Hishikawa Sori III:
Potted adonis with writing implements (1800)

Delving Into History Insists
Delving into history seems like an inherently dangerous activity. While nobody can ever honestly foresee their future, the same holds for foreseeing their history, for it couldn't have possibly been as expected. The very nature of forebears seems mysterious, just like nobody ever understands the underlying nature of their parents' relationship’s covenant. It's not exactly a secret but of another context, not for anybody but the principles to ever profoundly comprehend. No amount of study will ever unwrap the underlying mystery, though even superficial study seems likely to uncover previously unrecognized elements. The same holds for distant ancestors as it must for immediate family. Dealing with more distant relatives erases the more closely shared context immediate relatives share. I have no possibility of anticipating the lives of relatives who spoke now derelict languages in places impossibly different than any surviving place in this world. Their motives must leave me clueless. Their morals simply must seem questionable. Delving into history insists upon me exercising my most generous possible interpretations.

—

Weekly Writing Summary

This Fambly Story, Romance, speaks of language, the great divider of my forebears and the greater uniter of their progeny. My family's history follows the evolution of our more modern languages, though I have only managed to barely master an arcane form of American English more like my grandfather's.

Antonie Wierix (II), after Maerten de Vos: Kerkvader Ambrosiusm [Churchfather Ambrosium] (1585)
" … even though my forebears just passed through."
—

This Fambly Story finds me wondering after my LivingHistory, or if history can ever correctly be considered a living entity. This story proved to be this week's most popular.

Frederic Remington: Historians of the Tribe (1890–99)
"Cicadas, like history, spend much more time in the ground than they ever spend making noise."
—
This Fambly Story, FakingHistory , finally admits that some indeterminable portion of the history I've been presenting here might have been fiction. I wasn't necessarily intending to misrepresent, at least not consciously. I have been trying to create a coherent story, and history doesn't necessarily come out so straight.

William Michael Harnett: Still-life with Flute and Times (1877)
" … nobody has a better foundation than the notoriously unstable shifting sands of time."
—
This Fambly Story finds me performing a routine impossibility, which I attempt every Memorial Day, VisitingHistory.

Gravestone of Nicholas Daniel Schmaltz, my fraternal grandfather
" … grateful for the one day each year reserved for performing the obligatorily impossible …"
—
This Fambly Story recounts the particulars of one of my most illustrious and notorious ancestors, KatherineSwynford , mistress then third wife of John of Gaunt.

Unknown Artist: Katherine Swynford, from her tomb, Lincoln Cathedral (1403)
"Swynford was an exceptional presence."
—
This Fambly Story, Colonization, might not be fit to read. Some of my Fambly history seems too shameful to remember.

King Henry VII of England- Lord Howth was his cousin by marriage and a reliable supporter of his Tudor dynasty
"We seem too stupid to survive."
—

Creating my Fambly stories became excruciating this week. Summarizing the experience only twists the knife in the wound. Several times this week, I prayed for an end to this ordeal, a sure sign that I must have been stumbling into something meaningful, not to be avoided. The Romance languages harken back to the Vulgar Latin my forebears employed. Living History must be a paradoxical entity, one perhaps aspired to but never once actually experienced. Every honest genealogist must catch themselves FakingHistory. Less truth than anyone ever imagined remains for analysis. Likewise, I imagine myself VisitingHistory. This turns out to be somewhat like the Monopoly game's Just Visiting space where you're not actually in the space you think you're visiting. I reverted to describing one of my eighteenth great-great grandmother's experiences, KatherineSwynford. I ended my writing week railing against Colonization, the very medium within which much of my Fambly history has unfolded. To seek truth seems unavoidably disappointing. Color me seriously disappointed. What else should have I expected? Thank you for hanging in there while I have been so publicly hanging myself.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Fambly, #PureSchmaltz