One year of blogs.
And as promised, dear readers, I will stop for seven days beginning tomorrow.
After seven days I will either post amended rules for the blog and/or retreat for seven more days, before coming all the way back to the page.
What began as an impromptu creative attempt at motivating myself to practice writing everyday has led to (at its peak) forty readers a day, a few published narratives, some new contacts, and almost 400 pages single-spaced of new creative material. I was even dubbed “e-woman” by a local regional publication for the blog – a label that I find occasionally flattering and always humorous, given the fact that I’m on dial-up and pee in a bucket. But really, this has all led to much more than I expected – and what can I say?
I can say this: I have finally begun to understand the notion of practice for a writer. I have dug my heels into the notion of an audience – that’s you – and seen how important, inspiring, and encouraging that can be. I have discovered inspiring threads in my life that I want to write essays about: my former students, healing and Chinese medicine, friendship, my physical surroundings, matters of the heart, to name a few.
To recap, the structure was thus: 250-1,000 words per night every night no matter what, post first drafts only, never blog about blogging, and be honest.
Suggestions for new rules, new topics, new themes, new anythings will be highly appreciated! Post comments or email. What worked? What didn’t? What’s boring? What’s compelling? Stop now or keep going?
Thank you so much for reading!!!!!
Friday, July 28, 2006
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Pirate of the Written Word
“My mom says you write about me,” Cedar Mae says to me in the car on the way to town.
“Yup, I do.” There is not an ounce of shame in this confession. We’ talked about this before, Cedar just forgets sometimes. This, ironically, from the same kid who can remember lines from Pirates of the Caribbean verbatim, but I guess an old writing teacher can’t hold a stick to Johnny Depp’s eyeliner and silky tan.
“Oh yeah, that’s right. You told me. What’s my fake name again? Cedar who?”
“Mae. Cedar Mae.”
“That’s cool. What do you write?”
“I write about what we do together, the places we go. I write about your good qualities. I write about how you show me things in life.”
“Oh, like when we go swimming at the river? I read that one I think…” her attention wanders to a loud car of teenagers passing us on the state highway. I am taking she and her older sister to the local theatre to see the sequel to Pirates.
“Yup. Yeah, and when we walked to the cemetery on the full moon,” I add.
“It’s ok if you write about me. Besides, you like tell me about your life and stuff so that’s fine. I read your stories about being a teenager. The best thing about your stories is that they’re true.”
I do not tell Cedar this, but her approval is worth its weight in gold. To hear that a teenager values a true story couldn’t make me happier. After all, Cedar would be, I suppose, my future market (meaning that about the time I finally, hopefully, land a book deal – she’ll be out on her own and doing things like driving around town to run errands at bookstores).
“Do you still do that thing online? That blog?” Cedar asks. At this her sister perks up, the older and wiser ear more attuned to the ways of the internet now at full attention.
“Mmm-hmmm,” I say.
“And you like, reveal secrets about your life?”
At this I laugh. “Yeah, I you could say that,” I pause for a moment. “Actually, yes. Completely.”
Secrets. Reveal. My Life. One year of secrets, of revealing, of my life. Composed in a container of first draft only, late-night, word-limit creativity.
“Tomorrow will be day 365,” I say, realizing it myself as I say it.
“Whoa. I don’t think I could like, sit still long enough, to handle that.”
“Fair enough. But anyone can sit still for two and a half hours of Johnny Depp, right?”
I park the car, we hop out, and yet another adventure with Cedar Mae begins.
“Yup, I do.” There is not an ounce of shame in this confession. We’ talked about this before, Cedar just forgets sometimes. This, ironically, from the same kid who can remember lines from Pirates of the Caribbean verbatim, but I guess an old writing teacher can’t hold a stick to Johnny Depp’s eyeliner and silky tan.
“Oh yeah, that’s right. You told me. What’s my fake name again? Cedar who?”
“Mae. Cedar Mae.”
“That’s cool. What do you write?”
“I write about what we do together, the places we go. I write about your good qualities. I write about how you show me things in life.”
“Oh, like when we go swimming at the river? I read that one I think…” her attention wanders to a loud car of teenagers passing us on the state highway. I am taking she and her older sister to the local theatre to see the sequel to Pirates.
“Yup. Yeah, and when we walked to the cemetery on the full moon,” I add.
“It’s ok if you write about me. Besides, you like tell me about your life and stuff so that’s fine. I read your stories about being a teenager. The best thing about your stories is that they’re true.”
I do not tell Cedar this, but her approval is worth its weight in gold. To hear that a teenager values a true story couldn’t make me happier. After all, Cedar would be, I suppose, my future market (meaning that about the time I finally, hopefully, land a book deal – she’ll be out on her own and doing things like driving around town to run errands at bookstores).
“Do you still do that thing online? That blog?” Cedar asks. At this her sister perks up, the older and wiser ear more attuned to the ways of the internet now at full attention.
“Mmm-hmmm,” I say.
“And you like, reveal secrets about your life?”
At this I laugh. “Yeah, I you could say that,” I pause for a moment. “Actually, yes. Completely.”
Secrets. Reveal. My Life. One year of secrets, of revealing, of my life. Composed in a container of first draft only, late-night, word-limit creativity.
“Tomorrow will be day 365,” I say, realizing it myself as I say it.
“Whoa. I don’t think I could like, sit still long enough, to handle that.”
“Fair enough. But anyone can sit still for two and a half hours of Johnny Depp, right?”
I park the car, we hop out, and yet another adventure with Cedar Mae begins.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Uhhhh...
I have been chased by an edginess for the past four or five days that, when ignored and built up over a sustained amount of time, is almost enough to insinuate insanity.
[Is it too much sugar? Is it that cold beer, every night, right before bed? Is it the illusion of getting lost in books? Is it everything and nothing all at once? Is the crazy artist’s scene at the craft school?]
I decide I shouldn’t eat sugar and that I need to meditate for hours on end. I will begin immediately. I also decide not talking very much during the day will be a good idea. At least for twenty-four hours.
[Rash decision-making? Indeed, a further indication of insanity.]
But then there are plans and social events. A family friend touring the school tomorrow. Then a promised visit to the lower clay studio to see Viva. A swim with Sara on Friday, who has never seen this part of the river. The poetry reading Friday night. The overnight thereafter. The closing shift Saturday. The inevitable party Saturday night. The sleepover I planned at the old boarding school for a handful of teenagers on Monday night? The dinner I told them I will cook?
[Inability to distinguish between time and place? Easily overwhelmed? Anxious without reason? Check. Check .Check.]
---
OK, a little shameless self-promotion: Check out new writing by me – out there, in the real world. Issue #64 of Ceramic Art and Perception, an international clay journal, available at Borders and most university libraries. Page 51, feature essay!
[Is it too much sugar? Is it that cold beer, every night, right before bed? Is it the illusion of getting lost in books? Is it everything and nothing all at once? Is the crazy artist’s scene at the craft school?]
I decide I shouldn’t eat sugar and that I need to meditate for hours on end. I will begin immediately. I also decide not talking very much during the day will be a good idea. At least for twenty-four hours.
[Rash decision-making? Indeed, a further indication of insanity.]
But then there are plans and social events. A family friend touring the school tomorrow. Then a promised visit to the lower clay studio to see Viva. A swim with Sara on Friday, who has never seen this part of the river. The poetry reading Friday night. The overnight thereafter. The closing shift Saturday. The inevitable party Saturday night. The sleepover I planned at the old boarding school for a handful of teenagers on Monday night? The dinner I told them I will cook?
[Inability to distinguish between time and place? Easily overwhelmed? Anxious without reason? Check. Check .Check.]
---
OK, a little shameless self-promotion: Check out new writing by me – out there, in the real world. Issue #64 of Ceramic Art and Perception, an international clay journal, available at Borders and most university libraries. Page 51, feature essay!
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Green, Ever-green
It would be impossible to choose a favorite shade of green during this time of year. It would almost be like asking a fish to take a step back and examine the water it was swimming in. There is no escape from this color in the valley.
At sunrise I see magnified green through dewdrops on grass blades, mist-kissed green highlighting hemlock boughs, cold river green along the South Toe before the sunlight warms it.
By noon the meadows are bright green with a tease of yellow here and there, sometimes a white flower puff blowing in the breeze. The foothills can look almost smooth and solid green in this noon light, the façade of a two-tone world – the green against a blue, blue sky.
The afternoon is unquestionably the hottest part of the day and here the green swells and pales. Fields drip hot, dry green like crispy grass blades shifting dully against one another, barely reflecting any glimmers of sunlight. The river looks a deep cherry green, smooth and running, warm and waiting. The foothills look blanketed, shadows of the opposite hills darkening the Black Mountains from the bottom up as if to tuck the tips of the mountains into bed.
At dusk the green glows again, like a candle’s last flicker before being blown out. It is brilliant at sunset, though at this hour the green of the landscape cannot out-dazzle the sky. By nightfall the green is iridescent, appearing unpredictably on the bulbous butts of fireflies and in the oblong bodies of cicadas under the trance of my porch light. When I close my eyes it is as if the green bugs of the night dance across my lids, tickling my dreams awake, singing a sweet cicada symphony of sleep into my mind.
At sunrise I see magnified green through dewdrops on grass blades, mist-kissed green highlighting hemlock boughs, cold river green along the South Toe before the sunlight warms it.
By noon the meadows are bright green with a tease of yellow here and there, sometimes a white flower puff blowing in the breeze. The foothills can look almost smooth and solid green in this noon light, the façade of a two-tone world – the green against a blue, blue sky.
The afternoon is unquestionably the hottest part of the day and here the green swells and pales. Fields drip hot, dry green like crispy grass blades shifting dully against one another, barely reflecting any glimmers of sunlight. The river looks a deep cherry green, smooth and running, warm and waiting. The foothills look blanketed, shadows of the opposite hills darkening the Black Mountains from the bottom up as if to tuck the tips of the mountains into bed.
At dusk the green glows again, like a candle’s last flicker before being blown out. It is brilliant at sunset, though at this hour the green of the landscape cannot out-dazzle the sky. By nightfall the green is iridescent, appearing unpredictably on the bulbous butts of fireflies and in the oblong bodies of cicadas under the trance of my porch light. When I close my eyes it is as if the green bugs of the night dance across my lids, tickling my dreams awake, singing a sweet cicada symphony of sleep into my mind.
Monday, July 24, 2006
Let It Rain, Let It Pour
I walk the dog down the cove to meet some friends for a picnic dinner facing the Black Mountains. Dog sitting for my parents on the east side of the river puts a little more distance between where I’m walking and the upslope of the mountains. I barely have to crane my neck to take in the entire view. End to end, top to bottom, the range is breathtaking, a landscape swelling with shades of green. Rich in life, I think, biowealth.
As I walk I notice that the dusk air is gentle and dry, atypical for July in this temperate rainforest. I move with a slight bounce in my step, having just finished a draft of a story, and decide that there is nothing like a walk on a gravel road to invoke the notion of freedom. My pace quickens at the thought.
We drink homebrew made with barley hops and watch the dogs bark and chase each other between rows of garden greens. One friend is just back from a sixty-four mile mountain bike race and balances like a gymnast along the porch railing, then drops her pants to reveal a triple-shade bruise the size of a volleyball. The injury spreads across her right thigh and buttock and looks utterly un-human. Two others are just back from a road trip in Canada, “Where we camped on cliff sides and let the wind blow in our faces.”
I consider telling them I have been traveling too, lost in the valleys of my mind for forty-eight ridiculous hours of creativity and hell and self-doubt and heart-pumping sentences and everything in-between. Instead I mutter something about Sophie the dog, and how she is so soft and wispy that she moves like moonlight, but somehow this doesn’t convey the last two days of writing. I am reminded of what my advisor said to me about the writing life in his last letter: “This is a solitary sport, no way around it. It’s made for the hermit in all of us.”
Solitary indeed, and I slip away from the picnic early, rich already from the faces of friends, their laughter, the constant wag of dog’s tails, the promises for future picnics, the fading light over the rim of the Blacks. Later, it rains, one thousand million fat, hot, drops slam-dunking into the chocolate soil. I call for the dog and he comes, sprinting as fast as lightning, spraying pellets of water in all directions, skidding now across the kitchen floor, wagging into my lap, licking the salt on my legs, nudging his sweet, black nose into the crook of my arm like an ole’ pal.
We curl up for the night, an added blanket to fend off the façade of thunderstorm chills, and where he will dream fields and hole digging I will dream books and metaphor weaving. Either way, the rain sings the same song to us both.
As I walk I notice that the dusk air is gentle and dry, atypical for July in this temperate rainforest. I move with a slight bounce in my step, having just finished a draft of a story, and decide that there is nothing like a walk on a gravel road to invoke the notion of freedom. My pace quickens at the thought.
We drink homebrew made with barley hops and watch the dogs bark and chase each other between rows of garden greens. One friend is just back from a sixty-four mile mountain bike race and balances like a gymnast along the porch railing, then drops her pants to reveal a triple-shade bruise the size of a volleyball. The injury spreads across her right thigh and buttock and looks utterly un-human. Two others are just back from a road trip in Canada, “Where we camped on cliff sides and let the wind blow in our faces.”
I consider telling them I have been traveling too, lost in the valleys of my mind for forty-eight ridiculous hours of creativity and hell and self-doubt and heart-pumping sentences and everything in-between. Instead I mutter something about Sophie the dog, and how she is so soft and wispy that she moves like moonlight, but somehow this doesn’t convey the last two days of writing. I am reminded of what my advisor said to me about the writing life in his last letter: “This is a solitary sport, no way around it. It’s made for the hermit in all of us.”
Solitary indeed, and I slip away from the picnic early, rich already from the faces of friends, their laughter, the constant wag of dog’s tails, the promises for future picnics, the fading light over the rim of the Blacks. Later, it rains, one thousand million fat, hot, drops slam-dunking into the chocolate soil. I call for the dog and he comes, sprinting as fast as lightning, spraying pellets of water in all directions, skidding now across the kitchen floor, wagging into my lap, licking the salt on my legs, nudging his sweet, black nose into the crook of my arm like an ole’ pal.
We curl up for the night, an added blanket to fend off the façade of thunderstorm chills, and where he will dream fields and hole digging I will dream books and metaphor weaving. Either way, the rain sings the same song to us both.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Burn, Baby Burn
I am dogsitting for my parents who live, as the crow flies, just across the river. In a car, however, it takes ten minutes to drive a mile and half down the gravel to the paved highway, then a mile and a half downriver to the bridge, then another mile and a half back from the direction you came on a gravel road – this time on the opposite side of the river.
My parents live in the last house at the very top of the cove, bordering national forest lands. This is the house that they parent five teenagers in during the school year as a part of their work for the boarding school. The day is beautifully sunny but doesn’t break eighty; a perfect mountain mixture of summer. I have promised myself a hike but the reality is that I have 150 pages to read (having only read seven yesterday) and a story to revise. I work outside as a compromise, enamored with the walls of dense, fluffy green that careens down the cove on all sides.
I soak up the sun in the meadow, lounging topless on a towel and reading Tobias Wolff for hours on end. Foolishly, I don’t mind the time or the sun or the sunscreen, and by mid-afternoon my reading is done but I am almost sick from sunlight, my back a brilliant, shamefully glowing, pink.
A message on the phone back home indicates that barter plans for tomorrow have been cancelled and I feel like a glutton as another writing day has fallen into my lap. Discipline in the face of such glorious weather is difficult so I decide in advance that a “TO DO” list will be necessary in order to get enough done tomorrow.
My parents live in the last house at the very top of the cove, bordering national forest lands. This is the house that they parent five teenagers in during the school year as a part of their work for the boarding school. The day is beautifully sunny but doesn’t break eighty; a perfect mountain mixture of summer. I have promised myself a hike but the reality is that I have 150 pages to read (having only read seven yesterday) and a story to revise. I work outside as a compromise, enamored with the walls of dense, fluffy green that careens down the cove on all sides.
I soak up the sun in the meadow, lounging topless on a towel and reading Tobias Wolff for hours on end. Foolishly, I don’t mind the time or the sun or the sunscreen, and by mid-afternoon my reading is done but I am almost sick from sunlight, my back a brilliant, shamefully glowing, pink.
A message on the phone back home indicates that barter plans for tomorrow have been cancelled and I feel like a glutton as another writing day has fallen into my lap. Discipline in the face of such glorious weather is difficult so I decide in advance that a “TO DO” list will be necessary in order to get enough done tomorrow.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
P(retty) M(uch) S(tupid)
I forget sometimes, to look outside. And it is the sky, or the crookedness of the horizon against the sky, that always helps me return to the natural world, reeling as if backwards through time, un-fishing the seas of my imagination so that I may once again blend into the whole.
I can spin in circles in my head for days on end. This is both painful and productive. It’s like going through the motions – making a double Americano, paying a bill, taking a shower – while never really leaving the capsule of your mind. You make plans with friends, you sign your name on checks as if your identity was something measurable, when really you are lost in a sea of words and the daily endurance of
just
writing
something
new.
But when I remember to look outside, everything opens up again; connects. I get the urge to fast for two days, drink only tea or eat lettuce and take baths. I meditate for longer and reread paragraphs from my favorite books. I count the hours in a week that I spend writing or studying and try to find more.
But where there is determination I carry weaknesses in equal measure. I forget to eat vegetables for three days. I lose all motivation for physical activity. I debate the veracity of my life pursuits and self-worth. Social interactions lead only to hours of useless over-analyzing and self-doubt. I try to write myself back into confidence when really I should just get up and go hike.
Which is precisely what I should do, tomorrow, in order to get out of this P(retty) M(uch) S(tupid) funk.
I can spin in circles in my head for days on end. This is both painful and productive. It’s like going through the motions – making a double Americano, paying a bill, taking a shower – while never really leaving the capsule of your mind. You make plans with friends, you sign your name on checks as if your identity was something measurable, when really you are lost in a sea of words and the daily endurance of
just
writing
something
new.
But when I remember to look outside, everything opens up again; connects. I get the urge to fast for two days, drink only tea or eat lettuce and take baths. I meditate for longer and reread paragraphs from my favorite books. I count the hours in a week that I spend writing or studying and try to find more.
But where there is determination I carry weaknesses in equal measure. I forget to eat vegetables for three days. I lose all motivation for physical activity. I debate the veracity of my life pursuits and self-worth. Social interactions lead only to hours of useless over-analyzing and self-doubt. I try to write myself back into confidence when really I should just get up and go hike.
Which is precisely what I should do, tomorrow, in order to get out of this P(retty) M(uch) S(tupid) funk.
Friday, July 21, 2006
Babies and Bookstores and Posters, Oh My!
“Oh,” Britt says with a knowing smile on her face, “this is your first experience in public with twins, isn’t it?”
She says it as a warning but already I am ill prepared. We have taken a spur of the moment trip to BigCity, NC, carpooling from SmallTown, with all three kids in tow. The mission? Hang posters for the upcoming Carolina Mountains Literary Festival and make a pit stop at Amazing Savings for discount groceries.
It is two and a half blocks to the bookstore from where we park the Honda minivan (Note to self: multiple children requires a larger vehicle with car seats the size of luggage and arm strength surpassing the Incredible Hulk’s). Britt steers the double-stroller with a charismatic bounce in her step. By all accounts she is the tan, cute, young mother in a tight tank top and almost-mini skirt. I point out that we’re both wearing trendy red shoes with white ankle socks but otherwise, with the stroller between us and my pigtail braids and bandana, we represent fully opposite sides of the spectrum.
We make it to the bookstore safely, but not without stopping traffic twice and being sidelined by six, SIX!, total strangers who drool various versions of ooh-and-ahh-and-are-they-identical-or-paternal-oh-how-adorable’s at the twin boys. Britt still blushes slightly when strangers holler across city blocks about how beautiful her babies are, so as her friend I know that even flattering attention is sometimes awkward – but she handles it like the stroller, with some genetic, swift, maternal maturity that I am in awe of.
“Oh!” One woman gasps in adoration, “I had twin girls. They’re twenty-five now!” She is so loud that half the block turns our direction.
“So you survived!?” Britt shouts in response, barreling through the crowd at the crosswalk and forging forward toward our next stop. Completely useless and overwhelmed by more people than I’ve seen in two weeks, I follow – the diligent, oddly young looking friend that seems to know the kids but doesn’t fit the mold.
At least, I don’t fit the mold until we are in the bookstore and little Maxwell joyfully shouts: “Katey you are!” Then repeats my name as a question: “Katey? Katey? Katey?”
I smile.
Max smiles.
The entire bookstore is smiling, including the cute new-age-beatnick poet who works behind the counter and has a body as thin as paper but a heart as deep as the ocean (at least according to his chapbooks I’ve read). We recognize each other from a poetry reading a while back and I wonder what he thinks, seeing me hold a bubbly, blue-eyed baby boy as if I know what I am doing.
“You know what we look like, right?” Britt says. “It occurs to me that we’re in BigCity, NC…”
Her tone is insinuating something and it takes me a moment, then, “’Ten Thousand Lesbians Can’t Be Wrong!’” I say, quoting the unofficial BigCity slogan. (Here, there are more lesbians per capita than any other city in the country.)
“Yeah, and if we had test tube babies it’d be more likely that we had twins anyway, see?”
I link arms with her and we walk down the street one hand each on the double-stroller, pretending, two boys, two girls, too cute.
She says it as a warning but already I am ill prepared. We have taken a spur of the moment trip to BigCity, NC, carpooling from SmallTown, with all three kids in tow. The mission? Hang posters for the upcoming Carolina Mountains Literary Festival and make a pit stop at Amazing Savings for discount groceries.
It is two and a half blocks to the bookstore from where we park the Honda minivan (Note to self: multiple children requires a larger vehicle with car seats the size of luggage and arm strength surpassing the Incredible Hulk’s). Britt steers the double-stroller with a charismatic bounce in her step. By all accounts she is the tan, cute, young mother in a tight tank top and almost-mini skirt. I point out that we’re both wearing trendy red shoes with white ankle socks but otherwise, with the stroller between us and my pigtail braids and bandana, we represent fully opposite sides of the spectrum.
We make it to the bookstore safely, but not without stopping traffic twice and being sidelined by six, SIX!, total strangers who drool various versions of ooh-and-ahh-and-are-they-identical-or-paternal-oh-how-adorable’s at the twin boys. Britt still blushes slightly when strangers holler across city blocks about how beautiful her babies are, so as her friend I know that even flattering attention is sometimes awkward – but she handles it like the stroller, with some genetic, swift, maternal maturity that I am in awe of.
“Oh!” One woman gasps in adoration, “I had twin girls. They’re twenty-five now!” She is so loud that half the block turns our direction.
“So you survived!?” Britt shouts in response, barreling through the crowd at the crosswalk and forging forward toward our next stop. Completely useless and overwhelmed by more people than I’ve seen in two weeks, I follow – the diligent, oddly young looking friend that seems to know the kids but doesn’t fit the mold.
At least, I don’t fit the mold until we are in the bookstore and little Maxwell joyfully shouts: “Katey you are!” Then repeats my name as a question: “Katey? Katey? Katey?”
I smile.
Max smiles.
The entire bookstore is smiling, including the cute new-age-beatnick poet who works behind the counter and has a body as thin as paper but a heart as deep as the ocean (at least according to his chapbooks I’ve read). We recognize each other from a poetry reading a while back and I wonder what he thinks, seeing me hold a bubbly, blue-eyed baby boy as if I know what I am doing.
“You know what we look like, right?” Britt says. “It occurs to me that we’re in BigCity, NC…”
Her tone is insinuating something and it takes me a moment, then, “’Ten Thousand Lesbians Can’t Be Wrong!’” I say, quoting the unofficial BigCity slogan. (Here, there are more lesbians per capita than any other city in the country.)
“Yeah, and if we had test tube babies it’d be more likely that we had twins anyway, see?”
I link arms with her and we walk down the street one hand each on the double-stroller, pretending, two boys, two girls, too cute.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Run Away Run-Ons
If Monday was hauling wood day, sweat pouring down my neck and filtering through my shirt or collecting in dirty lines along the crease of each elbow, and Tuesday was ditch-digging day, whereupon Riley and I spent four hours hauling, laying, and burying irrigation pipe up the slope of Celo Knob at the Gardens (pausing, once, under a hemlock tree to drink spring water from a break in the line and yes, splash each other so that later, when kissing, I could taste that same water mixed with sweat on his skin), and Wednesday was glued-to-the-desk day, ninety minutes on half a page of dialogue to name only one challenge, then today is haul refrigerators day, taut shoulder muscles unsympathetic to my attempts at bear-hug-hoisting two half-fridges down the trail to and from my cabin without the aid of a dolly.
[That’s an attempt at a Didion run on sentence, though she’s too old for Riley and I bet she doesn’t use half-fridges and she’d probably have someone carry it for her anyway; reader attempts at Didion run-ons encouraged, comments welcomed, do post – trust me, once you start, you can’t stop, this parenthetical being an additional case in point.]
After the fridges, after the lunch rush, after yoga, I finish Melissa Bank’s The Wonder Spot and decide that its finest virtue is its narrator, Sophie Applebaum. Furthermore, I decide that the way the author uses white space and scene placement makes me envy fiction, while also slightly cheapening the genre. I am reminded of advice from a fellow MFAer: “It’ll be years, if not lifetimes, before you enjoy reading for reading’s sake again.”
At a pace of 250-350 pages every six days plus critical essays, I believe it.
Which reminds me, onward to Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life.
[That’s an attempt at a Didion run on sentence, though she’s too old for Riley and I bet she doesn’t use half-fridges and she’d probably have someone carry it for her anyway; reader attempts at Didion run-ons encouraged, comments welcomed, do post – trust me, once you start, you can’t stop, this parenthetical being an additional case in point.]
After the fridges, after the lunch rush, after yoga, I finish Melissa Bank’s The Wonder Spot and decide that its finest virtue is its narrator, Sophie Applebaum. Furthermore, I decide that the way the author uses white space and scene placement makes me envy fiction, while also slightly cheapening the genre. I am reminded of advice from a fellow MFAer: “It’ll be years, if not lifetimes, before you enjoy reading for reading’s sake again.”
At a pace of 250-350 pages every six days plus critical essays, I believe it.
Which reminds me, onward to Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
What A Day!
Women’s Singing Night takes place up at the craft school this week and tonight we are six plus a large dog named Weston and a pea-sized dog named Pig. We sit outside around a picnic table with a full view that extends from Conley Ridge to the Black Mountains in the hazy distance. The day has been long and full and the company of women’s voices only makes it run over in the best possible way.
In honor of Pig, who is the size of Weston’s head, we sing a silly round:
Why doesn’t my dog
Sing as well as your dog
When I paid for my dog
Twice as much thou?
I look to Pig and gather no reaction. Instead he huddles in his owner’s arms, the fiddler player from bad-guitar-night last week. She has frosty blue eyes and hardly speaks and her face looks oddly humbled, like Pig’s. But then she sees the words to The Train Song and after thirty minutes of muteness, announces:
“I know The Train Song, too. Yes! The Train Song!”
Mel starts us off, her hair tied shamelessly in an African wrap, although it is not long and the leopard pattern does not match her hippy clothes. She laughs, gulping without hesitation from the jar of Blueberry Cordials that we’re passing around.
To stop the train
in cases of emergency,
pull down the chain!
Pull down the chain!
Penalty for improper use,
five pounds!
Mel waves her hands wildly in the air then repeats the song, adding a full set of hand motions and Noelle, who has been on her feet as a waitress for seven hours today (and has to work the 9pm-11pm at the coffeehouse tonight) starts to laugh uncontrollably. She begins to cry through the laughter and I can see the stress and exhaustion roll off of her like water beading down a duck’s back. Pretty soon we are all laughing between lines of the song, and Meg determines that the only way to keep the round going is to pretend that she is a lunatic train conductor. Meanwhile, Mel and I are the only two capable of carrying our voices over the laughter so we make eye contact, synchronizing our hand motions.
Then Noelle’s brother Arlo, the glass blower, flip-flops his way onto the porch. He takes one look at us and starts curling into himself with laughter. His black, curly hair shakes and bounces and he gasps for air and we end the song, for lack of breath.
On the way home Katydids sing on the sides of the highway and I stick my left arm out the window, bobbing it up and down through the hot air. Dark, black mountains form a rounded, ancient horizon and hoist up the Hemlocks as if their tips could prick more stars into the blanket of sky. My eyes cannot hold all the wealth there is to see at twilight but if they could, I’d drown in fields of gold, azure, magenta, and caramel.
And as if that weren’t enough…When I get home and check my mail, there is a letter from the local arts council awarding me a $1,000 scholarship toward my MFA.
In honor of Pig, who is the size of Weston’s head, we sing a silly round:
Why doesn’t my dog
Sing as well as your dog
When I paid for my dog
Twice as much thou?
I look to Pig and gather no reaction. Instead he huddles in his owner’s arms, the fiddler player from bad-guitar-night last week. She has frosty blue eyes and hardly speaks and her face looks oddly humbled, like Pig’s. But then she sees the words to The Train Song and after thirty minutes of muteness, announces:
“I know The Train Song, too. Yes! The Train Song!”
Mel starts us off, her hair tied shamelessly in an African wrap, although it is not long and the leopard pattern does not match her hippy clothes. She laughs, gulping without hesitation from the jar of Blueberry Cordials that we’re passing around.
To stop the train
in cases of emergency,
pull down the chain!
Pull down the chain!
Penalty for improper use,
five pounds!
Mel waves her hands wildly in the air then repeats the song, adding a full set of hand motions and Noelle, who has been on her feet as a waitress for seven hours today (and has to work the 9pm-11pm at the coffeehouse tonight) starts to laugh uncontrollably. She begins to cry through the laughter and I can see the stress and exhaustion roll off of her like water beading down a duck’s back. Pretty soon we are all laughing between lines of the song, and Meg determines that the only way to keep the round going is to pretend that she is a lunatic train conductor. Meanwhile, Mel and I are the only two capable of carrying our voices over the laughter so we make eye contact, synchronizing our hand motions.
Then Noelle’s brother Arlo, the glass blower, flip-flops his way onto the porch. He takes one look at us and starts curling into himself with laughter. His black, curly hair shakes and bounces and he gasps for air and we end the song, for lack of breath.
On the way home Katydids sing on the sides of the highway and I stick my left arm out the window, bobbing it up and down through the hot air. Dark, black mountains form a rounded, ancient horizon and hoist up the Hemlocks as if their tips could prick more stars into the blanket of sky. My eyes cannot hold all the wealth there is to see at twilight but if they could, I’d drown in fields of gold, azure, magenta, and caramel.
And as if that weren’t enough…When I get home and check my mail, there is a letter from the local arts council awarding me a $1,000 scholarship toward my MFA.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Good Lawd Allmighty, I've Been Snowed!
On a whim I ask the mechanics at S&S Qwik Stop if they think $757 is too much for a distributor cap, spark plugs, computer chip, and labor.
“Good Lord Allmighty!,” the assistant manager says, tipping up his NASCAR cap and squinting at the numbers again. “Buzz, c’mere’n’ look at this.”
Buzz comes here.
“Lordamercy!“Look at it! Oh honey,” Buzz looks over the top of the receipt I’ve handed him and glances at me sympathetically. “This guy oughtta have a warrant out for his arrest.”
“Yeah, a warrant for fraud!I’m-a call my boss. Good L—I cain’t believe this.”
The boss is called and brings his son. There are now four mechanics, all in private practice in SmallTown, NC looking at my receipt from Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off.
“You pay ‘im yet?” the boss asks, circling items on the parts list and shaking his head.
“Yessir,” I admit.
“Walk on over to Advanced Auto Parts now, an tellum to price these parts for you,” the assistant manager says. He points across the parking lot to the store. “Then come back and give us the report. Ain’t nobody shoulda charged anybody $96 for no distributor cap.”
The son, lowest in rank, finally gets his hands on the receipt and echoes the disapproval from the other men. The assistant manager turns to me and confesses he could have done the job for half as much. “An look here, $360 for labor?”
“Yeah, it’s $40 per hour from him,” I say, knowing that he’ll understand this is far less than the dealership.
“But this work he did – it couldn’ta taken nine hours. I could do this in three or four. Five if I had a lot of trouble.” He hands me his business card, which I eagerly accept.
The son looks up at me, then over to his dad, then back at me again. “Yer not from here, are yew?”
“No,” I say, “But I’ve been here four years.”
“He knew you weren’t from here. He could tell that ‘boutchew,” the son says and the other men nod in agreement.
“T’ain’t right, I know. Guys like this give mechanics a bad name,” Buzz says, still shaking his head.
At Advanced Auto Parts the clerk looks at the receipt and sees the name of Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off, then says, “Now I don’t wanna cause no trouble here. Nope. But I’ll look up the prices for you.”
We work together and I write on the receipt:
Distributor cap: charged $96.79, costs $45.48
Spark plug wire set: charged $72.59, costs $41.48
Ignition rotor: charged $23.06, costs $9.18
Upper gasket set: charged $32.43, costs $18.48
Computer chip sensor: charged $146.34, costs unknown due to faulty UPC code
“And the labor, sir? How much time would you put into a job like this?” I ask, gaining confidence now.
“Two hours, three tops.”
***
I report back to S&S Qwik Stop. They coach me on how to approach Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off and I drive away feeling nervous yet determined. Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off has been fixing my family’s cars for two years. He fixes my friend’s cars. He fixes my neighbor’s cars. His buddy only charges $25 for towing. But the facts don’t line up and I know I’ve been snowed.
I begin by telling Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off that I have no intention of calling anyone dishonest. I tell him I make $400 per month and that an $800 car bill (added in tax and tow) is no small matter.
Then I show him the numbers for the parts and he has no excuse. He concedes on the spot, albeit only with a slump of his shoulders and a barely articulate but defeated, “Well allright.”
Then I tell him about the labor. I tell him I have the name and phone number of a mechanic in SmallTown, NC who could have done it for half what I was charged. I tell him three other mechanics looked at the receipt and that I brought it into Advanced Auto Parts too. Then I remind Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off that he never returned my phone call, which was placed 36 hours after the tow to inquire about parts.
“How much did you pay for the parts you put in my car?” I ask point blank.
Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off looks at the receipt with my handwriting on it. “Less than that,” he says pointing to the prices I got at Advanced Auto Parts. “But I been doin’ this for twenty-seven years.”
At this point I expect him to make me feel small. I expect him to tell me that twenty-seven years is as long as I’ve been alive. I expect him to tell me he’s cashed my check already and they ain’t nothin’ nobody gonna do ‘bout it now.
“You paid LESS?” I say, flabbergasted that I’ve been ripped off even more than I thought. Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off doesn’t get angry at this moment, but I can see him sweating and he’s running out of words. I hold my ground.
“I don’t know nobody who buys a part for $1 and sells it for $1,” he says in defense.
“I don’t know anybody who buys a part for $1 and sells it for $3, or $4. There’s got to be a happy medium and this isn’t it. This is not customer service.”
At which point I tell him I will put a stop on the check (and I do) and that he will hear from me in a day or two. Then I thank Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off for listening to me and I mean it when I say it.
Right away I go to my parents’ house and Dad says he’s proud and I tell him he’s the one who taught me to stick up for myself in the first place. Then we remember that the Volvo is at the Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off’s shop right now. Dad starts to stew, realizing now that he’s been snowed by this guy as well.
At home I compose a typed letter and write Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off a check for $400, which I say should cover parts, labor, tax, tow, and everything from here to Mozambique [OK, I leave that last phrase off]. Tomorrow on my way to work I will put the check in his mailbox a few miles down the road and then I will call the Better Business Bureau and I will have enough money leftover to pay for two fillings next month at the dentist.
‘Nuf said.
“Good Lord Allmighty!,” the assistant manager says, tipping up his NASCAR cap and squinting at the numbers again. “Buzz, c’mere’n’ look at this.”
Buzz comes here.
“Lordamercy!“Look at it! Oh honey,” Buzz looks over the top of the receipt I’ve handed him and glances at me sympathetically. “This guy oughtta have a warrant out for his arrest.”
“Yeah, a warrant for fraud!I’m-a call my boss. Good L—I cain’t believe this.”
The boss is called and brings his son. There are now four mechanics, all in private practice in SmallTown, NC looking at my receipt from Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off.
“You pay ‘im yet?” the boss asks, circling items on the parts list and shaking his head.
“Yessir,” I admit.
“Walk on over to Advanced Auto Parts now, an tellum to price these parts for you,” the assistant manager says. He points across the parking lot to the store. “Then come back and give us the report. Ain’t nobody shoulda charged anybody $96 for no distributor cap.”
The son, lowest in rank, finally gets his hands on the receipt and echoes the disapproval from the other men. The assistant manager turns to me and confesses he could have done the job for half as much. “An look here, $360 for labor?”
“Yeah, it’s $40 per hour from him,” I say, knowing that he’ll understand this is far less than the dealership.
“But this work he did – it couldn’ta taken nine hours. I could do this in three or four. Five if I had a lot of trouble.” He hands me his business card, which I eagerly accept.
The son looks up at me, then over to his dad, then back at me again. “Yer not from here, are yew?”
“No,” I say, “But I’ve been here four years.”
“He knew you weren’t from here. He could tell that ‘boutchew,” the son says and the other men nod in agreement.
“T’ain’t right, I know. Guys like this give mechanics a bad name,” Buzz says, still shaking his head.
At Advanced Auto Parts the clerk looks at the receipt and sees the name of Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off, then says, “Now I don’t wanna cause no trouble here. Nope. But I’ll look up the prices for you.”
We work together and I write on the receipt:
Distributor cap: charged $96.79, costs $45.48
Spark plug wire set: charged $72.59, costs $41.48
Ignition rotor: charged $23.06, costs $9.18
Upper gasket set: charged $32.43, costs $18.48
Computer chip sensor: charged $146.34, costs unknown due to faulty UPC code
“And the labor, sir? How much time would you put into a job like this?” I ask, gaining confidence now.
“Two hours, three tops.”
***
I report back to S&S Qwik Stop. They coach me on how to approach Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off and I drive away feeling nervous yet determined. Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off has been fixing my family’s cars for two years. He fixes my friend’s cars. He fixes my neighbor’s cars. His buddy only charges $25 for towing. But the facts don’t line up and I know I’ve been snowed.
I begin by telling Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off that I have no intention of calling anyone dishonest. I tell him I make $400 per month and that an $800 car bill (added in tax and tow) is no small matter.
Then I show him the numbers for the parts and he has no excuse. He concedes on the spot, albeit only with a slump of his shoulders and a barely articulate but defeated, “Well allright.”
Then I tell him about the labor. I tell him I have the name and phone number of a mechanic in SmallTown, NC who could have done it for half what I was charged. I tell him three other mechanics looked at the receipt and that I brought it into Advanced Auto Parts too. Then I remind Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off that he never returned my phone call, which was placed 36 hours after the tow to inquire about parts.
“How much did you pay for the parts you put in my car?” I ask point blank.
Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off looks at the receipt with my handwriting on it. “Less than that,” he says pointing to the prices I got at Advanced Auto Parts. “But I been doin’ this for twenty-seven years.”
At this point I expect him to make me feel small. I expect him to tell me that twenty-seven years is as long as I’ve been alive. I expect him to tell me he’s cashed my check already and they ain’t nothin’ nobody gonna do ‘bout it now.
“You paid LESS?” I say, flabbergasted that I’ve been ripped off even more than I thought. Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off doesn’t get angry at this moment, but I can see him sweating and he’s running out of words. I hold my ground.
“I don’t know nobody who buys a part for $1 and sells it for $1,” he says in defense.
“I don’t know anybody who buys a part for $1 and sells it for $3, or $4. There’s got to be a happy medium and this isn’t it. This is not customer service.”
At which point I tell him I will put a stop on the check (and I do) and that he will hear from me in a day or two. Then I thank Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off for listening to me and I mean it when I say it.
Right away I go to my parents’ house and Dad says he’s proud and I tell him he’s the one who taught me to stick up for myself in the first place. Then we remember that the Volvo is at the Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off’s shop right now. Dad starts to stew, realizing now that he’s been snowed by this guy as well.
At home I compose a typed letter and write Local-Guy-Who-Ripped-Me-Off a check for $400, which I say should cover parts, labor, tax, tow, and everything from here to Mozambique [OK, I leave that last phrase off]. Tomorrow on my way to work I will put the check in his mailbox a few miles down the road and then I will call the Better Business Bureau and I will have enough money leftover to pay for two fillings next month at the dentist.
‘Nuf said.
Monday, July 17, 2006
Adventures in Optimism
Joyful, joyful, joyful.
This is what I try to say to myself when I see that I am taking on an anxious perspective.
Big crush on someone that’s not right for me and is leaving anyway? Oh well, it’s fun to love and it’ll only hurt if I let it. In other words, enjoy the fact that I have a heart.
Six weeks to write a history article I know nothing about and no time to do it in? Oh well, it pays what I deserve and opens to door to a magazine that I eventually hope to write personal narratives for. I’ll find the time.
Car cost $782 to repair? Oh well, my check from the Pacific University financial aid office arrived today. Borrowed money from the feds never looked so good. And the tires that almost killed me? Dad to the rescue.
Parents still obsessed with ex-boyfriend and arranging get-togethers when I’d rather just find my way back to him on my own? Oh well, at least if I end up marrying him they’ll already love each other like family (especially considering that they see more of each other than I see of any of them).
Worried about my weight? Oh well, the soy ice cream I bought is gone and I don’t need to buy anymore. Dog sitting at my parents’ house next week where the exercise bike is.
And so my adventures in optimism go. They are thwarted occasionally by self-doubt but so far, I am able to turn things back around and keep charging ahead. This is all in the name of writing. I can’t put my heart and soul into the words if my heart and soul are tortured by stressful situations of my own making.
Onward ho! Clearing the plate so that I can fill up with a towering entrée of sentences!
This is what I try to say to myself when I see that I am taking on an anxious perspective.
Big crush on someone that’s not right for me and is leaving anyway? Oh well, it’s fun to love and it’ll only hurt if I let it. In other words, enjoy the fact that I have a heart.
Six weeks to write a history article I know nothing about and no time to do it in? Oh well, it pays what I deserve and opens to door to a magazine that I eventually hope to write personal narratives for. I’ll find the time.
Car cost $782 to repair? Oh well, my check from the Pacific University financial aid office arrived today. Borrowed money from the feds never looked so good. And the tires that almost killed me? Dad to the rescue.
Parents still obsessed with ex-boyfriend and arranging get-togethers when I’d rather just find my way back to him on my own? Oh well, at least if I end up marrying him they’ll already love each other like family (especially considering that they see more of each other than I see of any of them).
Worried about my weight? Oh well, the soy ice cream I bought is gone and I don’t need to buy anymore. Dog sitting at my parents’ house next week where the exercise bike is.
And so my adventures in optimism go. They are thwarted occasionally by self-doubt but so far, I am able to turn things back around and keep charging ahead. This is all in the name of writing. I can’t put my heart and soul into the words if my heart and soul are tortured by stressful situations of my own making.
Onward ho! Clearing the plate so that I can fill up with a towering entrée of sentences!
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Good Ole Porch Sittin'
It occurs to me that I have not hiked higher into the Black Mountains in over a month. My mind can journey across lifetimes and road trips of the imagination for hours on end as I get lost in my reading assignments for the MFA, but nothing replaces the sweat and brawn of a good hike in the woods.
But I try to replace it by reading one hundred pages of Bank’s The Wonder Spot on the porch, where there is a tiny window between two red oak trees that opens up to a view of Celo Knob. Between chapters I eye the mountain, notice the pattern of clouds and later mist that tease the acid-scorched hemlocks on the ridgeline.
Wasps crawl on my legs and arms and I remain still, unwilling to harm them and, as a practicing Buddhist, unsure about how to deal with the six growing nests beneath the ten-foot long awning above where I sit. I hear an unusually slow, steady cruuuuunch at the porch’s edge and look up to see a five and a half foot long black snake slithering across the sun-soaked clearing at the bottom of the porch steps. I move slowly, wasps still clinging to my limbs, to get a better view of the snake. It becomes startled and slithers humbly under the porch. Later, two young horseflies chew on my fingers and when I take a break to play the Martin, blood rushes to my fingers and the bites swell and itch, doubling the width of each finger.
But I have no complaints. My pores are rich with the warmth of the sun and I can see that I am not unlike that slithering snake, just trying to soak it all up. I put off the moral dilemma of the wasps for another day and promise myself one good hike this week if I can get through the essay I’m writing.
But I try to replace it by reading one hundred pages of Bank’s The Wonder Spot on the porch, where there is a tiny window between two red oak trees that opens up to a view of Celo Knob. Between chapters I eye the mountain, notice the pattern of clouds and later mist that tease the acid-scorched hemlocks on the ridgeline.
Wasps crawl on my legs and arms and I remain still, unwilling to harm them and, as a practicing Buddhist, unsure about how to deal with the six growing nests beneath the ten-foot long awning above where I sit. I hear an unusually slow, steady cruuuuunch at the porch’s edge and look up to see a five and a half foot long black snake slithering across the sun-soaked clearing at the bottom of the porch steps. I move slowly, wasps still clinging to my limbs, to get a better view of the snake. It becomes startled and slithers humbly under the porch. Later, two young horseflies chew on my fingers and when I take a break to play the Martin, blood rushes to my fingers and the bites swell and itch, doubling the width of each finger.
But I have no complaints. My pores are rich with the warmth of the sun and I can see that I am not unlike that slithering snake, just trying to soak it all up. I put off the moral dilemma of the wasps for another day and promise myself one good hike this week if I can get through the essay I’m writing.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Trying To Be A Co-Creator
This morning a dew-drenched yellow light filtered through the mixed forest on the property as if to greet me with all the strength of heart I will ever need to live my life. Be where you are, I thought again, then, I am here.. And by nightfall, while moths pressed their soft, fat bodies into the seams of my window screens I am reminded: “We are co-creators in the universe. Define what you want and put it out there. Invite your heart’s desires to come by creating a mental and spiritual space for them.”
I realize that when exude confusion I see confusion manifest in my life:
I want to play guitar and hope to be invited to the jam session with Big Slate. Self-consciously, I have concerns about my abilities as a musician and complain that I am the only woman in a roomful of male musical energy. Manifestation? Not one, but two damaged guitars.
I want a committed partner who falls hard and fast in love with me, meets me at every turn and challenges me where I need it most. Furthermore, I want passion and intimacy. Secretly, I doubt aspects of my personality and struggle with body image. Manifestation? Constantly falling for men that actually embody more extreme, hidden aspects of my own personality – aspects that I am afraid to acknowledge in myself but fall head over heals for when I find them in another. Mistaking this for love, or at best mutual attraction beyond the physical, and growing sexually impatient.
So what do I want?
I want to love myself more thoroughly so that I can sincerely love another.
I want to accept my emotional bravery as a gift, rather than a burden or a curse.
I want to publish a book that I am proud of. I will publish a book that I am proud of.
I never want to lose sight of all that I have been given, all I’m grateful for.
I realize that when exude confusion I see confusion manifest in my life:
I want to play guitar and hope to be invited to the jam session with Big Slate. Self-consciously, I have concerns about my abilities as a musician and complain that I am the only woman in a roomful of male musical energy. Manifestation? Not one, but two damaged guitars.
I want a committed partner who falls hard and fast in love with me, meets me at every turn and challenges me where I need it most. Furthermore, I want passion and intimacy. Secretly, I doubt aspects of my personality and struggle with body image. Manifestation? Constantly falling for men that actually embody more extreme, hidden aspects of my own personality – aspects that I am afraid to acknowledge in myself but fall head over heals for when I find them in another. Mistaking this for love, or at best mutual attraction beyond the physical, and growing sexually impatient.
So what do I want?
I want to love myself more thoroughly so that I can sincerely love another.
I want to accept my emotional bravery as a gift, rather than a burden or a curse.
I want to publish a book that I am proud of. I will publish a book that I am proud of.
I never want to lose sight of all that I have been given, all I’m grateful for.
Putting It Out There
Vic offers pristine advice at the height of my anxiety: “Choose differently. And if you can’t choose differently, then pretend you can for a while and eventually you will be able to.”
We are talking about men which means we are also talking about writing, and how men effect my writing and how I hate it and love it all in the same breath but how lately I just want to make it all go away. I go to bed determined to wake up with the mantra: Writer, writer, writer rather than Lover, lover, lover.
Which is why, at 6:57 a.m. my internal alarm goes off and I begin repeating this to myself, Writer, writer, writer, even though my mind already wanders like a puppy, Lover, lover, writer, lover, writer, lover. But today I decide I will have the leash and make a compromise, setting my mind to: Love writing, love writing, love writing.
And because I am determined, albeit still tortured by the stresses of my own making, I get dressed for my day and pretend my way through seventy-five pages of Didion and sixty pages of Melissa Bank’s The Wonder Spot. I pretend that I am not thinking about how Riley is scheduled to come over tonight, how he broke up with his girlfriend two weeks ago (a fact recently confirmed by the source himself), and how after he leaves, my house will smell like tobacco and sweat and dirt and I will like that; but again I falter. Love writing, love writing, love writing.
By afternoon I am ready to begin new creative work, a series of essays loosely based on the theme and more universally based on emotional maturation of the narrator. The theme, perhaps unfortunately, is kissing, and it begins in 1989.
Lover, lover, lover. WRITER.
I fade for long moments into flashbacks, flashforwards, and hot flashes of the non-menopausal variety, and before I know it my muse it at my doorstep. Four pages into the first essay I click save, answer the door, and pop the top off two beers. We are supposed to go to a movie but never make it; the conversation is too good (“What do you look for in life?” the writer asks, “Wildness and beauty,” the muse replies, and the writer’s eyes grow soft, romantic, deluded, penetrating), the day a little too hot and humid, his attention a little too charming, his smell undeniably biochemical, unrelenting, mountain.
And when he finally leaves, the sun stretched long below the horizon and darkness swallowing the sounds of the forest, I might have new paragraphs to add to my kissing essays but always, I follow the night into its confusing ambiguity, eddies of thought swirling in my mind-stream before Riley’s car even gets to the bottom of the driveway. Love writing, love writing, love writing.
Really, it should be: Love life, forgive yourself your wantings, breath in wisdom rather than regret, fear not your unsatisfied heart – hold it up to the sun every morning, throbbing and ready, willing to pump life into the beauty and pain of each breath. Kiss the hemlock tips as if they were a lover’s lips and use their needless for your pens. Be where you are.
We are talking about men which means we are also talking about writing, and how men effect my writing and how I hate it and love it all in the same breath but how lately I just want to make it all go away. I go to bed determined to wake up with the mantra: Writer, writer, writer rather than Lover, lover, lover.
Which is why, at 6:57 a.m. my internal alarm goes off and I begin repeating this to myself, Writer, writer, writer, even though my mind already wanders like a puppy, Lover, lover, writer, lover, writer, lover. But today I decide I will have the leash and make a compromise, setting my mind to: Love writing, love writing, love writing.
And because I am determined, albeit still tortured by the stresses of my own making, I get dressed for my day and pretend my way through seventy-five pages of Didion and sixty pages of Melissa Bank’s The Wonder Spot. I pretend that I am not thinking about how Riley is scheduled to come over tonight, how he broke up with his girlfriend two weeks ago (a fact recently confirmed by the source himself), and how after he leaves, my house will smell like tobacco and sweat and dirt and I will like that; but again I falter. Love writing, love writing, love writing.
By afternoon I am ready to begin new creative work, a series of essays loosely based on the theme and more universally based on emotional maturation of the narrator. The theme, perhaps unfortunately, is kissing, and it begins in 1989.
Lover, lover, lover. WRITER.
I fade for long moments into flashbacks, flashforwards, and hot flashes of the non-menopausal variety, and before I know it my muse it at my doorstep. Four pages into the first essay I click save, answer the door, and pop the top off two beers. We are supposed to go to a movie but never make it; the conversation is too good (“What do you look for in life?” the writer asks, “Wildness and beauty,” the muse replies, and the writer’s eyes grow soft, romantic, deluded, penetrating), the day a little too hot and humid, his attention a little too charming, his smell undeniably biochemical, unrelenting, mountain.
And when he finally leaves, the sun stretched long below the horizon and darkness swallowing the sounds of the forest, I might have new paragraphs to add to my kissing essays but always, I follow the night into its confusing ambiguity, eddies of thought swirling in my mind-stream before Riley’s car even gets to the bottom of the driveway. Love writing, love writing, love writing.
Really, it should be: Love life, forgive yourself your wantings, breath in wisdom rather than regret, fear not your unsatisfied heart – hold it up to the sun every morning, throbbing and ready, willing to pump life into the beauty and pain of each breath. Kiss the hemlock tips as if they were a lover’s lips and use their needless for your pens. Be where you are.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Full Cirlce, Or What?
“What do you want?” I ask Riley. We are squatting in a small, dense patch of the garden that needs to be weeded. A soft, slow rain falls but we don’t care.
“Freedom.”
“I want to write about you. I’m interested in choices. Choices people make and don’t make, how people get where they are.” We’ve been discussing why he dropped out of high school and college, how he learns best, why he lives the way he does.
“Then let’s get some drugs and drive to the coast for the weekend,” he says.
There is a long pause.
“The difference between me and you is that you say that without thinking first and I could only think something like that and then I’d never let myself say it. And we’re both wrong about it all, anyway,” I declare.
Riley smiles then chuckles, placing the end of a blade of grass into the corner of his mouth when it opens and at this moment I could almost crawl inside of him.
“Look, I’m going to New York next week…Then I’m coming back.”
“How long will you be gone?” I ask.
“’Bout three weeks. Got a ride up there, gonna hitch back by way of Kentucky. I’ll work here in August.”
“Who are you going with?”
“Danny.”
“Danny the red-headed punk rocker who used to work here? You mean you know him?” I am surprised – after all, that was last fall – back in the days of MGL.
“Yeah, that Danny,” Riley says. “He worked up here with a guy named MGL.”
“Did you ever meet MGL?” I ask, almost afraid to know the answer.
“You mean the guy you were with? That one? No, I didn’t meet him. Danny told me he worked with an apprentice up here who really liked you. And that was it. What happened?”
“You want the easy answer or you want to know what really happened?”
“Freedom.”
“I want to write about you. I’m interested in choices. Choices people make and don’t make, how people get where they are.” We’ve been discussing why he dropped out of high school and college, how he learns best, why he lives the way he does.
“Then let’s get some drugs and drive to the coast for the weekend,” he says.
There is a long pause.
“The difference between me and you is that you say that without thinking first and I could only think something like that and then I’d never let myself say it. And we’re both wrong about it all, anyway,” I declare.
Riley smiles then chuckles, placing the end of a blade of grass into the corner of his mouth when it opens and at this moment I could almost crawl inside of him.
“Look, I’m going to New York next week…Then I’m coming back.”
“How long will you be gone?” I ask.
“’Bout three weeks. Got a ride up there, gonna hitch back by way of Kentucky. I’ll work here in August.”
“Who are you going with?”
“Danny.”
“Danny the red-headed punk rocker who used to work here? You mean you know him?” I am surprised – after all, that was last fall – back in the days of MGL.
“Yeah, that Danny,” Riley says. “He worked up here with a guy named MGL.”
“Did you ever meet MGL?” I ask, almost afraid to know the answer.
“You mean the guy you were with? That one? No, I didn’t meet him. Danny told me he worked with an apprentice up here who really liked you. And that was it. What happened?”
“You want the easy answer or you want to know what really happened?”
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Strength In Voices
It is Women’s Singing Night at the end of a full shift at the coffeehouse. On three hours’ sleep and a double Americano I’m a little weary of singing. In order to sing with my heart I have to be willing to open my heart, which is presently reluctant and raw.
But when we start with a round,
The love your deepest heart desires
is offered with every breath you take.
The rose whose scent you seek
is blooming at your very feet.
I finally have permission to drop the burden of the last twenty-four hours and fall head-long into song, lost in the cadence and melodies, the chasing syllables and lyrical content. We must be a picture of mountain beauty: the three of us picnicking on the top of Conley Ridge outside the craft school coffeehouse, sirens serenading the ghostly-misted hills of Appalachia.
Peg teaches Noelle and I “Savo Voda,” a Croation love song about a woman who is drowning herself in love for her male companion. The song is slow and long with six verses in three-part harmony. A few people shuffle by on the gravel path in front of where we drink wine, overlooking the view. They smile, reflecting our light back to us in a second-glance over-the-shoulder look back and I allow, for a moment, the pure loveliness of our efforts to settle like the truth in a dark room.
We are beautiful, strong, suffering, and human. We are eating life raw, knowing the tawny pulp of it as if life were a mango, our picnic table at the top of the tree, the oblong pit glowing and juicy when we open our mouths to sing and reveal the pit-bottoms of our own hearts.
But when we start with a round,
The love your deepest heart desires
is offered with every breath you take.
The rose whose scent you seek
is blooming at your very feet.
I finally have permission to drop the burden of the last twenty-four hours and fall head-long into song, lost in the cadence and melodies, the chasing syllables and lyrical content. We must be a picture of mountain beauty: the three of us picnicking on the top of Conley Ridge outside the craft school coffeehouse, sirens serenading the ghostly-misted hills of Appalachia.
Peg teaches Noelle and I “Savo Voda,” a Croation love song about a woman who is drowning herself in love for her male companion. The song is slow and long with six verses in three-part harmony. A few people shuffle by on the gravel path in front of where we drink wine, overlooking the view. They smile, reflecting our light back to us in a second-glance over-the-shoulder look back and I allow, for a moment, the pure loveliness of our efforts to settle like the truth in a dark room.
We are beautiful, strong, suffering, and human. We are eating life raw, knowing the tawny pulp of it as if life were a mango, our picnic table at the top of the tree, the oblong pit glowing and juicy when we open our mouths to sing and reveal the pit-bottoms of our own hearts.
What Is To Come...Came
(see post from earlier tonight, below...yes, two in one night)
Under the porch light, beneath the stars, playing music with my friends,
the guitar strap snaps
and whips like a snake from around my neck.
And my red Art & Lutherie guitar, a guitar I have put ten years into, goes crashing down, face first, onto the hardwood porch at my feet.
The fiddler, everyone, they all stop playing.
Someone kicks over a beer and then nothing, silence.
And I stare fearfully for a swollen second at the guitar at my feet, afraid to turn it over.
I swear lightly under my breath, stunned, all the fires of hell exploding inside of me. "I'm cursed," is all I can say with Big Slate holds me up steady so I don't fall over, don't throw the instrument, don't plummet off the edge of the earth for lack of explanation. He was there, after all, when the Martin was hurt at the last party.
Tomorrow I will leave at 7am to drive around the southern tip of the Black Mountains, skirt around the base of Mt. Mitchell and enter the valley on the west slopes of the range. In a little over an hour I can get to the guitar expert - and I'm bring the Martin too. (Link goes to the story about the curse of the Martin, which was also damaged at a craft school party in a random accident.)
I can't even stand to have the guitars in my house, like damaged souls, watching me, proof that either I lean too hard into life and this is how it hurts me back - or that nothing I do in life matters anyway, and this is what it looks like.
What was I wrote just a few hours ago? "With nothing but odd circumstances thrown my direction all day...Today I am but a pawn in the game..."
Under the porch light, beneath the stars, playing music with my friends,
the guitar strap snaps
and whips like a snake from around my neck.
And my red Art & Lutherie guitar, a guitar I have put ten years into, goes crashing down, face first, onto the hardwood porch at my feet.
The fiddler, everyone, they all stop playing.
Someone kicks over a beer and then nothing, silence.
And I stare fearfully for a swollen second at the guitar at my feet, afraid to turn it over.
I swear lightly under my breath, stunned, all the fires of hell exploding inside of me. "I'm cursed," is all I can say with Big Slate holds me up steady so I don't fall over, don't throw the instrument, don't plummet off the edge of the earth for lack of explanation. He was there, after all, when the Martin was hurt at the last party.
Tomorrow I will leave at 7am to drive around the southern tip of the Black Mountains, skirt around the base of Mt. Mitchell and enter the valley on the west slopes of the range. In a little over an hour I can get to the guitar expert - and I'm bring the Martin too. (Link goes to the story about the curse of the Martin, which was also damaged at a craft school party in a random accident.)
I can't even stand to have the guitars in my house, like damaged souls, watching me, proof that either I lean too hard into life and this is how it hurts me back - or that nothing I do in life matters anyway, and this is what it looks like.
What was I wrote just a few hours ago? "With nothing but odd circumstances thrown my direction all day...Today I am but a pawn in the game..."
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Who Knows What Is To Come
My alarm goes off and life costs $800.
At least, that what it feels like fourteen hours, one vehicle breakdown, four teeth x-rays, and a diagnosis of two cavities later. Oh, plus the towing fees.
I refuse to let this weigh me down because there is nothing I can do about any of it now. Thinking fast, I grab my guitar and Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem essays, then borrow the Volvo with broken wipers and no brake lights (our family back-up for times just like this), driving away to work with one eye on the billowing gray clouds.
By mid-afternoon I’m approved as assistant manager for the coffeehouse, effective mid-September, and the skies open up dropping at least two inches of rain in less than one hour. The full moon is rising all day, and even though it is not yet dark I can feel it swelling in me. With nothing but odd circumstances thrown my direction all day, this is the only explanation I can muster.
At work, a short man with fitted jeans and a wide cowboy hat orders two-coffees-to-go-please and sees my guitar resting in the corner of the coffeehouse.
“You play?”
I nod yes.
“Tonight, after the slide show. You should come,”
I nod again, glad I brought the Art & Lutherie and not the Martin.
“You know Big Slate?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He knows where we’ll be. Ask him how to get there. I play mandolin. We got a fiddler tonight though, it’ll be good. If you need me, I’ll be in the Iron Studio, ‘Till then, uh-huh.”
“Will do,” I say, assuming his pattern of speech and concluding my statement with yet another bob of my head.
Knowing I can’t go anywhere until the rain stops, and further knowing that I have Didion’s book and can do my homework at the coffeehouse after dinner, there was nothing to do but say yes. Today I am but a pawn in the game. Tonight, when the moonlight spreads its eerie light across the top of Conley Ridge, and maybe, just maybe reflects a wild blue off the fiddle’s strings, the world will be lost to me for a few sweet measures of good-ole-porch-and-yeah-songs and suddenly, everything will make sense.
At least, that what it feels like fourteen hours, one vehicle breakdown, four teeth x-rays, and a diagnosis of two cavities later. Oh, plus the towing fees.
I refuse to let this weigh me down because there is nothing I can do about any of it now. Thinking fast, I grab my guitar and Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem essays, then borrow the Volvo with broken wipers and no brake lights (our family back-up for times just like this), driving away to work with one eye on the billowing gray clouds.
By mid-afternoon I’m approved as assistant manager for the coffeehouse, effective mid-September, and the skies open up dropping at least two inches of rain in less than one hour. The full moon is rising all day, and even though it is not yet dark I can feel it swelling in me. With nothing but odd circumstances thrown my direction all day, this is the only explanation I can muster.
At work, a short man with fitted jeans and a wide cowboy hat orders two-coffees-to-go-please and sees my guitar resting in the corner of the coffeehouse.
“You play?”
I nod yes.
“Tonight, after the slide show. You should come,”
I nod again, glad I brought the Art & Lutherie and not the Martin.
“You know Big Slate?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He knows where we’ll be. Ask him how to get there. I play mandolin. We got a fiddler tonight though, it’ll be good. If you need me, I’ll be in the Iron Studio, ‘Till then, uh-huh.”
“Will do,” I say, assuming his pattern of speech and concluding my statement with yet another bob of my head.
Knowing I can’t go anywhere until the rain stops, and further knowing that I have Didion’s book and can do my homework at the coffeehouse after dinner, there was nothing to do but say yes. Today I am but a pawn in the game. Tonight, when the moonlight spreads its eerie light across the top of Conley Ridge, and maybe, just maybe reflects a wild blue off the fiddle’s strings, the world will be lost to me for a few sweet measures of good-ole-porch-and-yeah-songs and suddenly, everything will make sense.
Monday, July 10, 2006
The Mud-Slinging Muck of It
The valley was thick and soggy with moisture all day, as if honey-water swelled from clouds in a continuous, pulsing flow. In this temperate rainforest, it is possible to feel like you’re swimming all day even when no rain falls. So as I dug around in sopping piles of rotting mountain laurel branches, maple cuts, and yellow poplar wedges this afternoon, sorting rotten wood from burnable wood, it was difficult not to feel simultaneously submerged and parched.
Which is why Cam’s phone call seemed so perfectly timed. I could almost taste the thin, dry Colorado air on his breath while we talked writing and women and men and language and oh-remember-once-at-Whitman like the good-‘ole-this-and-that’s. He tells me he still falls hard and fast. I tell him I am still playing games with infatuation and that I’m bored of it. It is a safe confession. He, too, lives with his heart on his sleeve. We are both open to love, frequently wounded, die-hard romantics, and late twenty-something’s watching packs of friends on all sides get married-divorced-pregnant-cheated on-lied-to-had-enough-can’t-live-without-you kind of gigs.
There is further confession, though, that the single life is as sweet as it gets. That this freedom cannot be measured now and will only be looked at with sincere gratitude once it has slipped from our sunny-sky days, subsumed by commitments to a companion.
I want not to want and it’s precisely this curling paradox, meandering inside my bones like a lost snake - that keeps language alive for me. I cannot make sense of life within, so I look with-out and try to write my world “into coherence” – all the love, hate, shit, injustice, pain, beauty, mud-slinging rotten muck of it.
We hang up the phone and there is only one thing to do. Back to work.
Which is why Cam’s phone call seemed so perfectly timed. I could almost taste the thin, dry Colorado air on his breath while we talked writing and women and men and language and oh-remember-once-at-Whitman like the good-‘ole-this-and-that’s. He tells me he still falls hard and fast. I tell him I am still playing games with infatuation and that I’m bored of it. It is a safe confession. He, too, lives with his heart on his sleeve. We are both open to love, frequently wounded, die-hard romantics, and late twenty-something’s watching packs of friends on all sides get married-divorced-pregnant-cheated on-lied-to-had-enough-can’t-live-without-you kind of gigs.
There is further confession, though, that the single life is as sweet as it gets. That this freedom cannot be measured now and will only be looked at with sincere gratitude once it has slipped from our sunny-sky days, subsumed by commitments to a companion.
I want not to want and it’s precisely this curling paradox, meandering inside my bones like a lost snake - that keeps language alive for me. I cannot make sense of life within, so I look with-out and try to write my world “into coherence” – all the love, hate, shit, injustice, pain, beauty, mud-slinging rotten muck of it.
We hang up the phone and there is only one thing to do. Back to work.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
First Packet is Done!
It goes like this, see: I work all day and then wish that in the morning I was going to class and could talk about my work with someone. Or I get stuck on a sentence and when I walk outside, as if to search down the dormitory hallways for a friend to swap papers with, I am surrounded by small mammals that eat nuts and speak in Squirrel or Rabbit.
For a break between drafts I call Collene, who is one semester ahead of me at Pacific and knows what I am feeling. We talk books, sentences, residency gossip, conferences, genre. It goes well and hopefully there will be a cross-country visit between us sometime before January.
At the next round of drafts I call Vic, who is always game for chit-chat or bitch sessions or poetry talk or advice. We talk about her week, her commitments, my plans for time management, my need for classmates.
By 5:00 p.m. I am done with all the contents of my first packet to mail out and call Britt for a celebratory drink and catch-up. We visit at her house for two-and-a-half hours and still, it is only the tip of the iceberg. But still, we’re on the same page with our critique group goals, with facts about websites, with expectations for the local open-mic women’s night. She gives me a token from her beach vacation – a shark’s tooth that is serrated,“fitting for the MFA,” she says, explaining that it will fit her analogy in a poem she’s working on.
There are also phone calls from Veva and Cam, two more artist friends. I could not do this without support from all of these people.
Am I willing to slave for twenty years just to become proficient? Will I be able to maintain my dedication even if I never get recognition? Will I always be in love with writing? Is this only the beginning?
Yes, yes, and yes. Yes.
For a break between drafts I call Collene, who is one semester ahead of me at Pacific and knows what I am feeling. We talk books, sentences, residency gossip, conferences, genre. It goes well and hopefully there will be a cross-country visit between us sometime before January.
At the next round of drafts I call Vic, who is always game for chit-chat or bitch sessions or poetry talk or advice. We talk about her week, her commitments, my plans for time management, my need for classmates.
By 5:00 p.m. I am done with all the contents of my first packet to mail out and call Britt for a celebratory drink and catch-up. We visit at her house for two-and-a-half hours and still, it is only the tip of the iceberg. But still, we’re on the same page with our critique group goals, with facts about websites, with expectations for the local open-mic women’s night. She gives me a token from her beach vacation – a shark’s tooth that is serrated,“fitting for the MFA,” she says, explaining that it will fit her analogy in a poem she’s working on.
There are also phone calls from Veva and Cam, two more artist friends. I could not do this without support from all of these people.
Am I willing to slave for twenty years just to become proficient? Will I be able to maintain my dedication even if I never get recognition? Will I always be in love with writing? Is this only the beginning?
Yes, yes, and yes. Yes.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Close That Chapter Right Up!
I wake up in the middle of the night completely calm, yet alert, and grab the pen and paper next to my bed. I can feel the ease of closing the chapter with MGL, whose letter I buried in my mind soon after it was opened so many months ago. I am surprised this comes out of sleep because I haven’t thought about him in months, with the exception of mistaking passers-by for him in BigCity, NC – oddly enough. And here is what I write:
Dear MGL,
Well it really would have been quite simple had you been honest from the beginning. Most women I know would prefer to hear “No” before they hear a lie.
And part of me could feel the lie in you, taut like a rubber band, holding you back, about to break. Just when I was convinced you were aiming somewhere else though, you seemed to come back around (a poem sent, a rushed roadside phone call laced with frenzied attraction).
And when you kissed me I could see something desperate and wanting and terrified and boldly ferocious in you. But I also saw a tenderness. I saw talent. I saw determination. I saw a willingness to reveal your self.
And after you were arrested at the protest, and you wrote that I “fell pretty hard” for you, you were right – but I fell for the dream. The dream of a man who also loved mountains and writing and sex and hard work. Until you left, you seemed to meet me at every turn, so I fell where I hoped it would be safe yet adventurous, worthwhile and fun.
And that’s all there is to say in this letter, really.
Except it would be good of you to look me in the eyes one more time. And it would be good of you to be safe and strong-willed in there and when you’re out to not give up what you’ve been given and to never be dishonest with what others give you again. And be kind to yourself, and grow from that place inside of you.
~Katey
Dear MGL,
Well it really would have been quite simple had you been honest from the beginning. Most women I know would prefer to hear “No” before they hear a lie.
And part of me could feel the lie in you, taut like a rubber band, holding you back, about to break. Just when I was convinced you were aiming somewhere else though, you seemed to come back around (a poem sent, a rushed roadside phone call laced with frenzied attraction).
And when you kissed me I could see something desperate and wanting and terrified and boldly ferocious in you. But I also saw a tenderness. I saw talent. I saw determination. I saw a willingness to reveal your self.
And after you were arrested at the protest, and you wrote that I “fell pretty hard” for you, you were right – but I fell for the dream. The dream of a man who also loved mountains and writing and sex and hard work. Until you left, you seemed to meet me at every turn, so I fell where I hoped it would be safe yet adventurous, worthwhile and fun.
And that’s all there is to say in this letter, really.
Except it would be good of you to look me in the eyes one more time. And it would be good of you to be safe and strong-willed in there and when you’re out to not give up what you’ve been given and to never be dishonest with what others give you again. And be kind to yourself, and grow from that place inside of you.
~Katey
Friday, July 07, 2006
First Packet Due Monday
I work on my first twenty pages of creative work for my MFA advisor all day. When I need a break, I ride fourteen miles on the stationary recumbent bicycle at my parents’ house, because I can exercise while reading Joelle Frasier’s The Territory of Men, which I must finish by Sunday with enough time to write a commentary on it.
I add six pages to the ten I had from earlier this week, which leaves four left in order to make twenty (and therefore make the most of this opportunity to get one-on-one feedback from the author I’m working with). But by 4:30 p.m. I am out of steam and can’t seem to pull anything more together.
Just when I need to procrastinate I get a friendly phone call from my traveling companion in Houston, Texas. As we catch up I imagine that he must be stuck in traffic in the fourth largest city in America, either suffocating in the polluted heat or casually chatting on his cell in an air conditioned Honda. Either way, he’s a world away from me but it doesn’t matter, because he’s listening to me gab about the thread I’m trying to weave into a series of four compressed essays to make this twenty pages and blah, blah, blah and then I get to hear about Artificial Intelligence and his grad school plans and it makes me wish, at least for the moment, for a cold home brew and the Columbia River Gorge or somewhere, anywhere, with a breeze and lots of company and four extra pages floating around that I can cut and paste into my Word document.*
We hang up and I hike the Patton Cemetery loop in my cowgirl hat and hope this will inspire something…
Nothing…
Note to self: Joan Didion can write run-on sentences ‘til the cows come home and sell them for New York paychecks. So can Alexandra Fuller. And they both do fragments, too. Find out how. Make this work for you.
_____
*This is a run-on sentence, for example.
I add six pages to the ten I had from earlier this week, which leaves four left in order to make twenty (and therefore make the most of this opportunity to get one-on-one feedback from the author I’m working with). But by 4:30 p.m. I am out of steam and can’t seem to pull anything more together.
Just when I need to procrastinate I get a friendly phone call from my traveling companion in Houston, Texas. As we catch up I imagine that he must be stuck in traffic in the fourth largest city in America, either suffocating in the polluted heat or casually chatting on his cell in an air conditioned Honda. Either way, he’s a world away from me but it doesn’t matter, because he’s listening to me gab about the thread I’m trying to weave into a series of four compressed essays to make this twenty pages and blah, blah, blah and then I get to hear about Artificial Intelligence and his grad school plans and it makes me wish, at least for the moment, for a cold home brew and the Columbia River Gorge or somewhere, anywhere, with a breeze and lots of company and four extra pages floating around that I can cut and paste into my Word document.*
We hang up and I hike the Patton Cemetery loop in my cowgirl hat and hope this will inspire something…
Nothing…
Note to self: Joan Didion can write run-on sentences ‘til the cows come home and sell them for New York paychecks. So can Alexandra Fuller. And they both do fragments, too. Find out how. Make this work for you.
_____
*This is a run-on sentence, for example.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Completely Confused and Utterly Clear (???)
Joe is chest-deep in a deep irrigation ditch he and the apprentices have been hacking at all summer. His curly, white hair bobs in and out of the hole like a forest gnome peeking around the forest. When he stops to get more tools, I shovel silt out of the cold, deep pool of fresh mountain water, exposing the newly placed PVC pipe that is in position to redirect water. The new pipe will allow water to be filtered through layers of rock and clay. After we lay plastic down, Joe steps back into the hole for to fit the piping and cut a hole.
Which leaves Riley and I to pitch our shovels deep into the chocolate brown earth, sifting for stones that we will wash and prepare as gravel to fill the chest-deep hole. We determine fairly quickly that it works best if one of us shovels while the other rinses on a large framed screen twenty feet below, where an unruly black plastic pipe juts from the creek as a makeshift hose.
“Did you go to the show?” I ask Riley, expecting him to say no.
“Yeah, I did,” he says, grabbing a bucket of rinsed gravel from my hands and swapping it for a full, dirty one. He sees my jaw drop open, purposefully exaggerating defeat, so he adds: “And I thought about calling you as I was rolling out. I thought that would be the nice thing to do. But I was spending the night with friends and really couldn’t take you. And I had all these plans to make everyone hamburgers, see, and I was afraid the grocery store would close since it was a holiday – remember when stores used to close early on holidays? - So I had to get there quick, and so yeah, I didn’t call.” He is all the way back up to the gravel hole now and has to shout in order for me to hear him over the bubbling creek.
“It’s OK, Riley, really,” I say. “But how was the show?”
“It was pretty cool. I got up and sang back up vocals on a whim for the last song, so that was fun.” Joe has his back turned in the deep hole and Riley gestures quickly, grabbing an air mic and singing to an eighty’s foreplay song. “You know that one?”
I laugh and turn back to rinsing the gravel. The water feels cool across my hands and soothes small cuts that the grit and gravel make in my skin.
Riley comes back down the mountain and we swap buckets again. “But I’m sorry I didn’t call.”
“Well to be honest, I was hoping you would call. But it’s ok because maybe you’ll call another time.” The words jump out before I can stop them.
Another five minutes passes during which we shout fragmented sentences back and forth about small-nothings. But when we swap buckets again, he leans in this time, dangerously close yet still far enough to be played off as functional closeness for the sake of the bucket swap. “Plus I was there with my date,” he says like a close-range punch.
I lean in even closer, our hands gripping the same handle on a bucket full of rocks that we hold, suspended. I look him in the eye and say, as lightheartedly as I can, “Well does your date eat hamburgers?”
“Yeah, she does,” he takes the bucket and turns back up the mountain. “With blue cheese and shiitakes.”
Another five minutes passes. We make eye contact for a bucket swap and meet halfway this time. “It was good of you to tell me though,” I say.
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me that you had a date.” At this point all internal alarms are firing off inside my brain, begging me to stop talking, stop feeling, stop everything. “See, that’s good. It makes things very clear.”
“Well it would have been too presumptuous of me. Don’t you think? It’s not like we can just come up to each other and hand out little cards that say ‘Single’ or ‘Dating’ or ‘Queer.’ It’s not easy like that. Oh yeah, ‘Hey, Katey, nice to meet you, by the way, I’m dating someone so, you know…’” His face is expressive yet his tone is gentle and entirely convincing. “Besides, how am I supposed to say I’ve got a girlfriend I’m trying to break up with that I’m still hanging around with? That probably wouldn’t fit on the card.” Without thinking he grabs both buckets and turns back up the mountain. I let him get to the top, then climb up to the gravel hole and point out his mistake.
Joe grunts and mutters to himself in the deep hole. He can’t seem to find any of his tools so I begin to place the scattered tools neatly in a row within arm’s reach of the hole. “Ahhh! There are those scissors! Hey, yeah, thanks, all right…Now if I could just…”
On my way back down I can only laugh to myself. I know a good percentage of my infatuation is simply to distract myself from the answer to this question: Whose woman am I, if not my own? And besides, Riley will be leaving in three weeks, I’m too busy to give more time away as it is, and now’s not the time.
But oh, I like it when he rambles, getting lost in his own story, leaning in and making hand gestures to depict action. I like that he has done insane backpacking trips in the Sierra-Nevadas that most people couldn’t outlive and I want to know what it is inside a man, precisely, that sets things like that in motion. I like that he lives simply, stays dirty-from-the-earth most days, and smells like a mix of homegrown tobacco, patchuli, and a body odor that just killsme (in a good way).
“Hey down there,” he has to raise his hands up high and cup them over his mouth to make the sound of his voice carry. I look up and notice that this gesture pulls his shirt up just above the waistline of his cut-off Dickies shorts and add to the list: I like that he’s insanely attractive. “What about that new movie that’s opening in SmallTown, NC tonight at 12:01am? That one with Johnny Depp”
Oh God, Johnny Depp and Riley in the same theatre, at the same time? System overload! Hormonal breakdown! Reproductive reactions!
There is a long silence.
“Do you want to go?” I ask, wondering now if I’ve finished his thought or if he was too chicken to ask or if I just asked him out.
Joe pokes his head out as high as he can from the deep hole and looks at Riley, then looks at me, then leans into his shovel resting his head on the top of the handle for a better view.
“I brought you cold gingerade tea from the coffeehouse and I have to go now. I have to go to yoga class,” I say abruptly. “So you should come taste it now, before I go, k?” I walk down the mountain without waiting for a response.
We make it to the porch of the Herb Shop where Riley hands me a pint of his homemade beer and I hand him the gingerade tea. We sip each other’s drinks, then swap back in the same motion that we worked with the buckets all afternoon. Buffy the dog kisses my fingers and I begin to pet her roughly on the top of her rump.
“Why do dogs like that spot so much anyway?” Riley asks, exhaling a steady sigh of satisfaction from the special coffeehouse drink.
Slightly embarrassed but more entertained by the irony of the answer, I explain to Riley in strictly biological terms that dogs like to be rubbed on their rumps, female dogs especially, because when a male dog is mating with a female his chest bumps and rubs the back of her rump repeatedly. “So basically when you pet a dog their it reminds them of being humped,” I let down my guard.
“Oh, I guess that’s why I like my belly rubbed when I’m humping,” he says this in a manner that is somehow flirtatious and sardonic. “Except I usually like to get it all over with quick. It’s just a mating thing, you know, I don’t even like to touch when I’m humping. Touching is gross.” By now he is completely kidding and I cannot help but wonder if he is describing the exact opposite of his true preferences. This, of course, paints a wild and quick fantasy in my mind about Riley and mating and…
“Look, the movie would be too late tonight and Joe still needs my help. Let’s do it another time at a more decent hour,” he says as I walk down the porch steps in the direction of my car. ’Do IT another time at a decent hour?’ Oh! The movie, right. God help me, I’ve got to get out of here now.
“Ok. It’s better for me too,”
“And I’ll see you next week then, because I’m going to be gone all weekend,” he calls out. By now I’m below the deck and Riley’s boyish, twinkling face is hidden behind the railing paneling and some overgrowth. But I take two steps back up to be at eye-level with the edge of the porch. There is an opening in the siding and I peek my head through just enough to frame a view of his face perfectly.
“I’ll be here Sunday to make more tea though, will you be here Sunday night?” I ask.
“No, definitely not. Won’t be back ‘till Monday.”
“I’ll see you Tuesday then.”
“Right, have a good weekend Katey,” he says finally, and as he gazes at me a mixed look of sincerity, wonder, doubt, and slight attraction spreads across his face.
Which leaves Riley and I to pitch our shovels deep into the chocolate brown earth, sifting for stones that we will wash and prepare as gravel to fill the chest-deep hole. We determine fairly quickly that it works best if one of us shovels while the other rinses on a large framed screen twenty feet below, where an unruly black plastic pipe juts from the creek as a makeshift hose.
“Did you go to the show?” I ask Riley, expecting him to say no.
“Yeah, I did,” he says, grabbing a bucket of rinsed gravel from my hands and swapping it for a full, dirty one. He sees my jaw drop open, purposefully exaggerating defeat, so he adds: “And I thought about calling you as I was rolling out. I thought that would be the nice thing to do. But I was spending the night with friends and really couldn’t take you. And I had all these plans to make everyone hamburgers, see, and I was afraid the grocery store would close since it was a holiday – remember when stores used to close early on holidays? - So I had to get there quick, and so yeah, I didn’t call.” He is all the way back up to the gravel hole now and has to shout in order for me to hear him over the bubbling creek.
“It’s OK, Riley, really,” I say. “But how was the show?”
“It was pretty cool. I got up and sang back up vocals on a whim for the last song, so that was fun.” Joe has his back turned in the deep hole and Riley gestures quickly, grabbing an air mic and singing to an eighty’s foreplay song. “You know that one?”
I laugh and turn back to rinsing the gravel. The water feels cool across my hands and soothes small cuts that the grit and gravel make in my skin.
Riley comes back down the mountain and we swap buckets again. “But I’m sorry I didn’t call.”
“Well to be honest, I was hoping you would call. But it’s ok because maybe you’ll call another time.” The words jump out before I can stop them.
Another five minutes passes during which we shout fragmented sentences back and forth about small-nothings. But when we swap buckets again, he leans in this time, dangerously close yet still far enough to be played off as functional closeness for the sake of the bucket swap. “Plus I was there with my date,” he says like a close-range punch.
I lean in even closer, our hands gripping the same handle on a bucket full of rocks that we hold, suspended. I look him in the eye and say, as lightheartedly as I can, “Well does your date eat hamburgers?”
“Yeah, she does,” he takes the bucket and turns back up the mountain. “With blue cheese and shiitakes.”
Another five minutes passes. We make eye contact for a bucket swap and meet halfway this time. “It was good of you to tell me though,” I say.
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me that you had a date.” At this point all internal alarms are firing off inside my brain, begging me to stop talking, stop feeling, stop everything. “See, that’s good. It makes things very clear.”
“Well it would have been too presumptuous of me. Don’t you think? It’s not like we can just come up to each other and hand out little cards that say ‘Single’ or ‘Dating’ or ‘Queer.’ It’s not easy like that. Oh yeah, ‘Hey, Katey, nice to meet you, by the way, I’m dating someone so, you know…’” His face is expressive yet his tone is gentle and entirely convincing. “Besides, how am I supposed to say I’ve got a girlfriend I’m trying to break up with that I’m still hanging around with? That probably wouldn’t fit on the card.” Without thinking he grabs both buckets and turns back up the mountain. I let him get to the top, then climb up to the gravel hole and point out his mistake.
Joe grunts and mutters to himself in the deep hole. He can’t seem to find any of his tools so I begin to place the scattered tools neatly in a row within arm’s reach of the hole. “Ahhh! There are those scissors! Hey, yeah, thanks, all right…Now if I could just…”
On my way back down I can only laugh to myself. I know a good percentage of my infatuation is simply to distract myself from the answer to this question: Whose woman am I, if not my own? And besides, Riley will be leaving in three weeks, I’m too busy to give more time away as it is, and now’s not the time.
But oh, I like it when he rambles, getting lost in his own story, leaning in and making hand gestures to depict action. I like that he has done insane backpacking trips in the Sierra-Nevadas that most people couldn’t outlive and I want to know what it is inside a man, precisely, that sets things like that in motion. I like that he lives simply, stays dirty-from-the-earth most days, and smells like a mix of homegrown tobacco, patchuli, and a body odor that just killsme (in a good way).
“Hey down there,” he has to raise his hands up high and cup them over his mouth to make the sound of his voice carry. I look up and notice that this gesture pulls his shirt up just above the waistline of his cut-off Dickies shorts and add to the list: I like that he’s insanely attractive. “What about that new movie that’s opening in SmallTown, NC tonight at 12:01am? That one with Johnny Depp”
Oh God, Johnny Depp and Riley in the same theatre, at the same time? System overload! Hormonal breakdown! Reproductive reactions!
There is a long silence.
“Do you want to go?” I ask, wondering now if I’ve finished his thought or if he was too chicken to ask or if I just asked him out.
Joe pokes his head out as high as he can from the deep hole and looks at Riley, then looks at me, then leans into his shovel resting his head on the top of the handle for a better view.
“I brought you cold gingerade tea from the coffeehouse and I have to go now. I have to go to yoga class,” I say abruptly. “So you should come taste it now, before I go, k?” I walk down the mountain without waiting for a response.
We make it to the porch of the Herb Shop where Riley hands me a pint of his homemade beer and I hand him the gingerade tea. We sip each other’s drinks, then swap back in the same motion that we worked with the buckets all afternoon. Buffy the dog kisses my fingers and I begin to pet her roughly on the top of her rump.
“Why do dogs like that spot so much anyway?” Riley asks, exhaling a steady sigh of satisfaction from the special coffeehouse drink.
Slightly embarrassed but more entertained by the irony of the answer, I explain to Riley in strictly biological terms that dogs like to be rubbed on their rumps, female dogs especially, because when a male dog is mating with a female his chest bumps and rubs the back of her rump repeatedly. “So basically when you pet a dog their it reminds them of being humped,” I let down my guard.
“Oh, I guess that’s why I like my belly rubbed when I’m humping,” he says this in a manner that is somehow flirtatious and sardonic. “Except I usually like to get it all over with quick. It’s just a mating thing, you know, I don’t even like to touch when I’m humping. Touching is gross.” By now he is completely kidding and I cannot help but wonder if he is describing the exact opposite of his true preferences. This, of course, paints a wild and quick fantasy in my mind about Riley and mating and…
“Look, the movie would be too late tonight and Joe still needs my help. Let’s do it another time at a more decent hour,” he says as I walk down the porch steps in the direction of my car. ’Do IT another time at a decent hour?’ Oh! The movie, right. God help me, I’ve got to get out of here now.
“Ok. It’s better for me too,”
“And I’ll see you next week then, because I’m going to be gone all weekend,” he calls out. By now I’m below the deck and Riley’s boyish, twinkling face is hidden behind the railing paneling and some overgrowth. But I take two steps back up to be at eye-level with the edge of the porch. There is an opening in the siding and I peek my head through just enough to frame a view of his face perfectly.
“I’ll be here Sunday to make more tea though, will you be here Sunday night?” I ask.
“No, definitely not. Won’t be back ‘till Monday.”
“I’ll see you Tuesday then.”
“Right, have a good weekend Katey,” he says finally, and as he gazes at me a mixed look of sincerity, wonder, doubt, and slight attraction spreads across his face.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Wah, Wah, Wah
Perhaps I have been remiss in describing the coffeehouse. It resides on the bottom floor of an old Appalachian building on the top of a ridge in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. We’re just above 3,000 feet, which means something around here (and means nothing where I grew up). Since the craft school is basically like an artist’s colony the coffeehouse is designed to serve students, faculty, and staff three seasons a year. Our other patrons are mostly tourists, and usually they only come during the summer or at the peak of fall colors in October. Maximum, we can seat fifteen people in rickety wooden chairs and on a busy summer day we do $200 to $250 in sales. During the fall and spring we do about $100 in sales per day and we close for three and a half months every winter.
All of this brings me to my point, which is that my ankles are swollen like small Nerf balls and my pinky toes are blistered from doing over $400 in sales today, six sinkfulls of dishes, and pulling enough espresso shots to make my forearms stiff. There are only about 120 students on campus this session, plus about thirty staff today. Per capita that’s several bucks each and of course not everyone came in. Might that be a record? Apparently half of the school slept through breakfast, was still hung-over well past noon, and felt stupid-hot from the uncalled for humidity that sucked life out of the air all day long.
In other words, they needed caffeine in ungodly amounts at repeated intervals. And they tipped enough to pay for my share of this month’s phone bill. Hallelujah, I’m home.
All of this brings me to my point, which is that my ankles are swollen like small Nerf balls and my pinky toes are blistered from doing over $400 in sales today, six sinkfulls of dishes, and pulling enough espresso shots to make my forearms stiff. There are only about 120 students on campus this session, plus about thirty staff today. Per capita that’s several bucks each and of course not everyone came in. Might that be a record? Apparently half of the school slept through breakfast, was still hung-over well past noon, and felt stupid-hot from the uncalled for humidity that sucked life out of the air all day long.
In other words, they needed caffeine in ungodly amounts at repeated intervals. And they tipped enough to pay for my share of this month’s phone bill. Hallelujah, I’m home.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Independence
I face off with the mountains for my Fourth of July and decide once and for all that this must be a journey of Independence. I will forgive myself for my wantings, laugh at them when I can because of course they will still come up, and gently press forward without a man, without self-torment, devoted instead to a love affair with words.
The sky flutters and flashes with the distant flare of fireworks but I cannot see a single trick break above the ridgeline of the mountains or even the tallest tresses of the trees. I sit in near darkness on the deck, back leaning against a yellow pine post and stare deep into the night, through the thicket, in praise of the eastern slopes of the Black Mountains. Fireflies are my “bombs bursting in air” and the mountains go unmoved while the rest of humanity shutters and shakes with the need to entertain itself.
Today up at Joe’s farm I took life in stride, working steadily for four hours with the sweet, earthy apprentice who I will call Dorianne. “Life is hard up here,” she says, “without any other women to relate to.” I laugh a little, then nod in agreement telling her I have it easy because I come to the farm when I want and leave when I need my space. “The men up here talk in grunts or make no sounds at all, except to spit,” she says. “Like Joe and Riley. They just work, hard, all day. They sweat together and it’s as if they’re father and son or something.”
Later, I tap on the door of Joe’s cabin when it is time to leave and Buffy the golden dog pitter-patters to my feet, falling in a lump-of-dog-belly on the floor and asking for affection. Instead I find Riley, who is checking a concert schedule online for the evening’s festivities in BigCity, NC. We had tea together this morning during a break on the porch of the Herb Shop, and admittedly I felt relieved to work on the farm free from the storyline while still receiving the benefits of his husky presence. I noticed he was wearing cut-off Dickie’s shorts today and as he teased me about my coffee obsessions (a natural segue since we were sharing tea) and I tried not to stare. After, I dropped down to the lower gardens to finish my work and actually forgot about him for a little while.
I quickly touch base with Joe then make my way out the door, at which point Riley calls out, “Hey Katey, do you want to go to a punk show in BigCity tonight? I might-maybe go, but probably not.” He won’t look at me when he says this, but I walk back inside and put my hand on his back, noticing the tightness of muscles and grainy-salt texture of his clothing.
“Gimme a call, yeah, that might be good for me.”
“Ok, yeah, if I go,” he says unconvincingly.
But by then it doesn’t matter if we’ll end up going or not – or whether I’m even home if and when he calls. The point is that he asked, and that I didn’t have to obsess about it all morning in order for to receive a flattering invite. And as it turns out, Independence Day alone on my porch, toasting the mountains and their unshakeable stability (something to model after), was a better date than even Riley might have been, ruffled hair, mountain man mystique, and all.
The sky flutters and flashes with the distant flare of fireworks but I cannot see a single trick break above the ridgeline of the mountains or even the tallest tresses of the trees. I sit in near darkness on the deck, back leaning against a yellow pine post and stare deep into the night, through the thicket, in praise of the eastern slopes of the Black Mountains. Fireflies are my “bombs bursting in air” and the mountains go unmoved while the rest of humanity shutters and shakes with the need to entertain itself.
Today up at Joe’s farm I took life in stride, working steadily for four hours with the sweet, earthy apprentice who I will call Dorianne. “Life is hard up here,” she says, “without any other women to relate to.” I laugh a little, then nod in agreement telling her I have it easy because I come to the farm when I want and leave when I need my space. “The men up here talk in grunts or make no sounds at all, except to spit,” she says. “Like Joe and Riley. They just work, hard, all day. They sweat together and it’s as if they’re father and son or something.”
Later, I tap on the door of Joe’s cabin when it is time to leave and Buffy the golden dog pitter-patters to my feet, falling in a lump-of-dog-belly on the floor and asking for affection. Instead I find Riley, who is checking a concert schedule online for the evening’s festivities in BigCity, NC. We had tea together this morning during a break on the porch of the Herb Shop, and admittedly I felt relieved to work on the farm free from the storyline while still receiving the benefits of his husky presence. I noticed he was wearing cut-off Dickie’s shorts today and as he teased me about my coffee obsessions (a natural segue since we were sharing tea) and I tried not to stare. After, I dropped down to the lower gardens to finish my work and actually forgot about him for a little while.
I quickly touch base with Joe then make my way out the door, at which point Riley calls out, “Hey Katey, do you want to go to a punk show in BigCity tonight? I might-maybe go, but probably not.” He won’t look at me when he says this, but I walk back inside and put my hand on his back, noticing the tightness of muscles and grainy-salt texture of his clothing.
“Gimme a call, yeah, that might be good for me.”
“Ok, yeah, if I go,” he says unconvincingly.
But by then it doesn’t matter if we’ll end up going or not – or whether I’m even home if and when he calls. The point is that he asked, and that I didn’t have to obsess about it all morning in order for to receive a flattering invite. And as it turns out, Independence Day alone on my porch, toasting the mountains and their unshakeable stability (something to model after), was a better date than even Riley might have been, ruffled hair, mountain man mystique, and all.
Monday, July 03, 2006
New Tracks
The day unfolds like tissue paper around a wedding gift, somehow perfect despite the crinkles.
I call Kim, my meditation instructor, and explain the crisis of my weekend. She laughs gently at my torment then helps me understand it all. “In other words,” she says, “congratulations, you got it,” by which she means that I was willing to open my heart enough to see my own habitual patterns (Keller presenting one of the most difficult ones) as painful as it was. Seeing how large we make our own problems and being able to laugh once we see how small they really are, is one small step towards developing humility and trying to live our lives from a position of egolessness.
Friends call and ask what I am doing-for-the-fourth and I stutter, having willfully forgotten the common understanding of independence and patriotism, hanging them like old coats in the back closet with other things such as television, cellular phones, running hot water, and the desire to own a nice mattress. I commit to nothing and instead read Joan Didion’s “Goodbye To All That,” an essay on loving and leaving New York City. I am so moved I find I have to stand in the middle of my cabin and read it out loud, tracking the commas and cadence of her sentences like a hound that’s caught a scent, then finally slamming the book down THUD, shouting “How did she do that?!” and wanting, for the first time, to meet her in the flesh.
What can I say when one day the world felt so heavy that gravity pulled a well of tears across my cheeks and the next I feel convinced that this is progress? It could snow in July and I wouldn’t be surprised; instead I’d write a poem.
I call Kim, my meditation instructor, and explain the crisis of my weekend. She laughs gently at my torment then helps me understand it all. “In other words,” she says, “congratulations, you got it,” by which she means that I was willing to open my heart enough to see my own habitual patterns (Keller presenting one of the most difficult ones) as painful as it was. Seeing how large we make our own problems and being able to laugh once we see how small they really are, is one small step towards developing humility and trying to live our lives from a position of egolessness.
Friends call and ask what I am doing-for-the-fourth and I stutter, having willfully forgotten the common understanding of independence and patriotism, hanging them like old coats in the back closet with other things such as television, cellular phones, running hot water, and the desire to own a nice mattress. I commit to nothing and instead read Joan Didion’s “Goodbye To All That,” an essay on loving and leaving New York City. I am so moved I find I have to stand in the middle of my cabin and read it out loud, tracking the commas and cadence of her sentences like a hound that’s caught a scent, then finally slamming the book down THUD, shouting “How did she do that?!” and wanting, for the first time, to meet her in the flesh.
What can I say when one day the world felt so heavy that gravity pulled a well of tears across my cheeks and the next I feel convinced that this is progress? It could snow in July and I wouldn’t be surprised; instead I’d write a poem.
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Freedom and Confusion (Two Perfectly Acceptable Emotions After a Retreat)
When I drive back into the mouth of the South Toe River Valley my eyes have to swell just to take it all in. Over-exposed to air conditioning and the elegant simplicity of the shrine room all weekend from the meditation retreat, it’s no surprise that the big, bright world out there hits me right at the heart.
I play Josh Ritter through the car stereo and cry all the way home.
Never mind that whatever storylines my tortured mind could conjure about Keller were spinning webs of self-conscious bullshit in my head all weekend. Never mind that I wanted to retch as I walked out the front door of the meditation center after watching him scoot in closer to another woman at our post-retreat reception. He leaned into their conversation as if peering into a beautiful well. I know this because it’s the same way he leaned into me back in February, March, and April. Cheerful Shambhala Day, I think to myself, cynically. Hah, Eskimo kisses….stupid me.
I own nothing of this man and that’s not really what I was going for in the first place. I will confess, however, that I seem to have an unfortunate knack for attracting men, lately, who think in ways that are unimaginable to me. And so I curse myself for thinking there ever could have been more. I curse myself for wanting anything in the first place. I curse myself for not being able to let go – even after I see there’s nothing there for me to hold on to. In other words, I curse myself for being human.
In mediation practice we learn techniques that encourage the mind to interrupt itself when it falls into habitual patterns. These techniques all require at least a good night’s sleep and a particular kind of gentleness – both of which I lacked all weekend.
Which is how I can start writing about the mountains that I love, get up from my desk in the middle of a paragraph just to stare at the night sky, then drag myself back kicking and screaming to reckon with the page. One. Honest. Word. At. A. Time.
I play Josh Ritter through the car stereo and cry all the way home.
Never mind that whatever storylines my tortured mind could conjure about Keller were spinning webs of self-conscious bullshit in my head all weekend. Never mind that I wanted to retch as I walked out the front door of the meditation center after watching him scoot in closer to another woman at our post-retreat reception. He leaned into their conversation as if peering into a beautiful well. I know this because it’s the same way he leaned into me back in February, March, and April. Cheerful Shambhala Day, I think to myself, cynically. Hah, Eskimo kisses….stupid me.
I own nothing of this man and that’s not really what I was going for in the first place. I will confess, however, that I seem to have an unfortunate knack for attracting men, lately, who think in ways that are unimaginable to me. And so I curse myself for thinking there ever could have been more. I curse myself for wanting anything in the first place. I curse myself for not being able to let go – even after I see there’s nothing there for me to hold on to. In other words, I curse myself for being human.
In mediation practice we learn techniques that encourage the mind to interrupt itself when it falls into habitual patterns. These techniques all require at least a good night’s sleep and a particular kind of gentleness – both of which I lacked all weekend.
Which is how I can start writing about the mountains that I love, get up from my desk in the middle of a paragraph just to stare at the night sky, then drag myself back kicking and screaming to reckon with the page. One. Honest. Word. At. A. Time.
Mix it Up, Keep it Real
(Written Saturday night)
I begin to wonder if I know who I am at all without someone to bounce off of. Relative to nothing, what remains of who I am that can be named or seen; stable?
The weekend mixes like a spiked cocktail. First, there is my poor mangement of time resulting in a series of nights without enough sleep. Second, there is the profoundness of the meditation teachings from the retreat. Third, there is the unknown quantity - Keller.
Dealing with the sleep issue is a matter of discipline. It's the tonic that goes with the gin; the steadying force. It would have looked like: leaving the campfire at Joe's earlier and not spending Friday night at Keller's when I knew I had to open the coffeehouse very early the next morning.
Dealing with the profundity of the teachings has gone quite well. It's the gin that rounds out the drink and the slice of lime is the glimpse of something genuine that sparkles and fades. It looks like: opening the heart in the face of deeply personal vulnerabilities and being stable enough to do this repeatedly.
Dealing with the Keller issue is the kicker. It is the drug that turns a harmless cocktail into an unpredictable mess. It looks like: weaseling my way back into a man's life for one weekend knowing full well that he is no longer along for the ride, then convincing myself that enduring the emotional awkwardness can be harnessed as a journey of self-discovery, and finally, partaking of the journey and finding it depressing.
So what does remain? Who and where am I when I can't bounce my world off of the drama of a crush or the heat of infatuation?
Whose woman am I, if not my own?
I begin to wonder if I know who I am at all without someone to bounce off of. Relative to nothing, what remains of who I am that can be named or seen; stable?
The weekend mixes like a spiked cocktail. First, there is my poor mangement of time resulting in a series of nights without enough sleep. Second, there is the profoundness of the meditation teachings from the retreat. Third, there is the unknown quantity - Keller.
Dealing with the sleep issue is a matter of discipline. It's the tonic that goes with the gin; the steadying force. It would have looked like: leaving the campfire at Joe's earlier and not spending Friday night at Keller's when I knew I had to open the coffeehouse very early the next morning.
Dealing with the profundity of the teachings has gone quite well. It's the gin that rounds out the drink and the slice of lime is the glimpse of something genuine that sparkles and fades. It looks like: opening the heart in the face of deeply personal vulnerabilities and being stable enough to do this repeatedly.
Dealing with the Keller issue is the kicker. It is the drug that turns a harmless cocktail into an unpredictable mess. It looks like: weaseling my way back into a man's life for one weekend knowing full well that he is no longer along for the ride, then convincing myself that enduring the emotional awkwardness can be harnessed as a journey of self-discovery, and finally, partaking of the journey and finding it depressing.
So what does remain? Who and where am I when I can't bounce my world off of the drama of a crush or the heat of infatuation?
Whose woman am I, if not my own?
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