Nina MacLaughlin's Blog, page 20

All the Language in the World Won’t Make a Bookshelf ExistIn...

All the Language in the World Won’t Make a Bookshelf Exist

In honor of Father’s Day, Longreads is featuring a chunk of Hammer Head about the time I build bookshelves for my dad. Give it a read.

We’ve been in and out of the woman’s house for the past...

We’ve been in and out of the woman’s house for the past four
weeks, transforming a cave space into some place welcoming, brighter, livable.
She said on Friday, “When it’s all finished, we’ll have a celebration, of
course.” M. and I smiled at each other. Every time, it’s said, on each big
project we’ve ever done. When it’s done,
we’ll have a party! The impulse arises out of the excitement of being able to see an
end point, almost finished, and the urge to honor it, the work and its
completion. It never happens. Every time the people say, we’ll celebrate, and every time we sweep up on the final day, pack
up the tools, leave the people to their new space, disappear from their lives,
and the party never happens.

“Everyone says that,” M. said to her, “on all the big jobs.
Hasn’t happened once.”

The woman’s eyes are dark and warm. Her laugh is warm and
she laughs often. She gestures as she talks. She’s talked to us of paint colors
and how sensitive she is to them, how the wrong ones trouble her mind. I like a
lot about her, but maybe this the most.

“I am Albanian,” the woman said. “When we say something, it
is a promise.”
And standing in what will be her bedroom on a Friday morning before nine
o’clock, she told us a story. She told us an Albanian legend, one that spines
the honoring of a promise:

In a family, seven sons, one daughter. The daughter was
married off to a faraway prince, with the promise, from the youngest brother,
that they would bring her home again to live in the village. So the daughter
went off to be a faraway bride, and then the seven sons went off to war. Every
brother died. And their mother, grieving, cursed the sons for abandoning her
daughter, for not making good on their promise to bring her home. The youngest
brother, in reaction to his mother’s curse, rose from the dead and went to his
sister in the night. “Come with me,” he said, and the sister rode with him, not
thinking much about why he came so late at night, why he had earth in his hair,
why he looked “maybe Vampire-like.” He dropped her at the gate of her village
and told her he had to go. When she arrived home, her mother told her what
happened, that all her brothers were dead. But no, the daughter said, she’d
just been with her youngest brother, he’d made good on his word and brought her
home. What the story says: Albanians get up from the graves to keep promises.

“You don’t know what will happen if you don’t keep your
word,” the woman said. “Bad things maybe. We will celebrate.”

[“Constantine and Doruntina” by Ismail Lulani, 1987]

M. pried an old tread off a deck step this morning and found a...

M. pried an old tread off a deck step this morning and found a seed sprouting in the soft split wet wood below. “Check it out,” she said. I climbed the stairs and peered over her shoulder. There it was. A split black seed nestled into a crack in the frame of the steps and from the split in the seed, a curled white sprout probing toward the light. An unexpected place for life to start taking place, but we all try to make do.

At lunch, we watched two birds have sex in branches nearby. “Get a room,” I said to the birds, of course. “Doesn’t he look pleased with himself,” M. said. “Gets up on her, hops off, bounces around some other branches, puffs himself up, bounces back on her.”

I bit into my apple, who knows what kind, it was crisp and slightly gingered. I bit deep and broke through to the pocket where the seeds live. “Look!” Inside, the apple seeds had started sprouting, I’d never seen it happen before, the same white curl of sprout as the one in the crack in the wood of the deck, a white ribbon of growth, the quiet violence of life breaking out. “Spring has sprung,” M. said, and we laughed for a while at that. When the breeze blew, it brought to us the smell of honeysuckle.

The house is built into a hill. Climb the steep stonestairs,...

The house is built into a hill. Climb the steep stone
stairs, walk the slate path, open the front door, and it’s a regular place,
kitchen, living room. But behind both is a room dug into the hill which has the
feel of a cellar or a cave. We’ve been working to make this room, its walls
surrounded by wet earth, a usable, livable space. We’ve put in a bathroom, new
walls framed, insulated, plastered, new lights put in. It is still dim, and it
is still hard not to feel the damp press of earth on three sides. Spring
unfolds outside – here it is June! – but it’s a different season under earth, a
Hades gloom, and heading outside to where the saws are set up, we squint in the
sun, and heading back in to the dim, we blink, blinded, eyes adjusting to the
dark. I was starting to feel like a mole or a troll.

Yesterday, though, we started work on a deck. Outside allday. Loads
felt lighter. The hours had a different weight as well. Fat white peonies by
the sawhorses drooped under their own weight. Roses climbed a trellis. Birds
dipped by, close enough for us to hear wings at beat against the air. The work
felt not at all like labor. There are so many different shapes of leaves! What
a good thing to look up from the saw and see them, trembling just a little bit
on the breeze, as though they were as excited to be here, outside, existing in
spring.

The humble drop cloth, protector of floors and furniturefrom...

The humble drop cloth, protector of floors and furniture
from paint drips and sawdust and fragments of fiberglass like stiffer bits of
spiderweb. Sturdy but not without softness, canvas, tan, an unbleached, undyed
earthcolor. Draped across the world, dirt curtain, a presence that accompanies action, work,
change like a wool hat in the winter, like shovels at a grave.

Now let’s see your hands. Show me your hands.People say this to...

Now let’s see your hands. Show me your hands.

People say this to me. When they find out the work I do, they ask me to show them my hands. It has happened often these past weeks. I hold them out, palm up, palm down. And I disappoint the people who ask. They are hoping for calluses. They are hoping for dirt underneath my nails, for splinters, for scars, for evidence of the work on my skin. I notice the big blue vein like a worm on the back of my left hand, self conscious of it suddenly this past weekend, warmed and swollen. Here’s a cut, I’ll say, a little defensive, understanding I’ve disappointed them, understanding they believe me less. Here’s where I bashed my finger into the sharp tip of an old nail, that small gash. Should I roll up my sleeves and show you the bruises on my forearms, on my thighs? You want evidence of the work on my body? See, here, how my right pointer finger is a little crooked? M. dropped a hammer from a ladder. I was kneeling on the floor nearby. The hammer skimmed my skull and landed on my hand. No one but me would ever be able to tell the shape has changed, an altered outline, but it has.

“You don’t look like you work with your hands,” a woman said. “I expected to see your hands in worse shape,” a man said. “Sorry,” I want to say. But I’m not.

[Photograph: Aiko’s Hands, 1971, Imogen Cunningham]

My brother Sam wanted help with shelves. He moved recently and...

My brother Sam wanted help with shelves. He moved recently and boxes of books were the last thing left unpacked. A blank wall, some metal brackets, some #12 two-inch screws, a borrowed drill. I didn’t want to help. I wanted to relax on this Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn, drink at some small dim bar, laugh and rest. But a young brother in need, and what else can you do. I know the unease brought about by living amidst packed boxes, a lingering feeling of undoneness and transition and just wanting a place to be home.

To test to make sure we were hitting wood behind the drywall, I smelled the metal tip of the bit. And the unmistakable smell of pine, that bright crisp Christmassy whiff, burnt sugary, alive. Smelling it, proof that we were in the right place, improved my mood in an instant.

Before putting up the last of the brackets, I got started making ricotta cheese for the pizzas we’d be making for dinner that evening. I glugged a half-gallon of milk into a pot, juiced a lemon into a bowl, and turned on the burner. The milk warmed while we put in the last few screws. A neat combination – the sharp and shiny metal screws, the dentist chair sound of the drill, the hard wall, and in the kitchen, the soft silent stirring of smooth warming milk. I added some salt and put my head over the pot, steam just beginning to rise. Warm milk is one of my favorite smells. The heat makes the milk smell sweet and gentle, a lactic grassiness, so comforting. Finished with the work, we had beers to look forward to. We left the whey to strain while we drank and laughed and returned to a dishtowel weighted with cheese. Such similar words, wood and food.    

The Finest Hour is a free, quarterly reading and music series in...

The Finest Hour is a free, quarterly reading and music series in Ft. Greene/downtown Brooklyn. Tonight, I’ve got the bigtime honor of sharing the bill with Ariel Schrag and Anna North. If you’re in New York, think about stopping by. I think it’s going to be very good.

eatingaboutwriting:I’m on a roll, setting a Life After Mavis...

eatingaboutwriting:

I’m on a roll, setting a Life After Mavis record of three books read so far this year (that aren’t research related). Highly recommend Hammer Head by @nmaclaughlin.

André Gallant makes HAMMER HEAD look lovely.

It’s the day before May and a great day to buy a copy of HAMMER...

It’s the day before May and a great day to buy a copy of HAMMER HEAD if you haven’t already. If you want to know more about it, you can read this kind review in the Boston Globe.

And you can buy it here or here or here.

Furthermore, if you happen to live in Maine, particularly near Portland, TONIGHT, Thursday at 7 pm, I’ll be at the amazing Longfellow Books talking and reading and signing and looking forward to drinking some good Maine beer when it’s all done. I’d really love to see you there.

Find all the details here.