misappropriated talent

My sister has a broken record quality to her at times. "Come down to Yosemite and visit me," she says. "When are you coming down to Yosemite to visit me? Why don't you come down to Yosemite to visit me? You're never going to come down to Yosemite to visit me, are you?"

This summer will be her last at the park (she claims) since her summers and her winters will be taken up by the need to finish nursing school in the limited margin of time they permit a body to get a nursing degree. It is a stepping stone to a better life for her, at least in the economic sense: she does not begrudge it, or at least not aloud to me. Once she has established herself as a gypsy nurse, she will likely go back to spending her summers at Yosemite again.

"Gypsy nurse." There's something so outstandingly odd about that phrase.

She's vocal about trying to get us to come, but she isn't nearly so expressive about explaining why we should come. She's eloquent enough about Yosemite, but mostly emphasizing those aspects of it that we, as luxury-loving homebodies, would be least likely to enthuse about. "I live in a cabin," she told us at one point, offering the information as an enticement. Since she promptly followed that up with, "It doesn't have windows. Or doors. Or walls, as such," the image of the cozy cabin in the woods promptly gave way to an image of abject misery, mold, and bored wild animals and insects roaming in and out at will.

I question how a body can have walls "as such." Sako claims that canvas can make a wall. Me, I'm more of the brick and mortar school. If I can cut through the wall using a dessert fork, it is not adequate to my needs.

It's in pictures that she manages to do all the persuading that her stories fail to accomplish. She sends them from time to time, in massive chunks of arbitrary data. They could be labeled descriptively for what they are: the occasional brain dump, without context. Here is a picture of Sako waving her arms in front of a mountain. Here is a picture of complete strangers drinking beer over an inflatable raft. Here is a picture of some more strangers eating dinner by candlelight outdoors.

Here is a picture of a rock and an anonymous big toe.

Occasionally though, Sako manages to take some breathtaking, brilliant photographs. They happen without warning in the middle of a collection of utterly bewildering images. I'll flip through thumbnails, staring blankly at strange faces, and find myself caught by a picture of absolute, heart-stopping beauty. She has creative genes in her background -- our paternal grandmother was an artist; our paternal grandfather and father's generation were all musicians -- but in her it comes out in erratic bursts and bubbles, like small burps that have been suppressed too long for comfort. She does not bother to nurture or develop these strange and unpredictable talents of hers, but they're there. My sister the slacker is a goddamn genius.

You have no idea how annoying that is.

I remember Mom despairing over her when she was younger, clutching a handful of pictures Sako had drawn in which serious, impressive talent was mingled with the kind of haphazard scribbling only a bored child who'd rather be doing something else can produce. Her report cards tended to say things like, "Has talent but does not apply herself." "Lacks concentration." "Does not fulfill her potential."

"Your daughter," Mom used to say to Dad, which would just make him snicker. It's possible he took it as a compliment. He was not, perhaps, the most mature of parents, but he had a kindred spirit's appreciation of the wayward and the rebel. Sako was more like him than I ever would be.

Of course, seeing where it's taken her, who could possibly say that he was wrong?