the meisner progression

i passed my first audition today. it wasn't for playing a role, but rather for just being me.

i had an interview at freehold theater for the meisner progression. it's a 9 month course where an ensemble of students gives birth to themselves trimester by grueling trimester.

historically i would have entered as reserved nathania unwilling to admit how much it meant or how far i want to go, but instead i went in owning myself completely. calm (except when i inhaled incorrectly and started choking), confident and direct. i wasn't asked to present a monologue, just myself and my desire to be in this space and prove to robin that i am ready. robin is the genius teacher who is hailed by several other high caliber teachers as one of the best in the whole nation. and i met her. asked what i want to do and where i am in my art, i said clearly and immediately: "i want to go to grad school. the skill i want to achieve with this art is such that i want to immerse myself in as much of the best training as i can."

and i will. and this is just the beginning. and it doesn't matter that i don't know where the $3000 for the cost of these classes will come from or how i'll put myself through grad school or how i'll even get into the program that i want (because, nathania only wants the veryvery best). none of these things matter because i have begun to step into and own myself in this journey to act professionally. and the final steps i took in order to take this very first step were many and really just an accumulation of little moments and little pushes. but the important thing is that i have begun.



currently listening to: helen - the cave singers

the dark knight

this movie was so much more than i thought it was going to be. for me. personally. and not just the expected the artist envy of: god, maggie gyllenhall is moving up in the world and acting opposite christian bale.

it was more. and grounded in a theme i am finding in movies that is devastating. empire of the sun. donnie darko. the lord of the rings. they all have this one thing that levels me completely every time. i can't even start on it now. at midnight. still raw.

then on top of that whole mess, you have the artist envy of what heath ledger was able to accomplish with the waggle of one finger at times and the lurch of his entire body at others. and as though the above weren't enough there's the icing on the cake: maggie gyllenhall. not even gorgeous or glamorous or anything. just maggie. and that's enough.

hometown glory

was forwarded this song today. from eden. she always has a good nose for sniffing out new music. i found the song nicely aligned with the themes that are already playing out in my life right now.

hometown glory

i've been walking
in the same way as i did
missing out
the cracks in the pavement
and tutting my heel
and strutting my feet
"is there anything
i can do for you dear?
is there anyone i can call?"
"no and thank you, please madam
i ain't lost, just wandering"

round my hometown
memories are fresh
round my hometown
ooh, the people i've met

are the wonders of my world
are the wonders of my world
are the wonders of this world
are the wonders of my world

i like it in the city
when the air
is so thick and opaque
i love to see everybody
in short skirts
shorts and shades
i like it in the city
when two worlds collide
you get the people
and the government
everybody taking
different sides

shows that
we ain't gonna stand shit
shows that
we are united
shows that
we ain't gonna take it
shows that
we ain't gonna stand shit
shows that we are united

round my hometown
memories are fresh
round my hometown
ooh the people i've met

are the wonders of my world
are the wonders of my world
are the wonders of this world
are the wonders of my world

currently listening to: hometown glory - adele

empire of the sun - part two

jim: i was dreaming about god.
his mother: what did he say?
jim: nothing. he was playing tennis. perhaps that's where god is all the time and that's why you can't see him when you're awake, do you think?
his mother: i don't know. i don't know about god.
jim: perhaps he's our dream...and we're his.


jim: learned a new word today. atom bomb. a white light across the whole sky. it was like god taking a photograph.






i'm not sure what i have in my hands, but they are full.

to be continued.....



currently listening to: the welsh lullaby playing in my head that is synonymous to this movie.

empire of the sun - part one

several weeks ago i listened to this movie being viewed on the other side of a door and down a bit of hallway. despite the distractions of the moment and the distance and obstructions between myself and the film, i could recall a surprising number of images from this movie i haven't seen in over fifteen years. i won't even begin to list them all as they flashed through my mind, dredged up by the delicate netting of sounds and broken dialogue floating in from the other room, but they came. unbidden. concrete. full of life and color. almost impossibly vivid.

tomorrow i watch it for the very first time since crossing the line into adulthood and i find myself impatient to see it again. i can already tell it's going to be a dense and charged experience--just looking at the poster begins to stir something deep. on one hand i will be reliving the act of watching the movie, filling in the gaps of my child's interpretation of the story, fleshing out my memories and correcting the images that have strayed off course a bit (did he really touch his mother's lip that way? were her lips really that red?). and on the other hand, i will be reliving my life then, as a child growing up in a family of four and as daughter to a father who loved this movie very much.

i watched this movie throughout my childhood sometimes sitting down and focused, other times it played as a background to foreground events. i have no sense of how many times i watched this movie since the day my father bought the tape at a flea market. i remember knowing that some moments didn't fully make sense because i was missing some significance of the scene within the greater framework of the fabula. the weight and presence of the story was such that i knew nothing was extraneous or unconsidered, even if it's meaning was somehow deeper than i could consciously comprehend. but even with my partial understanding, this movie evoked a depth and sense of aloneness in me that left me in a quiet state of awe/terror.



and now, i am beginning to realize that so much has occurred within those simultaneously unfolding stories i don't know if i'll be able to fully hold onto their convergence tomorrow night.

to be continued...

less rest/restless

i am antsy. i need change.



i feel like sissi in the princess and the warrior (which you should see if you haven't). coming back from getting hit by a semi and almost dying beneath it, a friend observes that her biggest fear is not that she doesn't fit in her life any more, but that her life will continue on as before.



what is the point of all the work i've done these past 8 months -i have moved mountains inside myself- if there is nothing to show for it?















currently listening to: sea lion - sage francis.
photo credit - deep south - sally mann.

i want to be a mountain climber when i grow up

just a few wee ones, like mt. rainier and a fourteener or two in colorado. i need to cultivate the adventurous part of me. groom her up. let her out. i think i have a these tight boundaries of safety built around me. unfortunately they aren't defined by my personality, but out of this rather restrictive need to defend myself. against what, i'm not sure, but i feel this tension between what i want to do and what i will let myself do.

a good friend named this internal boundary dispute quite adeptly this past winter. i brought by my then current boyfriend (of sorts) and i think we discussed the rather....quirky/exotic tattoo he was about to get. she looked at me and said: "he is good for you, nat. you have this definite line of where you will or won't go that is set out of fear. and he'll help you move past that." well, whether or not he was actually good for me then or at any point is still yet to be determined, but my friend was incredibly accurate on a few parts. 1. there is a crazier side of me than has been aired in the light of day and 2. i have needed a little help getting there.

but i think i've found an even better source: the mountains, the wilderness, the off the beaten trail. some of the best moments of the trip were in the scrambling expanse of my aunt and uncle's backyard (also known as national forest service land and the rocky mountain national park). i need to polish this part of me. see what's under the grime of disuse and fear.

in loss

no one enjoys the experience of loss. we shy/shun/run as much as we can to avoid it, and i am no different. i have these beautifully wrought defenses in place that parade around as innocuously and advantageously as something like a good memory.

my memory is a chain between myself and something that is gone. a moment. a person. a connection. a thing. a place. a hope. on one hand, as long as i'm tied to these things, as long as i have their presence in my psyche, i don't have to acknowledge the loss. on the other hand, i am a slave to the things i cling to and the filter that i view them through. most often, the best thing for me would be to just face the loss, grieve and move on.

i guess ideally i could move through loss and grief much like i navigated myself after my grandfather's death. somehow that was clear. a clean break. the grief was not shoved aside or ignored or covered up with hope. it was just present. and it has run its course and it will come back in moments and it is not a threat to me. no regrets or what-ifs or alternative ways of working out. just an end. a departure. a finish.

i had a hard spring for loss. or avoidance of it, really. something incredibly beautiful was offered and then i watched it slowly dissolve in my hands. it was the opposite of my grandfather's death. there was rippage. there were regrets and threats to my Self and so many alternative paths my head is still dizzy keeping up with them. it was hard working past it and hope put up a tough battle.

at some point i asked eden what she thought of my movement through this experience. she paused to think for a moment and said gently: it's like watching you read a book, nat.

she didn't just mean any old book though - not the blink's or even the poisonwood bible's of the world, but the emotional epics of various shapes and sizes. the little prince, the deed of paksenarrion, anne of green gables, harry potter, the little princess, beauty: a retelling of the story beauty and the beast, sunshine, the host....the list itself is an epic. and every time i re-re-re-read one of the above, i get completely involved and every waking moment not devoted to work or driving (unless i'm in heavy traffic, in which case i have been known to pull a book out while i inch forward or sit at a stop light) is given up to consuming and being consumed. i vacate my own life to live in this golden place elsewhere. and while it lasts, it's a thrilling existence.

while. it. lasts.

at the end i always hit this wall in myself when the words stop and there are no more pages to turn. and this wall has a weight and texture i can feel tear fingertips like sandpaper or red bricks and unfortunately it always seems completely unspannable. i have been known (as i did with my most recent read, the host) to finish the last page, sit in the bittersweet gratification of a story well finished, then turn to page number one and start again. even if i don't re-read it from cover to cover, i will most likely keep the book close to me for the next few days and randomly flip through to my favorite parts, slowly weaning myself off the story.

this compulsive reliving is much akin to the way i keep my memories close, the only difference is that in the case with the books, the original story is always available. it doesn't disappear or change or cease to exist. on one hand there is the fact that the story is ended, but i have the story itself to offer itself up as consolation.

i am a firm believer in the fact that the way we do the small things is the way we do the big things, so i have to ask myself how this aversion to experiencing loss with a book is lived out in my experience of loss in other places. i don't like the answer, because the answer sounds a lot like "denial parading around as hope." my equivalent of picking a book up and rereading it is the way i inhabit my memoryscape inside my head. i have the moments and thoughts and images firmly in place in my mind. science says we remember best those things we speak or think about, meaning my visual memory is aided by my a constant reliving on the events. i have a safety line in the knowledge i can always have the book back, and in the real world, i have an uncanny ability to derive a sense of security from my memories.

in addition to the memorization, i've learned to just bulldoze all else aside and have this stunning vision of how things will work out that allows me to rest in this often false and cruel hope. i have discovered hope is a kitten with a full set of teeth and claws - all the attraction and charm and as well as all the sudden bites and drawn blood. i have been trying to let hope go its own way but it hasn't been the easiest thing. at times this spring it's taken a crowbar to pry it out of my clenched fists, but it's slowly starting to yield.

sea-oh has a tattoo on their arm that says: less hope, more care.

the first time i read that i was affronted. why less hope? isn't it a good thing by definition? and slowly the obvious dawned on me: hope is inactive, it's passively waiting for things to be better and it devalues the experience one is having at this precise moment. care, on the other hand, is full of movement and action and presence. it's not trying to change the current experience, just augment it. so i guess it comes down to caring for myself, not trying to change into something i am not currently. which means i also am not wrong, or flawed or......fill in the blank.

a simple simple thing to say, but it will take a little longer to adjust those stories that whisper lies in my head.

wish me luck.

currently listening to: elusive, a boy with a thorn in his side & eyes wider than before - scott matthews.

title: something old, something new, something broken, something blue

i dreamed it was my wedding and i was about to walk down the isle. it was a small gathering of friends and family in a church. my cousins brenna and katie where there. my grandmother and grandfather were there. maybe fifteen people total. but my fiancee couldn't make it. we knew that when we planned the wedding and invited the guests and they knew that when they came. there was no doubt that he would be able be there as a good husband and present in the marriage, he just couldn't be there for the ceremony.

that was all fine until i was about to walk down the isle. i looked out over the church and saw these big white flowers on the pew at the far end of the church from me. they were hanging over the edge of the pew and their huge white faces were pointed towards me. then i saw these three fiery red flowers that someone had put on the pews also facing towards me, but these were half way down the isle and closer to me than the white ones. it was like the vibrancy of the red woke me up to the situation and suddenly i was filled with shame and grief that he couldn't be there. i realized i couldn't walk down the isle and i didn't know what to do because all these people had come for the wedding. eden was standing back by me, the lone attendant, and i took a few steps into the church and walked to the second or third pew down and then walked into the pew and sat there in my grief and shame.

and that's when the dream ended.

my writing perch for the week

it's this lovely chair with a lovely foot rest (acting as a table for my laptop for the pose) looking out at a lovely view. currently it's moving on towards dark and last of the day's glorious blues and dying on the horizon (see photos from yesterday of the blue behind the clouds - glorious doesn't even begin to describe those colors).

and just in case anyone is wondering, no, i'm not a narcissist. i enjoy taking photographs of people, and for some reason, i always seem to be on hand when there is an interesting place or lighting to use to photograph a person. i'm also not self-conscious when i'm wielding the lens and i follow my own directions on what adjustments to make so it's a perfect situation.

have i mentioned yet that i love my iphone camera? we're good friends right now, though i must credit eden with the introduction. i didn't really think twice about taking photographs until i saw some of the wacky ones she took. mine don't end up being too off the wall unless she's around, but then again, i know i take myself far too seriously most of the time.

sorry. working on that. some of the time.

a note on the below

the previous post, in memoriam, is long. very long. six single-spaced pages on the computer. a large portion of it is directly transcribed from a journal entry i wrote on a hike shortly after the funeral. i don't normally give away pieces of my personal journal, but writing it out and completing it is for my family, and of course myself. as with all of my writings, the external and internal are inseparable, so the below is as much about me as it is about my grandfather.

you are welcome to any portion of it you chose.

in memoriam

He was buried exactly the way he would have wanted to be buried. Small, intimate, completely natural and organic and lacking any kind of artifice. He was buried the way he lived.

My first memory of my grandfather is of him giving me the moon. A good astronomer, he brought his telescope with him on a visit to Alabama. One night we set it up in our yard and he let us look at the sky. We were at Thirty-three Adams Street at the time, so I couldn’t have been more than six or seven, but I feel like I was closer to four or five. I still remember the surprise and awe that moved through me so tangibly when I really saw the moon for the first time. The dark side of the moon, so long assumed by my child’s perspective not to exist at all, was dimly visible on the left and the texture and shading on the right still stands out in my memory it its full glowing glory. I remember it being enormous.

This moment of discovery was pure magic, and that experience of real life magic is as important as the curiosity about the world it lit up - the first of so many things he has bestowed upon me.

What I admire so much about my grandfather is how fully he lived his life. He died just a few days shy of ninety-four and a half, but had enough spirit and life to fill another complete lifetime. Exactly a month before he died, I stopped by for a few minutes with my brother, Ross. We were passing through Eugene and I wanted to see him once more. On his hospital bed in the living room, he was still as engaged as ever, talking with as much energy as possible (considerably slowed down compared to my visit in April with my other brother, Dagob). He told us how his body was changing drastically and he could either read or write a letter or eat, just not all three at once. Rests were required between each activity, but he still had so many things he wanted to do. It was heartbreaking to see his body sloughing off in large flakes and know the spirit inside had so much more he wanted to do.

I am well aware that every life has to end at some time, as well as the fact that we can’t recreate the memories Death takes with him. I think I mourn the loss of his stories as much as his vivacious presence in his storytelling. Alfred Mikesell was a magnificent storyteller. He had an amazing memory for all the details of countless family and personal epics as well as the short vignettes. And he came so alive in the telling, his presence and engagement in life so tangible in his voice and movements. I don’t ever remember a time when I was too young to be captivated by his tales, even the more lengthy or scientific. They were full of tangents and factoids and organic details that added a cadence and flow that can’t be replicated. He stretched beyond the boundaries of his physical form and invited those listening to expand along with him. His stories weren’t self-glorifying or narcissistic, but humble yet lush. He would talk on and on, one story leading into the next not out of disregard or lack of curiosity for those around him, but simply out of enthusiasm for sharing and reliving. As an artist whose lifework is dedicated to the exploration and understanding of self within the tapestry of family history, I have always acknowledged Grandpa as the keeper of our family’s history.

On Wednesday the 25th of June, I had some extra time in the morning to get ready for work, so I checked my email and saw that Grandpa had taken a dramatic turn for the worse. He was no longer eating or drinking and he was barely conscious any more. Aunt Kathy had changed her flight to leave in morning instead of waiting until Friday and the necessity of that change hit me in full force: he wasn’t going to last the week.

I had a very dense car ride to work with Eden and we started by talking a lot about my previous night’s dinner with another friend. This other friend had confessed that she could tell me things despite not having really seen me in years, that she hadn’t told anyone else before besides her husband. I thought of how I tend to have that effect on people, this ability to enter a close and intimate space, particularly with people I see infrequently. It’s the beautiful/unique/true part of me that, as all these most pure parts of my Self do, occasionally crosses the line to destructive/compensatory/too close. I suddenly realized that I open spaces in myself and others and that it is the common theme among all my passions. I want to create artwork that opens spaces. But even when I am not making artwork, in the way I interact and relate to people and the world around me, I am still succeeding and living this thing that is wholly and completely my Self.

We paused in silence for a moment, and I internally speculated how this is realization is tied to my experience of loss. I have a stronger than normal resistance to experiencing loss, and intuitively I sensed they are intimately intertwined. I told Eden about the email and I had my first moment of acknowledging the grief of my grandfather’s passing.

Somewhere a dam opened in me and my well-placed defenses of selective stoicism and undying optimism fell before the onslaught.

I find it somehow right that in the same conversation that I could acknowledge the cost of my grandfather’s death, I could also acknowledge the success that I have had so far living my life truly. A sense of surety and certainty was found in that car ride that I won’t fail in living up to my Grandfather’s life of connecting to people and living out one’s passions. I haven’t been able to fully make the connection between this underlying theme in my life and my experience of loss, but I know I’m on the right path for understanding and living both.

When I got to work later that morning, my sister hadn’t seen the email yet. She was so upset after reading it that we went on a walk to Lake Sammamish. This was right around nine o’clock in the morning and the sun and sky and day were all blooming gorgeously. We went out on a sandbar and watched a bald eagle fly over. We rested in our stories of him and we rested in quiet. It was a lovely walk. We came back to work and settled in for a few more hours before I got the next email announcing that Grandpa had passed away at 9am, right about the time we started our walk.

My whole body went numb reading these words: Mike passed about a half hour ago. I walked over to Bimi’s desk and just stood there, unable to actually say any words to correct her misconception that I was there for a lunch break. After a sentence or two, she registered the look on my face and without me having to speak, knew exactly what had happened. In a few half spoken sentences we agreed to meet in my car.

The hour we spent sitting out in the parking lot was...perfect seems like the wrong word to use, but it’s the only one I can conjure. We sobbed. We were silent. I gripped the steering wheel and held my arm out to the heat of the day. Eden brought us a whole roll of toilet paper. My parents called and we talked for a while to my mom. My favorite part was sharing with her the last few cards we had sent to him. My Mom had sent a three-panel card of a sheep running up a hill at night, standing at the top of the hill looking up at the stars, then trotting back down again with an empty sky behind him and all the stars in his wool. Bimi told mom about the card she had just put in the mail that morning. It depicted a woodpecker with a gleeful expression on its face wielding a power tool. We laughed as he would have and it felt so right. Clean. Clear. My grandfather would have greatly appreciated these cards and I can hear his great bellow of laughter starting high and getting lower on the scale for each subsequent full-bellied “Ha!” At some point, Grandma Marjorie interrupted the call and we switched over to hear her give us the news herself and invite us to the small funeral on Saturday. She said Grandpa had enjoyed the cards and postcards he had received regularly from us these past months. She said it more than once. It was so hard to keep it together on the phone knowing what she had just lost and watching her reach out to us and even remembering to thank us for our letters just a mere three hours later. And yet, it was fitting somehow that she was present in this initial hour of grief.

In his death, I am experiencing a close death for the first time in my life. While Grandma Mary was significant, she was still on the peripheral of my own life and I felt a detachment in that distance. It was the death of my mother’s mother and I mourned for the idea and my mother’s loss more than the specifics of a person, whole and complete, in my emotional psyche. Living close to Grandpa and sharing more time and space together, particularly in my adult life, has added a depth and richness that I have not experienced in loss before. He is not only someone who I loved and admired, but someone who is a symbol for family, memory, and living one’s passions, all things that are central to my being.

The funeral itself was perfect. In a culture where death is such a formal, overdone affair, my Grandfather asked for none of the artifice or ceremony. He built his casket years ago out of pine. Simple. Humble. Biodegradable. He didn’t want his body to be embalmed because he wanted to decompose quickly and nourish the trees he had loved so fully throughout his life. He didn’t want the funerary makeup or his best suit or anything of that nature. Simple and humble, much like himself.

Our family did everything. Grandma and Aunt Marny changed his clothes (under the gentle supervision of the funeral home staff) and Grandma carefully wrapped him in a tapestry she had bought on their travels decades ago. Together the two of them with the help of the two workers lifted his body into the casket before being gently tucked in by Grandma and taken away. Grandpa had picked his burial plot out on the family tree farm and a precise and elegant hole he would have marveled at was dug for him. The family came out in casual clothing that could get dirty and wore much like what we all would be wearing for a stroll through the forest. The last to arrive was Grandma Marjorie who was gently led by Uncle Tom. She was wearing a black T-shirt with constellations on it and the words along the bottom saying “Heavenly Bodies.” It seemed appropriate at the burial of an astronomer. She stopped along the way to pick a few orange lilies growing along the path and joined the rest of us patiently waiting.

The moment of deciding who would carry the coffin to the grave was something that stands out in my mind. Any heavy lifting is assumed to be in the realm of men, but several of my aunts quickly stepped forward with a firm desire to be apart of the group carrying him. I held back not wanting to take the place that one of his children might desire to have, but came forward to assist in lowering his casket carefully into the grave. I stood at the foot next to Aunt Marny and across from Uncle John and Aunt Kathy, Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Jerry lowered his head. I could hardly see straight for tears. I had brought a white gardenia to put on the casket and it stood out regally next to Grandma’s two wild orange lilies. After he was lowered into the grave, Grandma opened up the space for a Quaker service.

We stood together in silence and listened to the forest and birds and wind and words of those gathered as they felt moved to speak about Grandpa. Marny opened with a poem sent by Uncle Steve. Uncle John offered “parting is my saddest pleasure” and one by one many spoke of the gifts and anecdotes of Grandpa Mike. Barely able to speak, I offered up my first memory of Grandpa and the moon. Aunt Kathy identified the bird that was chirping the perfect requiem. She also introduced Joe, who had worked with Grandpa on the tree farm for almost forty years. Joe spoke of walking all of the 160 acres of the forest with Grandpa. He had a clear voice and a face that was twitching with grief for the man he had for almost two of my lifetimes. Uncle Tom spoke about a walk they had gone fairly recently and joked that Grandpa nearly outpaced him. Dagob told the story about the last walk he took with him this spring where Grandpa had spoken about death, and his curiosity that was mingled with just a touch of fear. So many beautiful words were spoken, I wish I had captured them all when I had the ability to remember them all. There was a lot of silence too, but a silence filled with the wind in the trees and the birds. Aunt Rebecca pointed out the view that he would have for eternity and we all looked up at the canopy of trees above us for a few moments.

In the end we all gathered round in a circle for a final Quaker prayer while Aunt Rebecca was egged on by her sister to sing the Grandfather Clock song. Everyone was still marveling at the fact that the Grandfather clock he owned stopped the day before he died.

My Grandfather's clock was too large for the shelf,
So it stood ninety years on the floor.
It was taller by half than the old man himself,
Though it weighed not a pennyweight more.

It was bought on the morn of the day he was born,
It was always his treasure and pride,
And it stopped short, never to go again, when the old man died.

In watching its pendulum swing to and fro,
Many hours he spent as a boy.
And in childhood and manhood the clock seemed to know,
And it shared both his sorrow and joy.

My Grandfather said that of those he could hire,
Not a servant so faithful he found.
It wasted no time and it had one desire,
At the end of the week to be wound.

And it stayed in its place, not a frown upon its face,
And it's hands never hung by its side,
And it stopped short, never to go again, when the old man died.

A few people joined in the song and we chuckled softly into a silence holding hands in our internal prayers.

We had four or five shovels and people took turns filling the hole above the coffin. The gravedigger had informed the Aunts that we had to pack the dirt down tightly, particularly around the edges of the coffin. The first time someone stood on the dirt above the coffin, I had a moment of dismay at the lack of respect, but then realized that Grandpa would have of course approved of a gravesite properly constructed. I’m also certain if he had been there in body, he probably would have had a few questions or speculations on the best way to go about packing down the dirt and the possible consequences or advantages to each different method.

The group effort of the burial felt Right in a way I never anticipated. Almost everyone took turns and there was something shared of the grief in this joint task. I was wearing sandals and observed the damp, cool dirt between my toes and watched the redness stain my feet and felt so connected to my Grandfather and my family in this simple yet almost antiquated act of practicality and tradition. The image in my minds eye of my Grandfather inside the wooden box, eyes closed, lovingly wrapped in his tapestry felt so much apart of those of us moving about above. The neighbors brought a basket full of flower petals that were scattered over the finished mound for its crowning touch and we said goodbye and left, Grandma’s hand tenderly being held by Uncle Tom.

The next morning those of us still in Eugene came back to the forest for an early morning walk to Jonathan. My understanding is that he’s the oldest tree in the forest, but that might be incorrect. He certainly is the only tree in 160 acres to have a name, and he has been lovingly watched over and spared from the selective harvesting by both my grandparents. The walk up was lovely. We started early and hiked up from the little house on the property, pausing to listen to birdsong and identify the singer. I was walking with Aunt Kathy, and were walking a bit behind the others so when we rounded the corner and saw the fallen tree they were standing beneath, it still took me a few moments to comprehend the enormity before me: Jonathan had fallen.

Along with the stopping of the grandfather clock, it seems like these pillar objects that were tantamount to my Grandfather both acknowledged his passing before the rest of us. We can’t place Jonathan’s exact date of death, but definitely in the past year since Grandma, Bimi and I had gone out to see him the spring a year before. There had been worry of him rotting and it appears that one of the many windstorms we have had recently finished him off. We walked up the considerable length of his trunk, marveling at this event and found pieces of him to carry with us. As we turned to leave, Bimi and I both spotted a beautiful piece of trunk that was too large to carry home in our already packed car, but part way back to the cars, a better idea occurred to us. We ran back and the two of us carried this beautiful piece of wood all the way back down and placed it at the head of Grandpa’s grave. A fitting headstone.

Now that my grandfather is gone, we are left with his remains, but not the remains of a body as he had already given that to the trees. No, remains in a sense of all the things, memories, objects, papers, that he left. Objects from a life and souvenirs for our memories. His smallish room is jam packed with books and old bills, projects and old scales he collected – several of which I dusted off and polished in April (and on that same visit, my brother and I discovered an old Weston print that comes with it’s own story, of course). Like all good “to do” list sort of people, myself included, evidence of multiple projects patiently lounge around on any free surface. Books span the perimeter of three of the four walls, treated with a casually jumbled but marked reverence.

In the days shortly after his death my aunts worked their way through his study. Among the things they filling his room is a set of journals he had kept throughout his life. One of my aunts flipped through several and found bits and pieces of his story that fill in a different perspective and reality of my grandfather. Perhaps the most shocking was that this optimistic, chipper person contemplated suicide in his early years of his marriage to my Grandmother Mary (who he later divorced). They also found a photograph of him in some book or stack of papers that depicts him with a hat brim covering his face and shading his eyes. He isn’t looking at the camera, but away and his usual Cheshire Cat smile is missing.

We take these things and extract new meanings because it is all we have left. These objects allude to parts of his humanity we didn’t get to see but will become just as much a part of our understanding of his life as the pieces we cherish with picture frames, heirlooms and hand written letters. It’s not that we see an entirely different person here, just less edited, or less sculpted and we see new facets emerge. A new perspective; a different understanding. There doesn’t have to be a conflict or reconciliation between the two experiences of the same man. They are one and the same and I find myself approaching these new facets with a loving curiosity that I learned from the man himself. One of the most precious things I own is the post card collection he gave me. I look forward to reading the postcards written to him and the stories they imply. I look forward to the reconstruction inherent in my new discoveries. In this way, not only does he continue to live, but also continues to grow in my experience of him.

About a month ago, I reread Keturah and Lord Death and felt a closeness to death that I had never believed imaginable. The story, which unfolds so elegantly, reveals this deeply intertwined relationship between life and death and for the first time in my life, I could feel the lack of separation between the two. One passage in particular stood out in this second reading. I still remember the blazing moment of realization when I read:

"Tell me what it is like to die," Keturah replied.
"You experience something similar every day," Death said softly. "It is as familiar to you as bread and butter."
"Yes," Keturah said. "It is like every night when I fall asleep."
"No. It is like every morning when you wake up."

As I muse on it further, I have realized not only is my Grandfather waking up to a new day, but those of us left behind are too. We are waking up to life without our Alfred Mikesell and Grandpa Mike. We are waking up to a shifting, sieving interpretation of our memories of him and his remains. And every day we wake up with the impact of his death on our hearts and minds and Death's offerings of a bitter-sweetness and tenor to our lives that we couldn’t live without.

day 2.5

time is slipping away here. enjoying myself immensely, but
not sure what's most important for me to accomplish.












on a picnic bench in their yard, i finished the second read of the script of moonstruck amidst a bit of cloud watching. i went from being terrified of the scene i have to act from moonstruck to being completely excited about it. my acting partner and i are the most trained in our class and it shows. and it's gratifying and confidence instilling. for once, i'm not afraid of making a mistake because i'm so much ahead of the other kids in the class. even at my worst i'm still doing well. silly, i know, since the whole acting process is about making mistakes, but i can't help being a perfectionist, at least, not at the moment. i'm working on that one, but i'll probably need a few more decades.

my main concern is the make out portion of the scene. it follows a rather big argument, and i was dead certain there was no way in hell it would appear genuine, authentic, realistic, ect. but class on thursday completely changed my mind. we ran through it once and it went alright (the teacher graciously said "stop there, we'll tackle the make out scene later" followed by an annoying chuckle). the second time we ran the scene we finished the section yelling at each other practically nose to nose and suddenly the passionate kiss became not only a possibility but an obvious given. it was really an empowering acting moment. on to memorizing the scene so we can record it next week.





currently listening to: a rodeo announcer from the show in town and the opening measures of moonlight sonata which i was attempting to plunk my way through earlier this evening.

grey

i have always found it interesting that as a person and artist so moved and motivated by color, that my first memory is of the color grey. but it wasn't a flat grey, not a simple, solitary grey, but a barrel of greys. a curve. a monochromatic color scheme.

my first memory is of the inside of a wave that pulled me into the atlantic ocean.

it was the summer we traveled north to visit my aunt elisabeth in new york. i was one and a half. i don't remember who pulled me out, either my mom or my aunt, but my next memory is of sitting between the two of them high up on the beach watching my siblings by the water. i don't recall any emotional response on my part, just this awareness of how hugely relieved my mother was.

this was also the trip my brother remembers that the older siblings (himself included) started picking on me. the youngest of four, somehow the three year gap between the middle child and me was unspannable for decades. i find some feeling of synchronicity in the fact that my memory began at the same time the sibling antagonism did. my feelings of being both apart of this sibling entity as well as these sometimes violent boundaries within it are a constant texture to my childhood. unavoidable and highly influential, much like my relationship to color.



i feel like i want to take these thoughts further, but i can't seem to feel out where the next step is leading me. maybe i'm still catching up from only getting four hours of sleep before i left. and i have to wake up early tomorrow for a morning hike to emerald lake with my aunt and uncle. we're hoping to beat the weekend crowd on the trails. pictures coming.



currently listening to: the tic of the clock on my aunt's music stand and cars on the road, no wind tonight, sadly.

the south draws me home

and i really can't say it better than sally mann:


flannery o’conner said the south is christ-haunted, but i say it’s death-haunted. the pictures i took on those awestruck, heartbreaking trips down south were pegged to the familiar corner posts of my conscious being: memory, loss, time, and love. the repertoire of the southern artist has long included place, the past, family, death and dosages of romance that would be fatal to most contemporary artists.


i had never thought of myself as a southern artist until i read those words. i am a good one for remembering and i remember so much of my childhood. i live in those spaces of the past and what they mean for my present and future and that is why i will always be a southern artist. because these definitive moments happened in small town alabama and it doesn't matter how long it's been since i've visited my hometown in three dimensional space, i will always be living out the legacy of my childhood there.



currently listening to: my aunt on her viola and my uncle at the grand piano.

#14

.................


a great

man
is
gone.

Tall as the truth

was who:and
wore his(mountains
understand

how)life

like a (now
with
one sweet sun

in it,now with a

million
flaming billion kinds
of nameless

silence)sky;




i found this in a collection of ee cummings poems while browsing the bookshelves of my aunt's house. perhaps i should say it found me. i love that image outside the brackets "wore his life like a sky." i think i might have to use this as a centerpiece for a painting. such lush imagery.

in coming here and writing, i wanted to step back into a space of remembering my grandfather but wasn't sure how that would work. seems like i don't have to worry. those stories will be reflected in spaces around me and will make themselves heard.



currently listening to: the wind. she's a lovely creature and getting a little feisty as the day dies.

elevation 7,500 ft

i'm already in love with this space. my aunt and uncle own a glorious house that feels much like a big kid's tree house. so many windows, wood everywhere with open spaces and sky and trees. very similar to their last house that was perched above lake sammamish, washington. they have generously opened their space to me for the next five (and spare change) days to sit down and focus on a handful of projects that just keep on getting put aside back home.

the main goal is to write. i have a grant proposal i need to research and edit and i want to hack into my blog a bit and finish recording my experience of my grandfather's burial. i intend to branch out from the funeral to recording my memories in general. one of the primary themes of my artwork is the exploration of family history, personal history, loss, and memory, and the point at which these things all intersect. i have been playing with these ideas visually for years and want to begin tapping into a new way of entering that thought space. written words have played an important role since mid high school when i began journaling. there is something unique about the process of writing down thoughts that opens new connections and spaces inside me and i am ready to do that with my art and my personal history.

i also need to apply for new jobs and do a hefty chunk of acting homework. but a scene that once intimidated the hell out of me is suddenly cooking, so i'm uber motivated to go in further. get more specific. i have a lot of lines but luckily, not the bad hair that cher had in the 80's when she played this role (from moonstruck).

i am desperately trying not to fall too much in love with this house and the writing space. there is a loft bed on the second floor that would be a nice hideout if i decide to skip my plane and move in here. i'm sure my aunt would notice the addition of a permanent fixture of a niece in the corner of her office (see photo). but the view (see other photo) from the balcony inches from my current writing spot is quite enticing.

the only bugger currently is the altitude adjustment. i'm drinking water like the aussies down beer and i am still thirsty, though i've only been lightheaded once. my uncle, an anesthesiologist and mountain climber (think big mountains - really really big mountains), approved me to go out and about on some or other hiking loop tomorrow and i'm looking forward to being outside with these panoramic views. my aunt is charmingly conscientious about how much time i spend "away" from the projects i came here to work on, but i'm not too worried. i've only really been here 7 hours, plus or minus, and already feel like this is going to be a spectacular trip.





currently listening to: birds, crickets, the wind in the aspens.

early morning flights

they are always a great idea a month or so out when you are buying your ticket and thinking about arriving at your destination with a full day ahead of you. but the night before, when you have an acting class you need to prep for and then make it through, and then you also need to actually pack, etc, they don't seem like such a good idea any more. translate "don't seem like such a good idea any more" to "really pretty gosh darned awful."

and then i feel too guilty to ask for a ride to the airport at 4:30am. luckily it works out that ede is flying home a day and a half later, so jasper is going to hang out during the interval watching planes fly by overhead, then ede will drive him home. and who knows, he might really enjoy the vacation himself...maybe he always wanted to grow up to be an airplane.



currently listening to: Med sud i eyrum - sigur ros

i always wanted to be a super hero

i can't wait for the new batman and the new bond movies to be released.

and it isn't just because one features christian bale (who i have loved since empire of the sun and lusted in more recent years - mostly joking ;) and the other features daniel craig (who was in the most awesome shower scene in cinema history, and go figure it would be fully clothed). i like both these stories in particular because they depict "regular" people doing amazing things. aided and abbetted by stuntmen and cgi, of course, but hey, it's a lot closer to us humans than spiderman or superman. i enjoy those movies too, with the exception of the most recent spiderman which was a dis-a-point-ment, but they don't have a new installment in the next few weeks (batman - july 18th) or months (B22 - nov 7th) so they are a little further from the top of my mind.

just spent the best 3 minutes of my work day watching the new bond trailer.


currently listening to: sigur ros' new album.

a h m

born adelbert hougham mikesell january 28th, 1914
died alfred houghham mikesell june 25th, 2008

on my last real visit with my grandfather, sometime in early april i think, he told me the story of discarding adelbert and taking up alfred. adelbert was too german for post-war america. too soft. too feminine. i think he was about twelve when his family moved to the bay area of california (and the reason behind so many golden gate bridge postcards in the collection i inherited from him). at some point on the drive there, they stopped for a break and he got out of the car and he shouted off a cliff: "no more adelbert. i am alfred mikesell." his mom was crying in the background. adelbert had been a darling name to her.

i like the fact that he changed his name. i like the fact that he chose his name. i have been able to do a little bit of both. nathania was given but never fully. it was tania for many years until my cousin bullied me into seeing how unique and beautiful nathania was. i was visiting her in new york city and she insisted on introducing me as: "...my cousin, nathania. isn't that just a beautiful name? she's visiting from seattle..." that was the summer right after i graduated high school and yet i'm still working on owning the name completely. one of the aunts kept calling me natasha at the funeral. it was cute. i didn't correct her because i enjoyed the fact that an effort was simply being made. changing names amongst family who have known you for so long is always a bit tricky.

i embrace all forms of nicknames that are scions of the full name, nat (given by the aussies - they can't say anything over one or two syllables - macca's = mcdonalds, brekky = breakfast, uni, folio, unco = uncoordinated....), nate (given by my favorite professor), nathy (from one of my candidates from lebanon), and hania (my current housemate). tania will probably always feel foreign to me except when spoken by family (nostalgia value), though tan is somehow acceptable, and tawny wahny (used only by my younger bro these days) still makes me chuckle. piggy buckabum: one from the far reaches of my childhood somehow a derivative of my love for chewing gum and my father's bizarro sense of humor. there is a five year old in me somewhere still cringing at the thought of that name.

grandpa was grandpa. or grandfather if i am speaking of him. alfred h mikesell. mike. grandpa mike. some of the post cards are addressed to professor mike. and once upon a time ago, adelbert. i'm not sure what picture it depicts, but one of my favorite postcards is to adelbert mikesell. it was written by my great grandfather who had been traveling to texas at the time. oh wait, i do know what was on the front of the card: something from the native americans from the region. he said they "whooped" quite loudly and spoke of anticipating being home again with the family. christmas was right around the corner and he was obviously looking forward to the celebrations. his script was elegant. he signed the card "love, Daddy."

of course we know everyone is a child at some point, but those two simple words hone in for me the reality that my grandfather was a child once who called someone Daddy.



currently listening to: new sigur ros (still); take me home & uncle sam goddam - brother ali; love in this club - usher.

old robe trail

the first day i really had on my own to grieve. not in tears, because they had their due space as i helped lower the casket and listened during the simple service; not in voice, because i had told my two stories and they had their place and been well heard; not in community, because i had stood with the family all weekend; but in silence. stillness. aloneness.

and it was beautiful. and fitting.

i journeyed back to a haunt i haven't visited since high school. it's out past granite falls and a wee hike down some switchbacks, out to a river bed and through some old railroad tunnels. a lot of changes have moved in these spaces since i last visited including a river bed that i had hoped to meander across. no can do. this was a raging river i timidly skirted around the edges of, hoping i wouldn't slip in with my iphone and journal in tow. i brought a feast of a salad, but no fork (or at least, i didn't realize i had a fork tucked away in a tupperware container left over from the weekend's drive - and i like messy salads). i brought my journal and an ipod i never turned on. i walked along the river and past the sign that said "no hikers beyond this point" and scrambled along a lot of mudslide wreckage to the end of the trail. on my way back, i picked a spot to sit and writeandwriteandwriteandwrite. and write a lot i did. and even hours later, i have only tapped the surface of my account of my grandfather and his funeral.


i'm going to do something i haven't done before which is transcribe (a rearranged version for narrative value) parts of my journal here once i get it all down. two aunts (my mom included) and uncle unable to make the burial deserve as many memories of the event as possible to make up for the lack of their own.

so, this is to be continued.