Anchored in departure

Passing a bookstore on my way to work on February 21, 1990, I saw a couple of poems by Ulla Ollin, a Finnish poet, posted on the wall. Here's one:

In this nearly hopeless life
it's worthless to turn the soul inside out
Nor does the answer come to one who has
placed himself under the rainbow
in the belief that it will give color.
No, beauty is to hold up
the nearly hopeless in our position:
always outside, always threatening, homelessly
anchored in departure.

Ulla Ollin (translated from Swedish by Sue Anne Moody)

One move - but not the first

I'm on the threshold to what used to be my room, in the middle of a move, between one country and another, surrounded by cardboard boxes, disassembled furniture and fixtures. I'm facing bare windows, empty walls and footprints.
I know I'm probably in the way for all the movers, all these heavy-set men in their work gloves, but I feel as though I have to keep an eye on what they're doing.
From here I can see, in all the places where dust hasn't been able to collect, contours of empty spaces where things used to be. And as the front door opens wide and the cold air begins to rush in, it seems more important than ever before to know what we're going to take with us and what we're going to leave behind. I need to know before all the dust gathers in new places and begins to roll around and erase all evidence of distinctions between choice and fate, between what's important and not, silence and dumbness.
In one clean space that never gathered any dust I can still see where the two cabinets stood, the ones that were white with details in pink. Our father had built them, one for my sister and one for me, even though he was no real carpenter. They looked the same, except for the doors, which chafed and opened from opposite sides.
On top of the cabinets I used to display my collection of historical dolls from all over the world, in their traditional costumes. Inside were two shelves full of books, binders, games like Monopoly and Scrabble and Concentration, jacks, marbles, rubber bands, glue, dog shampoo, scissors, water colors, pens, crayons, drawing pads – all in a terrible mess. I didn't really mind the disorder. I liked everything because it was mine, including the cabinet itself. It did bother me though that the door was difficult to open and close, and so for days it was either wide open or closed tight, apparently locked shut.

Tokyo, Japan 1960

Passport

Your passport please.
Where are you coming from?
Stockholm, Arlanda
Fright LH 5433
San Francisco, Pearl Harbor,
Nagasaki, Hiroshima.

Turbulent
take-off.
Surrounded in
dependence.
Push my naval army
air force button.
Rock a bye belly
Over the sea
When the bomb falls
The crater will drop
Baby
Boom.

Emergency
landing. Wake
on an island
in the stormy Pacific
in a City
during a cold war.

The purpose
of your visit?
remains
to be seen
in between
flights, frights, and
war museums.
What's left? right? wrong?
Orient, occident, accident?
Your honor
Justice please.

Business or pleasure?
State your profession?
Pass a fist, pacifist.
Direct her, directress.
Play right, playwrite.

What about yourself?
Baby boom
boom boomer.

This time, it appears
we've caught our baby
on the upbeat
in the midddle of the act
just as she touched down
ground
in one piece.

Back to roots - 20 December 2006

I have read somewhere that much of Alex Haley's "Roots" was plagiarized from a white person. God only knows where everything that becomes such an integral part of us comes from. I must confess that I may also have plagiarized, or at least let myself be inspired by, the dialect of a white man whom I - as a child - was long convinced was black. God also knows how I've loved Uncle Remus tales ever since I was a kid. Mea culpa if I have stolen anything from Brer Fox's plate, like a calamus root. I think it's all a part of the process of de and re construction.
A professor of Scandinavian literature - none-mentioned or forgotten - once told me that many of the 'experiences' that were related in a novel by a famous Swedish writer (while the latter was a visiting professor of Scandinavian literature in the United States and a lodger in the home of the afore-mentioned professsor), were actually experiences that he had related to this writer. The professor's reluctance to condone the writer's creative license, and writer's reluctance to credit his source, caused the two to remain tragically at odds with one another until just before death ultimately separated them. I think I understand them both, not because I'm so clever, but because the writer has expressed himself so lucidly in his work, and the professor so openly and honestly in personal conversation with me. What perspectives are represented in reading, writing, in private and public communications? Is personal communication different, a creative attempt to reconcile apparently dichotomus perspectives on life?
Uncle Remus folktales are especially fascinating to me because the stories are written in a black American dialect told by a fictional character - an old black slave called Uncle Remus - to a young white boy. The stories are overheard by a white woman, and written down in the late 19th century by a white male author. And after having read them as a child, and remembered the characters, their dilemmas and strategies, I am now rereading them and re-membering them as an adult. What a circuitous route we take to and from our roots.