A Room With One Door

I hope that my life never becomes a room with only one door, as it has become for my grandmother, Delphine.

A few weeks ago, my parents and I made the drive to Troy, MI, to the house where my mother grew up, to visit my Grandma Del and Grandpa Bill. We were to have dinner and celebrate my grandmother’s 86^th birthday, and we also planned to help out around the house: dad and I carried the leaf-blower up the rickety basement steps, because Grandpa, at 91 years old, still insists on doing all of his own yard work; mom and I helped cook, set the table, and clean up the kitchen. 

My family has always been small, and it is even smaller now. Yet there was pierogi, gołąbki, kapusta, ham, and kielbasa—no Polish soirée could be complete without them. There was a cake and at least two pies. And of course fruit jello, all the rage as a status symbol in the 50s, is ever-present, since in many ways my grandparents have never left that golden era.

There is so much food that even after it is divided up among family members, it can be lived off of for a week (unless I am involved, in which case, it lasts more like two days). All the fine china and silver was out on display, set just right, and fresh candles were placed at the center of the table. The rest of us wouldn’t care if we were eating off of paper plates, but this is the way it has always been done. My grandmother was a Depression baby, growing up in poverty with three siblings and a single immigrant mother in a broken home in Hamtramck, Detroit; she worked hard for what she has, and she is proud of it. She still lives in fear of those days of having nothing. Wasting food before her eyes is the greatest sin, and in her basement is a stockpile of cans, ready for the taking should disaster strike.

She and her sister Pauline never knew their own father, although my mother has done extensive research and thinks that she has located his pauper's grave in Sandusky Cemetery. She did know her stepfather, the sire of her other two siblings, Billy and Wanda, but he died of a heart attack when they were still quite young. 

I don't know much about the third father, but the fourth was an abusive, chauvinistic man, who their Polish-speaking mother married more out of necessity than out of love. In a world where immigrants were looked down upon and women were shunted from the workforce, a woman with four children had few options. So men came and went, and when the house was empty of them, my great-grandmother sent Delphine and her other three children door to door, selling hand-made items so that they could eat dinner that night.

They did receive some welfare. Once, my great-grandmother was accused of fraud, for a neighbor had claimed that they were spending the money on luxury items instead of on food. In some respects, this was true. The social worker came to my great grandmother, demanding justification. My great-grandmother pointed to Pauline’s violin and my grandmother’s piano, and explained that they weren’t a luxury. To my great-grandmother, music was food, and an avenue through which her children could rise up out of poverty. Her home would starve without it. Seeing the conditions they were living in, the social worker was so touched by her story that she let the matter rest. Shortly after, my grandmother began taking piano lessons from a woman nearby in exchange for completing chores for her every day of the week after school.

My grandmother was a brilliant student, and she even got into Cass Technical, which at the time was the most prestigious high school in Detroit. Her dream was to go to college. She wanted to teach and play her music. Her stepfather, husband number four, did not approve of this dream.

There’s a much-told story in our family about how Delphine got to go to college. Babka and her fourth husband were walking down the street, coming back from the butcher's with their meat. They were arguing passionately about whether or not my grandma Del would continue going to school. Babka's husband was demanding that Delphine drop out of high school and go to work instead in order to provide for the family.

“It’s ridiculous for a woman to go to college,” he snarled. “I forbid it!”

My great-grandmother turned then, looked straight at her husband, threw the pork chops into the gutter in a fit of rage, and screamed, “My Delphine will go to school, and you can go to hell!”

Despite the tenuous position it left the family in, my great-grandmother packed her husband’s things in a suitcase and threw it on the porch that very day. That was the end of that. I often think about how brave that was, knowing how financially hard it would be without that terrible man in their lives.

My grandmother did go to college. Fulltime, too. She paid her own way, working three jobs, singing in the choir, and playing the organ for her church. And when she was done, she continued to work hard; she scrimped and she saved. It is thanks to her that I do not have 45,000 dollars of debt right now. She worked her way up from poverty so that I didn’t have to, and provided over 10,000 dollars a year towards my bachelor’s degree. Without her, I would certainly not be where I am.

She still works hard. She refuses to hire a maid, and despite being nigh on deaf, blind in one eye, and hunched from severe osteoporosis, she works endlessly to keep the big colonial house up to par with her expectations.

But despite her efforts to stop her world from changing, pieces of her heart have been chipped away over the years. Pauline, her sister, was first, although the incident is hardly mentioned now. It is one of the skeletons in our family's closet. I never knew Pauline, but from what I gather, she fell into a deep depression after her young son died, and so she attempted to commit suicide. She was “treated” by electroshock therapy. Not the modern kind, but the kind in horror films that does more damage than good. It drove her deeper into madness and depression, until she died of premature senility. My grandmother says that Pauline died of cancer, and we don’t correct her; the truth is too painful. And, in sooth, manic-depressive thoughts are a kind of cancer, one that eats until nothing is left.

Then Billy, who also struggled with madness. It is a darkness that seems to run rampant in my family. He was a child of the Depression, and a hoarder. But he did not just hoard cans in the basement. I never met him, although he didn’t pass away from colon cancer until I was well into my teens. He stayed in Hamtramck, holed up in a tiny house piled with newspapers, and never went outside. When he could no longer work because of this, my Great Aunt Wanda and Grandma Del sent him money, and went to visit him from time to time. But not too often, I think. They loved Billy, but it was hard to see what he had become. My grandma always tells me that he was such a happy child, a mischief maker, a comedian. But life can turn comedy into tragedy with a flick of its wrist.

Wanda and Grandma Del were the ones who lasted, who kept their sanity through the hardships. I loved Aunt Wanda. She always gave me books for Christmas, some of which I appreciated right away, and others that I did not rediscover until much later: The Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland, and even my first Harry Potter. She was never angry, always kind and giving. I haven’t a single negative memory of her. We always went to her house for New Years, and sometimes on Thanksgiving, and she would show off her button collection. She loved her button club, and she loved to travel with her daughter, my cousin Carol. Even as she got older, they went places together: Alaska, the Sequoia National Park.

She and my grandmother were incredibly close-knit, the last ones remaining in a family that had struggled to survive from day one. Best friends. They visited, and when they couldn’t visit, they wrote. They went to Polish lessons together, trying to regain the ancestral language they had lost over the years. Wanda swam almost every day, too, and was in wonderful health. Until the cancer. She wasted away as the mesothelioma spread and the chemotherapy made her sick. In the end, she began refusing it. I didn’t blame her. The last time I saw her, I almost started crying immediately, because she looked like a skeleton. Barely recognizable. 

And near the very end, she refused to see anyone except Carol, not even my grandmother. My grandmother was heartbroken by this, but I don’t think she understood that Wanda wanted to spare her that memory. She didn’t want anyone to see what death’s door looked like, not even her sister.

My grandmother misses her terribly. She is the last, now, staring forward at a future that has a single door. She has watched other people walk through it, people that she loves. Her eyes are fixed on that door now, waiting until the time when she too must pass through it, and she has given up looking for others.

That is why a few weeks ago, on her 86^th birthday, I made my grandmother cry. I walked up behind her and put my arm around her, drawing a loving circle on her back with my hand. To me, the gesture was innocent. I had no idea the reaction it would trigger.

“That feels so good, Abby,” she said, putting her arm around me. She gripped me fiercely, almost desperately. Her hands are still strong, despite everything. “I have such a wonderful family.”

Her voice broke completely then as she started to cry, leaning against me for support. She was once as tall as me, but the osteoporosis and her back forces her head to my stomach now. “I miss my family. It’s such a terrible thing, Abby. When one thing can come and take everything.” But then her words were choked by grief.

I had never seen my grandmother cry like that before; I held her tightly, not saying anything for a time but matching her strength and feeling hot tears of sympathy form in my own eyes. All I could think to murmur was “I love you,” again and again, kissing the top of her head and resting my cheek against her ear. And even now, that’s all I can think to say.

What else can we say? In the end, it’s more about what we do. We carry snow-blowers up the stairs. We clean dishes, hang Christmas lights, and take them down again. We sing Stolat, “Happy Birthday,” in Polish. We never let those we love forget that they are not alone. And we try to make the room beautiful, so that the long walk to the door is a spectacular one.

Three generations.

Grandma Del chastising Grandpa Bill for one of his many goofy comments.

Delphine  Luksza-Whitmer

The Vortex

There is a place in the woods, behind my parents’ house, that we half-jokingly call The Vortex. My mother and I have some disagreement about where exactly it is. But then, that is the nature of that place. It sneaks up on you if you are careless enough to forget your place.

What we both agree on is that if you try to walk through it, you will inevitably end up lost, sometimes for hours, only to find that you were minutes away from familiar landmarks the entire time. We also agree that something seems to lurk there. Something with watchful eyes.

But more about that later. I don’t want to give you the impression that the entire forest has intentions as malign as The Vortex’s. Far from it. The woods have always been a great solace to me: growing up they were my playhouse, my sanctuary, and my church.

There are several hundred acres of trees around my parent’s rural Michigan home. We only own three of them, but are fortunate enough to have elderly neighbors who give us free reign over the forest (except during hunting season). One of them is Maria. She is the epitome of what I hope to be someday. She is a 91-year-old Lithuanian master gardener who still grows her own vegetables, keeps bees, cans food, and makes her own elderberry wine. She can also be seen every other evening in the summertime, walking our long dirt road and picking up garbage wherever she sees it.

Much of Maria’s property is old horse pasture, although for over fifty years a new growth forest of sugar maples, ash, balsam, white pine, and white birch have made it their own. Here and there, I still find thick wooden fence posts, or bits of metal wire from the fence. I’ve even seen a tree which, as it grew outward, swallowed an old wire into its girth. I admire that tree for continuing to grow.

Directly adjacent to our property is also a stand of tall red pines, maybe two square acres. Maria and her late husband planted them many years ago, someday hoping to harvest them and sell the wood to a telephone company. The pines seem big enough for poles now, but here they remain. Often, I hope that she will forget to call the foresters. But moreso, I hope that her children will forget. For the stand is truly a sight to see. 

The sentinels extend straight up in narrow, planted rows—some of the tallest trees in the forest. From the very moment they sprouted they competed with each other for light, and so they raced, and now only the crowns have branches and needles. All but a few scraggily twigs has been sloughed away by the darkness. The ochre bark remains as well, patterned like the octagons of a dried mud flat. And when the sun sets, the red bark explodes into the most spectacular oranges, setting the woods aflame.

Lower is a bed of dead orange needles, half a foot deep, where mice like to make their nests in the winter-time. I have seen the evidence as I walk through the winter canvas: Tiny perfect footprints leading to a small black hole in the snow at the very base of the tree.

For even in the winter, the woods are not lifeless. A barren cornfield in the winter is like a grave, waiting for new life to emerge from the old. A forest in winter feels more like a slow-moving giant.

Everywhere are the molds of footprints that tell their own stories. They reveal the daily dramas of rabbits, raccoons, mice, coyotes, wild turkey, foxes, and squirrels. Here a herd of deer have bedded down beneath white pines wreathed in wild grape vines as thick as my arm. There they’ve broken the ice on the meandering creek, to lap up the cold running water.

There are other signs, too, if you look and listen. Mouse and mole holes and fox squirrels, ever present, sliding effortlessly around the tree to watch me with alert black eyes, their bushy gray tails twitching warily. The ravens roost in their red pine rookery, cackling and cawing in a way that feels like fog on a cool spring morning: still, mysterious, frightening in a way that makes me want to walk just a little bit closer.

And early in the day I can hear the happy whistle of the Chickadee, my favorite bird. “Whee-whoo…whee-whoo,” and the answering “Chicka-dee-dee-dee!” The Chickadee is one of those tough little species, like the cardinals, junkos, sparrows, and hairy woodpeckers, that stay year round and endure the hard winter. Sometimes they are silent for days, no doubt hunkered down in their safe, warm places. But when the sun reappears from the gloom, their song is always the first I hear.

As much as I love the Chickadees, my favorite living creatures in the wintertime have to be the trees. Even when they have lost their leaves and their trunks are slick and blackened, they feel alive. Ever since I was little, one of my favorite things was to stop, place my palm on the rough bark of a tree, close my eyes, and listen. I have always imagined that I can feel the life there, burning in the heartwood. When I touch a tree trunk, I feel apart of, rather than apart.

I can sense them as I walk, and if I stop crunching through the snow and attend carefully, I can hear them borrowing the wind. For the wind, as it passes through the branches, becomes their breath to speak. All around, even on a still day, is a pleasant chorus of wooden taps, knocks, swishes, and creaks.

The trees in The Vortex have an altogether different sort of cadence. You cannot know what I mean, unless you have been there, but I will attempt to explain. The atmosphere is heavier, stiller, as if every living creature there is holding its breath and is creeping quickly through, rather than taking a leisurely stroll.

When I walk there, there is a feeling of being watched—and a sort of vague premonition builds in my chest. It is the same sensation that triggers me to flee rapidly up dark basement steps. I have never heard much birdsong there, even in the distance. It is as if the whole place has been cocooned in.

The only sound, in fact, is the trees. But their talk is not gentle or soothing here. It is calamitous—twice as loud and somehow violent—cracking the stillness like a trod-on branch as the limbs strike each other and groan slowly back into place.

But the most unnerving characteristic of the trees in The Vortex is that they appear to speak only as I walk by.

I am still not sure if the trees themselves do not want me there or if they themselves are trapped. Not able to escape like the other denizens of the forest, they try to warn me away.

Before it’s too late.

Wherein an Excess of Feeling "Chuffed" May Lead to Spontaneous Combustion

I got into the Creative Writing M.A. program at Central Michigan University! They liked my portfolio!

Elation. Joy. Freedom. Peace. Gratitude. Hope.

But the best word to describe how I feel: O so CHUFFED! All evening, my parents have had to put up with me scurrying like a bunny up and down the stairs to feed them new bits of exciting information. They have done their best not to laugh at me. I still don't know whether I can afford this. I have applied for a Graduate Assistantship, and if I get it, I will get free tuition and a 10,500 dollar living stipend. If I don't get it, I either have to wait a year or take out too many loans. But the first step has been taken, and I could not be more thrilled.

Now, to attend to the fuzzy purring lump who demands to use me as a living hot water bottle every night. Already this evening she has dashed across the keyboard while I type in a desperate bid for attention. Now she is sitting on my bed, staring determinedly at me and rumbling like a generator. Is it bedtime, Holly? Why yes, yes it is. And I will sleep soundly tonight. 

For New Graduates or Those with "Down Days"

I decided to post this entry from my journal, because I felt that others, especially new graduates, would be able to take something from it. I am generally a positive and upbeat individual, and I love dry humor. However, ever since high school, I have suffered occasional bouts of depression. High school was the worst; it was a time of utter lifelessness and constant pretending. 

My journals of the time are deceptively vivacious, but that is because my dad told me to fight the sadness with joy. If I pretended long enough, he said, it would become true. Mind over matter was his favorite phrase while I was growing up. And he was right. I gritted my teeth and clawed my way out of that hole with false laughter, determination, and a blessed end to puberty. Most people, except a select few who were there, don't know this about me. Usually my down moments now are reserved to one or two days a month, when I feel tired, lethargic, melancholy, and detached from others for no reason. My version of PMS, I guess. I don't get mad, I get sad! (Cue Glad Bags commercial music).

But after graduating with my undergraduate degree in Biology this last August, moving back in with my parents, and starting the as-of -yet-unsuccessful search for a full-time job, I felt like an utter failure. The future was uncertain, but worse than that, I wasn't even sure what I wanted anymore. I was slowly realizing that mainstream academic research was not for me. I didn't want to be a lab rat for the rest of my days; a drove of possibilities stood before me and I wanted all of them except for the one that I had already chosen.

I was in a terrible limbo and paralyzed by indecision. Deep down, I knew what I wanted, what I had always wanted (to return to English and writing, my first loves), but I did not have the courage to admit it to myself nor to others. Getting a Master's degree in English was not practical; getting an M.S. in science was. What would I tell my parents? What would I tell the people who had invested in my scientific career, who had expected great things of me? That hopelessness and shame increased my down days significantly.

Such a "Down Day," occurred recently. I wanted to share my diary entry, because I know others, friends of mine included, feel the same at times. And because it is important to remember that although you may feel like a trod-upon cow patty one day for no apparent reason, you could feel like a prancing unicorn the next. That said, I want to be clear that I would never, ever hurt myself, and neither should anyone. Life is so ever-changing, and those of us who are slaves to these periods of dark and light must realize that hope is like a migrating bird. It may fly away for awhile, but it will always return, especially if you stand waiting for it with open arms. Putting out suet helps, too. Birds love that stuff.

All right. I've blathered enough in this intro (sorry...I'm garrulous today). Here's my journal entry:

My bed is warm, but the bleakness of deep winter has stolen over me, and my headphones, along with my thoughts, are hopelessly tangled. I don't seem to have the energy to attempt to fix either of those issues.

I keep forgetting the date. I keep writing 11-2-2013 instead of 2-11-2014. I have to pause, too long, and remind myself: no, it's February. It's month six, yes, six, of this Limbo, this uncertainty. Time it seems, stopped months ago.

I wish I could be an ever present glowing light for others, for myself. I think I must hide my torment--those grey periods of lethargic dimness, of restlessness and boredom, self-inflicted, all, when things that pleased in the past fade to nothing, and the waiting begins. Waiting for the sky to brighten again, for the energy to rush back into my bones. Waiting to feel laughter bubble up for no reason than that I am alive, alive, and so lucky.

And the clouds will part--they always do. Of life, well, life is capricious. I have always known it, which is why never, never will I succumb to those periods of hopeless darkness, nor to the anxiety I feel as I watch great stretches of my life stolen by these feelings; time ticks away, and I sit here, watching, waiting, wanting to move, to thrust forward with all I have. If I do, I know I can accomplish anything. That I will feel better. Yet I am so tired, so often.

Bursts of energy come, and then, I am one of the hardest-working individuals I know. But then come the days when I go to bed often and early, because nothing seems worth the effort. Frustrating, that there is no reason, that my pain is self-inflicted. I feel so weak. I have parents and family who love me, support me, let me fall back into them when this job market and my mental paralysis have turned me from independence.

I have friends. So, oh, so many in the scheme of things. More people who care for me than I would have ever thought possible. A select few, I can tell anything to. Even fewer, I feel the resonance of kindred spirits with. It is as if when they speak, it is my words, not theirs, which fall from their lips.

And I hope to them that I am a positive force, that they don't know that some days, I cannot be with them, no matter how lonely I am, because I am just too tired, despite the full night of sleep that I have gotten.

It comes out here, in my writing.

A friend recently said to me after reading my creative writing portfolio [I paraphrase], "It's so good!" he said. "But some of it is SO dark. Knowing you, I never would have thought--" That there was so much darkness in my soul? I'm glad. I'm not glad that some of my writing comes across as dark, because I'd rather be a Terry Pratchett than a Sylvia Plath, but I am glad that no one expects it from me. I try so hard to live in the light.

I have friends who truly epitomize kindness of spirit--who have this contagious childlike innocence that ripples unassumingly around them. It is impossible not to feel it, tangibly reverberating deep inside the places you forgot you had. It makes me stronger to be with these people.

I want to be like that, to find inner and outer peace, and to spread it organically, like music in the air. Time goes on, and sometimes, for a long time, I can find that pool of tranquility and proactive love.

But it is so hard to walk gracefully and at ease--to feel the freedom to pause and gaze around you--when you feel as thought the road you walk, if it even exists, is not only invisible but hopelessly wandering. I like to see the road, but more importantly, I like to know which one I'm attempting to walk on.

At this point, I am so crazed with possibility and consequence that I am entirely willing to follow those brightly glowing will-o-the wisps, even if they cause me to fall through Sphagnum moss into a bog. Will-o-the-wisps are beautiful, enigmatic, and fade quickly. You think at first they are some playful fae creature, leading to a place possible only in your dreams, only to discover (once you've fallen to the bottom of a wetland) that in reality they were merely puffs of swamp gas brought on by anaerobic bacteria searching for electron receptors.

It is much less glorious to die at the hands of bacteria farts than faeries, but I digress.

I still don't know if I have the courage to risk everything for my dreams, but I know that I am not alone, and I can never give up, because tomorrow I will wake up and the sun could be shining. If not, I will do my very best to make my own sunshine.

It is better to follow hopeful lights for the chance of finding your way than to wander in lost circles in the fog forever.

A View from the Skies: The Andes Mountains

This little blurb was inspired by my flight from Santiago, Chile to Punta Arenas, Chile last fall, when I was on my way to Antarctica for my second research expedition:

Everything that man makes ultimately looks the same. From sprawling, seemingly messy cities to minuscule, strictly ordered microchips. Because from the air it is revealed that the cities and farms create a pattern not unlike the control board of a massive computer.

But suddenly, the manufactured world ends. Beyond a gray, opaque haze of smog and mist rise the Andes Mountains. Flying low they are hard, sharp, unchanging. Like teeth chipped to points and adorned in snow. From above breaks in the clouds, they become as soft and malleable as grey silk.

There is no man there, only nature. And after a time there isn't even land or sky. For the snowy peaks are indiscernible from the clouds, and the giants of the forest are suddenly reduced to form-fitting clumps of colored fur, crawling along the back of the animal that we like to claim, but that we will never fully understand.

And if your eyes roam farther, beyond the peaks, the clouds themselves become mountains, thrusting up from the blue pool of sky.

They will always be the same, and they never will be. Like the microchip mimicking the city, they are part of the never-ending repetition found in nature. Even we humans are not immune. Like the center of atoms matching photographs of galaxies, we work in closely weaving circles, which cannot be acknowledged until viewed from afar.

I am watching the river, zig-zagging between folds of mountains. Unlike man-altered rivers, it does not run straight. It curves, stretches, quick and languorous, tight and loose. It is whatever it needs to be along its journey. And when it hits the impermeable rock it patiently bites its way through, not sure where it is going or why, but knowing it must fight to get there.

I would rather be this sort of river. Not some creation of man's society, which cuts a flawless path, straight and ambitious. Man-made rivers run without obstacles, because a path has been pre-formed. And when they stray, they are chopped and dredged back into what is considered their most useful shape. Why would they wander, when the built path is so much easier? Biting through stone to go where you like brings no guarantee of success or happiness. But perhaps it is the biting itself that brings the pleasure. Every inch gained is a release from the confines of what was, a journey to what will be.

Shapes and faces litter the mountains. An eagle's talons. A man's features, frozen just before he was about to speak. Shadows cast by the clouds, forever separated from their creators.

Most of the mountains are clustered together, but one, snow laden and weeping, stands alone at the base of an azure lake. The crater makes me think it is a volcano, and unbidden come images of ancient worship.

No doubt this peak had a name once. It probably has one now. But I have to wonder if the two names are one and the same--and how many cultures and civilizations it has seen rise and fall as it hunches, primal but not eternal. It too will be gone someday. But we will not be here to see it go. 

A Disturbing Encounter

So, I had an encounter today that disturbed me. I was in Barnes & Noble, having a lusty look-around and trying to vain to talk myself out of buying anything. I mean, the price of physical books has truly skyrocketed with the rise of eBooks. Sixteen bucks for a 200 page paperback? I think not, thank you very much (I bought it anyway). Anyway, as I was meandering the shelves a loud, angry voice broke my book-induced reverie.

"Stop it! Stop touching it and watch it."

I looked up to see a mother, leaning angrily over a stroller, scolding a child (probably  not more than three years old) and shoving some kind of tablet/iPhone into the child's hands. The child had been trying to use the touch screen instead of watching the movie that was playing on it.

"Watch it," she repeated. The viciousness I heard in her voice was startling.

And all I could think was this: If she didn't want the kid playing with her 400 dollar tablet, she shouldn't have given it to the child. My second thought...she was scolding her child for attempting to interact with his/her environment. When they left the house everyday, did the child ever get to see or interact with the world around him/her? Or did this parent, because it was easier, thrust a movie into this baby's hands every day, all day, and then yell at her child when he/she tried to do anything else? Now, it was a fallacious thought; I have no idea what this mother does on a regular basis.

Additionally, I'm not a parent. I don't have any right to judge an overwrought mother in a public place, who is struggling to get through a busy day with a toddler in tow. For a time, I did babysit a six-month old, and I quickly realized how exhausting it is to have to hold your bladder for four hours straight and go without sleep or eating because of the constant attention babies require. When you get those sweet little bundles to stop their heart-wrenching wails, you will do anything in your power to make sure it stays that way.

So although I can forgive the mother for having a bad day, the interaction still haunts me, because it reflects a bigger problem in our society. That mother may not use the TV as a babysitter every day, but I know that many parents do, busy as they are trying to make ends meet in this poor economy. It makes me sad to think that some children are being raised by electronic devices, rather than warm bodies. I can't help but think of the consequences of this, of having a generation whose formative years were spent in complete social isolation. Twenty years from now, what ripple effect will this have on our country's future?

Hours have passed, but the thought of it still fills me with disgust and pity.

Research Trip to Antarctica

From January-February 2013 and from November-December 2013, I was blessed to accompany two research labs (Dr. Andrew Mahon's Lab from CMU and Dr. Halanych's lab from Auburn U., AL) to Antarctica. On both trips, I worked with a team of international scientists to collect benthic invertebrates for future genetic/climate change studies. Although I have ultimately decided that laboratory research is not my dream career, this was certainly a formative and irreplaceable experience. I learned so much and had the privilege of working with some of the hardest working, most intelligent marine scientists out there.



If you're interested in my trip or in the Mahon or Halanych labs, please follow these links to the Auburn and CMU Icy Inverts Blogs. There are tons of fabulous and informative scientific posts, and I myself blogged for these websites during the two expeditions.

For Auburn's  2013 Shipblog:

http://www.auburn.edu/cosam/departments/research/antarctica/2013/blog/index.htm
For Auburn, I blogged on November 21st and December 5, 2013.

For Central Michigan University's 2013 Shipblog:

http://people.cst.cmich.edu/mahon2a/MahonLab/Antarctica/Archive.html
My entries in the CMU blog include, "An Undergraduate's First Trip to the Ice," "Wedded Bliss on the High Seas," "Always Something New," and "My Final Thoughts On This Trip." You might want to scroll down to the bottom of the archives to start out with the January 2013 cruise.

Loneliness

Loneliness

By Abigail Hollingsworth

Most acute in a room full of people.

Faces, everywhere, oblivious, unseeing me.

Try to get close.

Invisible door,

Wrought from some invisible difference,

and gilded so shiny.

I want to open it,

But when I get close enough I

see scratches in the gold.

Nothing, but rust beneath.

Not love but more loneliness,

more than Before.

Now I don't even have myself.

I back away

to search for a new door.

I haven't found it yet.

It is hard to find something when you don't know what it looks like,

And when so many doors fool me

into thinking that in that gilded shine,

I can see my reflection.

Watchers in the Trees

I have walked in the woods many times, and almost always, it instantly calms me. There is a serenity there, the same peace I feel in old houses and cathedrals, or when I breathe in the scent of the flipping pages of a book. It lets me breathe deeper and see farther. But once and awhile, while walking alone, I have gotten the feeling that something was watching me. I look and see nothing, but some primal creeping feeling tells me it is there, lurking beneath what I can actually see or touch, but utterly real.

It is in the breathing of the trees--it is in the dark, disguising itself as sunlight. It is like something moving beneath the skin.

It is terrifying, and it makes me want to run back to the safety of man-built walls. But this is what makes it so beautiful. This primal world that provides and kills. It is danger that makes beauty.

If nature could not so easily reach out its hand and crush me, then I would not love it as much as I do. It is like God that way. Perhaps it is God. 

Fun with Shakespeare

The following was an assignment that I at first hated but then came to have a great deal of fun with. This is what would happen if I invited Falstaff from Henry IV Part 1 and MacBeth from (guess what) MacBeth, to dinner to discuss philosophy. For reference, "ancient worm" refers to a dragon, to "kill" a woman or for a woman to "die," is Shakespeare slang for them to reach a pleasurable climax (ahem...real Shakespeare dirty puns here people), and a "stale" is a prostitute.

Flourish within. Enter MACBETH, FALSTAFF, and ABIGAIL.

ABIGAIL: Welcome, gentlemen, to my humble abode.

FALSTAFF: A thousand thanks! [Aside] Humble, indeed. ‘Twould be better a least to have the same advantages of a stale’s keep, if it insist on being so humble.

MACBETH: ‘Twas a decent gesture to give us respite here. Weariness drags at my bones, and my spirit ‘tis as sunken in my chest as—

FALSTAFF: Aha! What, ho! Do I spy good food and spirits?

ABIGAIL: You do! It’s not much, but I hoped it would suffice.

FALSTAFF: My gut seems to welcome the sight of it. [Aside] Though the company could bear revision. This fellow here wears a countenance so drawn and colorless that a spirit long dead would pity him.

ABIGAIL: Well, have a seat and help yourselves, sirs.

MACBETH: Thanks, Lady.

FALSTAFF: The table will find itself barren before I’ve left it, or my name is not John Falstaff.

ABIGAIL: Now that we’re all seated, I confess that I bore design in inviting you here tonight. Soft, MacBeth—I intend neither of you any harm. I just hoped to pose an idea and hear your thoughts on’t.

MACBETH: I will hear it, then.

FALSTAFF: Aye. Let us take measure of this idea and beat it ‘till it surrenders.

ABIGAIL: It should ring familiar with you, MacBeth, because you once said it. The idea, in short description, is that life “is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” (MacBeth 5.5.25-27). What thinks you on’t now?

MACBETH: ‘Tis as true now as when I said it first. “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time,” and all men’s savage efforts amount only to death in the end, nothing more (MacBeth 5.5.18-20).

ABIGAIL: And what thinks you, Falstaff?

FALSTAFF: [Aside] The man ‘tis as miserable a soul as first I thought. [To ABIGAIL] Surely it means as he says, for his lips are those that said it. But mayhaps the truth behind it is not so sound.

ABIGAIL: Why do you believe life means nothing, MacBeth?

MACBETH: All men do is in vain. Life is all strife and struggle to gain, to survive, to be remembered, but it all ends in the same wretched vein: with death. With dust. With nothing. Men seek to stop it or control it, but fate is fate.

ABIGAIL: Some would argue that just the act of living is worthwhile. Are you saying then, that it doesn’t matter what action you take in life because fate has already been determined? Does not every action you choose determine your fate?

MACBETH: We only think as if we steer ourselves. ‘Tis the others, gods, spirits, dark hags likened to the Wyrd Sisters, that know our fates already and laugh at the folly that we suffer to control it. The hags prophesied things I though impossible. But they were true, all true. True and wretched in being true.

FALSTAFF: [Aside] The poor soul is a bit unhinged from reality, methinks.

MACBETH: All we accomplish through life is to move closer to death. We bluster and fret and worry over each choice, when in sooth, it means nothing. Every man and beast will die, and it matters not how he gets there.

ABIGAIL: Not to offend, but doesn’t it matter? Would not your life have been more worthwhile had you stayed your hand and had you not been tempted by the hags? Would not you have been happier now?

MACBETH: But the prophesy was destined to happen, was it not? Verily, was I to blame? They granted me truth before turning the blessing to a curse. It was still truth, was it not? I was destined to be King. I was not creating destiny but fulfilling it.

ABIGAIL: But what if you had never heard the prophesy nor fulfilled it by your own hand? Would it still have come to pass?

MACBETH: I was destiny’s pawn. I had no power. That is what I speak. Men have no power, even as they think they do. They fret and wring their hands and walk life’s stage trying to achieve the perfect performance when, as much as they try, their actions will lead only to the fate already set out for them. Fate somehow spoke through the bearded, unnatural lips of the Wyrd Sisters but not altered by their words any more than our own actions can hope to alter it.

FALSTAFF: [Aside] Methinks the wine is stronger than previously imagined. I will have to partake of more of it.

ABIGAIL: Yet to me, just the act of living has meaning in the way in which we do it. At least, it has more meaning than to not live at all.

MACBETH: ‘Tis an illusion! “Life’s but a walking shadow,” an act, a badly written play performed before a heartless and uncaring audience. And after all that strife and effort, the play comes to a close and the actors are “heard no more” (MacBeth 5.5.23-25). There can be neither pleasure nor success in a thing that will ultimately end in dust. It accomplishes nothing!

FALSTAFF: But what of the worth of comrades? What of drink and killing fresh women? What of living? Have you no friends? Take you pleasure in nothing?

MACBETH: What pleasures can I take? I have cursed myself—or if not that, I have been cursed. I cannot close my eyes to my fate, my damnation, which I will suffer in life, and worse, in death. I have bloodied my hands with King, with kin, with comrades. I have sinned ultimately already for a pleasure that, in sooth, revealed itself to be no pleasure at all. I have nothing remaining to me that would sweeten the poison that I have drunk, offered by spirits of strange faces and evil designs. I was a good man, but I shall die a tyrant. That is all.

FALSTAFF: Well, be you a tyrant, I say, enjoy it. If ‘tis all that is left for you, then kill every woman worth killing, and kill their men to silence objections. Drink ‘till there is no drink left, excepting that which needs be in stock for myself, of course, and collect treasures like some ancient worm, taking pleasure from your hoard. Therein lies your meaning in life.

MACBETH: Even my sinner’s ears recoil from that. I have not sunk so low, you lascivious—

ABIGAIL: Gentlemen! Perhaps we should digress.

FALSTAFF: The man names himself a tyrant, yet he objects to the definition.

ABIGAIL: Soft, both of you, please. So, to be clear: Falstaff, you believe that life has meaning in pleasure.

FALSTAFF: Just so. I don’t consider myself a philosophical sort of fool, and life, in sooth, may mean nothing. But then what are we here for then but to find pleasure? Be drunk, be loud, sink in revelry and make friends of both sexes.

ABIGAIL: And MacBeth, you believe that life signifies nothing, because it is a vain attempt at controlling something that is uncontrollable, and that the actions in one’s life are meaningless and petty because all they accomplish is to move you closer to death. You also claim there can be no pleasure found in life.

MACBETH: None, any more.

ABIGAIL: So, MacBeth, if your actions, as you say, mean nothing, and you had no control over them, then why did you choose to charge at the battle of Dunsinane? You must have known you were charging to death.

MACBETH: The hags had prophesied as such, and they had not yet been wrong. Death means more to others’ eyes than life. My life meant nothing to those traitors, yet my death might yet move them.

FALSTAFF: Ha! Honor, then! Again, honor. If you seek honor, you seek death. “Who hath it? He that died o’Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No.…Therefore I’ll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon,” a due paid to those too permanently still to appreciate it, and it will rot just as valiantly as the corpse (1 Henry IV 5.1.134-138). Why recall a man’s death if your thoughts are too sluggish to remember his life? You will be forgotten just the same had you expired elsewise, and even if remembered fondly, will not be present to enjoy the praise. Yet, if you turn tail, you live. In living, you continue to take pleasure. And verily, those living are impossible to forget, because they are in constant sight. Therefore, why rush to death? Once dead, regrettably, there is nothing for it. Let Death glower at me from afar. I have no words to bandy with him.

ABIGAIL: So, MacBeth, you find more significance in death than in life, and Falstaff, you find more significance in life than in death.

MACBETH: Verily.

FALSTAFF: I say, mock Death, as “I would be loath to pay him before his day” (1 Henry IV 5.1.127-128). Let him chase me to the ends of this world, and forbid he ever catch me. Leastways, whilst there is still drink to drink, money to be won—or, in sooth, to be lost—and women inclined to die.

MACBETH: So speaks a cheap carouser.

FALSTAFF: Myself? No, sir; I am but a good and honest gent. But you, one who professes no love nor pleasure in any flesh nor possession obtainable, are a bit of a fool. Thy life is meaningless because it is yours, and you have butchered it. That is the work of thy hand, not these hags of which you speak. So says Macbeth that all life signifies nothing. So says I that MacBeth’s life signifies nothing. A transfers to all that which belongs alone to himself.

ABIGAIL: No offense intended, MacBeth, but having heard both arguments, I have to say that I favor Falstaff’s. I believe that your actions bring about your own fate, and even if they don’t, life is still worthwhile. After all, life is all we have. We may not always be able to control what happens to us, and yes, we will all die in the end and probably be forgotten. But it is what we choose to do with our time here that creates meaning for us. It is what we do when we do have control that matters. It is through the people who we touch and love in our lives that our memory lives on and is not lost to dust. It is through living with honor, not just dying with honor, that we endure and find happiness in even the bitterest of times. We must all act as poets to fashion each of our lives into something personally meaningful. For the “poet’s pen turns [the form of things unknown] to shapes, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name” (A Midsummer Night’s Dream 4.2.15-17). We can never know for sure, but why don’t we live for something? It is mad to give up on life before you absolutely must; our time here is too short already.

MACBETH: I perceive now. I perceive your ‘design’ in inviting me here tonight. ‘Twas out of no generosity but to mock MacBeth’s isolated damnation. I pity the both of you, for the time when you at last reach the pinnacle of your life, only to realize that the “mad” MacBeth was in the right all the while! [Exeunt]

ABIGAIL: Wait, MacBeth! I didn’t mean it like that! I don’t agree with “that villainous, abominable misleader of youth, Falstaff,” either (1 Henry IV 2.5.421-422)! O, drat; he’s already gone!

FALSTAFF: I know not what I have done to deserve such a stained and repugnant reputation. I have always done my utmost to—

ABIGAIL: Oh, hush, Falstaff, and drink your blasted wine.

Exeunt all [severally]. End scene.