Emily, Lived By:

Today I was supposed to be good to family.  Well, it’s only fair. Family’s been good to me.

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The best part of my day by far was my conversation with my father about a book. He & I haven’t always been in touch over the years, but we reconnected for good last summer & since then I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know him & his sweet, intelligent sons much better.  I called him in Washington, DC this afternoon to discuss “Aguantando”, a short story from Junot Diaz’s collection Drown.

My father chose this collection because, he told me, “It’s the hardest form to do well– this particular guy is a master of it.”  My father is a photographer who holds that photography’s goal is “to tell a complete story in a single image,” & he sees a similar effect created in Diaz’s work (those yellow dress socks!).  Dad & I both agreed that the story is moving, simply written, & evocative.  A pleasure to read.  Etc.

Summer of '88

After 21 years of schooling, it’s strange to discuss a book in terms of “feelings.”  It’s something I never do.  & feelings? I’ve never had.

If it were a book club, we’d start wrapping up our leftovers & putting on our coats.

But the first sentence of our story is “I lived without a father for the first nine years of my life,” & in the last, certifiably heart-breaking paragraph, the child narrator imagines his father’s homecoming with poignancy that almost brought me to tears– & my father to, I imagine, the grown man’s equivalent.

Why did he choose this particular story?  At first when I asked him it seemed there was no particular reason.  But I’m big on destiny lately & I have to tell you: the story choice means something.  Even if it didn’t, we made it mean something.  The elephant in the room often turns out to be a kind & gentle one, & we bonded about our unconventional childhoods & absent (emotionally or otherwise) fathers.

Most of that should be kept private, I think. Not that there’s anything too scandalous.

He did tell me a story from his boyhood that is too good not share, especially considering that Hemingway played an awfully big role in my life during Week 2.

Below is the account, essentially verbatim, of what happened to my father in the summer of 1956.  As some of you more educated folks may know, this was a politically volatile time for Cuba.  When the story takes place, Castro is a guerilla fighter publicly backed by Hemingway.

When my father was sixteen he had just graduated from Harvard School in Los Angeles.  Fred Zinnemann, my grandfather, had been hired to direct the film adaptation of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, & they were all to spend the summer in Cuba on set.

By the time my father arrived, Zinnemann was off the picture.  Hemingway, who wanted him as the director, got into a fistfight with the producer–  but, as we know in these more civilized times, violence doesn’t solve anything. As a consolation, Hemingway invited my father & grandfather to go fishing with him.  On the same boat from the story, in fact.  With the same Old Man.

A mile or so off the coast of Havana, they put their lines in the water & started to troll.  “The first fish that comes, you take it,” Hemingway told my father.

Soon fish started jumping all around the boat, & the water was crazy with splashes.  Hemingway jumped to the top of the boat & began steering the craft in insane zig-zags through the water, causing my father to think he’d lost his mind.

In fact, they were being machine-gunned from the shore by Batista’s men.

Once the shooting stopped the first fish bit.  My father began to reel it in but Hemingway pushed him out of the way & took it himself.  It was tiny, my father says.  “No bigger than a minnow.”

I’ll leave you all to make whatever sense you like of that.

I find it interesting that Diaz’s work has prompted both my interviewees to share stories about their own families.  A good story, I think, encourages its readers to want to share their own.

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Does this feel like a lot of reading?  Imagine being the one writing it.

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Another task of mine today was to bake something for a family member. Well, nobody lives in my town & I’ve stopped eating.  I suppose I could have rolled some dog food in cold halibut & seasoned it with pepper– that’s really all I have in my cupboard.  I’m a little over budget this week, so I reached an ingenious solution:

I baked a virtual cake for my brother & emailed it to him.  Isn’t it beautiful?  it must taste delicious too.  Much better than getting old halibut in the mail.

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Spring of '07

Also on my list, I had to make a mixed CD for my mother & send her a note telling her why I chose 5-10 songs.  My disk drive has been broken for months & I obviously don’t have the time to take it in, since the project requires me to have my computer every day!  So I reached another ingenious solution: I made an iTunes playlist dedicated to her.

I’ve been attempting to turn it into an iMix periodically over the past four hours, but they’re undergoing “system maintenance” — yeah right.  I know the devil’s work when I see it.

[ed. note: iMix now available here]

Note taken care of below with the playlist!  & soon the “CD” is “given,” if you take a loose definition of “to give.”  Once the iMix is up I’ll share it here & then everyone– including my mom– can enjoy it.

Here’s the playlist:

1. “Love & Communication (Acoustic Version)” – Cat Power – because the first words of the song are “Love & communication you will hear from me” — so this is an obvious one to begin with, right?
2. “Someday You’ll Want Me to Want You” – Ricky Nelson
3. “People” – El Perro del Mar — because you wouldn’t normally like this song, but you will REALLY like it if you imagine that it’s Bella’s interior monologue
4. “Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall” – Ella Fitzgerald & the Ink Spots
5. “White Winter Hymnal” – Fleet Foxes
6. “You Love Me” – Kimya Dawson
7. “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be Will Be)” – Doris Day
8. “Never Had Nobody Like You (feat. Zooey Deschanel)” – M. Ward
9. “Manhattan” – Ella Fitzgerald
10. “Two Sleepy People” – Fats Waller
11. “Baby Love” – Annie Philippe — because it’s funny to hear a French cover
12. “(Hey) Big Spender” – Dorothy Fields
13. “We’re All Mad Here” – Tom Waits — because we are
14. “Sentimental Heart” – She & Him
15. “The Fairest of the Seasons” – Nico
16. “Not Dark Yet” – Bob Dylan
17. “Cabaret” – Louis Armstrong — because one should never end a playlist with any other song.  I think I want this to be the first song my baby hears, if I ever find a decent man.
    

Does this count as a failure?  You tell me.

I made a video of me whistling “Que Sera Sera” but this post is already way too content heavy.

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I’m also supposed to compliment 20 facebook friends, ten of whom I dislike or don’t see often.  I’ve made a list.  I’m not complimenting anyone I dislike because I’ve already defriended them all!  Ha.  I purge regularly & mercilessly.  I am the Stalin of facebook.

Sorry if you’re reading this & I’ve defriended you.  Assume I did it for other reasons (maybe your status updates are stupid).

Anyway, I have a list.  For compliments, not purges.  They’ll be going out within the next few hours.

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There you have it.  Another day in the life of Emily Zinnemann, complete with dead roses & an Oedipal black cat. Oh & of course there’s always

P.S. One of my readers wants to know more about boys & kissing.  I’m sorry, but it’s not that kind of blog!