Lilacs out of the Dead Ground

Publiziert am 2011/10/16 von Aileen

In his wonderful book about translation, Quasi dasselbe mit anderen Worten, Umberto Eco discusses the problem of translating allusions with an example from one of his own books, where he quotes “In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo” from T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. The quotation is obviously not a problem in the English translation, and Eliot’s work seems to be familiar enough in other languages (presumably at least among Eco’s readers) that the quotation is recognizable. I think it was the Russian translator, however, who was completely mystified by the allusion and could make no sense of it in the context. I have felt reminded of this story (and also of the fact that I can’t remember whom I lent that book to, by the way), every time someone else reacts to the title of Christopher’s new album, “Lilacs out of the Dead Ground”.

Some people immediately recognize it as a quotation from T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”, but are clearly not quite sure why Christopher would use it. Other people, who are just happy to hear that Christopher has made a new album, are apparently a bit puzzled by it and ask what it means. Admittedly, it is probably not really a very obvious title for leftist political hip hop music, and I somehow doubt that Mr. Eliot himself would approve, but I think it works. Listening to the words, it seems that Christopher has been paying attention, that he can name situations of injustice and corruption, but also think about what people need in this world. Especially now, with protests spreading all over the world, with more and more people taking a stand for the importance of what people need to be able to live together, against greed and exploitation and corruption, Christopher adds his voice to the many who are speaking up, speaking out, and I find that encouraging. It also matters very much to me that he has been thinking very seriously about the roots of hip hop music in resistance against oppression, recognizing his own very privileged position and that he is not himself oppressed in any way, understanding that he cannot speak for others, but only with those who are oppressed. Sometimes that can mean collaborating with people who have different perspectives, and sometimes it means just shutting up and getting out of the way.

Christopher’s friend, our friend, Leo, made the first cover for the CD, and I still find it so beautiful. I admit that I noticed I couldn’t actually read it, but since I am accustomed to not being able to read graffiti, that didn’t really bother me. I assumed that people who would want to listen to it would be able to read it, but apparently there was considerable controversy about that. In response to this controversy and the crisis it entailed, since it was already so late, Paddy ended up making a new cover within twenty-four hours. As impressed as I was again by Paddy’s abilities, I felt even more reassured to hear that the boys can and do still look after one another. As much as I love Paddy’s cover, though, I hope that Christopher will still find an opportunity to use Leo’s too, because it really is beautiful.

For me, though, the title “Lilacs out of the Dead Ground” has an additional, very personal meaning. During the time when Christopher was so often in and out of the hospital, he had long hair. After each stay in the hospital with a high fever and delirious with pain, his hair was a horribly tangled, matted mess. When the pain began to subside, we would spend whole afternoons in the living room together, and as I tried to gently, carefully untangle and smooth his hair, we listened to hiphop music together and in between, we read poetry. I learned a great deal from Christopher then about hip hop music, learned to appreciate the poetry of the texts and how the music is made and the skill involved in putting the texts and music together, how hard it can be to get it just right, how wonderful it is when it all comes together. And being able to share with him the poetry that has always been so important to me – in both English and German – still feels like a precious gift. Countering pain with poetry – in every sense.

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Changing Spaces – Reprise

Publiziert am 2011/10/09 von Aileen

By chance, on the day that Paddy was to drive our car to Vienna to move his things into his new flat in Vienna, we were woken very early by the postman, who delivered a very large box addressed to Christopher. The large box turned out to contain several smaller boxes, each surrounded by packing material, at the core of which was a tea pot with matching sugar bowl and milk pitcher that had belonged to Grandma. When Grandma died and we were all asked what we would like to have that had belonged to her, Christopher requested the tea pot that Grandpa had bought for Grandma in Ireland, but we had meanwhile all forgotten about it.

Paddy was happy to claim the boxes for packing, but at that point it also became clear that Paddy, our tea connoisseur, had no tea pot of his own. While Paddy was packing, I went to the office to work, but I was restless and distracted all day, so at some point in the afternoon, I gave up. I went across the street to Paddy’s favorite tea shop in Linz, where the lovely young owner helped me to pick out a tea pot for him, which she packed up together with his favorite tea and her good wishes, and I got home with it just in time to help carry boxes and bags downstairs to be squeezed into the car. In the end, there was no way to get everything into the car, so when Paddy set off for Vienna, Christopher and I carried the remaining boxes and bags upstairs again.

The room that had been the boys’ room for so many years remained in this state of arrested chaos until Peter borrowed a VW bus from a friend the following week, and Paddy was able to move the rest of his belongings to Vienna.

Leaving me with an empty room and a mind full of memories.

Although I was starting to imagine what this room would eventually look like and what I would like to do with it, it was hard to know where to begin. Although Paddy had painted two walls a lovely shade of green after Christopher moved out, after he took his desks, shelves and posters to Vienna, the dire state of the other two walls became glaringly obvious. They really needed painting, but the prospect of undertaking that task by myself did not appeal to me in any way. Then two young friends came to my rescue and happily agreed to paint the wall for me. It seemed a bit absurd to ask two talented graffiti artists to paint a wall white and just leave it, but as artists they know their material and did an excellent job. I enjoyed listening to them imagining what they could do with a white wall, but in the end they helped me assemble book shelves and put them in front of the wall, instead of fantastical painting on it. When Peter came home and found his favorite crime mystery novels neatly arranged together on the new shelves, he was so pleased that, to my surprise, I have not heard a single complaint about things being moved.

Between the paint, the shelves and a few other odds and ends, I quickly ran out of money for any further new furnishings, so the old black couch with a white cover on it will have to do for now, as will Paddy’s old primary school desk that I dragged up from the cellar some time ago. So the room is not exactly as I imagined it, but it is good enough for a start: as a guest room, as a writing room for me.

In a way, it is ironic that the room as returned to me now – or I to the room. When we first moved into this flat, when Christopher was just over a year old, seven months before Paddy was born, this room was designated as my room: for sewing, writing, keeping things safe from small people. Christopher’s – and then also Paddy’s – room was the one in the back with the window to the balcony. After the first winter, however, it became obvious that our building was badly constructed and poorly insulated, as the dampness in the children’s room was so bad that the floor started warping and mold was appearing on the wall. I hadn’t really fully taken possession of my so-called workroom yet, so switching the rooms didn’t seem to matter much. Soon after that, as Peter and I both became more and more interested in the Internet and Linux and trying out running a small network, “my” workroom became the computer room, which it still remains.

Since the computers at our house require an entire room for themselves, Christopher and Paddy always shared this front room, even though it is not even big enough for two beds, which is why they always had bunk beds and everyone spent more time in the large, bright living room. In short, trying to occupy space for myself in this household has been an ongoing challenge for the past twenty years. As Virginia Woolf stated, a woman needs money and room of her own to write. I’m not sure about the money, but now I’ve got a room of my own for writing.

In the meantime, Grandma’s tea pot, a delightfully kitschy set of white china sprinkled with green shamrocks with a gold-painted tiny pagoda-shaped knob on top, which traveled from Ireland to Albuquerque to Texas and back to Albuquerque and from there to Linz, has arrived safely in Vienna, where it now lives happily in the kitchen of Christopher’s shared flat in the sixth district, surrounded by political slogans, coffee cups in need of washing, and overflowing ashtrays. Paddy now lives happily in a large bright room in a newly renovated flat in an old building in a colorful neighborhood, which he shares with a childhood friend, although they are still in search of a third flat-mate. When I went to visit them, I enjoyed having my grown-up sons show me around the city and explain to me how it works. They have both decided to study in Vienna now, so Paddy has registered as a student of musicology and computer science, while Christopher has registered to study English (“British and American Studies”), although they both intend to pursue their other interests in film and music at the same time.

 

 

After spending quite a bit of time going through old photos, I finally managed to narrow my selection of favorites down to a number small enough to put into frames and hang on the wall. With my memories of the boys’ childhood and teen years now externalized and fixed on the wall, I have cleared mental space as well as physical space to focus on … what? At this point, I have the feeling I have either forgotten how to write, or else I simply have nothing to say for myself. But at least now I have time and space to figure it out.

 

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To be continued …

Publiziert am 2011/09/04 von Aileen

When I accidentally knocked this blog offline trying to update it and then wasn’t able to fix it for over a month, I was beginning to think it might be a sign that it’s time to give it up. The original purpose, of course, which was to provide updates about Christopher’s illness, has thankfully been obsolete since May 2006. The subsequent transformation into a kind of form of entertainment for me in allowing me an opportunity to simply amuse myself in writing trivial posts about everyday life has worked well for years. But now my everyday life does not really involve my two sons, and if I’m not blogging as Christopher and Patrick’s mother, I’m not sure I have that much to say for myself.

Now that the blog is up and running again, though, I find it looks very inviting. So much so, that I’m sitting here looking at it and thinking about what to write instead of going to the symposium I had planned to attend today.

The Ars Electronica Festival is on again in Linz now. For so many years, it was such a vitally important part of my life. During the years when I worked on the book for the competition Prix Ars Electronica, I enjoyed sitting in on the jury meetings, listening to experts – many of them interesting and friendly people that I felt privileged to become acquainted with – as they discussed what they felt was important, a kind of overall view of digital and media art. Translating and editing the artists’ statements about their work was a different view then, often very personal and passionate. When work on the book was finished and it was time to start setting up the exhibition, it was fascinating to hear from the technical set-up team (including Peter) about their understanding of the works, how they were made, how convincing or obscure they seemed just by themselves. Moving right along from there, I worked with the gallery education staff on their texts in English, what they wanted to say about each of the works, which ones meant the most to them, which artists they found most interesting to work with. Then, when everything was set up and the festival started, I enjoyed going through the exhibition with festival guests, hearing their impressions and their informed views on the individual works, the overall exhibition and digital and media art in general.

Going through this same process year after year was a brilliant education in art, something that I am still grateful for. After I stopped working on the Prix book, the festival was still important to me, because I still felt – in some small way – a part of that “scene”. And of course the festival still brings interesting people to Linz.

But I wasn’t here for the festival the past three years. It was not a part of my life, it simply didn’t exist for me. In September 2008, I was supposed to fly to London for a presentation and return to Linz with other people from London for the festival. When I had to suddenly change my plans and fly to Michigan instead, nothing else mattered. London, Linz, Ars Electronica – everything else simply ceased to exist. In September 2009 my friend Ruth came to Linz by train from London, and we planned to spend a few days at the festival together and continue on by train to Istanbul for the Eclectic Tech Carnival there. When plans for a memorial for Amy had to be canceled because Mother’s health took a turn for the worse, and she was not expected to live more than a few hours, a few days at the most, the Ars Electronica Festival dropped off the bottom of my list of priorities. It felt strange to get on that train to Istanbul with no way of knowing whether my mother would still be alive or not by the next time I would be reachable again. Then last year, the Ars Electronica Festival never even made it onto my list of priorities at all, because I went to Michigan again to help scatter Amy’s ashes at last on the second anniversary of her death. That was important, calming and healing – nothing else mattered.

Now it is 2011, Ars Electronica is on again in Linz, and I am here with not a family emergency in sight (knock on wood). It’s here, yet it still feels so far away, disconnected. When I opened my work calendar last Monday and saw that the week would end on 2 September, I felt disheartened, blocked. All week that date just seemed to be waiting to pounce on me, and I could see no escape. When Friday finally came, I gave up fighting the memories and just let them play like a film in my mind over and over and over again. I consoled myself with the thought that although the dates 7 January and 11 May are still – and will always be – significant, I no longer feel blocked or needing to cry every year on those dates. I also remember feeling confused earlier this year, when people started posting tributes to Douglas Adams on the tenth anniversary of his death. I remembered that Douglas Adams died on the same date as my father, but I would have sworn it was only one year later, not three. Maybe a period of three years also has some significance in the process of mourning. Somehow I found that an encouraging thought, even as I put on the same clothes I wore for Amy’s memorial in Michigan, along with the shoes I had to buy there because I couldn’t find mine in the hectic of packing, with the addition of a necklace and earrings that had belonged to her.

Although I wasn’t feeling very motivated to go to Ars Electronica, I managed to make an effort and found it was worth the effort. It felt comfortable, familiar, a place where I belong. All the knowledge and experiences I have gained over the years are still there, and I’m sure I will find a way to make use of them. Having relived the nightmares of my childhood in the course of my mother dying, it felt like a welcome confirmation that that childhood is long gone now, because I can walk into a room at an international conference, recognize people, be recognized, simply walk over and join a conversation, or just stand on the side and watch for a bit. This is me now, this is my life, and it is good.

So although I haven’t seen much of Ars Electronica this year, I’m back now, and I’m ready to go on from here.

One next step is that Paddy has announced he is moving entirely to Vienna on Wednesday, day after tomorrow. I don’t think I’m going to think about that until I actually find myself confronted with an empty room, however. One step at a time.

Veröffentlicht unter Aileen, General, home, work | Hinterlasse einen Kommentar

Family Crossing Europe

Publiziert am 2011/04/19 von Aileen

The Crossing Europe Film Festival Linz ended yesterday, and looking at my work calendar (and my bank account), there are other things I should be doing right now, but somehow I don’t feel quite ready to rejoin the rest of the world yet.

Since the first festival was held in 2004, I have worked on the catalogue and translated newsletters and press releases, and Peter has done the network administration to make sure all the computers keep working together, even under the pressure of massive access when the festival starts. This year we further expanded family participation, as Christopher was invited to act as MC for the Awards Presentation again, and Paddy’s film was selected to be shown in the Local Artists section. Not to leave anyone out, Seth then stepped in to operate a subtitle projection machine for two screenings of a film in German. All present and accounted for.

Five people trying to do very different jobs all in the same – exhilarating, overwhelming – context is not a simple matter. Trying to find the right balance between taking my sons seriously, appreciating what they do and do well, and going into embarrassing mother mode is not a simple matter either. Let’s all take a wild ride on an emotional roller coaster together.

Peter and I share a long, long history with this festival. When we first got married and bought a car (our old “yellow shoebox”), we were happily able to escape the dismal cinema program in Linz and drive to Freistadt, a town closer to the Czech border, where more interesting films were shown in the original language (including English) with subtitles. Given the state of the roads then in the direction of the Czech border, which was still closed at that time, along with my need to be sitting comfortably in my seat before the lights go out in the cinema and the mutually incompatible and conflictingly different understandings of time that Peter and I have always had, it was very fortunate for our relationship that Wolfgang Steininger, who was responsible for the films in Freistadt, started bringing alternative cinema to Linz. This alleviated the necessity of tense, mad dashes to Freistadt. When Wolfgang first told me about the idea of starting a film festival in Linz, I wasn’t entirely convinced that it sounded like a good idea. Most of all, it sounded like a lot of extra work for me, which I wasn’t sure I wanted to do, but which I obviously would do, if Wolfgang asked me to.

As it turned out, the festival was indeed a good idea, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the translation work involved in it for me ever since, even though I still have the feeling I don’t really understand enough about film, and translating simple, but vital practical information for international visitors still poses a huge challenge. Nevertheless, the festival director Christine Dollhofer is high on my personal list of most admired women, and working with the wonderful team she has gathered to run this festival is a privilege that I enjoy every year. I think Peter feels much the same way about the people we work with, although he has a different perspective, of course, since he is looking more at the technical infrastructure side of it than the content. And since this is a festival where even such marginal figures as ourselves enjoy appreciation and recognition, we have always had the pleasure of being provided with festival passes, even if we don’t always get to make much use of them.

When the first festival took place in 2004, Paddy was twelve years old and Christopher thirteen, not quite fourteen. This is generally not an age, when children are inclined to be interested in what their parents are doing, but it means that the boys have largely grown up with and now into the festival. That too is a great privilege. However, it is one thing to be able to offer one’s children access to interesting people and very different ideas. It is something else entirely to deal with them becoming involved themselves – as themselves, not as their parents’ children.

This first came up several years ago, when a film by a young (very young) director from the UK was shown at Kapu, and Peter, Christopher and I went there together to see it. I think that may have been the year that Christopher helped with subtitles for a special series of hip hop videos shown in the festival, but in any case he had ended up in conversation with the young director, and the two of them got along quite well. At Kapu the director introduced me to his parents, explaining that they had also come along to see his film there. Suddenly I found myself in the uncomfortable situation of not knowing how to explain that I was not there at Kapu as Christopher’s mother, it was one of the places I preferred to go without him – one of the places where I could just be Aileen and not “somebody’s mother”. When Christopher first started going out, it took some time to adjust, to renegotiate spaces, figure out which spaces we could share or not. That night at Kapu was one of those moments of renegotiation, although at that point we were still “me and my son”, rather than “Christopher and his mother”, but it was a position I felt I needed to defend against misunderstandings.

Last year, when Christopher was invited to act as MC for the Awards Presentation as a young “Local Artist” just beginning to make a name for himself with his first CD as a hip hop musician and as a spoken word performer, the balance shifted a bit again, but it was still manageable. Just. This year we reached a new level, because not only was Christopher acting as MC again for the Awards Presentation, but with a film in the program Paddy was also competing for one of those awards.

It was an odd feeling to translate the press release for the program press conference this year and find Paddy’s name mentioned in it. It was strange to encounter Patrick Derieg not as Peter and Aileen’s son, but as a young filmmaker from Linz, a Local Artist, the director of a zombie film that has been surprisingly well received. Or maybe it is not that surprising, but since there is no way I can look objectively at what Paddy does, I have the feeling I usually end up oscillating between almost deprecatory reticence and embarrassing enthusiasm.

Following Paddy’s experience at the Youki festival last November, where he received the “Innovative Film Award” for his zombie film (innovative zombies?), but felt more than a little overwhelmed by the attention and the difficulty of speaking in public, he was nervous about Crossing Europe. He was thrilled that his film was selected for screening, but he was nervous about having to talk about it. Very nervous. When Paddy gets nervous, it tends to be contagious. Having worked on the catalogue and translated newsletters and press releases, I assured him that he was unlikely to have to do much talking. The Local Artists section includes an impressive number of highly talented people with considerably more experience than Paddy has yet, many of whom have already been nationally and internationally widely recognized for their work. I didn’t really believe that an eight-minute zombie film by a 19-year-old director would attract all that much attention at an international festival showing 159 other films as well. At some point, however, I started realizing, rather uncomfortably, that just because Paddy is still “my little guy”, that doesn’t mean his film is not to be taken seriously – and it was, in fact, actually in competition with the other Local Artists films. Then I started getting nervous.

Then Christopher arrived, flying in from London, where he has been auditioning at acting schools again. In some ways, perhaps that sounds impressive, but I didn’t have the feeling that his self-confidence was particularly high. But whenever Christopher comes back to Linz now, everyone is happy to see him, and of course that makes Christopher happy too. So my butterfly-brained child returned and started worrying me again, as he has done all his life, flitting cheerfully from one colorful idea to the next without any sign of actually having a plan, but generally having a great time at life’s great party.

At some point, Christopher also realized that Paddy’s film was, in fact, in competition for one of the awards that were to be presented Saturday evening with Christopher as MC. He also realized that he had a last line for the text he was to perform, but not a first line, and the middle was still a bit wobbly. So he started getting nervous too. However, we agreed (or at least Christopher and I agree that we agreed) not to supply any “insider information” at all about the awards in advance. None. I’m still not sure that was the right decision, but it seemed to make the most sense at the time. I think. We each had advance information about the winners because of our respective jobs in the festival, but keeping jobs and family separate seemed to be the right thing to do. Let’s be professional about this. In any case, by the time I got the jury statements to translate on Saturday afternoon and realized that I could stop being nervous on Paddy’s behalf, I had also heard from Christopher that the rehearsal went badly, so I went straight into maternal panic mode that Christopher was going to crash and burn and embarrass himself and everyone else and end up devastated by his failure.

Last weekend I made a new shirt for Christopher to wear for the Awards Presentation. I found a beautiful black fabric that I loved working with, found myself recalling so many sewing tricks that I learned from Bean, and felt quite pleased with myself – until I ran out of black thread Sunday afternoon. Sophie kindly brought me some black thread that evening so I could finish everything else, but I was afraid it wouldn’t be enough for the button holes, so the button holes had to be finished later. That worked fairly well this time, except that I realized too late that the button holes are not exactly in a straight line down the front of the shirt. So there was Christopher on stage with slightly crooked buttons, his mother watching in annoyance about the crooked buttons, but otherwise frozen with a fear of looming disaster (briefly distracted by hearing the jury statements read aloud and wanting to rearrange that sentence again), Paddy wound up close to the point of exploding, and Peter cheerfully, albeit erroneously, convinced that Christopher and I would have told Paddy if he hadn’t won, we hadn’t said anything, ergo Paddy must be about to win an award.

Crash, bang, boom: emotions flying every which way, colliding with disparate roles and responsibilities, bouncing off different expectations and intentions, becoming entangled in miscommunications and misunderstandings. Basically a montage of eight years of European filmmaking exploring manifold facets of familial interrelationships and functions. Pick your favorite film scene – comedy, tragedy, documentary, experimental – I’m sure we covered it at some point during the weekend.

In summary: Paddy did not win an award and Christopher did not make a complete mess of the Awards Presentation (despite his crooked buttons). Once the dust settled, of course it was clear what was really important. When Paddy spoke at the Q&A following the second screeing of the program with his film on Sunday evening, I was impressed by how well he presented himself. He learns fast. Sitting with Paddy and Susi in Solaris afterward, I enjoyed seeing a stranger at another table lean over to get Paddy’s attention and say, “Aren’t you the director of that zombie film? I really liked that one!” On the whole, I think there was just too much tension that had built up over the months, weeks, days, hours before Saturday evening, and it was released too quickly. In the meantime, we have all calmed down. Christopher has gone back to Vienna with clean clothes and cheddar cheese, although he has probably forgotten something else, Peter has gone ski mountaineering with a group of enthusiastic ski mountaineering people, Paddy has gone back to work serving society by looking after residents in an old folks’ home, and I am back in my office, almost ready to focus again on other translating work. My work.

I love working with the Crossing Europe team, but I don’t think I particularly love working with my family. I love being with them, listening to them, sharing in a bit of their lives, but a “family business” is not likely to be an option for anyone. The festival has become very important to me, and one of my favorite parts is that it includes Local Artists, many of whom I know and have worked with, some of whom are friends – and two of which this year were my sons.

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Not quite that quiet

Publiziert am 2011/02/21 von Aileen

Since the last entry in this blog is from October and I haven’t been doing a very good job of keeping up with email correspondence, it probably looks as though I haven’t been doing anything at all. That is not quite true, however.

Apart from still trying to sort out my life and what I want to do with it, apart from still trying to keep up with work, I have at least been doing a little blogging elsewhere.
There is the Furtherfield blog, for example, an amazing platform and network growing out of the inspiring efforts of my friends Ruth Catlow and Marc Garret, where I contribute occasional blog posts (although I would still like to contribute more):
http://www.furtherfield.org/blog/aileen

I also try to keep blogging at least occasionally in German for the Cultural Platform of Upper Austria (KUPF):
http://kupf.at/blogs/term/aderieg

And although I clearly need to make lists to keep better track of other people’s posts, I have developed a very keen appreciation of Twitter:
http://twitter.com/aderieg

So in case anyone has been wondering what’s going on, those are some of the other places where I may be found. As far as my sons are concerned, I’m still working on figuring out what I can post about them, and when I should just leave them to speak up for themselves. In other words, I haven’t quite figured out yet, where this blog is going to go from here, but I am working on it. In the meantime, I have just changed the appearance a bit, but that is also likely to keep changing.

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Leaving Home

Publiziert am 2010/10/05 von Aileen

Last Friday my first-born child left home.

Even though Christopher has only moved to Vienna, even though Vienna is only temporary, the point is that his parents’ home is no longer where he lives. He will come back of course, but when he comes back now, it will only be a visit, a transitional stop at the most. And of course the “goal” of parenting is to eventually let go, to trust this young person to take control of his own life. Nevertheless, after we packed up the car and I stood downstairs watching Christopher and Peter drive off together, I went back upstairs, looked around at the oddly empty spaces left and just sat down to cry for a bit. Letting go is easier said than done.

Watching (more than helping) Christopher pack, I was amused and touched to see what mattered most to him, what he wanted to have around him in the setting of his new life on his own, what he imagined he would need. Most importantly, he decided he needs his books. In recent years, especially during his last year of school, I sometimes complained that his books were costing me a fortune, especially when he came up with long lists of highly obscure (and accordingly expensive) leftist political history books that he absolutely, desperately, urgently needed. But Christopher is my son, my father’s grandson, Juanita Shanahan’s great-grand-nephew – and he loves books. It has always given me great pleasure to see how excited he can be about not only the contents of his books, but also the books as objects, beautiful, tangible objects in their own right. Unfortunately, in the end it wasn’t possible to fit the last box of books into our car along with Christopher’s mattress. Either the mattress or one box of books had to be left behind for the next trip to Vienna, presumably some time in the near future. Hard choice.

Fittingly, perhaps, Christopher packed all his clothes in the large suitcase that Amy bought for her first trip to Europe with her then two-year-old son when Christopher was born. I can’t remember now when or why that suitcase ended up in Austria, but the pink shoelaces that Amy tied around the handle are still attached, and I was happy to see Christopher take it with him. Christopher also packed up some smaller odds and ends of recording equipment and cables in a child-size suitcase with Star Wars pictures on it. I remembered that Amy found that one for me somewhere to transport some of the things I took home with me after Dad died. It was somehow comforting to see Christopher take that one too. And seeing him pack up his collection of Kachina dolls, I felt – superstitiously, whimsically – reassured that he will be protected with the Kachinas to watch over him.

There are so many things that Christopher doesn’t remember. We have looked at pictures, books, various objects together, and I have told him stories again and again about his childhood, and at some level I think he has made connections, but mental images of his own of having lived his own past seem to have been dimmed, if not entirely lost, from anything before meningitis. So as he packed, I had the impression that he associated emotional ties with certain objects, but not the specific memories that could explain those emotional ties. As is probably usually the case with mothers and children, even where memories have not been obscured by a period of pain, when I look at Christopher, I see all the twenty years of his life at once. I have very clear mental images of memories of him as a baby, as a toddler, as a kindergarten child, a young school child, a pre-adolescent, a young teenager, a 15-year-old delirious with pain, a 16-year-old recovering, a secondary school student struggling, an idealistic young leftist intellectual just beginning to spread his wings … As all of these unshared memories came flooding into my mind, I found myself feeling very lonely. I suspect that memories can only really be real, if they are shared. Perhaps that is another good reason why a greater number of people need to share in the life of a child.

When Peter returned from Vienna and found me among the empty spaces, I suggested that I would be happy to help Paddy rearrange the room for himself over the weekend. Peter firmly stated his opinion that Paddy would certainly not want to spend his last free weekend before starting his “service to society” on Monday rearranging furniture. I believe the technical term for that is “projection”.

When Paddy came in on Saturday, he could hardly wait to get started, and we had the bunk beds that the boys have shared for seventeen years disassembled and removed to the basement within about an hour. Moving things around and cleaning kept us busy for the rest of the day. Although I was a bit startled that Paddy and Susi suddenly announced that they were taking a break to go to the cinema, I was relieved that they brought Sascha home with them afterwards. Over the years, I’ve done my share of lifting and moving furniture, so I was happy to leave that to the younger generation, even though it left us with an absolutely classic situation: Susi in the kitchen making soup for the hard-working young men, Peter trapped somewhere in the back making helpful suggestions that were largely being ignored, me helplessly flapping my hands somewhere on the side, and Paddy and Sascha alternately yelping and swearing as they struggled to move the large black couch from the computer room into what is now Paddy’s room. That too unleashed so many memories – of similar situations all the way back to my childhood, watching my father and his brothers and friends move our furniture again.

On Sunday when Paddy and Susi went out for lunch and didn’t come back, because it was a beautiful autumn day and their last free day together, I found myself at home alone again, packing up the few things that Christopher had left behind. In the end, they fit into a shoe box. So that Paddy could turn what had been “the boys’ room” for eighteen years into what is now Paddy’s room, a young person’s room that could be anywhere, in any shared flat, in any city, I started cleaning the dust and traces that Christopher had left behind.

Most of the houses we moved into when I was a child were newly built, where we were the first occupants. The few times that we moved into a house that had previously been inhabited by someone else, I always searched carefully for traces of the previous occupants, some sign that might tell me at least some small story about the people who had lived there before. Conversely, every time we moved out, I always purposely left small traces hidden somewhere inconspicuous, hoping that someone would be curious enough to find them and wonder about me. Perhaps something of that memory was in the back of my mind as we packed up Amy’s things and cleaned her apartment for future residents. I liked Amy’s apartment, when I visited her there in early 2008, before we went to visit Mother “one last time” together. Amy seemed to be in a good place, and I was pleased for her. Cleaning her apartment, I felt that it was important to remove all traces – not a streak on the mirror nor even a fingerprint on the faucet should be left to move the future residents to wonder about who had lived there before them. It was a good space, and I wanted them to be happy there, whoever they might be.

As I cleaned Christopher’s desk, cleaned the window, washed the curtains, vacuumed the corners where the shelves had been, repressing the memory of cleaning Amy’s apartment felt like hard work, but I didn’t want to allow that association to form in my mind. Christopher doesn’t live here anymore, but he is not out of reach. Now Paddy lives here in this room – not so much with his parents, the people with whom he happens to share a kitchen and a bathroom and a television.

With all these memories, it is time for me to remember now what it was that I might have liked to do all those years when I felt there was no time at all left for me. I have that time now. As children grow up and move on, their parents become their past. Being someone else’s past is not enough, though. Now I need to be my own present as well – not only because I want to have something to say for myself, when my sons come to visit.

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Here we are now, late August again

Publiziert am 2010/08/22 von Aileen

Perhaps the real test of the progress I have made in recovering my ability to concentrate will be when I am able to blog regularly again – both here and on the other blogs where I am supposed to be a regular contributor.

Here we are again now in late August. For years (how many years actually?) late August has always been a time for taking stock and realizing that I have not achieved the rest and rejuvenation that I had wanted at the beginning of summer. Now we no longer have to face the exertion of the imminent start of school, but the beginning of September has acquired a different significance for me in the meantime. Last year all the plans for commemorating the first anniversary of Amy’s death had to suddenly be put on hold when Mother took a turn for the worse and was expected to live only a few more hours, a few days at the most. I still called her as usual that Sunday, just after the priest had come, as everyone was gathered around her. When she sounded happy, almost giddy, I suggested that even as a theologian, it would not have occurred to me to celebrate the Last Rites with a party, but it seemed like a wonderful way to die, so I congratulated her on that. More than six months too early, as it turned out.

This year I am going to Michigan the first week in September, where we will commemorate the second anniversary of Amy’s death by scattering her ashes at last. It is time to come to an end of dying to go on living. At the moment I’m trying not to think too much about what we will be doing in Michigan, concentrating instead on the loved ones I will see there. I was very happy to hear that the whole contingent from Albuquerque is coming, so I am very much looking forward to enjoying a drink with Kris, being able to have a whole conversation with Katrina, instead of just the disjointed little boxes on Facebook (although I am grateful for that contact), and being able to hear from Russell himself, not just about him from others (although I am grateful for that as well). I also get to meet Emma in person at last, which is certainly something I look forward to with great pleasure. Now the only person that I will not have seen this year is Charlotte. Somehow I think we must find a way to rectify that situation, although I enjoyed hearing from Christopher about how much he enjoyed staying with his cousin in London.

In the meantime, in case anyone was still wondering, Christopher was sadly not taken at Guildhall. It turns out that the odds were even greater than we realized at first – about 3700 applications, from which 150 were chosen for the second round (including Christopher), from which 28 lucky winners were selected – so we still think it was a great achievement that he made it into the second round of auditions at two of the three schools he applied to at first try. Of course, this still requires more explanation than would be the case with a simple “Yes!” or “Hurrah!”, but he learned a great deal from the process and is determined to continue trying.

Also in the meantime, Paddy made a zombie film for a competition for short zombie films. Paddy’s film, as it turns out, also made it into the second round, but not the final shortlist, from which the winner will be announced in September. Considering that Paddy is only 18 and this is basically only his second film (although he is not sure himself that he really wants to count the first one), this is also still quite an achievement. His film has also been selected for screening at a new “Slash Festival” in Vienna, he has entered it in a youth film festival in Upper Austria (where Christopher has been invited to moderate again), and of course he will enter it in the Crossing Europe festival as well. The film exists now, it has been well received by everyone who has seen it (I will also be taking subtitled DVDs with me to Michigan), it will be seen by more people – but of course this is still not as simple and straightforward as just winning a competition at first try.

As an old leftist feminist, I have always been happy that my sons are not competitive, not fixed on “winning” or “excelling”. Sometimes, though, when I read articles and blogs about social media, which so often stress self-promotion, when I see so much self-promotion everywhere I look, it seems, then of course I start to wonder whether I have put my sons at a disadvantage by encouraging them not to be competitive. On the other hand, when I think about the dire state that the world is in today, brought about by competitiveness, individualism, greed, then I feel that the world really needs more people like my sons, and I hope that there are many more and that they will be able to find each other. One of the things I enjoy most about listening to my sons talk about their activities is the appreciation and admiration that they are able to express for others. Filmmaking is what Paddy wants to do, and it was a great joy to watch him doing it, but it was also heart-warming to hear his enthusiasm about everyone who took part in this adventure. He wants to make films, but he is well aware that films are not made by one person alone, and I think the kind of appreciation he is capable of is important. Christopher, too, never seems to be quite as happy as when he is working together with other people, whether on stage or making music or organizing something.

As they set out on their own into this dark world as young adults, that gives me some hope that they will be able to survive – and perhaps even make a positive contribution to a world that is a little bit better.

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A time for dreaming, a time for … what now?

Publiziert am 2010/05/16 von Aileen

Christopher slamming his poetry
The dreaming started in August 2008, or at least that was when I first became aware of it. That was when Christopher started showing me the acting schools he was interested in applying to and talking about how to go about applying. That was before he passed the exam that allowed him to continue into the final year of school without repeating another year. It was also before Amy died. Yet Christopher continued dreaming, even attempted to inject a little realistic planning into his dreams. He decided not to start applying until he had actually finished school, so that he would have time to prepare properly. He gave up on the idea of applying to Pace University, because the costs prohibited even dreaming about being accepted there. During his trip to Ireland last summer, he realized that the course he was interested in at Trinity College wasn’t being offered, so he couldn’t apply for it. That left three acting schools that he began applying to last fall: Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and Guildhall School of Music & Drama. How much of a dreamer do you have to be to apply only to three schools that choose only about 20 students from among some 2000 applicants?

Of course, the dreaming didn’t just start in August 2008. It started about ten years before that. Wanting to go into theater has been one of the few constants in Christopher’s life since he was about eight years old. First and foremost, we have the Mason family to thank for that: from the time they were five and seven years old respectively, the boys’ summers were spent in Wilhering watching preparations for the baroque opera productions of Opera da Camera. Watching Henry work first inspired Christopher to want to learn to spell and to be able to write in both German and English and then motivated him to join a children’s theater group. When Christopher became unhappy with the children’s theater group in the second year, because he said some of the kids just wanted to be on stage so that everyone could look at them and that wasn’t fun or interesting, I thought that at least he had the right motivation. And over the years, he has had enough contact with actors and theater productions that I feel reasonably confident he has no illusions about what a hard job it really is. A glamorous career is one thing he is not really dreaming about.

From the beginning, Christopher wanted to go to the LISA – Linz International School Auhof, because not only is English the language of instruction, but most of all because drama is a required subject from the first year on. Both of the boys were incredibly fortunate to have had such an inspiring teacher as Beverly Flower-Hofer and benefited tremendously from her encouragement.

Nevertheless, when it came to the point of actually submitting applications to acting schools, just the way the questions were phrased indicated that the usual course of procedure requires multiple rounds of applications to numerous schools and intense and extensive preparation to get past the first round. The audition procedure itself is apparently part of the experience required to prepare for going into theater professionally. In fact, Christopher did learn something from his experience of the first audition in Bristol, where he was not invited to a recall audition. After that, I started getting nervous.

As a feminist mother of sons, it has always been important to me that my sons should be aware of how incredibly privileged they are, that they must learn not to occupy too much (physical, acoustic, atmospheric) space, so as not to block access for people less privileged – to learn to share all different kinds of spaces equitably. Of course, I think my children are wonderful, but I wanted them to realize that many other people might be equally bright, clever and talented, but forced by different circumstances to devote more of their creative talents simply to survival at different levels. Seeing Christopher facing rounds of auditions, however, I started to worry that, having been taught from an early age to stand back and leave room for others, he might not be assertive enough, self-confident enough to cope with that kind of competitive situation. So I worried that it would be my fault, if my poor child got run over and flattened in the process. That is, of course, one of the occupational hazards of being a mother: no matter what you do, it’s going to turn out to be wrong in some way.

Last week Christopher was in the UK again. First he flew to London, from there he took an overnight coach to Glasgow for his audition at the Royal Scottish Academy, then back to London for his audition at the Guildhall School the day after that. Much to everyone’s happy surprise, in Glasgow he was one of the ten people chosen from twenty-five applicants that day to stay for a further audition in the afternoon. At the end of the afternoon, he was not among the five finalists chosen, but he returned to London happy to have made it into the second round, happy to have made such interesting acquaintances, and feeling encouraged by the kind words of the decision-makers. He left thinking about how to approach the next round of applications and auditions next year. Even though he still had one more audition, somehow I felt that he was right in thinking, that was it.

It wasn’t. It’s not quite over yet. At the end of the auditions at Guildhall School the next day, Christopher was the only person in his group to be invited for a recall audition the end of May. The odds that he might be accepted there are certainly a bit better – now 200 people vying for 24 places, rather than some 2000 – but it still doesn’t really seem possible. At this point, I’m not sure which looks more intimidating, the list of notable alumni or the fees and tuitions section of the school web site. What is only slowly dawning on me, however, is that Christopher applied to only three prestigious acting schools and actually made it into the second round at two of them – at first try. Despite being Christopher’s mother and convinced that he is wonderful, I’m still finding this a bit difficult to grasp.

Next round of maternal anxiety: will this achievement go to his head? Instead of being too little assertive and self-confident, is there a danger he could become conceited and self-important now? After all, it is still his highly privileged position that gives him an opportunity to get this far. But I am reminding myself that Christopher is still essentially Christopher, and being insufferably conceited has never been one of his character traits. Most of all, though, it is so beautiful to see all the warm and enthusiastic encouragement from so many different people who all know and love Christopher too.

Does it matter whether Christopher is ultimately accepted at the Guildhall School? I’m not sure. I am sure that he will continue with his love of theater in any case. I am sure that he will benefit from the wonderful opportunity of simply being invited to take part in two days of intensive theater work. What he does after those two days will be decided when he has been notified about whether he has been accepted or not: specifically on 28th May, his twentieth birthday.

While Christopher is working hard to prepare, the rest of us can just enjoy twelve more days of dreaming.

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Sometimes it takes a long time to say good-bye

Publiziert am 2010/04/08 von Aileen

My brother Daniel called me in my office yesterday to tell me that Mother died peacefully in her sleep during the night. Unlike Amy’s death a year and a half ago, this was not unexpected, not a sudden life-changing shock. Nevertheless, it means that I am technically an orphan now, bereft of both parents as well as my beloved little sister. In a sense, of course, that simply indicates that I am an old woman, at least old enough not to actually need my parents. Thinking of my own children, though, I hope that being needed is not the only reason for living.

Scattered across various computers and bookmarking systems, I have a multitude of documents and links relating to Mother’s illnesses, her mental and physical state at various times, her care needs. Almost all of them were things that Amy sent me. Since Amy’s death, I have been calling my mother every Sunday at five to talk as long as she was able to – always about an hour in the beginning, then half an hour, in recent weeks only about fifteen minutes. I’m sure I never understood as much as Amy did, but I hope we were able to cover everything she still needed to talk about so that she could die peacefully last night.

Now someone will need to take Mother’s ashes and the small container with part of Amy’s ashes to San Antonio to be interred with Dad at Fort Sam Houston. I have sometimes thought that person might be me, but it doesn’t appear that that will be the case now.
Sometimes it feels as though we have been saying good-bye to Mother almost since Dad died twelve years ago. In a sense, perhaps we have. But even the longest good-bye eventually comes to an end – and still feels unexpected.

So now I find myself faced with the choice of being an orphan or just an old woman – or maybe both. Or maybe something else?

In the meantime, I am grateful to be able to leave the writing of a proper obituary to my darling niece, while I try to figure it out. Somehow I forgot to prepare for that while I was busy saying good-bye.

Ina Ruth Whitlock Derieg, 15 December 1934 - 7 April 2010

Ina Ruth Whitlock Derieg,
15 December 1933 - 6 April 2010

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This will still take some practice

Publiziert am 2010/03/24 von Aileen

Peter & Oscar
More and more, I like to imagine that Peter and I could someday be good grandparents together, but we still need some practice with other people’s children first. And we are very fortunate that there are wonderful people in our lives willing to share their children with us. I am quite happy to take on the role of an adjunct grandmother, and for now it gives me the greatest pleasure to simply watch Peter with some of the very small people we are fortunate enough to count among our friends.

Being with these very small people naturally evokes many memories of the different times and phases and situations of life with Christopher and Paddy over the past twenty years. From the beginning, I have always been especially grateful to Jean for sharing with me her experiences and reflections on raising two English-speaking sons very close in age in Austria. Watching Henry and Orlando grow up always provided a source of encouragement for me and wonderful role models for Christopher and Paddy. I see that as a kind of gift that I would like to pass on, but I think I still need to practice finding the right measure – what is meaningful to pass on, when am I talking too much.

I’m afraid I also still need to practice finding the right balance between sharing memories and maintaining some discretion.

When human beings are still very small and have not yet developed extensive verbal skills, the temptation to interpret their actions and characters on the basis of one’s own preferences and prejudices is great – and not always entirely misplaced, I think. This becomes a source of potential conflicts, however, as small human beings become bigger and more articulate and begin to obstinately insist on interpreting their own actions and characters. And sometimes these respective interpretations clash. When Christopher reached an age where parents necessarily and inevitably become embarrassing, for instance, I decided that since there was no way for me to not be embarrassing, I might as well embrace the situation and enjoy indulging in the luxury of being quite uninhibitedly embarrassing. Christopher put up with this, because Christopher has always good-naturedly (occasionally less so) put up with a lot of things all his life. Paddy has generally been less indulgent and seems to have somewhat stricter notions about what is or is not acceptable behavior on the part of his parents, although he can also be incredibly kind and gentle and competent in a crisis, as I have had reason to appreciate. On the whole, I have the impression, although I may be mistaken, that I may allow myself a greater scope of interpretations when recounting my memories of my children in conjunction with interpreting human beings who are very small now. I have an uncomfortable suspicion, however, that the boundaries may shift depending on the context, so I’m not sure how much freedom of interpretation I may justifiably claim, when it is a matter of my meanwhile grown sons constructing their own identities.

For example, now, while Paddy is happily exploring Japan, where the vividness of his impressions appears to have left him bereft of all punctuation apart from exclamation marks, his girlfriend joined us last night for dinner to celebrate my birthday. This is a lovely young person, who is obviously interested in Paddy, who clearly enjoys hearing about Paddy. So how many stories is Paddy’s mother allowed to tell then? How do we determine the boundaries, where my memories might conflict or at least not entirely correlate with his current self-representation? I remember being quite fascinated, for example, by his penchant for developing entire, elaborate imaginary worlds and trying to grasp some idea of his motivation for doing so. The imaginary worlds developed by a four-year-old or a seven-year-old might be astonishing, though, in ways that are inappropriate to the world of an eighteen-year-old, even though someone especially interested in Paddy might be quite interested in hearing about them. I’m afraid there are boundaries involved here that Paddy and I still need to negotiate.

All of this is still going to take some practice yet.

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