the next trip

So this blog will shortly become, once again, a travel blog in reality as well as in name.

I will be departing on a cross-country - or rather, country-circling - train adventure.  Yes, indeed, America has trains (True story: I had to explain this to a non-native friend, who was actually under the impression that we had no trains at all).

Along the way I'll be visiting the parts of the country where my family tree is rooted - rural Georgia, the northern reaches of Montana, southern California - and trying to gather some family stories, histories and legends along the way.  And thinking about trains, and immigration, and migration, and rootedness, and why we tell the stories about our past that we do.

That's the idea, anyway.

To prep I've been... well, I haven't been doing much yet.  Reading some Paul Theroux.  Brushing off my voice recorder.  And getting gifts from my father, from a family tree to old letters. A short list of things I never knew before these presents: our last name was originally spelled Demanowski.  My great-great-great-great-grandmother, a short, heavyset woman who immigrated over 150 years ago, had 9 children in 18 years.  Her blue-eyed husband could not read or write - though they arrived in 1852, they weren't the fleeing German intellegentsia we studied in AP US, when we memorized immigration demographics.

***

From one of my grandmother's cousins, a Catholic priest - no, not just a priest, the bishop of Atlanta! - we a letter survives.  He had never met my grandmother, but wrote to congratulate her on the birth of her fourth child, and to apologize for not writing earlier, due to his illness.  He mentioned:

"Let me say here that in every Mass I make a remembrance of "all my dear ones in all sides of the family". And, since I am an Easterner, in order to keep the heavenly record straight, I mention explicitly my good cousins (an ever increasing clan, it seems) in California.  Incidentally, I forgot to tell the Archbishop of Philadelphia, who is of Polish descent, that I have some Polish cousins in California.  However, since three of the children are red-heads, it would seem as though the Irish strain predominates..."

But just how Polish are the members of red-headed Domonoske clan?   When the Demanowskis emigrated from Europe, there was no Polish state - their passports were Prussian.

Time to bone up on my continental European history...?

intruder alert

The other day two men tried to break into my friends' apartment while two of them were there.  William, one of the roommates who was not there, mentioned this offhandedly.

"WHAT?"  That is me speaking, as anyone with a passing acquaintance with William could probably infer.  William's speech could very rarely be transcribed using all caps.

"Yeah."

"WHY?  WHEN? What did they want? What happened? Did they call the police? Did the police get there in time? Did they catch them?"

"Yup."

"YOU DIDN'T ANSWER MY OTHER QUESTIONS!"

"Oh, and it turns out one of them was [another friend]'s brother.  And he had a stun gun or something."

"WHAT?  EXPLAIN!!"

"I dunno, I think that's mostly it."

William, I concluded, is terrible at telling stories - although it must be said that withholding that last little fact made for a nice twist ending, very clever, sneaky bastard, etc.  So we went to the apartment and I went straight to the source - the friend, Patrick, who saw it all happen and called the cops.

"Yeah, somebody rang the doorbell and I looked out and didn't know him.  So then he left.  But then I saw somebody trying to break in, so I called the cops."

In despair - what does it look like when you see somebody break in? Who were they? What were they carrying? What were you thinking? What did the cops say? - I turned to our friend Annie, who took over the story-telling with an epic, action-packed, gesture-filled, dialogue-heavy narrative that, while occasionally inaccurate (Patrick was the prime witness, after all, and occasionally corrected her) had all the human drama the boys' versions lacked.  There was her, blissfully unaware as Patrick dialed 911 and watched a screwdriver stabbing at the deadbolt; there was Patrick, running outside to try to get a good look at the fleeing would-be intruders, an act that seemed to me extraordinarily stupid; there were cops, shouting "POLICE!  DOWN!" just as the script would call for, there were perps giving false names, wielding odd weapons, seeking revenge on supposedly cuckolding younger brothers.  It was a much more satisfying narrative.

I will not proceed from here to some cockamamie argument about female superiority in storytelling, although I've presented as much evidence as many pop evolutionary psychologist regularly provide in their books.  I hate evolutionary psychology so much.  So much.  I don't usually waste energy actively hating (pseudo)scientific disciplines but I can't help it.  So much hate.  I am derailing myself.

My point was simply to support a writing-related assertion: the truth is not enough.

late spring

and the world has turned a deep, enclosing green.

The road to our apartment is wrapped in the heavy scent of honeysuckles.

Yesterday I walked home from the grocery store and watched two geese and seven goslings pick their way across the road.

At night I hold the names of Russian formalists close to my chest and wonder how people learn to be happy.