My new neighbor may be related to me…

By Forrest Muelrath.

It was not my neighbor’s last name that first made me suspect he may be related to me. I fear you won’t believe me when I say that the moment I first suspected my neighbor and I might have a familial connection was when I saw him wearing a 49ers jacket. That is to say, as odd as it may sound, the first time I got the inkling of a suspicion I might have blood ties to my neighbor, was not when I noticed a similarity between our last names on a piece of mail, but when I saw my neighbor wearing a windbreaker displaying the red and gold iconography of the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League. I fear you might not believe me because the San Francisco 49ers are one of the top twenty most popular professional sports brands in the entire world, so belonging to this fan base is not exactly like belonging to some rare or exclusive club—not at all. On the contrary, my surname and my neighbor’s surname are extremely rare. So I’m afraid you might believe belonging to the San Francisco 49ers fan base (assuming my neighbor even belongs to this fan base) is an incredibly stupid thing on which to base the entire premise of a suspected familial relation, and that no person would take the time to write out such a basic, crackpot fantasy, and then put such a great deal of effort into sharing with others that article of writing born from this baseless hypothesis—this miserably stupid idea of mine—in the way I have put effort into sharing all this now. But I must insist that what I write is true: and I do not care if you think I am stupid or I’m yanking your chain. I could care less about such things because I am confident I’m being as honest as I can be when I say, again, the first time I felt my nerves twinge with an epiphany about my neighbor and I having a familial connection, was when, from my office window, I saw him wearing a San Francisco 49ers jacket.

My neighbor is strange…

I was sitting in the walk-in closet I call my office when I opened my faux wood vinyl blinds—which sound like a rollercoaster clacking down the tracks—and there I saw my neighbor wearing the jacket in question. My office is on the street side of the small second-floor apartment I rented with my fiancée when she and I returned to America after two years in Europe. The neighbor I fear may be related to me lives directly across the street from my office window. From my second-story perch on a chilly afternoon, I saw my neighbor open his front door and step outside wearing a 49ers jacket much like one I wore in elementary school. The fact that my hypothesis about a blood relation was set off by this jacket is just some strange, perhaps neurotic truth about the way my thoughts work, and I am asking you to accept this truth about me: the first time I remember having a hunch that my new neighbor and I have blood ties, was the day I saw, through my office window, the old man struggling to walk down the steps of his decrepit porch wearing a 49ers jacket, and not the day I saw his name on a piece of mail accidentally delivered to my mailbox and noticed for the first time that his surname appeared to be an anglicized version of mine. As I already said, unlike being a part of the 49ers fan base, my family name is, in fact, a rare thing. Even having a last name that is three letters off from mine is a rare thing and something I have encountered only on the wild frontier of surname investigation that is the internet. Yet I knew nothing about his last name when out came my neighbor on that chilly afternoon—an apparent San Francisco 49ers fan, much like my father, and his father before him—walking backward, struggling to get down off his decrepit porch, gripping the railing with one hand and a cane in the other, as I experienced the completely irrational yet undeniable hunch that my new neighbor and I are related by blood.

My neighbor is strange. And not only because of his unusual surname. I have an itemized list of information I have collected to back up this assertion of his strangeness. First on this list is that my neighbor has no less than seven no trespassing signs tacked to the front of his house. I am sharing this particular piece of visual information first because it is the first thing I noticed about my neighbor when I visited his city street while shopping for apartments a short time ago.

I am not going to lie to you or try to hide from you. The surname I am all in a kerfuffle about is, in fact, the same surname at the top of this page: my nom de plume is, in fact, my actual surname. Have you ever come across this name before? I doubt it. And even if you have come across this name, I must imagine, judging by past interactions with those who are encountering it for the first, you find my name to be highly unusual. Perhaps even unusual enough to be the topic of a brief ice-breaking conversation. And there is a good reason that a stranger might find my surname to be unusual, and that reason is because it is.

Now, I already put a great deal of effort into telling you I was recently living in Europe for two years, so, with my surname in mind, you can probably imagine the EU nations I may have traveled around searching for people who have my last name. In case you cannot tell, it is a Germanic last name. Judging by name alone, my bloodline runs back through a Germanic tribe. What I know about my bloodline is that this apparent milling (Mühle) family of mine had some dubious connection with the Catholic faith, which was sloppily transposed onto American life in the early twentieth century, when my great-grandpa on my father’s side, whom I never met, had an umlaut hacked off his name and some letters added to it by the name butchers at Ellis Island. With a fresh start due to a now-anglicized, one-of-a-kind name, my great-grandpa and his thirteen children traveled to the Midwest and started sharecropping until the Dust Bowl blew them all the way out to Bodega Bay, California, like some characters in a Woody Guthrie song. From the population boom of the twentieth century Californian gold rush was born a professional sports team named the San Francisco 49ers, thus tying in the crazy idea that my neighbor might be related to me, not only because his anglicized name is only three letters off mine but also because he is, or appears to be, as I have said, a member of the 49ers fan base.

I want to create a portrait of me walking across the Germanic regions of Europe searching for my family name on foot with a rucksack on my back, but this would be an exaggeration. While traveling in Europe, like most people who travel in Europe these days, I typically took the train. I am not actually an idiot like Forrest Gump who runs across an entire continent repeating a simpleton’s phrases until someone takes an interest in me. I wish the truth were that easy, but it is not. When traveling in Europe I rarely went by foot, save for a few miles here or there.

The surname of my neighbor and my own surname are likely homophonous. It is hard to know for sure, because I have only heard my neighbor’s voice on three occasions, and on none of these occasions did I get to hear him pronounce his name. The first time I heard his voice was when I overheard another neighbor ask my homophonous neighbor if she could borrow a rake from him. He did not respond with words. He responded with grunting sounds. The next time I heard my neighbor’s voice his front door was open. I could see a shadow of his leg waving around in flickering blue light. I was left with the impression that my neighbor had fallen over backward while watching TV. I didn’t hear him speak this time either, but I heard him cackle with laughter. The one time I heard my neighbor speak, he shouted Goddammit, I don’t want to! into a telephone while I was walking by his open door.

Although my European surname investigation spanned two years, I have pared it down to a single essential incident that occurred one hot summer afternoon. The incident took place about eighteen months into my voyage while viewing a Northern Renaissance masterwork called the Isenheim Altarpiece in the Alsace region of France, along the German and Swiss borders. This notable incident gave rise to the most irrational, elaborate, and strongest hunch about my surname yet. If I had found out that my neighbor had some fantastical connection to the Isenheim Altarpiece the way I do, my top might have blown off.

The main thing to know about the Isenheim Altarpiece is that it depicts a fungal infection known as ergotism. Ergotism is a terrifying disease which, in the worst cases, causes psychosis by attacking the central nervous system, then bludgeons the afflicted to death with gangrene. Throughout the Rhine Valley during the Middle Ages, entire villages would become infected with ergotism when a miller (müller) would accidentally grind the fungus into rye flour and sell it to area bakers. Within hours of ingesting the fungus, the afflicted might hallucinate that they have died and that they then have been transported to an alien landscape where they are accosted by demons. The ergot-afflicted might spend days on end shivering and sweating as their glazed-over eyes stared off into a faraway place until the gangrene took hold of their organs and left them convulsing against the crimson walls of the medieval monastery where the Isenheim Altarpiece was originally housed. Strange, that a drug used by some to have a good time in recent decades, LSD, was originally derived from that nightmarish fungus: ergot.

Ergotism is sometimes known as St Anthony’s Fire, and so the Altarpiece’s creator, Mathias Grünewald, used scenes from St. Anthony’s hagiography and other Catholic doctrine to express the often horrifying and sometimes blissful effects of ergot poisoning. The disease is associated with Saint Anthony of the Desert because, during his hermitage in Egypt, he was tormented by martyrs, magicians, and monsters during periods of all-encompassing auditory and visual hallucinations, in which he was tempted by the revelation of innumerable worlds through God knows what tremendous psychosis.

The way the altarpiece works is that it unfolds. It unfolds one gloriously Catholic-themed painted wooden wing after another, unfolding three glorious views of unending depth to depict the enduring tragedy of human illness and epidemics. Originally the altarpiece unfolded into a hospital monastery built by the Brothers of Saint Anthony where ergotism was treated. In the early sixteenth century it opened for the first time into the monastery with crimson red walls, where those afflicted with a fungal infection were seated. And so the psychologically tormented would sit before the altarpiece hallucinating, expected to meditate upon the images before them as they waited to see whether or not they, too, would be bludgeoned to death by gangrene.

The altarpiece, unfolding, reveals a three-act tragedy. One is led to believe that this three-act tragedy depicted across twelve scenes painted on or carved into wood is meant to comfort those dying of ergotism. Christ is depicted on the cross and then in his tomb, pockmarked with the sores of ergot. Unfolding to the next view, a choir of angels is backed by an angelic string section, and the awakened Christ, glorious as ever, holds the sun as a halo with glowing reds and yellows while communing with the Father. Mary basks in the angelic music that surrounds her with a glow, coddling her infant son away from spiritual and earthly torments. Then, on the next wing, Anthony’s temptations arrive in the form of demons—half-beasts with anthropomorphic faces that claw at the fallen saint: an isolated man tormented by his reveries and by his hallucinations during a hermitage.

I was walking among the altarpiece paintings, which were laid out evenly in a chapel room near the border of France and Germany, when an older German man approached me. Like many elderly men I encountered while traveling through the Rhine Valley, this man had facial features and hair much like my grandfather had just before he died. For a moment, I even thought I was seeing a ghost because the man approached with ease and familiarity as I was standing there among the heavenly choir and the demonic beasts of Saint Anthony’s torments. Stranger still, the first thing the old man said when he opened his mouth was: And your family name is? I peeled my eyes away from examining the detail of some particularity translucent pink and blue angels floating in a rainbow-colored storm above Mary’s halo and stammered out my family name with a violently American accent as the angels fluttered out of view. Ah, he said with a strong German inflection, mill wheel wrath, it has been a big problem. I followed his hands with my eyes as he gestured towards the paintings while he spoke, A big problem around here: and he cackled with laughter. When I turned towards the sound of his laugh, he was no longer there and in his place stood a demon.

What happened next is difficult to explain. I remember feeling acutely afraid and dizzy as figures seemed to step out of the altarpiece and surround me. As if someone had cut the altarpiece into confetti and blown it in my face. The next thing I knew, I was being woken up by Rhine Valley nurses in a hospital. Oh, they sang in ascending harmony one after another, did you like the painting? The choir of nurses diagnosed me with Stendhal Syndrome, which occurs, they told me, when individuals become exposed to objects, artworks, and phenomena of great beauty. Especially, the choir of nurses said, in the Rhine Valley. And then they ran off laughing as I fell back asleep.

So now I’m here watching the house across the street through my faux wood vinyl blinds. I have the feeling that my neighbor needs help. My neighbor may need help getting down the stairs, or perhaps changing the channel on his TV after he has fallen off his chair. And if he does not need my help, perhaps one day I will need his help, and so it seems like the proper thing to do is go across the street and introduce myself. But what do I say?

I am afraid I’ll overwhelm my neighbor. I am afraid that if I begin talking I will not be able to stop. I am sitting here scared stiff as I imagine how the entire conversation with my neighbor will play out. I will approach him with a small wave of my hand accompanied by one of the more common greetings shared between American men today, such as: Hi, how are you? Then I will attempt to say something to express how fantastic I think the San Francisco 49ers are. The rest of the interaction will depend on how the man reacts to my expression of 49ers fandom. There are so many variables here, making it so the remaining conversation is essentially impossible to plan for. My biggest fear is that I will accidentally segue into a lecture on the Isenheim Altarpiece, including the part about the fungal infection that attacks the central nervous system, and I will conclude my diatribe—my wholly unneighborly rant—by declaring that I have a hunch, an essentially baseless crackpot fantasy, that my neighbor and I are related by blood. Furthermore, I will expand upon this fantasy by declaring that our grain-milling forebears had accidentally poisoned a small town in the Rhine Valley during the Middle Ages, ruining our good Germanic name, scattering our family, and leaving our tribe left to wander the world for centuries to come.

I am sitting here staring out my office window, wondering when my neighbor will descend his stairs again. One of my biggest worries is that he will descend while I am walking by—the thought of which has fused my feet to the floor. I am stuck. It feels like my red-booted feet have been glued to the floor. My red leather boots, the red of which would match the red uniforms of the San Francisco 49ers, or the red robe of Saint Anthony in Grünewald’s painting, or the reddish-purple color of the fungus ergot, and what else can I think about? Red and that is it. So I am stuck.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Forrest Muelrath is an American-born poet, artist, and critic. Since 2010, his writing has been published by BOMB, e-flux Criticism, Lacanian Ink, ExPat Press, Hobart Pulp, and others. A fascination with the relationship between language and images led him to sound design. As a sound designer, he collaborates with his partner to produce video art that has been exhibited by institutions such as MMCA (Seoul), Kebbel-Villa, Rijksakademie, and the Whitney Museum. His online presence can be found through his personal website: www.forrestmuelrath.com. His first novel, The Valeries, is out this month from Expat Press.