{"id":365,"date":"2014-06-20T00:48:47","date_gmt":"2014-06-20T00:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/djhatfield.com\/blog\/?p=365"},"modified":"2014-06-20T00:48:47","modified_gmt":"2014-06-20T00:48:47","slug":"blast-from-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/djhatfield.com\/blog\/?p=365","title":{"rendered":"blast from the past"},"content":{"rendered":"

several years ago–when i was still living in chicago, in fact, my friend marko zivkovic<\/a> suggested to a small group of friends interested in experimental writing that we write short vignettes about fieldwork. i became a bit over enthusiastic in the mode of trying to retrain my voice after finishing the dissertation, and ended up writing several semi-fictional autobiographical stories. until recently, i thought that they had been lost on some zip drive or another….<\/p>\n

Everyone Deserves an Umbrella<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s been said, by one of Doestojevskij’s characters I believe, that deserving an umbrella is the common denominator of humanity.\u00a0 My grandmother, Reverend W’s wife, probably never read Dostojevskij, but she would feel a certain appropriateness in an umbrella centered definition of what it is to be human.\u00a0 More so than a briefcase, a handkerchief, or a wool blazer, the quality of a gentleman can be judged by the weight and the fabric of the tool he uses to keep the rain off of his shoulders.<\/p>\n

Perhaps due to the virtue acquired by the piece in being carried about in a man’s right hand, the umbrella is the next best judge of character to the handshake.\u00a0 Both should be firm and weighty while being gentle.\u00a0 And of course, the umbrella should be expansive enough to accommodate one’s partner<\/p>\n

It was with these important considerations in mind that my grandmother selected an umbrella for her eldest grandson on the occasion of his year abroad in Taiwan.\u00a0 An umbrella is impossible to wrap, so she presented it to me, with apologies on the lack of a surprise opening, on the going away party that approximately corresponded to my eighteenth birthday.\u00a0 Seeing the umbrellas that I had previously carried, none of them distinctive, she assumed that like most men (Reverend W for whom she had always bought shirts being the truest example of the species)\u00a0 I was incapable of purchasing those very items which are any gentleman’s essential properties.\u00a0 But an umbrella was a matter of utmost importance.\u00a0 I think that even if I were married, my grandmother would not have entrusted such a matter to someone who was a virtual outsider.\u00a0 After all, it was my humanity that was in question<\/p>\n

My grandmother selected the umbrella from the mens’ department of Peeble’s Department Store in Seaford, Delaware. \u00a0She would have preferred Wannamaker’s in Philadelphia, but in a pinch, Peeble’s would do. In keeping with her tastes, it was a sturdy, simple umbrella in heavy black nylon with a stainless steel tip.\u00a0 The handle was of real wood and not the imitation wood molded plastic most umbrellas are made of these days.\u00a0 As far as umbrellas go, this one was made to survive both gentle spring rains, winter fogs, and the gusty thunderstorms of august.\u00a0 In keeping with the occasion of a going away party, the handle was also marked with a etched brass monogrammed plate:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DJH<\/strong><\/p>\n

1986<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She assumed that this umbrella would remain with me for at least until my future wife would begin buying shirts, handkerchiefs, ties, and umbrellas.\u00a0 Unfortunately, her gift was stolen from me not long after I arrived in Taiwan.\u00a0 On one of those summer days when a Typhoon was blowing through another part of the island, Taitiong’s sky\u00a0 was navigated by billowing full masted clouds, which whisped toward the Central Mountain Range, where they would come aground.\u00a0 I had taken my umbrella just in case one of them decided to lighten its hold of rain while still above the coastal flatlands.\u00a0 On the way to the coffee shop where I met a friend who worked outside of the university, the clouds continued to sail along, mottling the street with lugubrious shadows.\u00a0 When we were about to leave, however, a sheet of water glazed the open gate of Gothic Coffee Shop’s covered patio.\u00a0 I walked back to the umbrella rack near the door of the coffee shop to pick up my umbrella only to find it missing.\u00a0 Perhaps someone had mistaken the umbrella for their own, but now there were no umbrellas matching a similar description in any of the metal compartments of the rack.\u00a0 I stood in the doorway and cursed under my breath as my friend, who had not taken an umbrella to the coffee shop, discretely took an umbrella from the rack.\u00a0 He motioned that I do the same.\u00a0 I gave him a scornful glance and walked out into the rain<\/p>\n

By the time he convinced me to stand underneath his ill-gotten umbrella, I was already halfway to a midsummer fever.\u00a0 Instead of going to a video parlour to view a film, as we had planned, we decided to go to a nearby sauna.\u00a0 He fetched some dry clothes from a street vendor as I sat with a towel wrapped around me, inhaling redwood scented steam.\u00a0 And an umbrella from those street vendors who appear–seemingly from nowhere–at the outset of unexpected rains.\u00a0 This umbrella stayed with me for a week, give a take a few days, when it was stolen from another umbrella rack, this time at a karaoke.\u00a0 Once again, as I stood dumbly cursing at the door, a friend took another umbrella from the rack.\u00a0 He pressed it into my hands.\u00a0 “Aih…just take one,” his voice of confused impatience<\/p>\n

Noting how routinely the umbrellas I had stolen for me from umbrella racks were stolen to be stolen once again by others who were later stolen from, I began to lose my moral inhibitions about stealing umbrellas.\u00a0 After all, the umbrella I stole from the rack was probably stolen anyway.\u00a0 I thought that perhaps I was returning the favour.\u00a0 Or maybe I was righting the wrong done to someone else, who after all of the umbrellas–including his own–were stolen from the rack, had to face the misery of the prickly rain that fell like so many cat hairs on those days when the sky refused to rain honestly. Or perhaps by stealing this umbrella, I was passing on the misfortune of having one’s umbrella stolen during the spring monsoons to someone who had stolen someone else’s.\u00a0 At least I was keeping myself dry<\/p>\n

Sometimes, during the rainy season in particular, I would imagine that I could identify umbrellas that I lifted from an umbrella rack in a teahouse only to be stolen from me at a shaved-ice-and-fruit stand.\u00a0 I would look carefully at the person holding the umbrella and try to remember whether I had seen them that day, sipping at an iced taro root soup or a sweet mung bean ice topped with condensed milk.\u00a0 She would seem to sip innocently.\u00a0 But wasn’t there a certain cleverness about the way she looked at my umbrella in the inverted reflection of her spoon?\u00a0 She was really waiting for me to walk to the counter, when she could casually reach under the table.\u00a0 Only a muted popping sound from the other side of the tin roof would warn me of what I would discover when returning for my books<\/p>\n

Not that my books got wet that day.\u00a0 If one was in a public place (excluding the street, where one would have to buy one) there were always a few umbrellas around. If a stolen umbrella was stolen, one would not think of it as theft, but as a circulation of all the little debts we owe one another.\u00a0 He sent over a glass of beer at the karaoke, and I am certain that he needed the umbrella when he left; besides, I took this umbrella from the stairwell of X’s apartment, I think it belonged to his downstairs neighbor, but if he leaves an umbrella in the stairwell, then–who is to say that he didn’t take it from someone else?\u00a0 With the new umbrellas added to umbrella racks throughout the island by street vendors who sell cheap umbrellas for 100 NT each time it rains, it’s not like we are ever going to have an umbrella shortage.\u00a0 And one should truly thank these umbrella producers and salesmen for their crucial role in protecting us all from the total anonymity of contemporary urban life.\u00a0 For if everyone deserves an umbrella, what could express our relationships to each other as those who share a similar human fate than the accidents of umbrellas stolen?<\/p>\n

But a well-made umbrella is still a well-made umbrella.\u00a0 I returned to my family who live back of Willards, Maryland for a month or two before finishing college in Lexington, Virginia.\u00a0 My grandmother never asked about the umbrella she gave me as a going away present two years before, and I never mentioned it being stolen.\u00a0 When I told my parents that I was planning to embark for Taiwan after graduating from college, they did not decide to combine graduation celebrations with a going away party; moving my books into storage was enough to manage.\u00a0 I had no chance to acquire another umbrella before I left.\u00a0 But in Taiwan one could always pick one up somewhere<\/p>\n

A day or two after I arrived,\u00a0 I bought one of the 100 NT umbrellas from a street salesman in the Kelang nightmarket amid stalls selling octopus sashimi and stringy noodles with oysters.\u00a0 The salesmen made brisk business in this port city famous for rain in Japanese colonial era standards such as “Rainy Night in a Harbour City”.\u00a0 We drove back to Taiepi that night, after visiting abandoned gold mining town of Kaohun, ever shrouded in its dull green mist.\u00a0 In Taipei the hum of air conditioners could be heard over the weeklong prattle of raindrops on ashphalt.\u00a0 One of the first Typhoons with a male name was headed for Taitang.\u00a0 The next day, I met two college classmates–one from Lexington, another from Taitiong–at the entrance of Sogo department store.\u00a0 We drove to Thohng to pick up one of our friends.\u00a0 He suggested a teahouse on the rooftop of a building downtown.\u00a0 Shoes and umbrellas were deposited at the entrance, shoes checked, umbrellas placed in a convenient rack.\u00a0 Many pots of tea and plates of cashews later, we put on the geta provided by the proprietor to walk from our pavilion set with others in the simulated traditional village and garden.\u00a0 The teahouse also provided oil paper umbrellas which could be used when necessary.\u00a0 Of course, one left both with the cashier<\/p>\n

We collected our shoes to leave.\u00a0 It was no surprise that the umbrella I had bought the day before was now no longer in the rack.\u00a0 Without looking in the rack, my hand was drawn to the nearest umbrella, one with a wood handle.\u00a0 “Just take one like the one you lost,” I told my classmate from Lexington, Virginia, who eyed me suspiciously.\u00a0 “It was probably stolen from someone else anyway,” chimed in the classmate from Taitiong.\u00a0 That night, we all slept in our friend’s apartment in Thohng.\u00a0 As I carried the new umbrella inside, I noticed\u00a0 small engraved plate on the handle:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DJH<\/p>\n

1986<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The engraving was worn, the brass tarnished, and a few of the spokes of the umbrella were curiously bent, but there was no doubt that this was indeed the umbrella my grandmother had given me two years before.\u00a0 I lost the umbrella in Taitiong, and from there it had passed through many hands.\u00a0 Perhaps it had been taken from the Gothic Coffee House by a real estate agent, who lent it out to a client, who lost the umbrella a week\u00a0 later while eating a business lunch.\u00a0 There, the umbrella was carried by a young woman who waited at the corner of Freedom Street for a taxi.\u00a0 When she arrived at her destination and the sky was clear, she left my umbrella behind.\u00a0 The driver used the umbrella when on a visit to his family in Lokkang.\u00a0 He gave it to his mother, who recognized a good umbrella when she saw one.\u00a0 When the driver’s mother visited her brother in Kohiong two weeks later, someone lifted the umbrella as she and her brother’s children ate at a Western restaurant.\u00a0 In two years, the umbrella had been carried from city to city; had been on quiet walks in the mountains; had shielded the delicate skin of a young woman who traversed the harsh white pavement of the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial with tiny, pensive steps; performed its centripetal magic, drawing\u00a0 many couples under its open spokes into their first, hesitant embrace; acted as an impromptu walking stick; kept a young writer’s first collection of poetry from being soaked on its way to the editor; was held at car doors by dutiful grandsons while opening the car door for Ah-Ma or Ah-kong; bumped spokes with other umbrellas in the morning rush; opened and closed between apartments, restaurants, pedestrian arcades, teahouses, coffee shops, markets, nightclubs, offices, classrooms, department stores, railroad platforms, bus stops, hospitals, haberdasheries, and temples; allowed for splendid feats of dexterity when opened by riders of vespa scooters; it had seen many a reunion, send off, and first meeting handshake.\u00a0 Finally, a gangster with tatoos visible through his thin white cotton shirt had taken the umbrella from a questionable piano bar a few days before.\u00a0 It was given to him by one of the women who worked there, who thought it made him look like a character from “City of Sadness”.\u00a0 When we left the teahouse, one could still hear the gangster’s voice singing drunkenly, “Tonight it still rains in Taipei”<\/p>\n

There is a chance of rain in Chicago today, but I will not carry the umbrella my grandmother gave me in 1986.\u00a0 I figured that I would take it out of circulation, now that it has come back to me, with ghosts hiding underneath its spokes<\/p>\n

[i think that this one was dated 1998 or 1999]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

several years ago–when i was still living in chicago, in fact, my friend marko zivkovic suggested to a small group of friends interested in experimental writing that we write short Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[104,103,102,101],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-autobiographical-fiction","tag-ethnographic-fiction","tag-umbrellas","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/djhatfield.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/djhatfield.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/djhatfield.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djhatfield.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djhatfield.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/djhatfield.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":369,"href":"https:\/\/djhatfield.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions\/369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/djhatfield.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djhatfield.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djhatfield.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}