It was a long wooden walkway running down over the rocks to it, a dull yellow, low clapboard structure with small rectangular window and an unassuming bland metal chimney on the end, the calm water, ice and endless sky spreading out beyond it as far as she could see. That was their home for the next three weeks.
Her mother played records from start to finish. Lai wasn’t allowed to just listen to her favorite songs. She had to get there. She had to hear all of the songs on the record, both sides, A and B. Puff was the second last song on Side A. And then This Land is Your Land. I couldn’t stand that song. 
Lai watched her mother, sitting there in a hand-knit sweater, a grey and white caribou herd across her chest. She looked old, not just the way she moved, but her face and neck. It was what she imagined for herself, wandering through darkness, not finding the right things, sitting and staring, because there was nothing else to do.
Category Archives: other places
Anori Outtake: Developing Morning
The sound came up with the morning’s milky grey light – the birds’ songs like half played wooden flutes, a voice from a far-off radio, talking and then in song, the distant chopping of branches and trees and the imagined first hiss of the fire’s first heat, the whirr of a motor, a car or a generator, the cough of a grandmother, the crying baby needing to be fed, the sporadic confused rooster, starting and stopping again. and then the first chants from the pagoda high on the hill – all of these one. 
Pictures of Paris with Nani
Davis visited his Nani when he came back from his summer in Paris. She marveled at his pictures, asking again and again where they were from.
“It’s Paris, Nani.” 
“You were in Paris?”
“Yes, I was in Paris.”
“Oh, I’ve never been there.”
“You were there on your honeymoon.”
“Oh, I was?”
“Yes, Nani. You’ve been there many times.”
“Oh dear. I don’t remember that at all. I remember nothing.” She bent toward Davis and whispered. “I’m losing my memory.”
“That’s okay, Nani. Don’t worry about it.”
She turned to a picture of Ellen sitting on a tiny balcony with a wrought iron railing. “And who’s this? Is this me?”
“No. that’s Ellen, my girlfriend.”
“Ellen? I don’t know her.”
“She visited in the spring. We live together at school.”
“Oh, I see. She’s very pretty.” She looked at it again. “And where is this?”
“Paris, Nani.”
“Oh.” She turned to the next picture, Ellen completely naked on the bed.
The blood drained from Davis’ face as he reached over involuntarily. He had forgotten to take those ones out.
“Who is that?”
“Well…” He took the stack gently from her and sifted the next three images out – each more graphic than the next – and returned the remainder to his grandmother.
She considered Davis with her drifting, vacant eyes and then squinted at the images in her lap. “What’s this?”
“This is from a boat tour on the Seine.” 
“Oh.” She peered at the picture of Ellen smiling, the Pont Neuf behind her. “And where is this?”
“Paris.”
“You were in Paris?”
“Yes, for a few weeks.”
“I’ve never been there.”
“Yes, you have, Nani. You’ve been there many times.”
“I don’t remember that at all.”
“That’s okay.” He turned to the next picture.
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
Davis nodded. “Okay.”
“You have to help me.”
“I can do that.” He stood. “Ready? One, two, three.” He pulled her up from the couch.
She clung to him a moment, her head against his chest, and then peered into his face. “There’s no dignity in getting old. You just have to forget about that.”
Earth-Out-of-View Phenomenon
At the outset of space exploration in the 1950’s, scientists were concerned about the psychological effects of leaving Earth on astronauts. Initially concerned with various psychoses and anxieties, they have been exceedingly begrudging in allowing the astronaut any sort of autonomy. 
The initial diagnosis for the state of mind of an astronaut’s realization of being in space was called the deadly rapture of space and space euphoria. While out on space walks, astronauts tended to ignore earth-bound commands. 
Now with plans for a journey to Mars in its early stages, concern for something new is being raised – called the Breakaway Effect or Earth-out-of-View Phenomenon. This theory postulates that, once free of any physical sense of this planet – most notably sight – humans might lose their connection to those left behind. 
In other words, the further away they get, the less likely they might care about the place they left behind. A future Martian? Or a Citizen of the Universe?
(*Information derived from Mary Roach’s “Packing for Mars”)
72: Gods, Heart Rate and Par
72: Number of names for God
72: Number of Babylonian languages 
72: Average human heart rate
72: Percentage of water of a human
72: Atomic number of hafnium
72: Desired temperature for a Goldilocks Planet
72: Par
Climb!
It’s up ahead. Move.
Do not stop. Climb.
Say it louder. Climb! 
Never stop. Just climb.
Nigel Baines
I couldn’t go in the water. It was too dark. And cold. 
I had got the fish hook stuck. I just wanted to forget about it and make everyone walk away. But they wouldn’t.
“You have to go in,” the old woman said.
I kept pulling on the rod, moving it in every direction.
“I’ll go.” Nigel Baines stripped down to his underwear and went in, just like that. I watched his legs kicking up as he went down. It took him all of 15 seconds. He was hailed with warm towels and hugs.
“You can have as many grilled cheese sandwiches as you like! You deserve it.”
I was allowed to come too, but I didn’t. I stayed behind and stared into the dark water, that fearful place, and hated Nigel Baines.
Ice Friday: Bauby’s “The Diving Bell”
Jean-Dominique Bauby’s tersely poetic memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, typed from the blinking of an eye, is harrowing and crystalline clear, moments chronicled by a man on the precipice of death:
I am fading away. Slowly but surely. Like the sailor who watches the home shore gradually disappear, I watch my past recede. My old life spurns within me, but more and more of it is reduced to the ashes of memory. 
I went to Paris and was unmoved by it. The streets were decked out in summer finery, but for me it was still winter, and what I saw through the ambulance window was just a movie background. Filmmakers call the process a “rear-scene projection,” with the hero’s car speeding along a road that unrolls behind him on a studio wall. Hitchcock films owe much of their poetry to the use of this process in its early, unperfected stages. 
My own crossing of Paris left me indifferent. Yet nothing was missing – housewives in flowered dresses and youths on roller skates, revving buses, messengers cursing on their scooters. The Place de l’Opera, straight out of a Dufy canvas. The treetops foaming like surf against the glass building fronts, wisps of clouds in the sky. Nothing was missing except me. I was elsewhere.
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Sentimental About Being Alone
I remember the voice rising in sing-song, pausing, starting again, climbing in soft melancholy, conveying the sadness of the world, stopping and starting again.
I remember the pagodas everywhere, the nights cold, days without cover, crowds thick and a language impossible to understand. 
I remember the dogs fighting in the bushes while I haggled for something I didn’t want and then I was beside a truck, fighting to be heard. 
I remember my dusty feet, my bruised kidneys and my battered knees, feeling out of place and wanting to get home.
The Prejudice of Time Zones
It seems to me that to eliminate prejudice, we just have to get rid of time zones. 
I know that time zones seem like a practical system for everyone, and it only starts with a measly one-hour difference. Yes, it is all so sensible, but then the hours become two and three, and before you realize what’s happened, it’s turned into a matter of night and day. 
Think about how off-putting it is to realize that your noon is another’s midnight, your breakfast someone else’s dinner.
Seeing the world only from a lone time zone is skewed and detrimental to all. Saying one is a few hours ahead, another a day behind is judgmental, making for a wholly classist understanding for what should be a common human experience. 
Why can’t we all be equal, all of us together in a fuzzy land of uncertainty, unaware of our own self-centric time? No more of this self-centered living. It is time to embrace and love the all of our communal experience. 
Or maybe I should try to get a good night’s sleep.