The Antique

It has been a very long two weeks here in California and I find myself (of course) in the midst of many, many a new project.

I spent much of the last week on an extended road trip with M. Benjamin and his family--the two of us first travelled north to his family home in Meadow Valley where I was introduced to the many new additions on the ranch, including Tuck, the bouncy new Airedale Terrier puppy, and the beginnings of a herd of Scottish Highland cattle, a bull, five cows and a little heifer. Amongst the many project in which the two of us are engaged this summer is the restoration of a little cabin in a beautiful ravine that has sadly gone to seed since it was built in the 1950's--but we were able to finally set up M. Benjamin's antique rope bed in the loft and spend a couple of cold, stormy nights there. Pictures later in the summer as the restoration continues.

The bulk of our time, however, was occupied on the long drive between Meadow Valley and Loma Linda, with the mission to see Emily, M. Benjamin's sister, graduate from dental school. We stopped a couple of days in Bishop for the--can you believe this even exists?--annual Mule Days festival, and spent much time with Emily and her fiancé, Gabe, once we reached the valley.

I'm currently working on an illustrated journal for this trip, which I may post in increments once it's finished. Thus far, it's titled "Marrying In" and shall hopefully serve as an interesting memento of this very interesting weekend.

I'm still sorting through those old family photos I went on about a couple of months ago, and here are some new scans:







This last photo, and the photo of the woman with the draft horses may be my favourites. I love the bleakness of the North Dakota landscapes--all my life I have been drawn to this bleak, muted, solitary aesthetic in all things visual, poetic, and musical, and I'm starting to think that it may run in my blood.

Off to work on the journal now, but I must shamelessly plug a new coffee shop in Modesto--The Serrano Social Club has finally opened on J Street after years in the works, and it's better than anything else in town! Coffee and pastries are superb, the baristas are awesome, talented guys, and their already hanging art and planning live music. Any Motowners reading this should check it out. You will not be disappointed.

Heritage/Legacy.

When I was young, I was enthralled by the idea of "legacy." I loved the way the word sounded, and I loved what it signified. From the first time I set foot into an antique store, I wanted to live in history.

While I was on holiday in California, I went through two big apple boxes of family photos, stretching back to the Swedish and Norwegian immigrants that settled in the Dakotas and camped their way to the central valley of California at the beginning of the twentieth century:
I do not know who took most of these pictures or, indeed, often who their subjects are, but they fascinate, startle, and sadden me just a bit:


When I look at these photographs, I cannot help but realize how their content shaped me, how they informed my vision, even before I saw them. Is there something that runs in my blood, the blood of these people that wrenches my heart in bleak landscapes? Something that piques my interest naturally when I come across another person with that odd, lurching, twisted height of my great-great-grandfather Osmund? Even before seeing the photograph of "Girls in White," as my mother has so poignantly named it, was there some unconscious familiarity with its subjects that causes fascination--and a little fear--at the sight of a little girl in a white dress?

Earlier this semester, I read Roland Barthes' La Chambre Claire, a meditation on why the photographs that affect us do affect us, in which he explains that the pictures that interest have two qualities that we find attractive. There is the studium, the over-arching interest in history, in costume, in people and personalities that originally draws us; then, there is the punctum, the "prick" that haunts us afterward. The strange white goats on the running board (why goats? why so small?). The small, round glasses on great-great Aunt Nordisse, set above small, round mouth (she owned the only camera in the family for a while). The drooping, walrussy, Nietzsche-esque moustache on Norman Qualle in the sleigh (did he, like Nietzsche, insist that the ladies loved it?). These are the punctums that draw me to these mysterious photographs.

I'm off now to take some photographs of my own, posted probably tomorrow. I wonder whether, years from now, they will have some strange effect on a little girl, a great-great-granddaughter of mine, who will ask herself, "Is this why I well up when I smell tulip trees? "