Unruly, Tangled, Untangled Data

I spent much of the day yesterday writing research.  Writing about data.  But it was strange because the data in this case is, primarily, my family history.  What I want to do here, though, is take liberties with the data and just play around with the material and think about some of the intersections and try to be... unrestrained.

It is juncture. The juncture between summer and early fall. It is a time for vata and vata is everywhere around and in me.  It was in the dry rocky terrain I negotiated up and down Manitou Springs Incline yesterday.  It is in my inability to focus, sit still, and write an dplay with my data. I have been doing my best to ground her.  Hold her still.  Contain her.

But movement is a signature part of my life. As, I'm discovering, it was a signature part of my grandmother's early life.  Although she settled in Redwood City for, what, 60 years now, and lived about her first 18 years in Victor, in between there was a variety of movement and transition that defined her live. I know that the early days of Victor were defining, much like my early years in Defiance defined so much of my life trajectory.

My movement. My trajectory. My vata has invoved a number of states:  California, Missouri, Washing on, New York, North Dakota... Colorado.

Stops (and starts) along the way include: Palo Alto, Redwood City, Defiance, Bonne Terre, Aptos, Santa Cruz, Seattle, Buffalo, Fargo, Victor, Denver.

I seem to hang on to some places more than others.  Places that take me to new depths and heights.  Places filled with memories--both light and dark.

Right now, between Victor and Defiance is a long trail that winds through mountains, rough and rocky. Steep and treacherous, but full of an uncontainable energy. Yet, I'm trying my best to harness it in a way that allows it to grow and flourish.  Between Victor and Defiance time blurs.  It is not chronological.  I move between the present and that past in one step.

Imagine this.  I sit in a building that I know my grandma danced many dances.  I sit in that room taking in a Victorian Olio. Although I'm sitting in space that is 2014, that space holds memories of many eras gone by.  It is an Elks Lodge.  There were near weekly dances there when my grandma was growing up.  She loved to dance.  Before that it was an armory and the militia was housed there when they were sent to squash the union miners, striking for shorter days and more pay.  It is one of those places that Patricia Williams calls "furniture without memories," but here it's buildings without memories. And there are lots of them in Victor.  Sitting in that room in 2014, very few people can remember that time.  I can't remember it, because these were not my memories of my own experience.  Instead, these are memories of my knowledge of that space. A memory created from data. A memory of data tangling with a memory experience, because I decided to sit down in that chair in that building.  A memory generated because I decided to take a plane from Fargo to Denver and drive to Victor.   This project is developing into one that seeking to excavate the memories from furniture, buildings, roads, rocks, mountains, and spaces that have no ability to remember.  All they have are the effects of time, neglect, and care.

And I am creating memories.  Bending space and time to imagine a world in which my grandma lived.  A world in which my great grandpa lived.  A world in which my great great grandma lived. Why do I weave between genders and generations? I don't know.  I do know that it zigzags and relates to some of my data.  The tangible stuff I could find.  Data. Such a rational word. A word that does not convey feeling or aliveness, yet there are unruly tangled up lives in all the documents and microfilm and photos and history books. That is where I find the past and create memories for buildings and towns that have little ability to speak in a language we can understand.  They speak through faded paint.  They speak through sagging ceilings.  They speak through the scuffed floorboards.  They speak through the mountain that is slowly being blown to bits for shards of gold.  But it is people, humans, who interpret these spaces.  Data.

That's why I'm here in Colorado. Data.  And in the process of finding data, new memories emerge.  Memories that tangle up with the data.  Each time I think I have untangled one thread, I find a new pile of thread. Each time I think I've navigated the path and find a clearing, another messy path emerges.

As I finish this trip where it started, in Denver, I will continue to follow the final frayed threads I can access.  Addresses.  Addresses from city directories where grandma and grandpa, great grandma and great grandpa lived.  Part research. Part scavenger hunt.  I am trying my best to walk a few more steps.  To take my time.  To let my vata energy help me move and flow through this city, yet find the grounding and focus to stop. Appreciate.  Feel.  Hear. See. Really see what this city has become in the context of where it was when my grandmother lived here.  I will stand in these spaces in 2014, imagining 1945, 1948, 1950, 1952.  All those years she was here.