Today is one of those days I am in the present , it's raining outside, even my dogs seem not to want to go their daily walk. Yesterday in the afternoon I finished putting up tree number three with my mother for Christmas. We always set up a green themed tree, a blue one and my favorite , a traditionally decorated one, it has ornaments from several countries we have lived in and it contains in a certain manner many of our memories as a family together.
Then this morning, I finished working on some of my photographs for a project and painted a little in the spare bedroom , all of a sudden turned into a studio. The smell of oil paint takes me home, no where in particular, but puts me inside a place of myself that is home. As the quiet brush strokes turn into lush images of far away places, I am able to start once again focusing on today. My mother made cake and home made bread this morning, those are the happiest moments I have ever experienced in my life, both of my parents in the house doing ordinary things that go unnoticed in life so many times. I have started noticing them, the simple hours on Sundays , when my mother and I spend the afternoon watching television in bed , while my father reads the newspaper and complains about some random soccer match.
I don't have classes on Tuesdays and therefore I planned on organizing my closet, I ended up with all of my clothes on top of my bed with me drawing on top of it all. This mess was then transferred to the spare bedroom where I suddenly felt the urge to paint. Thank god for those unused canvases in the basement! The result was the image of me as a child with my back to the image sitting under a grape vine playing with marbles. I haven't painted in over a year.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Sunday 11/28/210
I went home in June and visited a few other places, I found myself in that old house that has been a restoration project since 1979, I had not even been born then. Inside what used to be one of the estate's small libraries I found his name carved on the bottom of a book shelf where beside it there was a book Egypt, typical of a child's interest. It brought me closer to my grandfather, I used to read mummy books and pyramid books when I was ten years old, under an orange tree with one of my dogs I would dream of great adventures in Egypt as I read each page. I can see him before the world fell apart in 1935, when he had only been ten years old, at home before or after his tutoring lesson, hiding in the library and reading books that took him away from the boredom of being an only child.
As I walked through that old house, I took photo of the staircases and some of the ceilings my great-great grandmother had restored in the early nineteenth century. When I was child I was told by an aunt that the past was beautiful and sorrowful thing, her eyes always filled with tears when she said that, she suddenly went from being in the garden with me to being far away, she was born in Vienna, 1914. I only spent four days there this summer, I keep planning to return and live there for a while and start the restoration process, it's a project in the making I have to say.
In 1998 after we had just moved back to the U.S. I was only thirteen and in a new place again , things seemed to change, Chicago of all places. I missed the smell of the rain as it hit the dirt in that old road near our house. Rolling hills lush with vines and pastures with horses, and people I knew. I hate apartment living, but as it goes, big city small spaces. For a couple of years I was entertained and learning a new language , getting used to my surroundings that I forgot the memories I carried from childhood. For a while you sort of forget yourself and the midst of your new surroundings, as humans we want to fit in and adjust.
As I walked through that old house, I took photo of the staircases and some of the ceilings my great-great grandmother had restored in the early nineteenth century. When I was child I was told by an aunt that the past was beautiful and sorrowful thing, her eyes always filled with tears when she said that, she suddenly went from being in the garden with me to being far away, she was born in Vienna, 1914. I only spent four days there this summer, I keep planning to return and live there for a while and start the restoration process, it's a project in the making I have to say.
In 1998 after we had just moved back to the U.S. I was only thirteen and in a new place again , things seemed to change, Chicago of all places. I missed the smell of the rain as it hit the dirt in that old road near our house. Rolling hills lush with vines and pastures with horses, and people I knew. I hate apartment living, but as it goes, big city small spaces. For a couple of years I was entertained and learning a new language , getting used to my surroundings that I forgot the memories I carried from childhood. For a while you sort of forget yourself and the midst of your new surroundings, as humans we want to fit in and adjust.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
11/27/210 7:06 pm
I had lunch with my family today at Bon Vie , and as I was laughing and measuring other people in the restaurant and having a good laugh with family when I was brought back to this journal. Why am I writing it, why now? I asked my mother the same question, last night I went out to have a few drinks, the result is always the same, a few drinks are never just a few, they turn into many. But I finally feel that certain things I need to do. Drinking too much once a week and finally putting my story down on paper, or in this case in my blog.
My bedroom has always been a refuge, inside it I can write, paint and organize my thoughts, I was fifteen when I started translating my grandfather's exile documents. He was taken to a haven in the countryside of Genoa, there he rested and managed to make a new life for him, it feels as if our family has chasing a future that is leading to the past. We returned to the U.S. in '98 to start fresh, to get away from Europe and South America. For a while it seemed as if life was fresh and new, after thirteen years of going and coming back, I notice myself looking at old photos, tracking our home on google earth, simply to get a glimpse of the earth I miss so much.
Life is so strange, you want to get away from home for reasons only you and the people from that land understand, only to spend your entire life attempting to return home. I feel like that lately, wanting to return.
My bedroom has always been a refuge, inside it I can write, paint and organize my thoughts, I was fifteen when I started translating my grandfather's exile documents. He was taken to a haven in the countryside of Genoa, there he rested and managed to make a new life for him, it feels as if our family has chasing a future that is leading to the past. We returned to the U.S. in '98 to start fresh, to get away from Europe and South America. For a while it seemed as if life was fresh and new, after thirteen years of going and coming back, I notice myself looking at old photos, tracking our home on google earth, simply to get a glimpse of the earth I miss so much.
Life is so strange, you want to get away from home for reasons only you and the people from that land understand, only to spend your entire life attempting to return home. I feel like that lately, wanting to return.
I'll begin today , 11/27/210 10:24 am
My fixation began at the age of fifteen, I was going though things in boxes, papers and family documents when I discovered I had a bit of an interest for my family's history.
It wasn't a secret that certain things we were not allowed to uncover in my house, my mother always says , "if you dig up the past be prepared to get dirty", that is very true. Eleven years ago I started finding letters and documents containing information about someone I never knew, my grandfather. My father once had told me Ernst had found refuge in Italy during the WWII since our family had suffered with the holocaust , the truth is that he had been exiled in Italy because he was part of the holocaust, a Nazi. When do become children of the dammed, apologizing at every turn for sins committed by another? A life and soul are shaped differently once someone tells you the real version of the story.
I wish I had had more time with my grandfather , he and I could have talked long hours about the whys and decisions that shaped an era of bloodshed and tears, and later rebirth and reconstruction of a life. Without him I have spent years looking into a mirror and trying to find the answer , why wasn't he the Jew I loved, why was he the other? And from that discovery I have shaped my own self so different from when I once started.
It wasn't a secret that certain things we were not allowed to uncover in my house, my mother always says , "if you dig up the past be prepared to get dirty", that is very true. Eleven years ago I started finding letters and documents containing information about someone I never knew, my grandfather. My father once had told me Ernst had found refuge in Italy during the WWII since our family had suffered with the holocaust , the truth is that he had been exiled in Italy because he was part of the holocaust, a Nazi. When do become children of the dammed, apologizing at every turn for sins committed by another? A life and soul are shaped differently once someone tells you the real version of the story.
I wish I had had more time with my grandfather , he and I could have talked long hours about the whys and decisions that shaped an era of bloodshed and tears, and later rebirth and reconstruction of a life. Without him I have spent years looking into a mirror and trying to find the answer , why wasn't he the Jew I loved, why was he the other? And from that discovery I have shaped my own self so different from when I once started.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)