Arthur Rothstein: Morning routine, nursery school,
Harlingen, Texas. FSA camp. (1942)
United States. Farm Security Administration

"Losing our Grooves leaves us wandering relatively aimlessly in wilderness."

Being Exiled separates one from their Grooves, their essential routines that pretty much define them. Grooves might seem non-essential, but after losing every other point of orientation, a Groove or two prove at least reassuring, perhaps even confirming. They are who you are and were inseparable before they weren't. Loss of home might feel like loss of self, but losing those Grooves seals the separation. Through early Exiled days, I moved around in a definite haze. I couldn't find my rhythms, the cadences within which I engaged. I suffered from a form of arrhythmia where nothing seemed to work right. I could continue doing anything I'd done before, but without an essential elegance, as if I'd been thrown back into rank amateur status. Even activities in which I'd grown skilled became difficult. I was more likely to slice my thumb when in the kitchen. I'd even nick my chin when shaving.

Grooves grow to become invisible.

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz

George Inness: After a Summer Shower (1894)

It Cost Us Much More
I woke this morning to find Molly, our nearly feral girl cat, curled up on top of The Muse's open suitcase. We'd returned home the afternoon before to find our boy cat Max waiting and ready to mount my lap for some overdue petting. Molly had slipped in unnoticed later for her quick bite of supper before disappearing back out into her waning summer. The Muse harvested the week's worth of ripe tomatoes from our extraordinarily productive garden, and we took supper inside, the outside temperature having plummeted into Autumn in the short time we'd been gone. Our absence had made our hearts grow fonder for this place from which we were so long ago Exiled. Homecomings since have been uniformly sweet. They make the leaving seem worthwhile even though the world we find out there seems increasingly hostile to innocent visitors. Decent digs seem almost impossible to find. We traveled well again, our style honed in no small measure by our long-ago exile. We travel almost exclusively via roads few consider taking. We avoid schedules, often stopping to read and learn from those roadside readerboards. I gratefully slow to allow whoever's behind me to pass, lest they follow too closely and learn our sacred secrets. We learned to find our way by being rudely Exiled and thriving anyway. May we never have to go away like that again. I'm grateful, though, for the learning being laid low afforded us. I'd say our understanding's priceless, but it cost us much more than that. It's worth more, too.

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz

Odilon Redon: Passage of a Soul (1891)

"The roads least taken tend to be the ones most worth taking."

The Exiled do not readily adopt their new home. They naturally resist assimilation because too easy an integration might serve to disrespect their "real" home. They will find many reasons why their new station seems inferior, however superior it might objectively seem to every other observer. Traffic became chief among my complaints when we landed in Northern Virginia. Traffic had evolved into absolutely unworkable patterns there, where the bulk clogged what were euphemistically referred to as arteries. These often proved to be among the longest paths between any two points, but paradoxically also the most traveled. I believed that this had more to do with habit than design. People often follow what appear to be the wider paths, for instance, when narrower ones might make more sense. Of course, if everyone followed these shorter paths, they'd become clogged, too, so I worked hard to keep my emerging SecretPassages secret.

Chief among my strategies for keeping my SecretPassages secret involved turning off any navigation apps that might be recording my passage.

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz

W. Tringham, after Jacques de Sève:
Onbekend dier [Anonymous Animal] (1773)

" … I sense myself a better man …"

Anonymity might be the one utterly reliable superpower that the newly Exiled possess. Though stripped of most of their possessions, they all acquire this one in exchange. It might initially seem freeing to move about the world with nobody watching or anyone watching having no clue what they're seeing, but this gift has indefinite limits. The anonymous hold little influence. They have nobody they can call to help them out should they get themselves into a jam. They can go anywhere without fear of being recognized, but they tend to roam few places where such recognition might matter. It's as if they exist without any observers, without any risk or hope of accidentally bumping into someone influential and embarrassing themselves. The Anonymity, while initially freeing, comes to wear one down. If nobody knows you from Adam or Eve, it might become difficult to know what you believe. Acquaintances can at least remind you who you are or who you used to be, and without that feedback, it grows difficult to remember who you are or were in this world.

Anonymity reliably produces ghosts.

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz

Eduard-Julius-Friedrich Bendemann:
The People of Jerusalem in Exile (c. 1832)

" … not actually sentenced to spend time in jail but still there, even if Just Visiting."

Before we'd found permanent housing, we discovered that we'd been Exiled into the one place with more Exiles than any other place in this country. Federal government employees are routinely sent "on station," assigned to work in Washington for periods ranging from a few months to a few years. Thousands are encouraged to volunteer for these assignments, promised better future promotions, and a deeper understanding of how the system they're a part of works. Many bring their families, but more don't, and consequently, there are thousands of people left wondering what to do on weekends. Many work right through their weekends, figuring that the sooner they finish their assignment, the sooner their exile might end. Local connections seem challenging to make. The locals have families to attend to, and other ExPats have their own lives to live. Further, the sheer size of the DC Metro area means that people who work next to each other throughout the week might bunk fifty or more miles apart. Consequently, an Expat's life can be lonely.

The Muse and I, within a couple of weeks of arriving, began hosting a Sunday night potluck supper at our temporary digs.

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz

Unidentified Artist: Avoid Accidents! Think of Safety!
[Series/Book Title: Social Museum Collection] (c. 1903)

" … we ended up Accidentially thriving there …"

Our Exile separated The Muse and me from much more than our beloved home. It also separated us from our accustomed means of thriving. The Bankruptcy cleaned out our liquidity and, with that, our sense of identity. If we lacked money, how would we be able to continue pursuing our purpose? How would we be able to purchase what we needed to survive, especially once we'd relocated into one of the pricier housing markets in the country? We had no idea how we'd survive. We kept moving forward As If, perhaps taking heart from the parable of The Birds of the Field, who apparently manage to get by without the usual means to survive. They manage to live Accidentally On Purpose if that makes any sense. Of course, that notion makes no sense whatsoever to anyone schooled in this culture. Here, we carefully plot our course before purchasing passage. We thrive through planning, or so we continually insist. We're schooled to avoid accidents and believe that accidents result from poor planning and that accidents suggest terrible things about us. We even revile the accident-prone.

The Muse and I set about living Accidentally On Purpose.

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz

Anselmus Boëtius de Boodt: Robin
[Erithacus rubecula] (1596 - 1610)

" … long ago when I still expected novelty to light my way home."

I sought out novelty before we were Exiled. After, I felt more attracted to Familiar things, to Familiars. Before, I'd considered myself adventurous when seeking some odd or unusual experience. I'd order the wild boar in the restaurant and seek out the Stearnwheeler supper cruise. I'd gather these experiences like some collect bracelet charms, believing myself especially blessed and a bit courageous. I once drove over an hour to find a trailer in the Arizona desert where a retired fireman from Poughkeepsie had set up shop selling rattlesnake rattles so I could return from that trip with unique gifts for my kids. I preferred to take the less-traveled roads and thought myself unique. That was before I was Exiled.

After being Exiled, I sought out Familiars, even the formerly banal ones.

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz

Harry Sternberg:
Father Leaving Home with Suitcase
[Series/Book Title: Life in Woodcuts] (20th century)

"I no longer need to take leave."

The drive up and out of The Walla Walla Valley that first morning of Exile felt promising, for our possessions were already on their way, and we'd been left behind. It seemed as though we were only trying to catch up to our life as we headed East across the Blue Mountains and on through Southern Idaho into Utah. We made Evanston that first evening, just as far as my to-be first wife and I had made it the first morning of our initial Exile thirty-five years earlier. We were catching up to our lives then, too. She was chasing her first job after graduating from university, and I was tagging along, heading into what was then still a seemingly great unknown. I was twenty-two and had never experienced humidity, which made me a virgin of sorts. I'd never imagined what most of the rest of the country routinely experienced, clear evidence that I'd left Eden for some alternate universe inhabited by heathens. Why would any sentient being tolerate high humidity? It did not make sense!

With that first Exile experience and a lifetime's accumulation of others, I'd grown familiar with Leaving.

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz

Unidentified Artist: Industrial Problems, Welfare Work: United States. Ohio. Dayton. National Cash Register Company: Welfare Institutions of the National Cash Register Company, Dayton, Ohio.: Departments: Showing White Aprons

Series/Book Title: Social Museum Collection (c. 1903)

A Requisite Humility
Six hundred and sixty square feet of clear verticle grain Douglas Fir tongue and groove boards were delivered to my driveway yesterday. They represent the start of the final chapter in a two-year quest to refurbish our formerly beleaguered front porch here at The Villa Vatta Schmaltz. Those who have been paying attention will have noticed the continuing disruptions I've been reporting for nearly two months. At least two more months of effort remain to finish constructing the structure that will support the porch deck and then to lay those lovely gold-plated deck boards and the bead board ceiling, not to mention the dressing out of the new posts and beams and the construction of the new railing, top and bottom. My role in all this effort has largely been as sponsor and chief miscommunicator, for however skilled I might be as a writer, I suck as the supervisor of construction efforts. The workers speak in nearly indecipherable dialects heavy with incomprehensible terms. I banter through sixteen-inch centers as if I understand what I am saying. I later learned that I sometimes misrepresent my best interests by simply showing interest. Those trying to read the boss imperil the whole enterprise. Any boss trying actually to boss anybody proves to be a serious hazard to navigation. I am reminded how critically important ineptness always proves to be in every undertaking. It usually insists upon a requisite humility and more patience than Job.

Tags: #Exiled

Unknown Igbo Artist: Mami Wata figure (1950s)

"I might have been broke, but never broken."

The bankruptcy rendered us effectively insolvent. We entered a previously unperceived CashEconomy. It was as if the economy had suddenly returned to the gold standard, and we had no access to gold. Modern economies do not trouble themselves very much with cash. It serves more as an artifact than as a means of exchange. It becomes a metaphor, a way of speaking about value rather than a means for holding it. Modern economies transact exchanges with symbols once or more times removed from actual specie, just as CashEconomies sit at least once removed from their underlying gold. It's enough that Fort Knox holds reserves. Remember, it became illegal for private citizens to hold too much gold, even when we were still on the so-called gold standard. Such conventions ultimately came to limit economic potential, and so were done away with in favor of plastic and similar, more imaginative systems.

The most profound initial effect of the bankruptcy was a radical loss of liquidity.

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz

"(Giuseppe Niccolò Vicentino)(After Parmigianino)
(Previously attributed to Circle of Ugo da Carpi): Hope
(Sixteenth Century)

"We were never caught once."

We entered our Exile curiously hopeful. We had every right to engage in despair, for we had fallen far. We'd been within a month of moving into barrels, becoming cartoon-character destitute wearing barrels with suspenders, yet we felt hopeful instead. Obama had just been inaugurated, and Hope was in the air. We would be there, near where the upcoming miracle would happen, next to ground zero of the transformation. The Muse would even participate in her role in the bowels of The Department of Energy's Biofuels Development Office.

My role was unclear.

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz

William Blake: Fallen Angels,
Alternate Title: Three Falling Figures (c. 1793)

"Maybe I could find a new identity, even one AboveMe there."

While attending university in Portland, my first wife and I lived in a main-floor-of-an-old-house apartment on a busy arterial. When friends moved out of their main-floor-of-an-old-house apartment on top of Mt. Tabor with views of both Mt. Hood and Mt. Saint Helens, we moved in a minute and soon came to think of ourselves as the sort of people who lived on top of one of the more prominent vistas in the city. Later, when our landlord decided to raise the rent by the amount of the increase in the Consumer Price Index each month, we decided to buy a house. The best we could afford was located down in what we called The Flats, a neighborhood far beneath our accustomed station, with industrial operations squeezed between houses. The adjacent milk bottling plant left the neighborhood smelling of sour milk most mornings. All claims to have been urban pioneering aside, we felt as if we had been Exiled into a third-world nation. It would be where we'd raise our kids and live our lives. In retrospect, it doesn't seem half as demeaning as it felt.

I recognized that old familiar feeling when The Muse and I landed in Roslyn, Virginia, at the beginning of our later Exile.

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz

Russel Lee: Cot house in the oil town of Hobbs, New Mexico. Hobbs is now experiencing a boom and the cot houses are necessary for the swarms of workers who come in. This is typical of all oil boom towns. (1940) United States. Farm Security Administration

"I'd been shipwrecked before. I knew the routine."

Until The Muse and I were Exiled following our unfortunate bankruptcy, I hadn't understood how Experienced I had been at the odd art of exiling. Anyone accustomed to living and working in a place might never suspect a simmering exile economy surrounding them. Traveling salespersons might live in perpetual exile, as do consultants. I had been a consultant before the crash, so I had grown accustomed to working anywhere but home. One year, I stayed in fifty different hotel rooms and a few for longer than overnight. Each business trip amounted to a practice exile, for I would be rechallenged to find a cup of decent decaf and an acceptable bakery. I ultimately came to pride myself on being able to locate both within an hour of landing in any strange city. Traveling for a living seemed little different from being Exiled, except for the returning home part.

Leaving home was another matter.

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz

Paul Gauguin:
cover art for Catalogue de l'Exposition de Peintures du Groupe Impressionniste et Synthétiste
[Catalogue of the Exhibition of Paintings of the Impressionist and Synthetist Group] (1889)
Book containing eight zincographs and letterpress text
in black ink, with photomechanically printed gray stripes on cover, on tan wove paper

"I never learned how to feel as though I belonged there."

In late March 2009, The Muse and I left our beloved Villa Vatta Schmaltz for an indeterminate exile. Over the prior month, our local newspaper had published my series of essays entitled The White Collar Recession, which recounted our recent dénouement, our fall from grace. The prior autumn's economic crash had left our once-thriving business and us bankrupt. Coming concurrently with my father's death, the blow had been devastating. We fully expected to lose everything, including our beloved Villa, once the symbol of our success turned into our most visible evidence of failure. The bankruptcy administrator found us faultless, but his judgment did little to assuage our feelings. We were less than a month away from moving into a barrel when The Muse was offered a prestigious job with one of the Department of Energy's National Laboratories. The rub was that we would have to relocate far from the center of our universe. When entering that stage of life where we had been expected to be winding down our wandering, we were forced to rewind ours. By the time the newspaper declared my White Collar Recession their second most popular series of the year, we were no longer there, for we had been Exiled.

We landed in a close suburb of Washington, DC, Roslyn, Virginia, in transition housing, a sixth-floor apartment overlooking a firehouse and beneath the final approach to National Airport with two restless, edgy cats.

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz