In Memorium

A couple weeks ago, my Great-Uncle, Art, died of a heart attack due to complications of emphysema. Art became like a grandfather to myself and my little brother after our Grandpa (his brother) died almost twenty years ago. I wasn't able to attend the funeral due to work obligations, so I wrote something for the funeral for my Dad to read. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to read it there, so I decided to post it here so that everyone can know what an amazing person was lost to the world earlier this month.


When I first came to South Dakota, not too many years after Grandpa Ole’s death, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit like Captain Kirk beaming onto an alien planet as we drove across the plains toward Art and Eunice’s farmhouse. I’d never been to a place quite like this, where the heat waved the grass, drying to golden in the late August sunshine, bending it toward the ground under a dizzying blue sky. Where stands exploded with the most marvelously sweet watermelon in the world, where people stapled multicolored corn to the sides of auditoriums and where even the gold could be rose and green. I’d never even really been to a farm, just passed by them on my way through southern Minnesota and Iowa to our relatives in Waterloo, so the entire experience was just about as alien to me as Kirk’s encounters with green ladies in skimpy silver dresses.

Rather than encountering a bevy of alien beauties, however, I was introduced to farm life by some alien bovines in the wee hours of my first night when I met a herd of confused cow eyes staring through the darkness toward my window. They stood clustered in the glow of the light on the front lawn, waking me up in the middle of the night with a smattering of misguided moos. This “city girl” had never experienced a surprise quite like that one, a South Dakota welcome delivered by the strays from the neighbor’s escaped herd (though, as I recall, Eunice wasn’t quite as tickled about the trampled grass and fresh fertilizer she found on her lawn the next day). That night, I knew I was in for something better than alien babes are for a virile captain—I was in for an adventure in a new frontier.

Over the next week or so, we followed Art and the rest of the South Dakota Olsons over acres of land, inspecting cows out in the pasture, elbow-deep in various farm engines, trudging through a half-dozen different crops, and even baling hay. By the end of our first trip, Matthew swore up and down he was going to grow up and become a saxophone-playing farmer. I wasn’t quite as interested in getting down and dirty—while I went out on a number of excursions, I was just as content to walk around the property as all the cows charged in the opposite direction, watching as much as possible, playing with Dale’s panting golden lab in the shop and watching as they dismembered various machines, or riding with Art as he drove out to check a fence line, taking notes all the time about what I was experiencing.

Art picked up quickly on exactly what got me interested. One Sunday, after church, he took all of us on a tour of an empty town not far from the property, explaining what had once been there, pointing out everything from the post office to the mercantile. I was transfixed by the stories of the place and the people that had lived there, swept into the tales of a town whose boards were now gray and rotting, overgrown with lush green saplings. When we got home, I wrote pages and pages about the place as quickly as the thoughts could spill out of my brain.

Art and Eunice welcomed our family with such graciousness that Matthew and I quickly became like two more of the grandchildren, and even though we were only in town a couple times a year at most, we joined the brood, tromping through Art and Eunice’s house (being sure to leave our shoes in the entry!) and carrying on with our cousins with each visit as if we had barely been absent. We’d all crowd around the table at lunch time, with chairs being pulled from every corner of the house to accommodate as many bodies as the table could fit (sometimes even spilling over into the living room on really tight days), around a meal so big I thought every day we were there must be some sort of a holiday. But no, I was assured by my cousins, this is what happened pretty much every day at Grandma and Grandpa’s… the family would pile in, shoulder to shoulder, for hamburgers and baked beans, salads and sweet corn, watermelon and fruit salads, topped off with a big glass of milk, and NO COOKIES UNTIL AFTER LUNCH! Then, like a stampede tromping over the horizon, the rush would end as suddenly as it had come, and the house would be thrust into quiet again, at least until four o’clock or so.

I found out quickly that South Dakota wouldn’t remain an alien landscape. The farm became an extension of home, just as Grandma and Grandpa’s place becomes an extension of home for every child lucky enough to have the experience of that kind of love.

Norwegians have a proud history of storytelling, with histories and lineages passed down through epic verse, keeping the family and memory alive. Our ancestors were explorers, conquerors, and settlers, but above all, they were storytellers. Of course now we call our storytelling “bullshitting” (and Olsons are some of the best!), but the essence remains the same. We bring back the dead through our remembrance, giving color to their characters by adding new details to our own memories from stories we may not have known as they’re told to us by others sitting around the fire (or around a living room, or the pieces of a tractor’s starter) about those who’ve passed long ago to more sacred country.

When Art told his stories, people stopped to listen, because he was able to make people that were gone come back to life and laugh around the table all over again. Art brought my Grandpa back to me, telling stories of him that I’d never heard, coaxing additional details out of my Dad as we sat around the table, digesting our meal. These moments and memories are some of my favorites of Art—I don’t remember all the stories, but I’ll never forget about the color and humor with which he illustrated even the most mundane events.

I’d always hoped that Art would be around long enough to see what he’d inadvertently inspired in me. I hoped that I’d be able to lay a completed book, or at least a manuscript, in his hands and show him how his storytelling helped to stoke the fires in me that created the unquenchable desire to get a story onto the page, to pass on my own stories in the same way that I remember adoring his. While he wasn’t able to see the physical result, I hope he knows how much I value the legacy he passed on to me by passing on the love of a good story and in the stories themselves.

Penelope: An Exercise in Re-Imagining an Icon

It has been almost twenty years since I last saw your ship on the shore. Almost two decades since I last heard the tumbling melody of your voice reverberating among these halls, since your arms encircled my waist and your kiss blessed my lips. I have slept alone in the bed you built for us, raised our child without his father, and fended off the exploitation of your neighbors. I am so tired. My eyes and heart hurt from watching the waters for you.

Those first weeks after the men began coming home from the war were wrenching. It was horrendous to watch men who had been gone for so long return to the arms of wives and children while my son and I remained alien, as did all the wives on your ship. People talked. Whispers floated on smoky vapors at parties, plays, and other social functions about your fate. Everyone was, and is, convinced that you have met your mortal end.

But I refuse to accept their belief. Your soul is mine, my Love, and I would know if that part of me were lost to Hades. I know I would feel the loss, just as I felt the loss when our first daughter, our only other child, died as a baby in the middle of the night. I will never forget the chasm that her death left in me when I awoke from my dreams in the darkness, knowing she was gone before I ever held her lifeless infant form in my arms.

So I can at least hold to that. I have a clue, an inkling deep within me, that you are not irretrievable… that your soul still dwells somewhere across the waters.

But, my Love, the days without you here are arduous.

I spend them now, not watching for you to come over the hill to meet me for our evening meal, but concentrating on the waves beyond the walls, hoping to find the dark speck of your ship on the blue plane, heading back to the port in which it belongs. Men carouse in our home, day and night, eating away my son’s inheritance; uninvited interlopers trying to convince me that you are gone and they should be the next wife of Penelope and king of this land. I refuse to entertain such asinine rudeness… men who have not even offered to court me, but instead drain the resources of my home and try to corrupt the blood of my womb. I know that you made me promise to remarry if you did not return, but even if I had confirmation that you were gone, I would never dishonor your memory as a ruler and a husband or debase myself to the point that I would offer my hand to any member of this squalor. But nor can I leverage any authority in this city to keep their corrupt presence from our walls, so I am left only with the option of refusing their advances and refusing to honor their deplorable show at courtship.

I look for you, as twilight falls, in the stars, knowing that your deeds would have earned a place among Orion and Ursa if your end had come. Though I have my instinct, I cannot accept only the warmth in my chest as confirmation that you yet live, and I search for the evidence, anywhere I can find it, to confirm that you still breathe the air of this land, even if you are far from your home.

Each night, I shed my skin in sleep and wander the earth, like the Egyptian Isis, looking for pieces of you… a hint of your presence on this globe. I journey to Styx, to Acheron, and cross what few souls see until they have left their flesh for the final time. The Ferryman watches from his bark as my feet glide over the eddies, leaving concentric rings of black water in my wake. No authority constrains my path, for I share the darkness of the Underworld with the ghosts of its shadows… I live in its gloom every waking hour my husband’s ship fails to break the horizon, and I therefore belong to its obscurity as truly as every spirit living in misery there.

I search for my Love each night in this darkness of death, sifting through souls consigned to eternal rest or anguish, pleading to Persephone to point out my husband’s shade if he has come to dwell in this dank crevice. But every night, my wanderings are in vain. The Immortal Gods keep my eyes from laying upon the one visage I ache most to see. Their wrath for him, for he must have done something to incite such a long separation from his home, becomes my anguish as well.

I have heard legends, murmured in awe, of your exploits in the war on the lips of those who have returned. They say you fought valiantly in the war. They say that your ingenuity ended the conflict decisively, with a simple, deceptive gift to the Trojans. The warriors that return say that you would speak of nothing else on that day but your breathtaking wife and precious son, and how anxious you were to finish things on that distant shore so you could return to her adoring embrace and experience for the first time the shining eyes and musical laughter of your little boy, at that time almost a decade older than when you’d left him, cradled as an infant in his mother’s arms.

Another decade has passed since that day, and that boy is now a man. I have tried to keep you alive for him; I have told him daily of his father and how he had gone to a great war to honor his vow. When he was very young, I made up stories of your exploits and told them to our little boy as he drifted to sleep each night. I have tried to raise him as we would have together, encouraging him to be both strong and wise, urging him to foster the quick wit and cleverness which lives so vibrantly in you. There is so much of you in him… I hear you in the melody of his laugh, see your intensity in his eyes… the citizens and servants commonly proclaim how easy it is to divine the identity of his father from just a simple glance.

My body and soul burn with the vendetta owed my dishonored being as I watch the vipers feed viciously upon my husband’s livelihood and hear their whispered plots to take his image from me as well in his progeny’s form, to remove from me the last vestiges of my Beloved’s presence by slaying our only son and removing the competition to the throne. How my flesh aches to feel the satisfying slick of their blood between my fingers as my blade slices through the flesh of each one, to the last man… to rip the perfect ebony locks from the scalps of these sniveling snakes and cut the pretentious smiles from their lips. How I yearn to have the invincibility of the Goddess, that I could take my vengeance at the tip of a sword on each villain vying for a chance to violate my being.

I have spent the past two decades dying by inches. By seconds, clicking by in depraved regularity as the heart beats in my chest. My body betrays me, marking the passing days as it hungers and thirsts, the months in red lines as the moon cycles through the sky.

I embrace our bedpost, my Love, in the darkness where I used to rest in the sturdy timber of your arms, the living tree betraying the passage of years as it grows wider and I grow more gaunt. If only I could feel the love from the branches and leaves that you fashioned into our marriage bed which I once felt from the solace of your embrace. If only, in fashioning the bed in which we slept for a decade before your fateful trip across the waters, you had left a piece of your soul in the living wood, to offer me comfort and solace in these hours of abandonment.

I hold the little golden effigy of Athena you gave me for the harvest festival the year before your ship left port and gaze into the flames as my fingers trail along the folds in her little robe, the curls falling in glittering waves across her shoulders. I stare into the eyes of the tiny statue and beg her to intervene. I leverage the only power I have left, the power of a faithful supplicant to kneel before her Goddess, and implore her intervention. I remind her, in whispered reverence, of our faithfulness, how we have spent our lives as her servants, following her every direction with faith, giving gratefully and generously to her honor. I beg her to remember her servant, Odysseus, even if our ability to give to her has waned. I plead with her to hold me close, to offer me her guidance, until you can be at my side again to share in the decisions for our lives, our son, our home, and our community. I ask Athena for wisdom, hope and patience.

I pray to you as well… as my Husband, my Guardian, and my Love, straining for the only communication left to me; the communication of one soul directly to another. I pray that you keep yourself safe, that you will heed the counsel of the Gods, and that you will follow the voice of your wife to your home. I am sure that the Gods forgive this small heresy, for I know their eyes cannot have been averted from my plight.

All feels lost, my darling. As I watch your house fall to ruin, your son grow up without you, my body slowly, certainly, losing the luster of youth, I wonder how much longer the Gods will see fit to rend my soul like this.

I can’t lose hope. Hope is all I have left. I can’t lose hope.

Copyright 2007 S.L. Olson

Learning to Love "Lucretia"

Rembrandt Van Rijn was a well-known artist from the Baroque period who is known for his paintings of human subjects with deep contrast between dark and light. At first glance, Rembrandt’s portrayal of “Lucretia” may appear to be a morbid, grotesque and disturbing representation of suicide and the last moments of life. But, upon a further inspection of the piece, there is much more that can be learned about the history of the artist and the painting that makes “Lucretia” much more than a portrait of death. Painted late in his life when splendor and outward details no longer mattered to him, Rembrandt chose to focus on the psychological drama rather than the excitement of the story taking place. He uses sharp contrasts between light and dark to give a focal point to the piece and create intense emotion. “Lucretia” is not only the portrait of the pain of a legendary character, but the pain expressed in the painting also expresses the pain of both the painter and the viewer. Learning to appreciate the story behind the painting and the technique used to elicit emotion from the viewer gives a whole new dimension to the piece.

According to legend, Lucretia was a noblewoman in ancient Rome who was married to a general. She was known and loved across the entire Roman Empire for both her surpassing beauty and her virtue. Her husband was called to war and Lucretia was left behind to take care of the affairs at home. While Lucretia’s husband was gone, the son of the king of Rome came to see her. While he was at Lucretia’s house, the prince threatened and raped Lucretia. In Roman tradition, Lucretia’s rape brought dishonor and shame not only to her, but also to her family. Rather than allow her family to have to deal with the humiliation caused by the crime performed against her, Lucretia chose to commit suicide and spare the dishonor that Roman society would have inflicted on her family.

Lucretia has been portrayed numerous times in art and literature throughout history. Judith Akehurst, an expert on feminist history and Baroque painting observed the impact of Lucretia on art and culture; “The combination of death, sex and vindication made Lucretia an attractive symbol of feminine virtue and liberty for theologians and writers from St. Augustine to Chaucer and Shakespeare.” She was a very popular subject of art in the Renaissance, and was most commonly characterized as a nude woman plunging a dagger into her voluptuous breasts and staring helplessly into the sky.

Rembrandt draws Lucretia as a totally different character. She is fully dressed in clothing reminiscent of the wealthy women in the Baroque period. Instead of being interpreted by Rembrandt as a helpless (and somewhat brainless) woman, Lucretia is portrayed as strong and collected. Her dark, mournful eyes contrast the pale face that seems to already carry the raiment of death. The look on Lucretia’s face represents the epitome of sadness. Her eyes are filled with tears, and her white dress is stained with the blood from her mortal wound. Lucretia’s white dress symbolizes the purity that has been destroyed forever by the prince’s attack on her. Lucretia’s hand grips a chord that has been theorized to represent many things. One possible theory is that the chord is a call to the servants for help. Possibly Lucretia has changed her mind an instant too late, or she has chosen to die in the company of those that she loves. Another theory is that Lucretia is holding a chord connected to a curtain that closes on her life as it ends.

Rembrandt’s use of color in contrasts of light and dark creates a stunning focus for the piece. Lucretia is bathed in a light that seems to touch only her and creates deep shadows on her face betraying the sorrow and exhaustion that she is feeling. Her hair seems to blend into the dark background, with her intricately beaded hairpiece reflecting the light falling on her. Her dress is composed of gold and white cloth, and the red stain from her self-inflicted wound contrasts the pure white robe. The blade of the knife glistens in her hand as she awaits her death.

Rembrandt painted this version of “Lucretia” at a very low point in his life. The woman he had loved for more than 15 years had died after being branded as a whore and excommunicated from the church and the business of art they had created together had fallen apart. His health was declining, and he found himself having to face his financial problems alone. To express his feelings of agony over the loss of so many things that were so special to him, Rembrandt created “Lucretia” as both an outlet and a vessel for his pain. Lucretia’s expression of pain is so universal and so deeply moving that even without knowing the background of the painting, the viewer is drawn in to Lucretia’s suffering and forced to face her pain.

“The glory of the [Minneapolis] Institute’s [Lucretia] painting is that it’s so incredibly personal. She is a real person and you are given a very personal view of someone at a very important moment in her life.” (Judith Akehurst) The idea of facing pain is what makes “Lucretia” such a disturbing painting. The image of someone so close to death and in such agony makes the viewer of the piece incredibly uncomfortable. The intense emotion in “Lucretia” is what makes her portrait so incredibly stunning. Rembrandt’s portrayal of human emotion crosses the boundaries of culture and time, and can touch someone looking at the piece more than 330 years after it was created. Even though the content of “Lucretia” is disturbing because of its stark color contrasts and morose subject matter, the fact that it can move people to such deep reactions hundreds of years later makes the work a masterpiece of expressionism and human emotion.

Copyright (C) 2007 S.L. Olson

True Dominance

The term “dominance” incites a plethora of connotations in the average person’s mind, most of these images being of a sexual or animal nature. However, dominance is not simply a title employed in sexual play… the secret of true dominance extends far beyond the bedroom, and is not limited only to one who chooses to employ that particular distinction in a perceptible manner.

“Dominance games” are shallow tactics employed by those who beat their chests like primates at a zoo, vying for the illusion of obligatory dominance over another party. These petty ploys for power are commonplace among the populace, as the majority of human beings care more for the recognition of their dominance than they do about actually leveraging true power over a situation. These gaudy attempts at grandstanding forced power are overt and invariably cause strife among those with the misfortune of being a part of the experience, and those who try to leverage influence in this manner incur invariable and explicit resistance from those the person is trying to dominate.

It seems the stereotypical interpretation of a dominant person is based primarily upon those who succumb to these tasteless contests. To many, the dominant person is someone who is almost brutish in applying force, obliging compliance from those around him by sheer power of will. But this is a grossly limiting assumption. A truly dominant person is actually unbound by conventional interpretation, as he can assume a role based not upon which role has the appearance of carrying more weight, but instead based upon which role is more useful for his purposes. A person skilled in employing dominance understands that power is employed in variations of hues and can leverage the advantages of control from any position they may be in at the time. In spite of the fact that this form of true dominance is a much more profitable path in the long run, most people do not want to go to the concerted effort that is required in order to exert true and lasting influence over a situation, because it takes calculation, insight and forethought.

To exert true power over a situation, person, or group of people requires that the person wishing to leverage that power evaluate the specific climate among those involved in the circumstances in question, reading the people involved and knowing not what they say they want, but instead what they truly want to gain from the exchange. The goal of the truly dominant person, then, is to give the person the impression they have received that which they desire and gain the confidence and trust of those people. This will earn the respect of the others involved, and they will then look to that person again for insight and guidance, building this truly dominant person’s influence, regardless of the position that person holds on paper.

Once this base of trust is established from the parties involved, this person will likely have the option of taking a level of overt power if he so chooses, as the transition from a less visible position to one of more visible power will be viewed by the other party or parties as a “natural” one. At the proper stage, this transition will be accepted smoothly and with very little (if any) resistance.

Like the contrived and careful movements of a cat stalking its prey, one with real control knows when and which buttons to push from nearly any situation he lands in to exert true authority. The truly dominant person is a wise predator, knowing who to influence and how to exert that influence in order to create a result in his ultimate favor, avoiding garish games in favor of subtle, more binding influence. True power lies in this skill of leverage, and the truly powerful will employ it regularly and to their continual advantage.

Copyright 2005 S.L. Olson

Transcending "The Wall"

The film, The Wall, written and produced by the members of the band Pink Floyd in conjunction with their concept album of the same name, is a product of its time, expressing a variety of frustrations with the world which would, on first glance, seem to be anchored in simply an anti-war message fueled by the tension of the Cold War and the trauma many experienced in the wake of World War II. However, the film’s reach extends into a much more timeless statement, as one can easily interpret this film as a two-hour tirade against herd mentality. Interestingly, it also speaks to the personal dangers and problems that an individual can encounter when they choose to take the position of someone who “rebels” against assimilation into an unthinking popular culture. Of course, there are also very obvious anti-war overtones weaved throughout the piece, but The Wall appears to emphasize issues more personal and more complex than simply a statement of “war is bad.”

This movie speaks explicitly to the struggles and questions presented by Modernist and Postmodernist poets like William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and Hilda Doolittle. However, the perspective seems to not offer the hope of Hilda Doolittle’s work, but instead speaks to the doomed mass of “Hollow Men,” whom T.S. Eliot speaks of in his poem of the same title. The movie appears to speak explicitly to and about the hollow men who recognize their hollowness and can’t grasp how to go about filling themselves. The Wall points out the pressure toward conformity placed upon members of modern society and the dangers and destructive power which can be existent within a mass of people moving mindlessly forward, following a leader or ideal blindly with no will of their own. To repeatedly drive this point home, the creators of this film utilize disturbing and violent images, such as the faceless mass of children moving toward the meat grinder on a conveyor belt, the marching hammers, and the rampaging bulls. These images and others like them emerge at various stages throughout the film to reiterate the imminent danger intrinsic in a mass of people mindlessly ascribing to “groupthink” rather than thinking for themselves.

While I was relatively impressed with many of the statements made and thoughts initiated throughout the film, I must take issue with the stipulation that I think was being presented that claimed that if an individual were to manage to break down the Wall, it would likely lead to what society en masse would see as insanity. I do not see this as being a necessary result of such an act. Madness does not reside in destruction of the Wall. Madness results from banging one’s head against the Wall like a dumb animal.

Of course, the Wall has many possible symbolic interpretations, but if one wants to view it as a construct of facades created by the individual, then I would also protest the belief as presented that the Wall needs to be destroyed at all, because masks can be useful commodities, as long as the person utilizing them does not identify themselves by their guises. The guises one employs in daily life do not need to be disposed of if one can simply use logic and understand that they can easily know themselves without having to eliminate the tools they utilize in order to survive. I am not the witch or the Cookie Monster I dressed up as when I was a child for Halloween just as I am not simply the artist, the writer, or the customer service professional roles that I utilize as an adult today.

The danger in utilizing guises lies then in identifying oneself by the guises utilized, not in actually utilizing those roles in order to achieve one’s desire. In order to achieve understanding of oneself, it is necessary to cease identifying with the roles played rather than trying to conform to all of them at once, for that schizophrenic need to “be” everything at once is really what can cause identity problems and incite madness. Wallace Stevens grasped this to some degree in his poem, “The Idea of Order at Key West,” when he struggled with the many pieces of experience he saw in the “Sargasso Sea” of a woman walking along the beach singing. The woman is not the pieces of experience, nor is she the roles that she has gathered in her lifetime… like every person who honestly examines themselves and looks for the substance beyond their cells, she is more than the sum of her parts.

Pink, the main character in The Wall, sees the forms he had utilized throughout his life as impediments to self-knowledge rather than tools to be employed, and this is his most grievous error. He spends his time focusing upon the bricks he believes are holding him in rather understanding that he is separate from the tools he has created to survive, and this is what drives him mad. Were Pink to realize he is more than the masks he has accumulated over time, his decent into madness would not even take place.

Freedom does not come from breaking through the Wall; freedom comes when one comes to the realization that they are not the Wall. One can employ the Wall as a method for obtaining protection against the ferocities of the world without being bound within its limits.

Copyright 2005 S.L. Olson