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Author: Jessica Ruprecht

Letter to the ancestress I never knew

I heard you.

I never knew you. I still today know nothing about you, and yet I heard you.

You were a voice that reached out to me from beyond the vale of three lifetimes as I retraced our footsteps and found my way back to the country I know you called home.

I heard your whispers in the trees on the banks of Loch Lomond and felt your smiles in the warmth of the sun on my skin as I climbed cliff-sides in the Scottish highlands. I felt the the brush of your breath across my skin in the cool night air.

I never knew you. I have never so much as seen a picture of you, and yet I felt your presence all around me.

—

I grew up a child edited out of my own past, and yet decidedly still connected to the personal history that lurked in shadows and unspoken places. I remained connected to those people and places, always once removed from the stories I grew up with, stories born of parents who did not speak of their parents, and of grandparents who talked only of themselves.

I grew up divorced from the personal history that ties each of us back to belonging, back to one another along the vast network of human lineage, back to the shared heritage that can be traced back to a pair of common ancestors: grandfather and grandmother of the human race.

I grew up alone; separated from this vast network of interconnected lives, of interconnected histories.

I grew up rootless.

—

And yet I discovered myself unexpectedly rooted, tied not to a story or a history of self but to a history of place.

I grew up rooted to a small patch of Pacific coastline, a land of ancient redwoods and rocky beaches and the vicious, aching cold of the ocean’s waves.

I grew up among the trees, and learned to speak with the tongue of that place. I learned to walk among her spirits and greet them in our shared voice. I learned to let the ocean’s rhythm soothe the pace of my own fragile and faltering human heart and learned patience as I watched the winter’s rains linger and the summer’s winds blow.

And one day in the summer’s sun I excavated my heart and buried it by the sea shore, where it might be lulled to sleep, cradled in the rocking palm of the ocean’s tides.

And then I left that heart behind.

—

I wrote the words because they asked me to and I said, “I live in a beautiful world and it has deeply influenced the person I have become. My house is nestled in a clearing, surrounded by redwoods and spruce trees. I live near the ocean, and when the wind comes from the west I can taste its brine on my tongue. This natural beauty has infiltrated my psyche and greatly influenced my outlook on the world. It is a part of me.”

And then the call and came I walked away.

I left behind those rocks and trees I knew so well and moved 3,000 miles away to a place from which I almost couldn’t feel the fragile flutter of my heart.

And I was rootless.

—

I never knew her story, and by extension will never really know my own, lost forever are those chapters of my pre-history.

I grew up in a culture that moves forward without looking back and in doing so I fear we leave behind our stories, our wisdom.

Who today still cares to honor their ancestors, to cherish the guidance left behind in foot-shaped prints upon the Earth?

And this is why I cannot help but wonder, if I could hear her voice today— a voice reaching out from beyond the veil of time—

What would she want to tell me?

September 2014 Book Reviews

fall color

Happy October! It’s officially Autumn here in Boston — the leaves on the trees have started to change color and I’ve broken out the lightest of my wool layers already. My early morning walk to the bus stop has become rather brisk.

Spring and fall are by far the more interesting seasons of the year in the Northeast. Summer and winter linger with months of either sweltering and sticky heat (though this past summer was unusually temperate) or freezing cold, but Spring and Fall are anything but predictable. A day with highs in the 60s might be followed by a day with highs in the 80s making a daily weather check imperative when choosing attire for the day ahead.

The transition seasons are unreliable, unexpected, and daily bring novelty to an otherwise mundane routine and I for one enjoy the whimsy of the process.

On the reading front, this past month has been a quiet (and therefore productive) one. The page count for this month comes to 1,859 pages.

Disclaimer: This post contains Amazon affiliate links. I make a (very) small referral commission from purchases made using my links. This does not affect your price.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

I actually read most of this book in August, but didn’t manage to finish it in time for last month’s book reviews. Honestly, finishing this book was something of an odyssey, and it’s a testament to the quality of Faulkner’s writing that I finished the book at all. Because the book is undeniably well-written; however, The Sound and the Fury is certainly not an easy read and, despite the fact that I am generally opposed to re-reading books, this is a book to read for the pleasure of a second reading. The first reading is necessary because, having waded through the murky narrative once (preferably with the aid of the book’s Wikipedia page…), you’ll actually know what’s happening the second time through. The story is broken up among four narrators and the first two sections are extremely muddled, the third is narrated by a truly detestable character, and the final section marks the only really compelling section of the entire work. Reader beware: The Sound and the Fury is not to be undertaken lightly.

 

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely is a book about some of his research results as a behavioral economist at MIT, and how the results of his experiments demonstrate that humans often behave in ways that defy “common” sense. The book is engagingly written (if perhaps a little too chatty for my admittedly academically-inclined tastes), and the research results are interesting. Some particular highlights: why a 50 cent aspirin is a more effective painkiller than a 1 cent aspirin, the magic of FREE!, and why money-mindedness allows us to justify our greed. The book is a quick read and I recommend it for anyone interested in a bit of lighthearted reading on the subject of human foibles and fallibility. For those less inclined to sit down with the whole book, Dan Ariely writes an advice column that is both insightful and entertaining.

 

Dune by Frank Herbert

So it seems a gross omission that I had not previously read Dune, seeing as it is one of the truly iconic works of the Science Fiction genre. And while I’ll admit that in terms of Sci-Fi/Fantasy I’m usually more of a Fantasy reader than a true Sci-Fi enthusiast, Dune manages to support an elegant blend of both genres. If you’ve been following along with my book reviews, it’s pretty clear that I’ve been on more of a contemporary (non-)fiction tear, so this book made for a welcome change of pace. The book is an interesting and extremely well-executed bit of authorial world-building and I can see why it’s become a classic.

I was reading an interview with David Mitchell (author of such works as Cloud Atlas and most recently The Bone Clocks) and he had this to say about creating believable worlds that are outside of the realm of your own (or anyone’s) experience and I think it’s more than a little profound:

“How to immerse oneself in the moment-to-moment nature of a time and place you’ve never personally experienced—and perhaps cannot?

Well, I would put a question to you. What’s the difference between you and your great great great-grandfather? What makes you different?

I think the answer is this: What you take for granted.

What you take for granted about your life, about your rights, about people around you. About ethnicity, gender, sexuality, work, God. Your relationship with the state. The state’s obligations and duties to you: Health care, education, recreation. What you take for granted about all these things is I think what marks one culture from from another, and one generation from another.” [Source]

It is exactly this that Frank Herbert does so masterfully in Dune.

 

Night by Elie Wiesel

Here’s another entry from my I-can’t-believe-I-haven’t-already-read-this list. Night is a book that needs no introduction. A harrowing tale of the author’s time in Nazi concentration camps, the narrative is at times viscerally cringe-worthy, and yet the prose carries with it a silence, a quietude, that is profound. The prose is stark and the description unflinching in the face of atrocity. It’s no wonder the book has become something akin to required reading.

 

 

I’d love to hear from you! Let me know what you’re reading in the comments below.

Tired of waiting for my monthly wrap-ups? I talk about what I’m reading each week in my email newsletter.

A post-script on paying attention

Author’s note: This one’s from way back; it’s a poem I wrote in high school, and I fear it rather shows. But I published a blog post recently about the importance of paying attention and it reminded me of this poem. So here it is, for your enjoyment.

Regrets

If I could have these moments to do over again,
a life time to repeat,
feet retracing steps in a new/familiar way.
My beginning would become my end
along the same path,
leading forward into the darkness.

If I had these years to try again,
I’d want to spend more time
just remembering, just watching and noticing
as the time slips by.
I spent so many years,
head down as I hurried, walking briskly
from one place to another –
I forgot to look and listen.

My eyes saw pictures in the concrete beneath my feet
because the same old grey/black surface
spotted with old chewing gum, threaded with mossy crevices
was endless – neverchanging.
My feet walked on because I demanded it of them,
but there was no wonder,
no momentary pause, eye fixed on some sight in the distance
captivated.

I did not realize or comprehend
the daily beauty I was missing:
the wheeling bird I did not look up to see,
the petals tumbling from spring-time cherry trees,
the way the cat across the road looked up as I passed by,
and the smile of the woman on the street.
I’d cherish these moments from the beginning,
if I had mine to make over.

Insignificant

It happens on an airplane —
metal bullet hurtling at 30,000 feet,
temporary home to a mere 200 souls.
It happens as the wheels lift off, as the
houses, roads, and people fall away,
shrinking as I rapidly gain

perspective.

It happens on the bus at the intersection
and as we trundle down the street.
It happens as the people beyond my window
jog and laugh and race and as some of them
shuffle along, stumbling over
a distraction of cell phones, clutched
in outstretched hands.

It happens in a singular moment as
I hold their stories, cupped in the cradle of my palms
as I pass unseen beyond
the screen of window’s glass.

It happens in the dark, at night
when I find the thud of my heartbeat
distracting as it thumps and stutters
in the cage of my chest.
It happens as each moment passes
one after each and every other
to the rhythm of my heart’s beat chanting
now and now and now and —

It happens when I close my eyes,
breathe in deep,
and marvel at my own fleeting presence
and comprehend my utter

insignificance.

Are you paying enough attention?

It’s a thought that plagues me in moments of stillness: moments that capture me, like

great heaving breaths taken
in an instant as
head breaks water’s surface,
and for a shining, crystalline moment

I remember what it is to breathe.

Are you

Or maybe this isn’t an experience you have.

But my life is often an exercise in full-body immersion as I sink into mind and computer and achieve a state that’s nearly

 

dissociated

 

from my body.

And the sudden-ness of breaking free startles me, in the moments when I find myself back inside my body —

often with a thump.

This is when it hits me over the head how the hours have slipped by and I fear that I haven’t really been living. That I have instead been so completely wrapped up inside my mind that I’ve forgotten what it means to have a body. Forgotten what it means to sit in my body, to sit with my body, to

feel myself me.

And maybe if I weren’t me this wouldn’t be so much of a problem. Maybe I would relish the hours spent consumed by other, the moments when self falls so entirely free and I become one with machine.

Or as near to such a thing as can be.

But I find that art requires presence

That I cannot speak without tasting the texture of my tongue.

That I cannot see without knowing the slippery slide of eyelids upon eyes.

That I cannot feel without the dancing rhythm of my heart, thudding away inside my chest.

 

That I cannot know what I am seeing/thinking to speak it without first knowing that this body in it’s infinite
wisdom and fragility
is here and now and right in this very moment           with me.

 

And, so, I ask again:

Are you paying enough attention?