Ancestor Night

The holiday that we know as Halloween has always been associated with death. It was originally a night when spirits were believed to return to this world (think of the halloween images of the ghost and even zombies). Therefore, it could be seen as a time to honor the dead, especially the ancestors (Think Dia de los Muertos).

• Ancient Origins of Halloween
• Halloween (Wikipedia)
• Samhain (Wikipedia)
• Dia de los Muertos (Wikipedia)

So with all of this emphasis on the dead and ancestors this time of year, I once again find myself feeling root-less and not even knowing where to look for them at.

***

Last weekend I went to a wedding. My boyfriend and I got to spend the four hour ride with my sister and brother-in-law (and two and a half of it with their black lab). Luckily, my BIL can keep us entertained with his stories.

I listened to his stories come alive as we got closer to his home. Stories of his family and his family's land. Three generations all in one spot. Stories of bars and guns, hunting, and rice farming. It was quite educational really, I had never thought about what rice actually looks like as it grows. It made me realize how disjointed I am from the land. I don't even know where my food comes from or what it naturally looks like. I have this need to get back to the old ways. This stems from me trying to discover my roots. I want to go back home to the Home that I originally come from. A more natural state, I suppose you could say, where connections to the land and ancestors were important.

I envy my brother-in-law's stories. They connect him to the land that he grew up on and the land connects him to his ancestors.

My jack-o-lantern will be lit tomorrow, to guide the spirits that may visit this realm, but will any of my ancestors visit? And will I recognize them if they do?





Halloween Pumpkin Maker & MySpace Layouts

The Stupor

Well, my personal essay seems to have gone pretty well. I actually enjoyed writing that essay. But now I have to get back to the million other things that are on my mind. It seems like I have so many things sitting around in my head right now. I can't focus on anything. It's like walking around without my glasses on (and only people who wear glasses full-time know what I mean). It's disorienting.

***

In my conference, I talked about how I was still a little scared and timid about stepping out of the box and into the personal essay. I want to keep at least one toe inside the box. I was asked why, and maybe it goes back to that whole "you can never go home" thing. If I step too far out, can I ever get back in? Or will I want to? Maybe I'm afraid of liking it outside of the box and, as we've heard over and over, that can be scholarly suicide. I think (and some people may/may not see this) that I have "outsider tendencies." Maybe these tendencies come from my fuzzy lineage, and not really feeling like I have a home and/or ancestors that I can connect with. I constantly feel outside.

It must be the risk of academic suicide that still scares me. I know that we have written a personal essay already, but it was for a personal essay class so the risk was not just minimal but nonexistent. I suppose that it is the idea of taking this type of writing outside of this class that frightens the crap out of me. Hopefully this class will inspire some more Courage in me.

***

I wonder if it is just the turning of the seasons. It seems I always fall into this stupor around this time of year. Perhaps it is because the weather makes me want to be outside when my daily life confines me inside most of the time. I love being outside during the Fall. It's so gray and soothing that I get lost in the meditative-ness of it all. So if you see me around and try to talk to me, don't be surprised or offended if I just stare at you blankly. I have simply been stricken with the season.

Connecting

In class we talked about how personal a blog can be. It all comes down to what the writer wants to share. We do need to be careful, though, of becoming too personal and also of becoming not personal enough. An interesting blog (IMHO) is one that is personal enough to allow the reader to connect to the blogger through shared experience. If the blogger is too distant she runs the risk of "blog bore," (the "so what?" question) yet if the blogger is too personal it leaves the reader feeling as if she has been, as Enid Pope calls it, "word vomitted" on.

In this world of cell phones, and internet access, and cell phones with internet access, we don't have to be alone for one minute (although I am a BIG advocate of alone time). There is always a way to connect with someone if you want. And LOTS of people want to. Just look on any blog site (or myspace) and you will find OODLES of people spilling their guts out on the internet, and detailing every moment of their life. But no one (except maybe their real-life, flesh-and-bone friends) will read these blogs past the initial click (I know no one ever reads mine).

That's not to say that those blogs don't belong there, or that no one should write them, but they just don't serve the same purpose. Perhaps it is best to think of them as disposable, or like that trashy magazine that you browse in the grocery store line, it's entertains you while you stand there but you never actally buy it (or I don't know, maybe you do).

We also talked about ethics in personal writing. This is a difficult subject for a lot of people, including me. How do I write my story while being ethical in regards to my family? My story (the one that I am writing here, about my history) is inherently tied to my family. Looking back, how can I be truthful about my relationships with them in a way that is ethical? Perhaps I'll just say it's tricky and leave it at that. But do I owe you, the reader, more than that?

Walking with Thoreau and Barraza

In our assigned reading for last week, we read a piece by Santa Barraza about the significance of the maguey. Barraza writes: "The maguey is the symbol of home, of hogar" (20). I once again felt the way essayists often times connect to geography as a sense of home, and how my own map is so blank. Even though Barraza writes about a geography that I am familiar with, I cannot connect. A few feeble attempts to connect with the landscape were squeezed out by the nature walk that we took as a class last night:

"bits of leftover sunlight mixed with waxing moonlight on patches of water, left on the land by the tide"

"the branches envelope me, and truth blossoms-- red berries, small but abundant"

"there is a lack of clouds, except on the horizon line, making the moon bright and the shadows deepen"

and finally, inspired by Thoreau's "Walking", "I was not given the lushness of forests, but the stickiness of wetlands."



But most of the tidbits I collected are not focused on anything unique to the region. The sun and the moon shine everywhere and trees are common. I failed to connect to the distinctiveness of my home.

I was (and I am grateful for this) able to connect with nature on a broad scale. Many of my classmates were 'skeptical' as we labeled it in class, and were unable to see nature without also seeing the encroachment of man on nature. Although we were on a paved trail surrounded by apartment buildings and being passed by joggers, I was able to clear my mind of all of that. Maybe I figured that if I couldn't have what Thoreau had, then maybe this was good enough and I should try my hardest to see it as a true Nature Walk.

The Beginning

Well, I suppose the best place to begin is the beginning. But which beginning do I begin at? It seems as though there is so much to tell and yet no good place to begin. Perhaps I should begin with the spark that inspired this blog.

I recently attended a reading by Stephanie Elizondo-Griest. She spoke a lot about finding your roots, and returning to the Motherland. Her speaking and her writing have once again set aflame my thoughts of my ancestry. How can I visit the Motherland when I don't know where that is?

I don't know much about my lineage on either side of my family. I know that my father's side of the family is Czech. My mother always claimed to be Irish, but I'm a little skeptical of that. I think it might be closer to Britain. Although, how can I trace my mother's lineage, when all of the surnames are from males? It is impossible to trace from woman to woman to woman very far back. I believe that this is one reason I will choose to retain my last name (via hyphenation) if I get married. I want future generations to be able to get one step further in tracing the female members of the tree.

So that is how it all began, or got rekindled. Now, with new inspiration and new vehicles such as this blog and the personal academic essay that I have to write for my class on "The Personal Essay" I hope to explore and maybe even write my own history and ancestry.