L'aura del Campo

From Sweden to Sweden

Winter: 9 Mulk (February 15)

TREASURE OF THE DAY

I see your disease,
Like a lucid dream that is my own.
Nausea and compassion,
Back and forth,
The lost son of an invisible father,
Insane mother,
Dear to your heart,
My brother.

The opening describes some of what I felt as a child. Not entirely true, but looking back, too close for comfort.

Solid writing from AL in Sweden (land of my forefathers). I assume this is finished since it was written in 2004 and hasn't been updated in over a year. Since I wrote AL a prose-poem letter today (Oh yes I did! I'm still debating whether to make it public, but some of you know where to find it!), I thought it most appropriate.

To read the entire poem:

I see your disease  (13+) One of my first. #868091 by AL

2006-02-15
afternoon, 40 here, 39 in Monroe, WA.

Nasty cold in the North-West that is headed here. Always knew my 'older' sister had it in for me . She's the one who looks Swedish. Always evokes the memory of Grandma Bertha.

Part of what I sketched today in Letter to AL in Sweden:

The day continued well. I climbed up to the forum on the Hill and got to see a bat. It chittered out of fear. His keeper rescued him from dying in Topeka, has trained him to eat live mealy worms. He keeps the warm brown fur in pockets. I wonder if he checks them every time they're washed. Slowly the young bat settled down, the prof holding him by the scruff of neck. So small to be called a big brown bat. Did his chitters merely cry for help or yell his name? It's a tongue I do not speak nor understand.

So why this letter? Going across the ether to a place in Sweden where I've never been! My forefathers are surely grinning, turning over in their graves in Småland. Is that finger a gesture of knowing what I'm going through, of where I've been? If you speak to them, please translate the parts I need to know. Perhaps they have some wisdom to impart to me through you.

Authors (black cases) can access the entire poem here: "Letter to AL in Sweden" 

2006-02-15
vespers, 40 degrees. 32 in Linköping, Sverige (1 a.m.).

Can't find the temp in Jönköping or Växjö in Småland, but it should be around the same. Totally frustrated. This link,

http://www.rootsweb.com/~nychauta/CHURCH/SWEDISH.HTM

mentions the Chandler Valley near Sugar Grove, PA, just south of Jamestown, NY where some of my family still lives. It states that families, including the Obergs named the church Hessel Valley because some of the Swedes who settled there came from that town. Which is recorded as Hesselby or Hessleby.

Now try to find that on the map of Sweden! I've given up for today. Found Hassela and Hasselö, but nothing definite in Gotland or Småland.

Got me!

Family names are Carlson (changed to Hessel), Samuelsdotter, Oberg, Lawson. Our extended family is a web of mine, yours, ours and theirs as two families were brought together: Carlson-Samuelsdotter and Lawson-Oberg, if I'm right and had three children, including my grandmother, Bertha. Then there were two marriages between step brothers and sisters. Yikes! What a mess. My great-grandfather was John Ezekiel Hessel, I believe. At this point, I'm not sure of much of anything.

Did find a link in Pennsylvania about Oscar Hessel, my uncle. Maybe?