My Current Copy is a Dog-Eared Paperback

Today I am thinking about missing people. The thought pattern can be tracked back pretty easily, both the the many (many...many...) visitors who've been through Chicago lately and to the fact that I'm re-reading Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. The first time I picked that book up was, I believe, in 2005, not long after it came out. It was summertime, and people were leaving. The class directly ahead of me at Grinnell was wrapping up their graduation pomp, I was mildly ill, and overwhelmed by all the comings and going. And there was Gilead, on sale at the tiny Grinnell bookstore.

What else was happening? I ask to jog my own memory. I remember Dave's house (erstwhile nicknamed LeSchwArk for all its illustrious residents) during a picnic, almost cracking my tooth on a crawdaddy, crawling upstairs and hiding in Dave's room because I was sick and I just wanted to read. I remember Vanessa in a dress, maybe the first time I had seen such an outlandish thing. I remember the long, lush fields of green.

I was leaving too, although not permanently. The next semester would see me in St. Petersburg, in a tiny apartment on Goroxovaya Ulitsa which smelt of my grandmother's coat closet (there are old parasols in there. I was quite taken with them when I was younger, because they made me feel I was a lady. Little did my proto-feminist brain know). It would be months before I returned to a cold and frozen Iowa tundra, and by that time I would be different, and a significant number of my close friends would be gone. So we were reveling/reckoning that summer.*

My first copy of Gilead was hardbound and expensive, and I think that one Ms. Rachel Pierce is still holding it hostage somewhere. At the time I wasn't as taken with the story as I had hoped to be, after hearing so much positive outpouring from friends who'd read it. My experience with epistolary novels was limited, and so perhaps I got stuck on the form, or on the protagonist.

In a sense, it's reasonable that I would relate to him (the protagonist, that is) more as I am than as I was. At that time, I was surrounded by people in motion. I was actively leaving Iowa, seeking out the greater world, which is exactly what John Ames does not do. After his brother leaves to study German philosophy and goes prodigal, Ames reasserts his faith in the small town of Gilead, his vocation to stay and minister to the sheep in that byway of a place.

Here I am, three years later, and it must be said that I am not in Iowa. However, the action and aims of my life aren't what they once were; I'm no longer thrusting forward quite as violently, and I've come to feel the vital importance of winnowing. By that I don't mean that people should live narrow existences, or that every soul on earth would benefit from spending all their time in the space of a few square miles. But I do think that people tend to overlook how much choices free and shape them - if you leave all possible doors open, you never really get to test your strength in any particular area. You never form the bonds that you would if you moved forward in a definitive direction, and you never achieve the level of creativity and perspective that comes from working within a field of boundaries.

This is why I've always like writing poems within a form.

Gilead is the story of a man who is living with his choices, and who has come to see the light, the beauty, the formlessness of forms. That is something that I am thinking about. And how, you might ask, does this relate to missing people? Why in god's name did I bring that up at the beginning of this little post, only to let it fall by the wayside?

Well, in a sense I am thinking of that wordless nostalgia that tugs on me whenever I meditate on the happy past. Even people who have fallen away from me, run away from me, been pushed away, are attached to memories I will never be free from (even if I wanted to be). I think that the more you sift through the dross of things, the more you shave bits and pieces off, the more acutely you feel the need for what matters.






*Yes, ok, that's the title of an Ani DiFranco album. But it's appropriate! I swear.

Hard-Wired

There are some things that I remember in perfect pictures. The image of simultaneous Cyrillic and Roman signage on a dusty St. Petersburg afternoon, for example, seen through sleep-weary eyes and the dirty window of a tour bus driving in from the airport. Or, the first time I caught view of Grinnell College, also from a moving vehicle - a bunch of us kids, being shuttled in to our college home, were crammed in a van making uneasy conversation. The air was dusty, and I was disappointed when I wasn't dropped off on the tree-lined streets of North Campus (that didn't last long...South Campus is where the hippies lived, so of course I fit right in, even post-vegetarianism).

These memories feel to me like movie playback, scenes disconnected from the rest of eternity, but coherent and complete in the annals of my thoughts. But rarely does any image actually trigger a memory, making me woozy with nostalgia. Scents, on the other hand, do this all the time.

When I was younger, I used to think I was strange for reliving memories more completely through scent than through sound or sight. It seemed wrong - people were always telling me that the human sense of smell was far weaker than it is in other animals, and it didn't make sense to me that my brain would connect my memory to my nose. As I've grown, it's become apparent that many people live this way, that in fact it is in some ways hard-wired.

But science aside, I think scent-triggered memory is both interesting and beautiful, in part because it seems animalistic to me, primeval. I'll step into the vestibule of a restaurant and be completely overpowered by a memory of the in-window air conditioner at our motel in Soap Lake Washington, when I was ten years old. It's not the same as remembering what I did while on vacation as a pre-teen (read Nancy Drew novels, rub the "restorative" mud on my skin, watch the dragonflies copulate, get addicted to daytime television...) - instead, I'll remember for a moment what it felt like to be there, the way I was breathing, the boredom, a random itch on my left foot. And the constant top note is reconditioned air, with the knowledge of intense, bone-dry heat outdoors.

It's less a video clip and more deja vu.

Of course, the experience isn't always so intense - sometimes it's just sort of weird, and so it was with the inspiration for this post. The other day I went to the store and bought some new hand soap - nothing earth shattering, but I decided to buy a mango & something-else-fruity scent, because it was purple. And so is my towel. I like to have the bathroom matching.

When I first washed my hands I knew that the scent meant something to me, but I couldn't figure out quite what. It was somewhat pleasant, but not lovely - in fact, it was kind of saccharine, and I just couldn't place it.

So I started mulling over the sweet scents in my life that I don't really like - Naked Juice on someone else's breath, unpleasant perfume, cough syrup, bad rum drinks. But none of them quite fit the bill. Until I happened to glance at a photo of myself in Roatan, on vacation with Dave last year. And then it hit me! It was our bug spray. I have no idea what variety it was, as we bought all our liquids in Honduras, so as not to be mistaken for mad bombers in the airport. But, fueled by a mosquito paranoia and deep hatred for bug bites, I lathered myself with DDT each and every morning. And now, every time I wash my hands, I can relive it.

Hurray? I guess this is all a mixed blessing.