eyes have reeled out at me all these thoughts which lay like raw silk in its cocoon--thoughts--suspicious thoughts, perhaps. Why did you break your engagement? Why do you never come to our house any more? Why won't you come to see us tonight? [Mlle. Y appears as if about to speak] You needn't speak--I understand it all!"

excerpt from The Stronger, by August Strindberg

Our acquaintance has been so uncanny. When I saw you for the first time I was fascinated by you. You seemed quiet and timid, though hardly shy. What I did not know was that you were so fascinated by me you could not let me out of your sight. What I did not know then was that you didn’t dare have me for an enemy, and were desparately trying to become my friend. Perhaps you wanted to know what I had that you did not, since I was sleeping with a man who had rejected you. As a foreigner, vulnerable in your familiar territory and language, I must admit that I was flattered by your attention. But when I invited you to my home, there was always discord. Was it because you really couldn’t stand me, my vulnerability, my candidness, my weaknesses as well as my energy and creativity? Or was it because I couldn’t stand you, your insecurity, your obsequiousness, the strength of your silence and territorial nature? Or was it because my fiancé was so uncomfortable in your presence, that our relationship was as awry as an ill-fitting gown? I did everything I could to make him like you, without success. But then, when he and I separated, an intensive friendship developed between you and me. You nestled close, confided in me, and it looked all at once as though you dared to show your real feelings. You told me that you had been hurt him, and that he had rejected you for me. Strangely enough, I wasn’t jealous! Mostly curious, like you. Then your father, with whom you were very close and had very mixed feelings, died. You said that you were confused. You told me that you were at odds with your mother, your siblings. That was when I suggested that you get away, go abroad, visit my family, and view your world from another perspective, as I had done in a similar situation. And then, what happened then?

And then I recall the christening...

tbc.

The Precipice Trail

"In Acadia National Park there are over 120 miles (193 km) of trails. The Precipice Trail is among the steepest and most dramatic. Beginning here it scales the glacier-steepened eastern of Champlain Mountain. The ocean view from the top is impressive.

Although the ascent is precipitous, climbing gear is not needed. Iron hand holds and steps of native stone are placed at strategic points. On hot days it is better to start out in the afternoon when the sun is behind the mountain. The Precipice Trail is not recommended for small children."

Engraved on the Precipice Trail plaque

Berlin Wall revisited

Whose side of
the iconostases
are you on
where priests and police
once patrolled
our grafitti?

No more checkpoints.
Pause between the acts
and stations of the U-bahn
before crossing,

twenty years
after the fall
of the wall

orchestras tune up
waiting for a master key
a common beat
new rate of exchange

Dominus deus
Domino Day
Nothing stands still
forever
yours,

Shakedown at the Brazilian Room

Lina really didn’t want to get onto this subject again now, but Louis had taken off up into the hills again and she had to follow. Said the weather was perfect for another shakedown. The plan was to practice an emergency landing in the parking lot of the Brazilian Room in the regional park district not far from her desk in 1971. The evening fog had become so thick that this was apparently a perfect opportunity to practice landing with 0 visibility.
They had to fly low, following their noses as they hung out along Wildcat Canyon Road, breathing the fragrance of the Eucalyptus and Bay Laurel to stay on track. Suddenly, headlights appeared, turning down onto what appeared to be a modern hacienda, an old colonial gem where there was evidently a party on the go.
While Lina had been invited to Monique’s birthday party, Monique hardly expected her to fly halfway around the earth to be there tonight. Nor did Lina for that matter. And since only Lina and Monique had any personal associations with Louis, they were both surprised and perhaps even a bit disappointed that Lina had actually showed up. Suppose no one likes to be reminded of the past when they’re in the future. Rubble vs. bubble syndrome, East vs. West. Berlin Wall.
Unprepared as she was, Lina happened to have what she hoped would be a very personal and dear gift for Monique in her Sierra Club backback - an etching of a famous battle that took place during the Enlightenment in Paris - which she left at the entrance to the Brazilian Room. Monique probably thought it was just a card, since it was a flat piece of paper in a brown envelope, no heavy box or glittery paper. Why else, when she had read the dedication on the back, would she throw an antique into the wastepaper basket beside the gift table?
The party was just getting started. A quick look around and Lina could see that most of the guests, apart from a couple of relatives, were unfamiliar. And so she took a seat at one of the round tables with covers for twelve, where she had no professional or other affiliation with the others, all of whom turned out to be members of APA. Conversation centered on Monique’s relationship with her husband Bill. Lina mostly listened, since she didn’t really know much about him. They said they didn’t know him very well either, but that Monique was depressed and had confided that he was the reason. They related browraising stories about Bill. Since Lina was the only one at the party who had known Monique back in Paris, before she met Bill, they were curious to hear Lina tell them how she met Monique. Lina didn’t tell them that Monique had been depressed then too, but stories about their safaris together.
Then suddenly the band tuned up and Monique came and sat down at their table trying to get people to dance. Since no one was game, she changed the subject. Lina saw her mother in a long white dress with gold brocade, and a lemon meringue pie hairdo, clearly enjoying the dance floor. The party broke up fairly early, and a couple of APA members thanked Lina for telling them about the safaris to Norway and Spain.