Why don't you write about your family?

"Why don't you write about your family?" my mother asks. I've been home for a few days now, and it's clear that she's a bit hurt that I don't seem to deem it worthy of a few lines of type.

She doesn't seem to understand the nature of my blogging, the source from which this writing emerges.

Years ago, I started journaling when I was a junior high school kid in an English class where we were required to keep journals. The habit stuck, and I continued for years after that to maintain paper journals, writing at least every few days, sometimes including photographs, clippings, collages, rough drawings in pastel, and whatever fit at the time. But mostly just writing. Poems, snatches of essays, straight diary entries. Sometimes what I would now call ethnography, though I didn't have that language at the time. I loved to ride the train and bus into San Francisco, watching people, meeting people I never would have known except through the unusual social networking mechanisms I had discovered, and writing about what I saw and experienced. And, being an adolescent, and struggling like all American adolescents with the odd social situation of adolescents in relation to the categories of child and adult, the inherent incongruencies and tensions, as well as the particularities of my own personal family situation at the time, I wrote a lot about my parents, most of it not very flattering.

I've gone through several incarnations of my own journal-writing since then. I started blogging many years ago, but I struggled with the public-private divide, the notion of "writing for an audience" and the essential functions of synthesis, memory stimulation, and the forging of personal meaning that I accomplished through my own journal-writing, which I didn't want to relinquish completely in shifting to an electronic medium and a public forum. I've had various ways of finding that balance in blogging, none of them entirely satisfactory, but all of them geared more toward my own needs than toward writing a narrative that would be appreciated, understood, and valued by a broad audience.

Since I've started this journal, the impetus behind the writing has been, largely, to give my family and friends in faraway places some idea of what my daily life is like in Michigan, since most of them have never been there. The loneliness and alienation that come with living so far away and doing the inherently solitary work of a doctoral student are sometimes rather difficult to bear, and I thought that this link might help to bridge the distance. (Not to say that Ph.D. work isn't also intensely social, and dependent on many, many people . . . but that's a whole other conversation!) The bottom line is that it's fun to write sometimes, and engage in a conversation about whatever random connections I'm making between my studies and my conversations in everyday life and the deluge of media images and narratives that inundate us every day in our modern existence in the West. And particularly since I made my move to the country, I wanted to capture for myself something about the reconfiguration of life that I've been trying to engage in, to document the beauty of the world around me, and in the process, to remember something of what a spiritual life, a life of living deliberately, means for me.

To write about the people I know, in detail, to provide biographies and images, pushes the envelope for me in terms of where that balance between public and private ought to rest, and also, in my mind, violates in some way the autonomy of the actors in my life to choose the degree of privacy or publicity they wish to live in.
I never forget as I'm writing here that this is not only a space for my family, but also one viewable by anyone who happens to pass by here. And that has an impact on the ethics of representation, if the writing and images are not only for me and my inner circle.

It's only my dearest friends and family who understand the deep love and ambivalence with which I always approach my home in California. It's situated entirely in the context of experiences only they know. So that is one reason it just doesn't make much sense to write about my family in terms of the purpose of this journal.

But there's more, too. That image above is one I know my mother will hate. My loved ones never seem to love the images of them that have meaning for me. They always see the flaws, the awkwardness, the misplaced hairs. And I see the joy and love in the eyes, the downy softness of the rose-colored robe Mom is wearing when I hug her good morning, the coffee we share with no one else around, the pajamas just like the soft gray ones I wear on these intimate mornings with just the two of us.

The beloved image only I carry with me in my mind -- that is the only one I think is worth conveying, but it isn't necessarily the one to be published for an audience. So I'd rather stay silent, sometimes, than write something inauthentic for the masses. We live so much of our lives before a public. The version of ourselves that we are in the world that we mark for ourselves as private, and the tenor our lives take on in this context, are often the ones with the most meaning for us. I'd rather just live in that than try to reshape it for an audience.

In other words, Mom, I love you most especially the way you are with me.

No place like home for the holidays.

And now, the functionalist tour. (Huh, this gives me interesting ideas for field notes.)

Morning! (You know, in the *broad* sense.) Time for coffee.


I keep the good stuff in that vintage coffee can on the bottom shelf, whole bean Abianno espresso from Sweetwaters. I grind it up fresh, very fine.

I knock yesterday's grounds into my compost canister beside the sink. (When it fills, I'll bring it to the compost heap across the way on the garden plot.)

Then I rinse off my Moka, pouring out setting aside the leftovers of yesterday's coffee, maybe for a chocolate cake.

And then I put the fresh coffee on to percolate in the Moka. (This Moka was actually a parting gift from Suzi when I moved out to the country. She bought it in Paris when she was living there. I had used it nearly every day when we were living together in Ann Arbor, since my own had gotten lost in the move from Austin. Suzi, I'm eternally grateful!)

I grab some whole organic milk from the fridge, and warm it on the other burner.

I'm enjoying my sunflowers while the coffee is brewing.

When the coffee has percolated, I whisk the milk until it's all foamy, pour it into a mug (I've had that silly hippie mug with the heart-shaped strawberries and and psychedelic snails since Santa Cruz). First cup is half milk, half coffee. I top it with freshly ground nutmeg. The nutmeg grinder is old enough that it actually says Made in W.-Germany on it.

A glance out the kitchen window: a beautiful day here! (Hanging in the window, there's the evil eye Seda gave me as a housewarming gift in Austin when I moved into my cottage there by the University of Texas campus.)

On other days, we might go into the living room to bask in the bright gorgeous sunlight . . .

(Ba and Marta & Liles might remember that photo of us and Ross from Otis Street on my college graduation day, which I keep framed in my living room to remind me of times when I was surrounded with friends . . .)

And we might sit on the expansive couch there. . .

Or maybe settle in at the table overlooking the water. . . (yeah, never mind that table cloth hiding on the floor. I use it to cover my TV set sometimes, when I'm not overactively using my DVD player and hiding out on the loveseat in the corner there watching romantic comedies.)




But, instead, today, I take one quick detour to my bedroom to open up the vertical blinds to let in the light . . .







(Oh, look, Mom, there's the Wheel of Life thangka I bought in Himachal Pradesh!)

(And here's the vanity table I was telling you about. . .)


Yeah, yeah, okay. So the light is streaming in, and we're finishing the daytime tour, and now it's time for me to settle down in the office, with coffee cup number two, to do some writing.

So, then, um, where *are* those papers from Qualitative Methods, anyway? I took the course only about a year and a half ago. . . .



Not here; this is where I sort junk like jars of foreign change. . .



Obviously, not here -- this is my laundry corner. I'm closing up that folding door now to hide the stacked units.


Apparently, not here, though I keep lots of old papers from past courses in this little corner of drawer-style bins, and I see some files from classes from that same semester. . .


Yes, yes, I remember -- these are all my deadlines and projects that need my attention . . .


Oh, apparently they were in the very first spot I looked, all squeezed into that brown & white floral IKEA box, now unpacked and sitting on my desk in piles, ready to be read and digested . . . So, I'd better get started with that! You can see that my office, too, is wonderfully flooded with light.

A tour of my little house

To answer another one of Mom's requests, we're taking a tour of the inside of my cottage.

So, we enter through the kitchen, taking off our shoes to keep the water and mud from the gravel road and pathway to getting tracked throughout the cottage!

You can see here the style the owners used in renovating the kitchen, which I think is really sweet. The terra cotta with my blue Fiestaware remind me of the colors in my flat in Budapest. (I found that cobalt blue teapot at a yard sale in Ann Arbor this summer.) You can also see the beautiful stainless steel appliances they put in the kitchen -- Bosch dishwasher and gas range . . . swoon!

Over there on the counter you may notice my own electric appliances: I am still using that toaster oven I got in San Francisco, Mom's old breadmaker, and I've got a new rice maker I bought in an Asian shop here in Ann Arbor that makes me very happy. Behind it is hiding the vintage bean pot I was telling you about, Mom, as well as an old pottery bowl I bought at a garage sale back in Santa Cruz.

And then beyond, a CD tower I finally broke down and bought at IKEA to house my dozens of Eastern European CDs. Up top, I've still got that old fragment of an Indian screen that I bought years ago at the flea market in San Francisco. I'm still tempted to paint those blue walls a warm gold color, but I won't have the time to do it anytime soon, if I ever do.



And quickly we make our way in the open floorplan through to the living room. Here, you may recognize my old Salvador Dali lithographs Mom, Dad, and I bought at Price Costco so many years ago . . . that old antique buffet table you gave me when I moved to San Francisco, Mom, and that tiny marble-topped table you must have bought sometime after the Fire. You can also see my fireplace, the Firelight Glass lamps I have lit there on top of the buffet table, some houseplants I picked up at IKEA.

And there on the floor are the red and blue Turkish wool rugs I bought for my cottage in Austin when the floors were so cold and uninsulated I thought I'd freeze my feet if I didn't get some coverings on my floor. I bought those funny pale blue & rose vintage rugs for the same reason, at the same time -- and now they make a nice soft layer to sit on in front of the fire, much warmer than the concrete in front of the fireplace. I do love this hanging lantern-style light the owners have in the kitchen . . .


Taking a step down into the dining room and television corner, we look back up toward the living room from our spot beside the vintage Formica & chrome table. . . There's my cookbook collection, with those two pillar-style lamps I've had since Santa Cruz, and my much-beloved new red sectional couch. At the far end is the front door through which we entered the cottage.



Here, you can spy my grandfather's old accordion atop some funky vintage stacking tables I found at a garage sale. And the custom-made pine bookcase with an antique stained glass window for a door that I bought through craigslist. I keep my fiction books in there. And above it is the Elgin sunburst clock Mom got me at the senior's center in Minnesota this summer. Beside the bookcase is my old secretary desk with my poetry collection there, and beneath it I'm sure you'll notice the sewing machine you got me in Minnesota, Mom. Behind it is a funky old vintage suitcase I keep old photos and correspondence in.


Here, we turn the corner into my bedroom, where you can see that antique mirror I bought for $5 at a garage sale in Dexter, my vintage vanity table and glass lamps I bought from that sweet older couple on Huron River Drive, and the reproduction Depression glass candlesticks I've been carting around since I left my San Francisco studio in the TenderNob (I had bought them around the corner there at the Christian charity shop.) You might also recognize the vintage-style reproduction mirror from IKEA we'd admired together, Mom, and which in the end, I couldn't resist. Same goes for the bed frame.

And, because it used to be an old screened-in porch there, you step down into the section of the bedroom that I sleep in, which I curtain off for total coziness while I'm sleeping. On the floor you'll notice my meditation cushions atop the carpet I bought from the Kashmiri merchant in McLeod Ganj and shipped all the way from India. And, there's that old armoire Mom used to keep in the garage in Oakland.


We can stop for a moment at the bath, which is nothing special, but it's simple, functional, and all mine!


Go through that other little doorway, and you make your way into my office, and you can see just a couple of my many bookshelves . . .


And here is my workspace. This in and of itself could make the drive out to the boonies worthwhile, even if it weren't for the quiet and the beauty and the deep breaths of soul-regenerating fresh air. . .



The end! Come and visit the real thing soon! :)