Noise Reduction
quiet reflections on life in a loud worldArchive for Immigrant Life
Seeking: Point-of-View
Mid-thirties, good sense of humor, creative, compassionate, reasonably sure of her place in the world……….
Ho, hum. I had intended to write about my last days in London right up to the morning of my departure. Unfortunately, darn it, life got in the way. Packing took time. Saying goodbyes took time. Sleeping, eating – these thing still had to be done – and, as always, the little hobbit needed looking after. After all, it was not as if the little guy had a clue what it meant to be moving and was sitting around encouraging me to make notes on our life so he could read them when he grows up. No, no. I mean, in the first place, he still doesn’t speak English. But more important, as far as the hobbit was concerned, in those last days, life was going on as it always had. He had stuff to do, and as he was still lacking in the ability to do most of that stuff for very long without falling on his face or into a fit of frustration, he needed my help in doing it.
Now here we are in our new, temporary location in sunny, rural California. We are staying at my parents’ house, which used to be my grandparents’ house. These are my grandparents who used to be in the ranching business, and who have been succeeded in the business by my brother, who lives down the road with his family. A little farther down the road from them is the barn. At the barn are the horses, and the saddles (plus the reins, the ropes, the brushes, the rats, the cats, the bats, etc, etc) as well as the corral where, as a child, I was taught by my grandfather how to climb up onto a fence and onto a horse.
My surroundings could hardly be more different from London. In front of me is a yellow-brown hilly horizon that looks very much like the paw of a giant lion (not that I’ve ever seen a lion, giant or otherwise). The cultivated fields in the valley between the paw and me are alternately green and brown and uniformly rectangular. There’s a two-lane highway out there, too. Highway 156, running east and west, between San Juan Bautista (my temporary home town) and Hollister – populations 1,744 and 35,690, respectively.
Given all this difference, and beauty, you might think I’d be bursting with energy to write. Unfortunately, the fact is just sitting here at the computer is requiring great effort. It’s been three weeks since we arrived, and in that time I’ve written next to nothing. This is not for lack of effort I’ll say in my defense. Probably every other day I’ve tried in some way to put thoughts on paper or on screen. But all I’ve managed is a lot of false starts, a few quasi-compelling titles and some scribbles that are about as comprehensible as the ones the hobbit has taken to making on just about any surface he can find. (The most recent victim = the edge of the tub in my bathroom. Doh!)
Wanting to make some lemonade out of these writing lemons, I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about this particular block and its possible causes. I’ve stared out at the lion’s paw from the bench on my parents’ deck, sat behind the wheel of the car in various strip-mall parking lots, let half my brain go a’wandering while the hobbit and I strolled through what little there is of San Juan, and lo and behold, after all that thinking, I believe I can safely say I’ve got some lemonade. In other words, I’ve realized what the problem is and the problem is this: I’ve lost my point-of-view, darn it. I’ve become like one of those winter-scene shake toys after it’s been shaken. My identity has been undone and all the little bits of me are colliding with each other, causing confusion. I’m a mom living with my parents in the place where I spent my childhood summers. I’m a sister trying to catch up with siblings who have been living their day-to-day lives without me for four and a half years. I’m a loner who’s suddenly surrounded by people. I’m a writer who’s not writing. I’m a city kid living in the country. A Californian who actually enjoyed the London weather. I’m a mess, really. A right disaster. Yikes.
In writing circles, particularly fiction writing circles, we spend a lot of time talking about point-of-view. We usually refer to it as “POV,” and we do things like question a writer’s chosen POV, find fault with her sloppy POV shifts or his inconsistent POV. We talk about omniscient POV, first-person POV, third person distant, third person close. I’ve talked about these things. Often, confidently, perhaps even pedantically. But, honestly, it is only in the last few weeks that I’ve really begun to understand, I mean REALLY understand, the significance and the power of POV, because it’s been in my life, not in my stories, that my POV has been murky. This has been no exercise. This has been day after day of waking up and not knowing what to do other than look after the hobbit. Afternoon after afternoon of feeling lost. Evening after evening of looking back over my day and wondering how I managed to do so little and remember even less. I’ve come to understand that a clear point-of-view is no less important for an ordinary person trying to live a life as for a narrator trying to tell a story. Just as it is impossible to tell a good story if you’re not sure of your take on the events, it is impossible to feel fully engaged in life if you are not sure of how you relate to the world around you. If your identity is in bits. If you feel more liquid than solid. Truth be told, I remember feeling this way when I moved to London. I remember a day when I was asked to sign for a credit card transaction and could not for the life of me remember how to sign my name. No exaggeration. I was paralyzed. I had lost a sense of who I was, of where I began and where I ended. I was a blur to myself then and I’m a blur to myself now.
The good news for me is that in realizing this, I discovered my current point of view, and in discovering it, I was able to write this little bit. Thank goodness.
Last Days
Friday, 25 April, 8:34pm. I don’t know about you, but I have difficulty describing the sky. Especially if you deprive me of the word “beautiful.” For example, right this moment, the sky outside my window is beautiful, but that word alone doesn’t tell you anything about its softness or the calming effect of the particular shades of blue and purple I’m seeing. Nor does it say anything about the fact that right now, the sky outside my window is made more attractive by the old chestnut tree that stretches elegantly between my window and the sky. The whole scene is deeply comforting. The tree is silhouetted. It looks navy blue. And beyond the tree stand my neighbor’s houses, looking cozy, with a few windows lit up by lamplight here and there.
All of these details seem especially important right now, since all around me, on the floor inside my window, are piles and piles of possessions waiting to be packed. I’m leaving London in a few days. After living here almost five years, having a baby here, getting a master’s degree here, getting to know London and Londoners, mastering the Tube, toughening up – I’m heading home, to family and the familiar. I’d say it is hard to believe, but it’s not. It is time to go, and going home feels right. What I find hard to believe however, is the fact that in a few days time, London will no longer be where I live. That this physical environment that surrounds me right now will, in a matter of weeks, be nothing more than part of a set of vague memories. An emotional touchstone, to be sure, and permanently part of the being I call “I”. But suddenly part of my past.
Saturday, 26 April, 11:10am. The hobbit slept late this morning, which means that I slept late, which means that, instead of waking in response to the sounds of a hungry hobbit, I was able to ease from sleep listening to the sounds of the neighbors playing football with their kids out back, of birds chirping and a cat meowing. The sun was high. The sky was a washed-out shade of light blue. The tree outside my window was the color of dried mud – green-brown up where the light hit it, slate in the shadows.
I was glad for all this, and I lingered in the bed, again aware that my days in this flat are numbered. I was glad, too, when, after the hobbit finished his breakfast, the hobbit and the husband and I stood at the window together to do a little neighbor-gazing. In one yard, parents and children were busy setting up for a birthday party or baby shower, we couldn’t decide which. In another, a neighbor we call Mr. Nick was playing with his boys and sipping some hot drink from a tall Starbucks-issued cup. In a third, the shades were pulled on the upper windows where the new baby sleeps. We figured she was napping. In a fourth, we saw no people, inside or out. Just a bursting-with-color spring garden. As we stood there making our guesses, the husband and I, the hobbit babbled and babbled and tapped on the window. And the birds chirped.
For breakfast, I had Lucky Charms, which is ridiculous, because soon I’ll be in America, where I can buy Lucky Charms at a tiny fraction of the price they go for here. But the husband bought them for me the other day for a treat, because I love Lucky Charms. They are hard to find here in London and throughout our time here they’ve provided a taste of home. Silly, I know, but there you have it. Probably I should have had a big fry up, with black pudding and sausages, baked beans, grilled tomahtoes. But the Lucky Charms were nice. And the milk was delicious, and packed in a sensibly sized container. I’m not looking forward to the milk in the U.S. It just doesn’t taste as good. And it comes in such shockingly large jugs and boxes. The first time I went home after being in England a while, I was so stupid in supermarkets I really shouldn’t have been allowed to go on my own. There was so much of everything and everything was so HUGE. I remember my mom sent me to buy a few items one evening and when I returned over an hour later she looked at her watch and asked with shock in her voice where on earth I had been.
Sweeping Insights
Some of you are familiar with the hobbit’s love of sweeping. However, some of you might not be, so I will tell you outright: my son, AKA the hobbit, loves sweeping. He’s loved it most of his little life and as far as I can tell, sweeping’s only rival for his heart is “talking” on the “phone” (where talking = babbling enthusiastically and uttering the occasional “umm” and “bye”; and phone = anything that can be held up to the ear (e.g., mobile phones, cordless phones, fisher price phones, refrigerator magnets, ipods, pieces of chocolate, clothes, stuffed animals…) I don’t know where he picked up his phone habit, since, as friends and family will attest, I am not much of a user, and the husband, well, he does most of his telephone communication at the office. However, I am pretty sure he got the sweeping habit from me since, as it happens, the hobbit and the husband have a crumb-dropping habit in common. But I don’t love it. Not like he does.
Take the other day for example. It was a gorgeous spring day, with a blue sky, warm sunshine, chirping birds, delicate blossoms – the works. So, I was not surprised when, arriving to pick up the hobbit at nursery, I found all the children playing outside in the yard. I could hear the happy laughter, squeals and squawks even before I turned the last corner into the lane, and it was all so cheerful I started to feel quite happy myself. As I approached, I sought my hobbit among the twenty or so little people running around the yard, talking to each other, talking to themselves, laughing, skipping, and so on. Was he running with that group? No. Skipping with those? No. Swinging on the gate? No. Hiding under the picnic table? No. Bobbing up and down on the little seesaw they have there? No. Clinging to the trousers of a teacher? No. Wandering around lost and wondering when his beloved mommy was going to arrive?
No.
Sweeping?
Sweeping! Of course! Just as I started to take a second look over the scene, there was a break in the crowd and at last I saw him: my little hobbit, contentedly but with great focus, sitting in the middle of all the chaos, sweeping the ground with a dust broom. Crazy baby!
I thought of this story this morning as I read about the latest crisis news coming out of the U.S. – about the grounding of hundreds of airplanes after 8 failed FAA inspections. Or, hang on, maybe it was that other crisis news coming out of the U.S. – about the collapse of the lending industry? Or, no, it must have been the news about that other crisis – about Iraq? No? Or that absurd letter I got from the IRS the other day, describing Bush’s Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, which, as far as I can tell, is predicated on the notion that the best thing that Americans, many of whom are actually in debt, actually at risk of losing their houses, and/or actually at risk of losing their jobs, can do for their country is…spend more money.
No?
Well, anyway, something made me think back to the sight of my hobbit sitting there so contentedly, but what I couldn’t and still can’t decide is whether his sweeping was an instructive demonstration of how to keep one’s head in difficult times or a frighteningly accurate enactment of George W. Bush’s unique leadership style.
Anyone?
One Reason I Like Thanksgiving More Than The Fourth Of July
This won’t be my most coherent post ever, because it’s about feeling muddled. Sorry about that.
A couple of weeks ago I went to visit a Turkish friend at her new flat. While we were having tea and talking about life in Turkey and life in London, the CIA and torture (as one does), she thoughtfully gazed at me over the coffee table and said, “I can’t imagine what it’s like, being from a country like yours. I mean, in Turkey we have our problems. We are poor and the people, we have no hope. But to be from such a rich country like America? With so much power over everyone? I don’t think I would like that.” She went on to ask me what it felt like, and I have to admit, I was stumped. Not because I’d never thought about the U.S.’s power in the world, or about my own complicity as an American citizen in the good, bad and ugly of American foreign policies and practices. But, simply, because when she asked the question so directly, and so comparatively, all I could think (and say) was that it was strange. Strange, and, well, not something I could really like or dislike, since, after all, being American, like being Catholic, and being from a big family, and being from San Francisco, and being a woman, and being White (or pale-pink-peach, as the case really is) is inextricably part of who I am.
Her question stuck with me though (obviously, since here it is, guiding my blog post a couple of weeks on), and has sat on my shoulder ever since, like a parrot that doesn’t parrot so much as whisper almost inaudibly in my ear while I read the news and walk through my life as an American in London. I think now that if I’d been asked such a question by such a person in such a context earlier on in life, I would have said something along the lines of “It feels awful”, or “It’s embarrassing.” Alternately, I might have said “It makes me angry and ashamed.” Now though, as I enter my wiser years, everything, including what it feels like to be from the big, rich, powerful country that is the U.S., seems far too complex to be summed up by such answers. Let me illustrate -
The other day, I read an article in the International Herald Tribune about a book by Trevor Paglen. The book is about his research on secret U.S. military programs, and I should note that the article was not a book review, but a news article about a book, the news being both the secret programs described in the book, and the book itself, which is newsworthy because of the fact that it was written at all, it being all about secret military programs and all. I found the article to be both fascinating and disturbing, as well as, ultimately, both upsetting and reassuring. It was fascinating because secret military programs of any kind fascinate me, and because Paglen did some pretty amazing sleuthing to uncover all that he did. Similarly, it was disturbing because secret military programs of any kind disturb me, and because I’ve done my own snooping around secret military programs, and I know well that more often than not they lead to budget bloat, waste, myopic thinking, bad decision-making, and significant destruction of nature and/or human life.
The article was upsetting for a few reasons. First, because from it I learned that the budget for secret military programs is $32 billion. Thirty-two billion! All classified! Second, because after thinking about it a while, I started wondering about the quality of the press. Why did it take a photographer-geographer to write a book about these programs in order for them to get covered in the news? Why aren’t there investigative reporters hammering away at the story all the time? After all, we’re talking about $32 billion in unaccounted for government funds which is, according to the article, as much as the budgets of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Science Foundation and NASA combined. At the same time, I was reassured, because, however it got there, the story was in the mainstream news, and because the book was published, and because to date, no harm has come to Paglen from writing it. Quite the contrary. He is free to publish photographs of secret bases, take his book on tour, do interviews and so on. Comparing this to, say, Turkey, where the Nobel Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk is hounded by the government for discussing unpleasant matters of Turkish history, I’d say the U.S. looks pretty good.
I chose the secret military program story, but there were other stories I could have chosen – stories that similarly triggered conflicting emotions. The contested Zimbabwe election for example – in a few ways it reminded me of the U.S. presidential election of 2000 and thus made me feel both disturbed and disgusted by what occurred in the U.S. then, and encouraged and excited by what is happening there now. The fact that President Bush was booed when he threw the first pitch at the Washington Nationals opening baseball game made me feel simultaneously sad, angry, ashamed and again, reassured that people could express opposition to a sitting president without fear of arrest or punishment of any kind. News from home about my friend’s organization that works to get kids into college made me excited about the real opportunities there are for people in America. News from Germany about a friend’s deployment to Iraq made me mad about the stupidity of the war and ashamed that it was my government that not only started it but then made such a mess of it.
So then, how does it feel to be from America? Strange, I tell you. Strange. And I think that’s why I like Thanksgiving so much more than the Fourth of July. There is room for complexity at the Thanksgiving table. It is about giving thanks, for whatever it is you might be thankful for. It celebrates the confusing, turbulent, fruitful coming togethers of early English immigrants and Native Americans. And it takes place in autumn, when everything is in flux. The Fourth of July on the other hand, is all about certainty. It takes place in July. People wear clothes in colors as crisp as red, white and blue. There is bright sun, baseball and good cheer. I like it, but in all honesty, it makes me a little itchy. And why am I writing about this now? In April? Because the question’s been on my mind for a couple of weeks now, and I had to do something to answer it.
