By artist Michele Feder.

I’ve always had a thing for birds and drawings of birds.   I fell in love with this pen and ink drawing by Michele Feder the moment I set eyes on it in the Local Artist Profile section of The Piedmont Review (circa 1996?).  Oh how I coveted it.  And oh how there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell I could have afforded it.

I had just limped away from a three-year MFA program in writing with hefty student loans and no job prospects.  Having lived independently for three years I was in school, I was so broke I had to move in with my parents.  (Can you hear the sad lutes plinking in the background?)

I don’t like thinking about that time of my life, I have to say.  The moment I do, I begin to feel panicky, as if all over again I have to juggle the work issues, the debt issues, the transportation so that I can work and get out of debt issues, and the I-wrote-for-three-years-and-still-not-published issues.  {sigh}

But hey, things have changed since then.  So no point in dwelling there.  Speaking of change, Michele Feder’s work has evolved dramatically over the years.  The Piedmont Review is a very different local magazine, too.  It used to be interesting.  Now it tries too hard to be hip….file that under I hope no one ever says that about me, surely.

One thing that hasn’t changed is my affinity for bird pictures.  Picked up this print of swallows perched on telephone wires in Granada this past May.  Feeling very lucky that I have the pocket change to do so.

To get ready for an upcoming move I’m digging through paper clippings I’ve carried around for 20 years and across an ocean.  Today’s find:  a list of obits, circa 1995.

It was the name of the woman that caught my eye.  Catherine Thrash.  That’s an eye-catching name.  Why else would a 26-year old MFA student in Creative Writing snip a list of obituaries found in the Atlanta Journal Constitution?  (Ahem..don’t answer.)

Actually, back then I scanned the obits on many occasions looking for names, names that stood out, names that might give me some inspiration as to what to call the main character in one of my short stories.  A name, maybe, around which to build a new story, as silly as that may sound.  Only, I wasn’t supposed to be working on short stories.  I was supposed to be working on the novella that was my thesis.  Because the only way I could get any of the professors to be my thesis adviser was if I promised I was working on a novel and not a collection of short stories.  Except that I didn’t want to write a novel, but I had to.  And it was one hard mother effing slog as a result.  No wonder I produced a thesis that was complete crap {grumble grumble growl} and that I digress straight back into this old grudge at first opportunity.

At any rate, what also caught my eye about Catherine Thrash (besides her lovely name) was that she survived the Jonestown massacre.  She was 80 years old when she was a member of that cult of insanity.  She didn’t drink the juice as directed, who knows how she managed that, but apparently she did, and lived to 93.  Rather impressive.

Actually the Deaths Elsewhere list from November 22(?) 1995 is a pretty good one for obituary spotters, I would think.  Dance pioneer, Martha Hill (age 94) was mentioned alongside Chih-Kung Jen (age 89), the physicist whose research team first trapped “free radicals”.   Also, Tommie Baker (age 70), former child actor; he appeared in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”.

I’m saving the best of the list for last, though, the one with the odd detail that might actually eclipse “cult survivor”.  Arnold Batliner of San Francisco (age 91):  coin cleaner. He cleaned coins for 31 years at the St. Francis hotel.  He also stumped the panel on “What’s My Line”, which is apparently an impressive achievement.  I don’t know anything about the show.  I do know it’s highly unlikely that too many other people in our great nation answered coin cleaner to the occupation question on their tax return for 31 years running. That’s something straight out of fiction.

My clippings library excavations continue as I prep for an upcoming move by digging through some paper I’ve carried around for 20 years and across an ocean.  Today’s sifting found an article about historian Carlo Ginzburg, circa 1991.

Where I was at the time: Living at home, commuting to college for my senior year, not happy with the situ, especially my part time job in a Naturalizer shoe store.  (What was I thinking?!)  Buying the Sunday New York Times was a weekly treat.  Plus Because that was what smartypants,  sophisticated, wannabe fiction writers did.

What the clipping is about: Historian Carlo Ginzburg’s more maverick approach to history, the importance he places upon studying the perceptions of peasants rather than princes.  His first book, The Cheese and the Worms, about a 16th century miller burned at the stake during the Inquisition for disseminating heretical ideas, had delivered more mainstream recognition and success.  Most historians would have seen the miller as little more than an annotation in a story that placed the inquisitors at the center.  But Ginzburg took a different tact.  In the story he told, the “bit player” illuminated the central turmoil of his era.   I ended up buying the book as a result of reading this article.

Why I Kept It: I’m not sure.  I think I was inspired by Ginzburg’s affinity for the fringes of history and peasants.  Or, it could have been I recognized the name, having read at least six or seven novels by his mother, Natalia Ginzburg, reading anything of hers I could get my hands on basically.  Or, I just really liked the question posed in the article title.  It’s a toss up, really.

The Gift in Rediscovery: I can see the threading of my intellectual hankerings.  What intrigued me at age 21 still intrigues me at 40.

The Fate of the Paper: Recycle bin, I’m afraid.  I can get a copy of the article online, so why hang on to the photocopy?

Have a Looksee: http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/17/magazine/was-the-world-made-out-of-cheese.html

What better way to announce my blogcation’s end and my return to Flying Ready-ness than by talking about my mosquito bites?

Exactly!   I’ll spare you the photos but not the details:

• 14+ (actually I’ve lost count) delightful, red welts,
• intensifying itch,
• decreasing effectiveness of After Bite against said itch,
• searching for metaphor that makes the infernal irritation of mosquitoes somehow purposeful,
• not finding any,
• very upsetting.

Anyhow, got that off my chest…so, I’ve been sorting through all the paper that I brought with me and had shipped over last April.  I realized that I carry a lot of paper.

I’m not drowning in paper, mind you.  Whatever paper I have is well organized, labeled, filed, all that good stuff.  Of course, every piece is vital to my sense of security, precious in its own right, and must be preserved.  It’s important and irreplaceable, all of it.

But…does all of it have to be carried from continent to continent, country to country, rented accommodation to rented accommodation?

I know.   And yet, I can’t get past the risks of not having my paper tucked safely where I can touch it, smell it, resort it, refile it.  I could ship much of it back to the US, but what if it’s lost in transit?  Destroyed in transit?  Never gets back to the putty-colored 4-drawer filing cabinet in Atlanta where it belongs?  Some of this paper and I go way back, like 20 years.

Funny, then, that one of the clippings at the top of the pile was an interview by Edward Lewine of Dita Von Teese, burlesque queen and noted collector of many things vintage, for The New York Times Sunday magazine.  (She estimates she has about 15 different collections going.)

When asked what “obsolete item” from her collections she couldn’t “bear to part with”, Von Teese replied, “Everything I have is obsolete.  That’s the point.”

In a way, my paper is equally obsolete.  Hasn’t the moment of inspiration I sought from them long gone?  I mean, what has transpired, trasmuted, transcended as a result of having all this paper “potential” with me?  I know the answer, and still I can’t bring myself to let it go, not without another fight, or at least some kind of cataloging exercise, an overdue recognition of what each adds up to.  Just like Von Teese’s collection of vintage hair combs and ballet shoes, my assemblage of clippings amount to some kind of distinction.

It’s not just sentiment or longevity to binds me to my paper.  It’s the find.  The memory of finding them, stumbling upon each piece of printed treasure, the burning urge to hang on to each piece, because they weren’t mere clippings form Harpers, the New Yorker, The New York Times, etc…they were illuminations, potential sparks.   Because you never know, one of them might catch fire in my brain, and – ka-boom – the burning brightness of an idea for a novel (or some kind of a book), at least a cohesive idea for a story, will explode forth, and rain down from brain to keyboard in molten streams.  Like fireworks.  You never know….

Mid-way through the interview Von Teese comments about her favorite chore:  “Grocery shopping.  I wasn’t always able to afford food, so I love putting things in my cart and realizing I can afford them.”

Something about the way she’s clear as polished glass about cause and effect makes me want to stand up and cheer.  Huzzah, clarity.  Wish you came in a bottle, sold at pharmacies, including the one just down the street from me here in Moraira, and that it (the pharmacy) was open for a few hours even on Sundays, so that clarity could be purchased off the shelf seven days out of seven, for a reasonable price.  It’s OK to dream.

At any rate, I’m planning to reconnect with and celebrate my clippings library for a while, pulling them out one at a time, realizing their potential all over again, relishing that I can afford to dawdle this way.  Perhaps you’ve already guessed that that’s a foretelling of things to come.

And hey, fellow clippings people, feel free to comment about your own paper gems.

Growing up money was always tight in our household, but certain things were always considered non-negotiable, such as all the appliances normal for American families:  a dishwasher, a big refrigerator, a clothes dryer.  My mother loved her dryer – a gadget her parents hadn’t been able to afford until they were empty nesters.  Still, she would still hang the washing on a clothesline in nice weather three seasons out of four.  She said this was just one of a thousand ways she tried to save some money so that we lived within our means, kept a roof over our heads, kept food on the table, and made piano lessons possible.  She also said we had absolutely no idea how easy we had it, and clearly no concept of how grateful we ought to be.

She was right.  But, you can’t nag people into being grateful.  At least not in my experience.  So suffice it to say my siblings and I never met the gratitude bar she’d set, and we didn’t try all that hard in all honesty.

Fast forward many years later (not saying how many), and my mother’s eldest ingrate  – who in her single days used to rely on a laundry service that charged per pound – has uprooted herself and moved to a rented house in a tiny and very rural French village.  It’s an old house but recently renovated with a modern appliance inventory as follows:   dishwasher – check;  refrigerator – Euro-sized but big enough;  clothes dryer – no cigar.

I moved to France knowing this.  When I’d inquired about the dryer situation with the owners of the house, they paused before answering, and it was one of those pregnant pauses.  (I think they nearly busted a gut trying to not laugh.)

Anyhow, I’ve had to get the hang of laundry-doing sans clothes dryer.  There are new little twists to the proceedings that hadn’t been there before, like the need to know the five-day weather forecast, calculating how many shirts, socks, and shorts will fit on the two lines of rope we’ve strung on the back terrace, estimating how many hours it takes for a load of towels to dry.

My days of letting the laundry pile up until we’re desperate are over.  Laundry is now kind of always on my mind.  All because I don’t have a clothes dryer at my disposal.

And to my surprise I’m glad of it.  You could even say that I’m grateful – in the exact way my mother always wanted me to be.  Because I have to work just that much harder at an every day matter that was once easy enough for ease to be taken completely for granted.