Endless Knots

The branches of coincidence during the "anniversary"

Yesterday marked three years since Jeff died, which we spent together, indulging in massages, and eating his favorite meal.

"You're here because it's Dadpa's birthday," either Lake or Finn said when I arrived.

"It's not his birthday," the other said. "After you die, your birthday is called your anniversary."

It was so clever that it wasn't worth "correcting." Right. Forevermore, June 11 is Dadpa's anniversary.

A few hours later and quite out of the blue, I received an email from our neighbor Eleanor Rubin, an artist whose work we loved (we bought several pieces) and whom I only have seen occasionally over the years and not at all in the last three:

Hello, Jessica

It is impulsive of me to send a note and say hello.  I hope my note does not feel intrusive.  I think of you often and miss seeing you both.

Today, reading a book called " The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge," I came across an image of an "OrgScope by Jeffrey Stamp."  It made me remember a day, (must have been '11) when I met Jeffrey out walking his dog and he told me of his diagnosis.  I'm sure my response was inadequate but the moment is etched in my memory. I wished then as I wish now that I'd known how to respond fully.  Jeffrey seemed so much himself and yet I doubted that I'd ever see him again.  And I never did...

And then I remembered that about two years ago, I received a permission request from Manuel Lima, asking for permission to include a picture of OrgScope in this book on "visualizing branches of knowledge." And that I'd blogged one of Manuel's very clear talks here.

 

Explain to me why my neighbor wrote yesterday. Explain, please.

Best fried chicken in Boston? Try Back Bay Station

Vegetarians, avert eyes and try this post. Or this one. Or even this.

But if you're a flexitarian, then I bet you like fried chicken as much as me. Love it.

And so when I stumbled into Boston's Back Bay Station a few years ago starving and about to hop on the train to NY, I was drawn by the redolence of fried chicken. At a food court. Delicious and since then I've tried to procure same again but without luck. I was always there at the wrong time.

However recently (i.e. earlier today) and in the same situation -- and although it was barely 11 AM -- I found myself in front of T.J. Enterprises, talking with T.J. himself, who, once he heard how much I love his fried chicken, was willing to put it on offer earlier than usual. And so I enjoyed an early lunch/late breakfast of fried chicken on the train and learned the following:

1. T.J. is from Laurel, Mississippi, where he learned how to make it.

2. He perfected it via trial and error, a little less of this and a little more of that.

3. He usually serves it from 11:30 on.

4. Much as I dislike nuked chicken, it was absolutely delicious.

5. I should have taken a picture of T.J. but instead have only this to show for it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maya, who lived in Stamps, Arkansas

When people die, their good can inflate to fill the sky, fill the screens, and so they are everywhere for a few days. Which is how we've been learning so much about Maya Angelou this past week, how the glorious tribute from her son, Guy Johnson, also a writer, is in many links. He said the kind of thing you might hear from a child in a eulogy but in this case he said it while she could still hear it: How was it growing up in your mother's shadow, Oprah asked? I grew up in her light, he said.

His tribute matters most but the others are remarkable too, including "Maya and Me and Maya" by Charles Blow in the May 28, 2014, NY Times. "The news of Maya Angelou’s death arrived with the abruptness of a great twister — violent, without warning, tearing things up and flipping things over." And that's just his lede.

 

It got me started on a search for Stamps, Arkansas. Stamps, as in my children's last name, as in my late husband's. Late? As if he's just behind schedule?

 

Charles Blow was from a small town about 50 miles from Stamps, which was where Maya Angelou (née Marguerite Annie Johnson) lived with her grandmother from the age of three to seven and again a few years later during the period when she did not speak (rendered mute after being raped at age 8 by her mother's boyfriend who was subsequently murdered--"[a] breaking and entering when even the senses are torn apart," she wrote, none of which should be in parenthesis).

 

So I looked Stamps up and, yes, the Stamps for whom that little town (pop. ~2000) is named is descended from Thomas Stampe, who arrived in Jamestown, VA, in 1635 from Oxfordshire, England, the same ancestor of said husband and those children.

 

In any precise mapping, it's not really a connection at all but it's the way my mind works, always searching for another anchor, another way to tie everything to everything. And so in the subtle world, where faint lines reach across generations, across boundaries, in the vessel that contains all that is and was, a hamlet in Arkansas connects my daughters, their cousins, my grandsons, my in-laws to Maya too.

 

A distant cousin (someone with a genealogical bent could do the math) likely knew of Maya's grandmother in Stamps, extrapolating from this line in I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings:

 

Early in the century, Momma (we soon stopped calling her Grandmother) sold lunches to the sawmen in the lumberyard and the seedmen at the cotton gin. Her crisp meat pies and cool lemonade, when joined to her miraculous ability to be in two places at the same time assured her business success.

 

The races were segregated and without a lot more research I cannot find the clickable link, the node that connects the Stamps family to her directly, but they breathed the same dust in that corner of Arkansas, just across the Texas and Louisiana borders.