Moving

I decided to move this blog to its own domain in order to have more options, so we are now at http://thebookoflouis.com .

Come join in the conversation there!

i am accused of tending to the past

i am accused of tending to the past
as if i made it,
as if i sculpted it
with my own hands. i did not.
this past was waiting for me
when i came,
a monstrous unnamed baby,
and i with my mother’s itch
took it to breast
and named it
History.
she is more human now,
learning languages everyday,
remembering faces, names and dates.
when she is strong enough to travel
on her own, beware, she will.

Lucille Clifton

I wish I could say that I’ve known about Ms. Clifton all along, but that would be a lie. I found out she lived – and wrote and inspired and made people laugh and cry and hope – mainly because she died, and many of the people who did know her or her work have been writing about what she meant to them.

She is gone now, but I still have the work of a lifetime to get to know. 

snapshot

The newspapers spread wide against the wall are so bright it is only a moment later that I notice the small woman framed by them and the old quilts covering the beds, they’d probably bring a fortune today but then they were just old quilts.

Who was she? The credits say “Mulatto ex-slave in her house near Greensboro, Alabama, May 1941”, and I’m not sure why they have told us that she is mulatto, but then this “colorism” business that still grips and poisons didn’t come breeding alone out of the earth, more like it was cultivated, nurtured with far more attention and care than the lives it crushed underneath as if they were the weeds.

Did she make the quilts? Crabbed and scarred hands pulling the threaded needle through scraps of this and that, I’ve seen these old women (and young) place each piece with meaning, and some with none at all beyond that the shape or the colors fit. No bright hues here in the photo that became a work of art as soon as she sat her old bones down in the rocking chair and competed for focal point with the bright, insulating newspapers with the little blond boy front and off center.

Who put them there? Did she paste them one on top of the other whenever she got some to keep out the cold that was always finding a new way in, is that how it works? or did she or someone spruce up the walls for the photo shoot and whose idea was that, anyway?

She’s looking to the side or maybe just not at the camera, almost not there except that of course she is, she is, but it reminds me of that look we get sometimes when we’re in a situation that we don’t want to be in but have to endure for whatever reason, maybe because of a power that might have nothing to do with us or little for us that decides for us whether we want whatever they are offering or not.

I don’t know but did you notice the dingy patch up on the wall toward the ceiling? Maybe it couldn’t be reached or paper ran out or time like when someone comes to the door when you are not quite ready to let them in. But sometimes they come in anyway.

She is beautiful and as art it works, this mulatto woman who was an ex-slave sitting in her bedroom and sitting room with the bright new contrast to her old wood slat bed and old quilts and old body and old chair – oh,  is that dingy patch on the wall maybe a small, stubborn rebellion? – a picture taken in 1941 when she had a designation and a color but apparently still no name, it’s a shame I can’t just enjoy it, I wanted to do that, but I can’t help it I just have questions, questions, questions.

Like – in this carefully cleaned and appointed room, why is there a padlock sitting on the empty chair?