Numinous

12 years ago I was about to turn 12. September 11th had happened a few months prior. I was in the 6th grade, started to wear contacts, and was hopelessly battling puberty. 

12 years ago I first saw my mother paint. 

She was working towards her Masters in Art in Education and her culminating thesis was an art show depicting the wheat and grain heartland in which we lived. She painted four massive paintings following the progress of the maturation of a stalk of wheat. She drew numerous colored pencil drawings of the beautiful grain. She wrote her thesis essay, a paper so long it could have been bound as a book. 

In the weeks leading to Christmas, she was painting.

I would spend my day at school, writing stories and thoughts to tell her on scraps of paper I would shove into my pockets. School would end, and my sisters and I would ride the bumpy bus ride home. Once home we would grab a few Oreos, my sisters would head to the TV, and I went to the basement. In the back room, a damp place with molding work desks and cluttered with boxes of taxes from 1993 and dad's old aviation books, my mother had set up her easel. Here she could fling her paintbrush and not worry where drops landed. She could blast music (from Creed and 3 Doors Down, to Trans-Siberian Orchestra and N*Sync Christmas) and be warmed by the diesel furnace that sat about twenty feet away.

I would settle myself on the old green couch, the upholstery a sticky plastic substance (the stickiness most likely developing from years of small children spilling koolaid) and watch my mother paint, while telling her about the contents of the notes buried in my pockets. She would listen, sometimes giving advice, other times sighing in a way that led me to believe I should be joining my sisters in front of the TV.

After the art show my mother's paintings sold, and I have always wondered where they currently hang.

Sometime this past spring, in the throws of a looming depression brought on by the boredom found after college and low income, I wandered into a nearby craft store. Before I knew it, I had drained my meager bank account on a beginners set of acrylic paints, a few small canvases, paint brushes, and a plastic storage container to hold it all.

I hadn't painted since high school, although I had always felt the need to. Setting up in front of reality TV, I got to work, and developed a new coping skill. When I am anxious, restless, and depressed enough to be unable to see bright colors, I sit and paint. When I am bored, when there are no new Dateline episodes online, when I want to give an unique gift, or amp up my online dating profile, I paint.

And recently, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, I have been painting. And of course, listening to Christmas music.

The only Christmas music I listen to is a few select songs from the Love Actually Soundtrack, and all music by Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

Those who know me know I am not a religious person. Going to Catholic Mass for me is more of a family tradition than it is worship. During this Christmas season, as the first away from my family, living in a house sparsely decorated, and in a city that has yet seen snow, the ritual of painting with the background of Trans-Siberian has brought me back to Christmas at the Mills'. With each potted plant draped in lights and bulbs, one (or two) trees decorated to the nines. Garlands and candles on the mantles, and Santa figurines on every surface. Outside there is always a few inches of snow, inside Dad makes a fire, mom works on needlepoint while Dad watches football. We are all covered in blankets with a dog or cat in our laps. There are stuffed moose wearing stocking hats in the bathroom, wreaths in each picture window, and lights edging the brick house. Religion is the tradition of a family.

When I paint, I remember that. And remember the person who makes it all possible, the person who first placed a paint brush in my hand (or a pen for that matter), who takes an entire Saturday to decorate the house, and an entire week to convince her husband its time to put the lights up and get the tree. She cooks the dinner, places the sugar cookie dough in the fridge to cool, and embroiders door hangers for each our bedroom doors.

I recently saw the pictures from  Lisa's wedding, where I wore a black dress and my hair pulled up into a tight knot. I was struck at how much I looked like my mother. Today, after breakfast (at noon, obviously, as its a weekend), I threw on jeans, a yellow t-shirt I work out in, and a denim button up. I wrapped my frizzy hair into a bun and stuck a head band on. I glanced at my self in the mirror, and again was struck at how much I looked like my mother.

I got to painting, and within the blues and greens and fumes, I began to have issues. I struggled with getting the strokes and colors just right. I looked away from the canvas and then back, and found the issue. As I tend to work on small canvases, most only 2 inches by 2 inches, I often hold the canvas close to my eyes to get the paint exactly where I want it. And I often have to look away and then back, holding the canvas at an arm's length to see the bigger picture.

And sometimes it takes traveling to a new home on the other side of the world, and tearing up whenever you talk about your mom, to see the bigger picture.

Other than my green eyes from the Mills, I am turning into my mother, and I couldn't have a better Christmas present.

Numinous: adjective, Latin: appealing to the higher emotions or the aesthetic sense. 

Culture

The term "culture" is a modern one. It derives from the roman "cultura animi" which translates to "cultivation of the soul". The term originally was used to describe education, and not whole bodies of people.

One of my au pair neighbors was recently talking about her experience in Germany, she arrived three months before I did. She stated that she was loving it here, and loved "learning a new culture." Although I understood her statement, it struck me as odd. This neighbor is European, and her hometown has more similarities with Marl than mine does. However, with each day that passes, I find less differences between the German culture and my own, small town American one.

This became apparent on Friday night when I was invited to a rock concert for a local musician who had won Germany Idol a few years back. His type of music is similar to that of Creed, but I was excited to go and get out of the house.

The music was very good, including the opening act that was a reggae German singer, who I just loved. The venue was an old, small warehouse with a stage at one end and a bar at another. Right outside the door there was a Curry Wurst and Pommes Frites stand. The air inside was foggy from lighting effects, and the floor sticky with spilled beer. There were few tables and chairs, and so we stood for the entire three hours. The musician was a small town boy at heart, and every year on December 6th (St. Nikolaus day in Germany), he returned home and held a concert, choosing a local musician to open for him. The crowd was filled with his old friends from school, adults who had seen him grow, and teenagers who idolized his achievement of "making it big".

It was a rock concert. Simple as that. Even though the lyrics were in German, and I could barely understand anything with the heavy bass, the music was fun, people were dancing, there was beer, and for a split second I thought I saw an old acquaintance from Whitworth. My mind quickly exclaimed as I took a double take, "No, can't be. Not here in this small German city." But a part of me thought, why not? I could see this particular acquaintance liking this music and coming for a beer and Friday night fun.

With the pounding of music in my ears, and my eyes blinking from the bright lights on the stage, I realized that where I was, was really no different than where I could be this Friday night in America. Other than the obvious language difference, and the amazing beer, nothing was different.

And yet, I often get asked, "How do you like the German culture?" A culture I tend to define by its overeating of bread and paving everything with stone and brick. The language is different, but if you listen you hear the same roots English has. The train schedules are hideous, but I have never lived in New York, London, or Rome.

And some may say its this modern era, everything has been westernized, changed to reflect the giant that is the United States. Blue jeans,  coca cola, Herbal Essences, all these are American imports. In this modern era, is there still true culture?

And I wonder, was there ever? Or was it humans living within their means, using what was available, but in essence not living any differently than their counterparts across the world. Love, hate, grief, comfort, those are all the same. No German questions my love of sleep, of cheese, or of fresh air.

I begin to believe that this is not a different culture I am living in, nor a different life. It is simply a house, across the street from a church, with a family who loves their young son, and planning to build a jungle gym in the backyard for him. They bought stones from the local hardware store to pave the walkway. They trim the shrubs, move the welcome mat when it gets soaked with rain, and hang Christmas lights. They sing songs to the child, closely video tape when he begins to walk, and let him play with the pots and pans.

Eliano's childhood is not much different than my own. He will grow to speak a different language. But his culture, with the cobblestoned streets and increased intake of bread, is that what defines him as different than me. Or is he more similar than an outsider would realize. We are all born with the same emotions, all babble in baby talk, all learn to walk with the same shaky steps. And other than a slight change in material values and appearances, I have yet to see a difference.

For I believe the modern term "culture" is overused. Perhaps it is just the cultivation of a soul, the education of one, about one's world.