this is it.

i am heading out to have dinner at my sister's.
and, more importantly, see my dad who just flew in today.

it's been a few days shy of six years
and that's a long time.

and i have a lot of things i do want it to be
and even more things i don't want it to be
but i don't really know what any of this is
so i guess i'll just go and let it be whatever it is.

the postcards

this summer at the family reunion my grandfather's things began their arduous journeys into new homes. for some things, like the 42 postcards i sent him over two years, it was a returning. a reintegration back after a meandering detour through my grandfather's story picking up memories of post offices, dry fingers, and my grandfather's throaty chuckle.


here is the collection.
roughly arranged by color {of course}.

a few of my favorites:

this one is from the 1st of august, just after he broke his hip. it reads:

hey grandpa,
i've been waiting for the perfect person to send this to--there was just something so cute and quirky about the picture. i'm glad i waited. you're the perfect recipient. it depicts you and the rest of the mikesell clan. heal!
nathania

this one evidently arrived with a red arrow pointing to the top of the building. one of my big fascination with postcards are the secret stories they collect on their journey to their recipient. rarely does the story leave such a clear sign of its passage, but here you have it: a mysterious red arrow.

this lily postcard dates from my time at the art studio. this is one of the many images we would have the kids paint.

this one reads:

may 8, 2007

...thanks so much for such a wonderful visit. it's always such a joy to hear more sections of family history.
i love the postcards! {referring to the collection from his parents onward he passed on to me} i poured over them for a bit last night with my best friend. they are gorgeous!
nat.






another dated the same day {may 8th, 2007}:

hi grandma & grandpa,
i've decided what i want to do with some of the postcards. i think i'm going to make a tapestry of the postcards. sew them together like a patchwork quilt. there are so many of them that don't have writing on them it would be a great way to display the images. you don't mind if i alter them?
nathania

a year later i received a small package with the only letter from him i think i ever received {birthday and christmas cards were always signed in my grandmother's hand}. the package contained a few more postcards and a notebook of stickers.

2/2/08

dear nathania,
this quaint artifact, the collection of hotel stickers came from the gracious age, around 1910, when my mother spent about 10 months in europe with my grandmother. the "grand tour" of the era--all changed by WWI which nobody then recognized it was lurking on the horizon.

people traveled deliberately those days, with big luggage like trunks--especially steamer trunks, which carried a whole closet of accessories in a unit, aboard ship (10 to 16 d a trip) and then by train. inexpensive handlers were available at every stop, some of which were weeks long.

i recall some hotel stickers (those to be stuck on baggage as "brags" of where one had been) as late as my 1st europe trip, 1964.

these, like all the postcards, a present to you--do as you wish with them.

love you! grandpa mike

10.01.07

....here is a beautiful autumnal taste of tiffany. iv'e been resisting the fall for the last few weeks, but suddenly the colors won me over today. i'm such a sucker for pretty colors.
much love, nathania






12.13.07

grandpa--
this is a postcard for you. to thank you so much for the legacy you've given us grandchildren. a life well lived, saturated in the sciences, travel and people you love. you have shared it so vibrantly with those of us around and i have always been proud to belong to your family legacy.
nathania

the first i sent out was in early may of 2006 {as near as i can tell from the blurred post mark} and the last i sent was this one, postmarked a mere five days before his death which was also the day i started this blog.

bahija as my witness

this is what she wrote of my story:

they live on the countryside
outside their window , sheep graze
the sun dances on their wool
the hills are vast and lonely
picture-perfect on the outside

the couple spends their life healing
sharing their gift of love and spirituality
miles away she is lonely
her heart cries out, she is afraid

tomorrow things will change
she is a different person now
the love she once craved is within her
tomorrow things will change

a turning point

i haven't written much/anything on the veterans and artist collaboration project that has just passed it's sixth week. things have really begun moving and each week of lab work has never ceased to surprise me. i need to get on the ball with some writings on the topic of memory, war, and my experience as a sister to a veteran, but in the meantime, a lot has already begun moving for me just in the writing and movement pieces we've been doing each week.

today, we took turns telling a story to one of the other participants.
the story we were asked to share was of a turning point:
a moment when everything in your life changed, for good or bad.

my choice was pretty easy. as tomorrow looms over me and the reality of seeing my dad again after so long slowly suggests a variety of outcomes, i can't help but look back on the last time we saw each other.

i gave her a quickly sketched version of events during those three weeks in austria: the imploding dynamics, the regressed behavior each of us {dad, mom, me} displayed, and being trapped in a small apartment with no way out and no space to hide in.

and here i am now, staring down the next chapter of our relationship and unable to make out any of the words. so all i can do is firmly affix the knowledge of our mutual humanity and let everything else {expectations, hurt and healing} be held in the hands of our own grace.

and the amazing thing was to then be a witness my partner's story and how much it mirrored my own: her turning point was a vehicle for growth and she is now also perched at the edge of the next one. waiting. heart open.

the activity we were given was to take on the meaning of their story and how it lives in us as the witness. then in turn, give that meaning it's own life via writing, drawing, oral storytelling, or movement.

in the spirit of the artist's way freewrite {i've recently begun the process of restarting}, i wrote this about her story, and perhaps more accurately, about the kinship i felt in hearing her story.

a bookended but open-ended story. we both told them as we looked back all those years to something that opened us up with much forceful cracking and made us see all this mangled-ness inside. and here we are looking forward to all that is on the brink of happening. a new set of changes and growth that we have so much hope for. and i'm not sure exactly what she's thinking and hoping and praying for, but i hope to find us stronger and i hope to find truth fall more readily from our lips and i hope we find the balance we need in our life. and i hope the past five years, three hundred and fifty something days that have passed since i've last seen my father will have given us both some more grace, if nothing else.

her response to my story was so wonderfulbeautifultendercaring that i have asked her if i can post it here. but, i also feel like i wasn't able to give her the gift she so generously gave me: the gift of being reflected back my story but with the gentleness of a protector, making me somehow deserve the grief i {perhaps} still secretly feel i was too weak to hide. so here, i want to give her story it's own space:

she finally had it all. the big city dreams in the palm of her dainty hand. the young life of friends and frivolity we only think happen in movies. and her all was pretty with a good figure and the surprising zest of orange peel hidden in a fluffy chocolate cake. it was a good all.

but another all came along, swaddled up as a newborn and soul mate but left to her brother's meth coated dreams. and as perfectly wonderful as this all is {and will always be}, she needed it all. allallallallallallallallallallallall. a mother. a father. a good school and pack lunch every day. a laundry doer. a grocery shopper. a bedtime story reader. a moral fiber builder. a constant.

and the battle was silent and fierce, hidden behind the pretty with a good figure because no one could know, least of all the little all. but eventually the one all devoured the other all. and no matter what the love, it was a sad day.

but the ways and waters parted and the mixed blessing of a clean father gave them both a second chance. new city. new start. new growth. and perhaps most importantly a new hope that this time the all will be finite as much as the love will be infinite.

to a new all.




currently listening to: patrick watson - wooden arms - where the wild things are.

the prodigal parent returns

i haven't seen my father in almost six years.


that sounds weird to you, right? six years without seeing a family member and the word estranged begins flying around. but it's not like that. mostly. i mean, part of it has been the whole different continent thing.  travel is so expensive and europe feels so far away, but that's not all of it. the other part is that when i traveled out there last i embarked on just about the worst three weeks of my life.

it was messy.
teary.
and the three of us {my mom, dad, and i} without an exception regressed back to the confused and convoluted relationships of my high school years.
only this time i was trapped in an apartment with no space to claim as my own, no car to escape to friends i didn't have in the austrian countryside.
messy doesn't even begin to cut it.

but that was then.
and a whole year and a half's worth of artwork ensued, and later another year and a half of counseling followed by several more of personal growth for me combined with continuing improvement on his part {that i finally felt was supported not just by my mother's optimism}.

and then, today.
he asked me, very simply and unburdened by expectation, if he could come and spend christmas here with us kids.
and my answer was immediate and unflinching:

yes.

i'm not sure what tomorrow brings beyond ruminations on a lot of yesterdays.

and next week?
{so soon},
he arrives and whatever that brings with it will be full for us all.

cages

{i apologize in advance since i've been sick for the past few days and i spent all of today in bed reading/watching the below so my mind is mush.}


there always seems to be a compulsory mourning period after finishing the last book of a series. particularly, as in this case {just finished numero eight}, the series is of a substantial number of books. technically there is still one more book already published, and another coming in may, but i've been warned that the ninth leaves you at a bad place so i'm going to wait it out and read it right before it's sequel.

in the meantime, i'm a bit sheepish about how much time in the past few weeks i've spent not only reading about sookie stackhouse, but also watching the hbo television series, true blood, {where her name is pronounced as though it rhymes with cookie} and made {very loosely} in the books' image. i'm sheepish because it's so obviously poorly written {particularly the show, which is disappointing from an alan ball script--think american beauty}, pulpy, unrealistic and full of some of the worse plot decision-making that i can think of. and yet, here i am, fairly desperate to start season two of the show and/or run out and buy the ninth book and yet equally desperate to start my life again: paint, write, play piano, pick up the mess of clothing and paper that is the remnants of a week of tooth pain that was replaced by sickness, catch up on work, pay bills, the list goes on for days. emails. write emails. for crying out loud i owe so many people emails.

and i wonder at the addiction i know i'm facing. minor, yes, but one reflected in so many of the young girls these days. sookie will never have the prominence of the twilight series even though it's {slightly} better and sookie is at least trying to be an independently thinking person and never once professes to be dying without the love of her life, yadayadayada...

nathania, where is this going?

hmm....good question.
i think i'm just angry that my life is absorbed by this trash and yet i get so much enjoyment out of it. the books more so than the tv show. i tell you i laughed my hiney off at the one character they did right on the show. right as in: they didn't just take the general idea of him, pump it with emotions, steroids and hormones and throw it on the screen, no, eric they got the heart and soul of and somehow the best writing of the season always seemed to happen when he was depicted. but i digress.

okay, so you're angry, but it's more than that, right?

yes, i think so. i guess i'm just disappointed when there are so many more beautiful stories, or even simple, obvious ways to have made this story better. i mean really simple things. in the tv show, 1. they tried to get way too many stories told so they all come out diluted. 2. they picked one of the most decent and trustworthy characters and made him sleep with sookie's best friend to conjure yet more opportunities for conflict and sex. dumb in the same way that making faramir try to go after the ring when tolkien's point was that he was immune and integrous. 3. everyone's response to everything is to get angry and they blew by all these wonderful moments to build relationships and connections between two characters and frankly i'm sick of seeing anna paquin whiney. she's better than that. they all are. they are just given bad material except for the aforementioned eric, who, i double sheepishly must admit is the stunning son of stellan skarsgard. yay swedes.

but this is more than just a rant about the books or the show.

geeze, can't you just leave me be??? okay, okay, it's more than about these two things. sheesh. why do you have to be all over my case?

because you're trying to go to sleep but you have too much weighing you down.

alright, alright, i admit it. i feel like a caged animal stuck in yet another fantasy world and not getting anywhere. and it's worse when i see stories poorly told and films poorly made.

okay, that sounds more like it. and what are you going to do about it?

i don't know. it's so much easier to just sit here and bitch and then return to normal life of bills, work, and cleaning up the clothes i have strewn about the house during the past week of hibernation.

so, for tonight why don't you just go to bed?

hmm...okay. i guess that's the only thing i can do tonight.

welcome december suns

okay, this was taken a week ago, but better late than never.
welcome, december though i'd prefer it if you kept your 30 degree temperatures to yourself.

it could have been a better week.

i was on such a good roll. i mean, i posted three posts in two days.
i was back in business, ready to rumble and catch up on things, life, emails.

and then my tooth started hurting.
and then my tooth started really really really hurting.
and then it hurt a little less, which you can celebrate for all of two seconds until i tell you how swollen the right side of my face got.
in particular there was {still is but to a lesser degree} a stripe of swelling along the roof of my mouth, which, half-way through my emergency root canal on friday, i realized had not been included in the stabbing poke that was the administering of local anesthesia. and this was a problem because the plastic tent they threw over the whole area was somehow mysteriously attached to my mouth via the edge of my tooth and propped up against said swollen and tender part of my mouth.

the next twenty minutes, maybe thirty, were long ones indeed and not even my music was much help at that point. if i couldn't physically SEE the doctor doing something to my mouth then i just couldn't believe that progress {as well as the end of the jaw discomfort and tender-roof-swelling-poking} was being made. i mean, i could tell myself again and again that of course he must have really important things to do outside of my line of sight but it was quite an emotional challenge not to rip the stupid blue plastic mouth tent off and scream get back here and get this over with any time he disappeared.

it was a long week.
and now i have a sore throat.
and for the first time ever it feels like every single one of my neighbors is having a loud party of some sort tonight.
seriously?
after living here for three months and hearing nary a peep or bass beat.
i find this rather frustrating.

but at least i can floss around the second tooth from the back {upper right} without pain. that's a first in years.

oh, and just for one more whinge: did i mention i don't have insurance and this all came out of pocket? yup. ouch.

oooooh, wait. one MORE thing. the guy that owns the car that scraped mine in our apartment's parking lot {his friend was driving it at the time}. well, when he heard the repairs were costing a grand more than he thought, he suddenly stopped returning my calls. ugh. i don't want to have to get mean on him, but by golly i will.

okey dokey. nighty night. i promise fun things will come tomorrow.

more visual notes from the weekend:

and have i said yet how much i love my stinking boots?
they were {and still are} worth the 4 year wait i had to put up with before i found cute, but sexy FLATS {this baby doesn't need any extra inches}:

still hiding

i could only speak to you
curled up and fetal
through the space
left between my arm and the pillow
while staring intently at a hair on my elbow.

a day later
and i'm still not sure
if silence wouldn't have been better
since i still can't say out loud
that i wasn't listening in the first place.

the last of november suns

friday was glorious and we spent the day well.
outside and walking off the coolness of the air
and the remaining lethargy after the previous day's feasting.

volunteer park and its darling conservatory made for a lovely destination to walk to and here are the fruits of our meanderings:

night suns

i guess this has turned into a series of its own:

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