Annoucements

Check out today’s website updates! Good news (2 events!) posted on the sidebar, and new announcements of forthcoming articles (including a potential cover story!) posted beneath the main photo. What a fine day it was for news in my little writing world!

Also, regional readers, writers, and hobbyists, please consider attending the 2nd annual Carolina Mountains Literary Festival. Local readers, especially, take note that many of the workshops are filling as we speak, and pre-registration is required.

Last year, we hosted visitors from as far away as Oklahoma and great amounts of money were raised to support local literacy efforts. Please consider joining us!

TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY of The Writing Life blog

Correction. Three things will keep me from going insane during this brief set back in ankle history, and the third thing arrived in the mail today (well, yesterday, but I didn’t check it until today):

A gold sequined MASK from my friend and fellow writer, Felicity Shoulders. She’d heard about my streak of bad luck and sent a little love my way via the good old USPS. And with a name that includes both happiness and body parts, you know she’s got to be one cool person. And a solid writer. As she would say, “my kingdom for” a name like that.

So I wear the mask. I write looking through the mask. I spin on my ball chair wearing the mask. I sing on the porch wearing the mask. I have my own little Mardi Gras in my head, wearing the mask. Did I say this would keep me from going insane? Maybe I meant it would bring me closer to the brink, but here I am and yes, still writing, still reading, still breathing, still alive.

Onward.

THE INTERVIEW:

1. “Do you know that you often have typos in your blog posts?”
Yes, I know this. This is the only place I can get away with the kind of first drafts where I don’t care what happens and there is total writerly freedom. Everything else I write is seen by someone else, from editors to professors, and I have to be meticulous about errors. This, here, is a daily exercise for the opposite muscles – a loosening of the reins, if you will. I’m not saying I endorse incorrect grammar or even sloppy work, but for my circumstances, this set up works fine. If I start fiddling with proofreading blog posts, before I know it I’ll be revising them, which is the exact opposite of what I want to be doing on these pages.

2. “Why don’t you use real names for places in your blog?”
A clever reader, especially one in this state, could probably figure out where I live and work. Fork Mountain, for example, is real – albeit unincorporated. Tinyville, Smallville, Small Town, and BigCity, NC are named as such again, because of the search engines. When I first began this blog two years ago today, anonymity was crucial to me. The Internet was a big, scary, unknown and so was blogging. Now I have more trust in the set up and care less about being noticed by any weirdos that may be out there. But the reason I talk about “the craft school” and “the old boarding school” is because if I use the real names, then the Google search engines (which search, among everything else, the word-for-word content of blog posts) will find these names when people are looking for information about these places. Seems best to play it safe and represent myself on these pages, and not risk misrepresenting the places I’ve worked for. The same goes for the faculty with whom I’ve studied with in the MFA program. I simply will not reveal their names on these pages and that’s that. Also, for what it’s worth, most names are changed in this blog – except for family or friends who I mention in passing in only good, praiseworthy ways where nothing is at stake.

3. “Don’t you find it a little egotistical to do an interview with yourself?”
Yes, I do. And it’s a little embarrassing, as well. But you can’t write nonfiction and worry about being embarrassed. Writing means exposing all the elements of your less-than-perfect self to the world, and that includes everything from the audacious tentacles of ego to the frail fritters of faith when it’s at a low point. I try my best to make these pages human, and that includes spanning the breadth of human emotion.

TWO YEARS OF WRITING 5-7 DAYS A WEEK! Yes!

Two Things

Two things will save me from insanity during this next three and a half days of isolation and using the crutches again.

1. My Gaiam ball chair. Not familiar with this heavenly product? View it here. Besides the fact that this is the best chair I’ve ever had for writing, today I discovered that I can propel myself around the hardwood floors using my good leg, without having to use crutches. This means I can cook for myself (tonight, a fried egg sandwich) because my hands are free. It also means I can drink a beer and spin around in circles when I need stimulation from something other than my own brain.

2. My mom, who despite her utter terror over the road one has to drive up in order to get to where I live, drove the school truck to my house and put it in four wheel drive to get to me today so that she could carry my ball chair, laptop, books, and papers down from the loft for me (I’m incapable of getting up to the loft by myself right now). Now I have a desk from which to work, and therefore a place to put my words so they don’t fill up my brain and body until I internally combust.

Tomorrow, I will answer questions on this blog for the anniversary. There are three questions so far. I will also read a book by Aimee Bender and hopefully, if the muses permit, start a new short story. I promise to do some sort of supine yoga-ish stuff to prevent my body from feeling totally folded and crippled for all eternity and also, I will find a way to consume chocolate if at all possible even though I don’t have any in the house. Additionally, I’ll stop being grumpy. Or I’ll try to stop being grumpy. Pain and exhaustion make me grumpy faster than lightning cooks a tree. Who woulda thunk it?

Set Back

Yesterday, the biggest sales in the history of the craft school coffeehouse. At lunchtime, every seat indoors and out is taken, and the upper deck of the craft house has customers waiting for orders as well. We are balls to the wall, music pumping, feet pivoting busy and there’s no stopping them. They simply. Keep. Coming.

Today, the biggest setback on ankle recovery since the initial injury, which of course involved the joint of my left ankle bending outwards towards the ground then, yes, actually touching the ground and bouncing back up. Nothing more than fatigue, really, but fatigue on a full day of work is not a good combination. I close the coffeehouse night hours (an executive decision that I just have to make) and find a work study student to cover tomorrow’s lunch rush. Then I call for backup in case I’m not ready to work again on Monday. Two to three days solid rest (and yes, I’m back on crutches again) and hopefully I’ll be okay to start again.

Slow and steady wins the race, right? Or wins something anyway. More time to write? Who knows. Let’s just say I’m grateful for the truck tonight, headlights blazing up the mountainside to get my home with ease, their light challenged only by the waxing moon on the not-so-distant horizon.

It's Raining, It's Pouring

It’s raining on the mountain and raining in the valley, raining on the ridge tops and raining in the heavens. On the 13 mile drive home after women’s singing night up at the coffeehouse, thick fog rolls and settles in every dip in the road. I summit Pumpkin Patch and get a moment of clear sight, then dip back down into the clouds as if the world had turned upside down.

At home, the lower portion of the driveway is washed out again, a visible creek running down through a five-inch deep gouge in the gravel that’s been carved by today’s torrid downpours. The truck heaves and wobbles but with the new set of tires, I can crawl at a safer pace without spinning out. I round the last bend which is a blind curve before the last steep incline and see that a giant branch has fallen across the driveway. I have about 8/10 of a second to react, which means I don’t, and therefore drive over the branch before I even realize what I’m doing, it snaps beneath the truck without a flinch and I accelerate to make the final climb.

Inside, I am dry and protected but not a hint of light exists anywhere. Even the fireflies have bunkered down for the night or drowned in the mess of things outside. It is total and utter blackness. I notice immediately the loud sound of rushing water. It sounds as if someone is drawing a bath, only the water pressure is much too high for that. I realize quickly that it’s the overflow from the spring, which usually surges out at a rhythmic rate, gushing as if in time to a metronome. But tonight, it runs wild and fast, as loud as a creek tumbling over rocks, and there is not a moment of pause in the gushing.

It is abundance all over again. An excess of darkness, a world of water; sights and sounds to fill and chill the heart depending on how you look at it.

The Anniversary is Coming Soon!

Tonight, back on Fork Mountain. PD calls and needs help taking care of the animals while she is away. Like a good neighbor, she also asks about my ankle. I explain the truck situation and she says after she gets the brakes fixed on hers, that I may be able to park it at the bottom of the drive and use it each day to get up and down the hill. I take a deep breath. This sounds like good news, good enough to put faith in it and try to cultivate a little turning around of things for the better.

It is a day of numbers. Day four of my little fitness plan. And even more exciting, five days until the 2 YEAR ANNIVERSARY of The Writing Life blog. Last year, I took a week or two off to reflect on the nature of the blog and adjust some of my guiding principles. This year, I’ve decided to post an “interview with the author.” I thought about this for a while and almost feel bashful doing it. But I’m going to go ahead and put it out there because one of the oddities of an internet audience is that interaction between readers and writers is limited, yet on some level, intimacy is not. The internet is a safe and scary place all at once. How does that work? I’ve been lucky on these pages to encounter only good tastes, friendly & intelligent readers, and like-minded people.

I already have a few questions I know I’ll pose and answer in the post, because they are questions I get all the time but have never addressed directly in a post. Beyond that, any question is fair game. Mostly, I'm thinking that I can use this exercise as a way to reflect on the writing process and the writing life, based on your questions about that. Some readers have been with these pages from day one, a fact I find astonishing, flattering, and most of all--a fact that has supported me in times of doubt and worry. Post a comment with your question, and I’ll post an interview sometime during the anniversary week.

Back in the Saddle Again

There is nothing quite like being loved and being missed.

Picture Norm walking into Cheers. Imagine Ichiro at bat in Safeco field. I walk into the coffeehouse and it is all smiles, all around and I couldn’t feel more blessed. On the chalkboard above the cold drinks fridge is a message: “Number of days until Katey returns,” with a series of X’s over the days of the week.

Midway through the shift I hit my stride and my fingers start to remember all the register keys again. An old neighbor from comes in for a double espresso and I tamp the grounds like a champ. The shots come out frothy and rich, the crème a lovely hazelnut atop black-bay espresso.

I move slowly though, about half my normal speed. I can get away with this today because it is a Monday, typically slower. But it’s also about as fast as I can work. The only hard part is the tile-covered step between the back kitchen and the service counter, which I have to maneuver over at least a hundred times a shift. Fifteen minutes to closing time, and my boss walks through the door, offering to help. She washes two sinkfuls of dishes, puts the chairs up, and even mops. We close in thirty minutes, rather than the normal hour it takes me alone, and I put my feet up when we’re all through.

My, oh my, it’s good to be back!

Here We Go Again

Said truck decides everything from here on out, including the utter refusal to start this afternoon when I have the good intention of driving down the mountain and into town to vacuum and clean my dad’s truck for him. Instead, dad has to borrow a school truck and drive 40 minutes to my place, where we give the Ford a jump and then he follows me to the dealership. It’s still under warranty and this has got to be a starter and/or alternator problem. Best to let them deal with it and hopefully it won’t cost a thing.

Meanwhile, I’m back in the South Toe River valley again for the third time in two weeks. I’ve been home from Oregon for two and a half weeks. I haven’t had a week of consecutive rest in my own bed since June 3rd.

And so there are all the necessary questions: What are the lessons to be learned? I’ve set up camp at my parent’s house again, plugged into the iPod to block the sound of the Lonesome Dove series (which my parents own on DVD) and try and get some work done. I get to use my grandmother’s old mahogany desk and, since my parents are almost all done moving in, now there is a mattress on the floor. This is a huge step up compared to the 9 nights I had on the couch when I was dealing with the crutches.

But I digress again. What are the lessons to be learned? That wanting is futile. That stability is a mirage. The only thing steady in all of this, actually, has been my refusal to stop writing. In this way, all these little bumps have been a blessing in the form of tests.

What other lessons? Does the mountain want to swallow me whole? Some days, it’s felt like that. But then PD reminded me that I didn’t hurt my ankle on the mountain and so I quickly put that thought to rest. What else? Patience. Healing. Accepting what’s handed to you and being able to look at it and laugh, then move on.

Here’s to moving on.

Fitness Plan

It has been decided that I need the truck for a minimum of one more week, to save my ankle the strain and danger of hiking up 1/2 mile of washed out, steep, gravel road in the dark after being on my feet for six hours at work.

It has also been decided that the flat tire on said vehicle happened from a razor sharp rock on said washed out road.

Further, it’s been discovered that the dead battery on said truck the day after said flat tire on said washed out road was the result of a junky starter that’s draining the batter.

Somehow, I find it hard to believe that this is the vehicle which will supposedly cause me less trouble than walking and, in fact, keep me out of harm’s way should I stumble or be attacked by a rabies-carrying raccoon from whom I cannot escape since I move so slowly with the ankle brace on.

Additionally, it has been decided—and this time by me, as opposed to outside and universal, unexplained forces—that my body needs intense coaching to get back into shape. I ate and ate and ate at my family’s house for nine days while I was on crutches. Besides homework, there wasn’t much else to do. Add to that the four-week trip before I turned my ankle into hamburger mush, and that’s a lot of eating out and sitting down (plains, trains, automobiles, restaurants, classrooms, theatres, lecture halls, and auditoriums—no exaggeration).

I make a list. I check it twice. Then I do everything on the list and about halfway through it all, my mind finally starts to unravel itself a bit and actually get into a body rhythm with the exercises—something beyond just the mind propelling me forward. It is possible, my friends, to break a sweat on a yoga mat even when you’re one ankle short of a good pair.

I type up the approved list of exercises (which includes physical therapy for the ankle), print five lines where I will fill in what I eat each day (five small meals for a hypoglycemic like me), and print it all out. Signed, sealed, delivered, this is it.

They say it takes ten days to create a habit. One down, nine to go. Wish me luck!

Stormy Nights

The phone line keeps cutting in and out so it's hard to maintain a connection online. National Weather Service says up to 70 mph winds, severe thunderstorms and lighting, and "stay away from windows." Uh. Ok. There are more windows to this house than there are walls. Here we go...

Lessons

There is something graceful in the silence after the last pages of a book. The weight of the closed hardcover in your hands, the pages a little more worn than when you picked it up, the resoluteness of closing the back cover of the book and exhaling into a world that isn’t the same anymore because the perceiver—you—cannot look at it through the same eyes anymore.

I meditated for the first time in a while today and it was this feeling, the after-book feeling, that facilitated this decision. Suddenly my vision felt new to me, the silence on the mountain was spacious and I could almost dissolve into it. I got up from my chair and knew I was ready. I walked to the meditation hut.

It’s hard to begin after you’ve been away from the sitting for a while. There are expectations, lofty goals, and foolish anticipation. But when it comes down to it, there is only the moment. Nothing is stable but instability. This is how it is that I must find comfort. Where one day I can regret the loss of a woman lover, and the next be headlong ready to jump into the whatever when my Colorado friend teases me (“I’ll make the waffles if you make the coffee,” he says and I’m thinking My god, why are you so far away?). Or where one day I can run break neck down the soccer field and the next day I cannot even climb a flight of stairs. Or where, on the way down the mountain, the truck tires are all full of air and I can safely check my mail. But how on the way back up the mountain, the mail sitting on the passenger seat beside me, the front right tire goes flat and I am staring up at the sky wondering how it is that a person gets a flat tire in her own driveway while being on crutches in the middle of a two-inches-in-one-hour rainstorm.

Could there be any better proof that life is never what we think it will be? That it’s always in flux?

Full-Screen Cecropia

When the body is still, the rest of the world can look like an action-packed movie. A few days ago it was the doe I watched from the porch. Yesterday, I observed a woodchuck foraging through the lower portion of the old home site, where nettles, jewelweed, wild yam, and weeds abound. Through the binoculars, I observed that its face was round and personably and its body similarly pudgy. Soft hairs, growing lighter towards the tip of its nose, caught the afternoon light perfectly and I watched as it shifted and reflected while the woodchuck stretched its body.

Today, I have watched a mature cecropia moth sleep on the other side of the windowpane near my temporary desk. Its legs are as furry as a bear’s, its feelers lush and ornate as bamboo fans, and its wings like patterned silk quilts from overseas. This moth is the biggest of the silk moths in North America and, just inches from my face, I get to watch it rest during the lightest hours of the day. By nightfall, it will stretch and flap, fluttering its wings gently for a while to dry them and warm them, then in one push, lift off and flutter into the night. Much later, between 4 a.m. and dawn, if this moth is a female, she will release her scent and invite a mate.

Learn more about cecropias here.

Home Again, Take 2

Back on Fork Mountain, I am greeted by a lone doe about twelve feet from the porch, flapping her ears and munching on wild grasses. She stands firmly on the side of the mountain, hind legs braced into the rock, neck stretching gracefully into a patch of green. The sunlight is golden on her back, then gone altogether with the passing of a cloud. Below her, the slope is dappled with at least ten different kinds of wildflowers that I can see from my perch. The garden is now overgrown, the jewelweed along all the pathways at least three to four feet tall, Virginia creeper stretching it’s tawny fingers up the sides of a buckeye tree. Behind me, I hear the ever-present gush of the spring, overflowing down the sides of the mountain. Before I left for Oregon, the water was visible from the porch. Now, I mark it only by sound as the plants have completely taken over the slopes.

Inside, there is a phone message blinking on the machine. Two hang-ups and then a message from Cass. I play it several times and don’t call back.

My parents helped me “move back in” after nine days at their house crutching around. Maneuvering the steps from the gravel drive down to the house was quite a task, but now that I’m in, I’m in. I’ve been given use of Dad’s truck for a week, which I’ll use to get the mail and in case of an emergency. Otherwise, I’m on lockdown until I start work again the week following this one. About once a day I fall into despair over immobility, money, and the lethargy I feel at a loss to fend away. The rest of the time I do homework, try to stretch and heal my joints, or email writerly friends about matters of craft. I have everything I need and even though summer is halfway over before I feel it has even begun, I need to take this in stride. The outside of my ankle, after all, bent full at the joint and touched down to the ground beyond a 90 degree angle. I’m about as lucky as they get, by any ligament’s standards, and my boss is wise and kind and keeping my employed.

No right to complain. Breath. Focus. Have another glass of wine. Try to get as much work done as possible because, as if this hadn’t reminded me enough, you never know what’s coming next.

Reflection

It’s not as though deciding that you’d be better off making someone disappear from your life makes it any easier. It’s not as though the façade of moving on can ever be anything more than a façade.

So I still check to see if she’s “online” when I sign into my Gmail account. And I still, well, ask my friends that are her friends if, say, maybe-just-maybe they’ve heard from her. I still think of things I’d like to share with her, times I’d like to pick up the phone and call, songs she’d love to hear. I still see her, too, when I close my eyes—that blue gemstone look she’d give me over the rim of her glasses.

Nothing is sacred anymore. I loved too fiercely, ferociously almost, and so when it ended, little slivers of her poison were left in every part of me. I gave and gave and gave and I’m starting to see how dangerous that can be. But I’m terrified of the notion that in order to find love I have to “play it safe” and not put it all on the line. If I’m not willing to put it all on the line, then why bother?

I’m equally terrified of stubborn independence. I love the freedom I have on Fork Mountain and the flexibility being a stable, single, driven woman affords. But I don’t want my lifestyle to become hostage to that freedom, forsaking the chance to love again if it comes anywhere near the freedoms I have now. There must be some in between and someone who can meet me there.

I could never be with her as she is now. The dream I dreamed and loved that had her in it always had her future self, not the self she maintained day-to-day, but instead the one she always promised she was working toward. That’s not fair to either of us and it wouldn’t have been able to continue in that dichotomy. Long distance breeds a binge mentality. It demands strength but allows only a certain measure of depth and consistency. It’s like being a ghost in your own life.

Three Cheers for Pacific University!

Just got word from a fellow student...

Pacific University's low-res MFA program has been rated in the TOP FIVE in the nation by The Atlantic Monthly!

The Secret. Is. Out.

Thoughts on Process

There’s no denying it any longer. The memoirs I read are simply not the type of memoirs I want to write. When I struggled with this last semester, I looked to fiction for an answer. In the short story form I was faster to find the quiet story that ran 8-30 pages, something more akin to what I write when I write about my own adolescence. “If you can master the quiet story,” my advisor told me at the last residency, “then you can write.”

What is a quiet story? I can tell you first by saying what it is not. For me, it is not the memoir that has the constant narrative tension of an evil stepfather lurking in the room, the threats of alcoholism or drug abuse, murder, rape, incest, war-torn countries, or severe violations of human rights. The quiet story has something to say, but must use a distinct, consistent voice and characterization to guide the reader through the story and it must pay unique attention to descriptive detail. In the quiet story, it matters not so much what happened in the story, but how the story is told. My gut tells me that what I’m trying to write is more akin to personal narrative, but I’m composing it in a modified short story form that makes use of re-creating dialogue and other techniques employed by memoirists and in the end, reads like something in between it all.

I LOVE Judy Blunt’s memoir, Breaking Clean, and if I had the advantage of age and experience that she has, her narrative structure is something I’d proudly shoot for. Haven Kimmel has become another favorite, namely, A Girl Named Zippy. Kimmel has indeed mastered the quiet story, and her main craft trick is the clever, consistent, and tasteful use of humor throughout her memoir. Humor is one of the quickest ways to win the trust of your audience, but again, I’ve got to find my own gig.

That said, we learn by imitation and we grow stronger by borrowing. If faith is what we think it is, in the end we’ll come out stronger and smarter for it all but we’ll still wreak of our own, individual writing voices. We pull from the best to make ourselves better but we can never escape ourselves, thank goodness—otherwise the literary world might be a world of copycats.

So I’m digging down. I’m narrowing the field a bit in the hopes that, paradoxically, the salient aspects of my own writing will open up, full bloom.

Coping

It occurs to me that I have to draw on the power of the mind and not so heavily the power of the body and sense of place for my inspiration. Normally, if my body is stagnant, my mind is stagnant. No physical movement means no metaphysical movement, so to speak. Now that I have no choice, I’ve got to find another way of being for the next few weeks that works.

For the past three days I’ve been using coffee. This gives my body the temporary feeling of alertness and tricks my mind into leaps and bounds on the page. But it’s a quick fix and not the best thing for my digestive system and, well, it won’t work for a long period of time like I need it to.

Mind tricks. I’ve discovered that plugging headphones into the laptop works really well, even when I don’t have music playing. It gives other people the impression that I am unavailable because they think I can’t hear them and it gives me the physical feeling of being isolated from anything other than the computer, since the headphones physically attach me to it. When I do need music, it has to be classical or in another language. My current preference? Juana Molina’s album, Son (she is Argentinian).

I also use the façade of pressure to get my juices flowing again. If, for some reason, I have some moments of quiet at my parent’s house where people aren’t talking or calling or no one is watching a movie late at night, I tell myself that I have to use every second I have because I don’t know how long the quiet will last. It’s a kind of like a binge/purge relationship with writing and reading, so to speak.

But when I really feel myself losing it, I just sort of lie around on the floor and writhe in a miniature seizure. My parents find this amusing, the dogs thinks it means I want to play with him, and it feels absolutely ridiculous. Nothing better than a little of the absurd to bring you back into your body, eh? I just hope being holed up and immobile for a few weeks doesn’t make me too weird…

Verdict #1

The radiologist says it’s not broken, which by now I figured. The orthopedist, however, is not available until Thursday, an entire six days after the initial injury. Tomorrow I’m taking the temporary cast off and showering—something I haven’t been able to do since the soccer game.

Mom helped me drive up to the house on Fork Mountain today (though I had to maneuver the truck up the driveway once we got to the gravel, while she gripped the side handle and cursed. It really is frightening if you’re not used to it). The best thing about the whole trip was that we found an enormous pile of black bear scat in the middle of the gravel drive, about a tenth of a mile from the house. YES! I’d spotted scat once before on the property and was about 80% sure it was black bear, but this mark was undeniable. Somehow, the presence of a black bear is a mile marker when it comes to sense of place in my family. I now feel initiated, and I’ll feel fully initiated once I can see it in person.

No chance of that happening anytime soon, however, as I’m out of commission for the week at least. Meanwhile, it’s a heat wave and I can’t do a damn thing to help myself other than keep still. Thank goodness for parents and friends.

And So it Goes...

Denial is only so potent a drug. By 2am I am hobbling up the wooden steps to the truck and driving myself down the mountain to the ER. The hardest part is trying to figure out what to do with my dangling ankle while driving over the bumps and heaves in the gravel drive. After the thirty-minute drive, there is the battle of actually getting myself into the hospital, which is under construction. I hobble and curse my way across the parking lot (consider crawling) to a row of wheelchairs, then wheel my way down a long, covered, outdoor corridor and follow the signs to the ER.

One hallway leads to another and four corridors and four doorways later, I am at the front desk. A row of cowboys looks up, sullen-eyed and dusty. I guess that one of their buddies must be behind the triage doors from the night’s rodeo over in Arbuckle. Next to them, a rosy-cheeked, sleeping Hispanic child in the arms of her mother. She is feverish and whimpering. Behind me in line is a tall, slender woman in a halter top and fitted black jeans. She’s got a shiner the size of a baseball above her eye and a few bruises along her cheekbone. When the she goes in for her check-in and interview, the nurse closes the door so no one can hear.

Dad arrives as I’m being wheeled back to a room to await X-Rays. The pain, they said, was from muscle spasm and probably not from a break. The X-Rays show a possible hairline fracture along the tibia but I have to wait until Monday when the radiologist can look at it. The put me up in a temporary cast and I refuse the pain pills and crutches, since my parents have a stash of both back home. I am sent on my way and by 4:30 am arrive back in the South Toe Valley, drugged and dopey from the hydrocodone, and ready for some sleep. I’m given orders to stay off my foot, keep the cast on (and no showers), and use the crutches until I can see an orthopedic surgeon on Monday or Tuesday.

I sleep. Wake and contemplate the meaning of the pain. Sleep some more. Breath deep. By mid afternoon I’ve cancelled the cook out that was supposed to happen on my back deck, called the neighbors to tell them I can’t take care of their pets while they’re in Maine, called my boss and called a sub for work. The only thing left to do is sit. Read. Write. Sit some more. Stretch. It could be a week it could be six. I have no clue. One day at a time, right? Right. Meantime, the dream house on Fork Mountain sits empty, and waiting. Somehow I just can’t seem to get home. It is a lesson in wanting, in the ways we desire what we cannot have, and in the ways we lean on life for its dependability when really it is as fleeting a paper bag blowing in the wind. I accept this message, and must write my way through it—I will not let this be an excuse for not having enough money (because of no income) and not being able to write (because of immobility and a lack of privacy). Oh, the places I can go even though I cannot walk!

Pray to the Gods of Ankles For Me

After a morning working with Zac and Sammy on the driveway, I make it to the boarding school reunion by lunchtime and right away I feel at home. There is Rose and Cate, Cosima and Karen. Then I see Mark, Brady, Elliot, Ember and Devlin. I walk through the main doors of the new building and see Ryan, Brian, Frederick, Duey, Sally, David, and more. We're here to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the school, to do work projects on the farm-based campus, and to have fun together.

My former students, most of whom I knew when they were 12 and on up into their first year of high school, are now getting ready to enter college or have already begun. I get to hear about their efforts – snowboarding, mountain biking, battle of the bands, first steady paying job, high school graduation, long-term relationships, acceptance into a technical college, taking a year off, and more. Their smiles and stories are as varied as they come and yet we all gather at this same place, at the base of the Black Mountains along the South Toe River, because we have something here in common. It's a shared vision and even though many of us have moved on to other places since our time at the school, we still hold it in our hearts and bodies like a little seed that guides us in life.

After work, there is plenty of time to play. We swim in the pond and battle hard on the soccer field. I sprain my ankle but brush it off as minor and keep playing, laughing and passing to former students and friends over the course of our two hour game. After we’ve earned it, we jump in the river. Later, we cook dinner together (there are about 100 people) and do chores, we sing and laugh and at night there is an open mic and slide show. The most noticeable thing for me, personally, about the day is that I am more relaxed at this reunion than I ever was while I was a full-time staff at the school. Here, today, I am my best self with these kids and I love them for bringing that out in me. In the broader picture, the most noticeable thing is how easily we, as a group, can accomplish so many things because of the common threads we share stemming from the school. Our work is that of a miniature, model society that is consensus based and it feels good to see that after so many years and so many miles apart, we can come back together and things just fall into place again. This way of life, this community effort and style of living, is a slow and steady form of peace activism that I am proud to be a part of.

Getting home, however, is another matter entirely. By the end of the evening performance, my ankle is throbbing at about an 8 (on a scale of 1 to 10) and puffed over the edges of my shoe. I hobble to the truck, leaving a message for dad that I have to take it because I’m afraid I can’t hike the half mile up the driveway on my ankle. By the time I get home, I am full tears and sobbing, my ankle like a puffball of pain, and I am left in the dark at the top of the driveway to decipher the wooden steps that lead at a steep grade down to the house. I cry into the night, my sobs an embarrassment if anyone could here them. It must take five minutes to get to the front door. I crawl up the loft steps. I turn on the computer.

Tonight: Ibuprophen, moxa, arnica, medicated herbal plaster, and 10,000 prayers to the ankle gods to heal me. I can only hope this isn’t serious because if it is, I won’t be able to work (make money) and I won’t be able to my own house.

Love Is Where You Find It

It’s like one million tides pulling in as many directions. Former core students at the craft school are up for a reunion and want to party. Friends from daily life on campus who I haven’t seen for a month are waiting, waiting, waiting. The 45th anniversary at the old boarding school has been happening for two days and I still haven’t been able to get over there to attend yet. My parents missed me and want time, more time. My local writer friends know I have to hide when I get back from trips but still, I want to see them, too. The women singers came over less than 24 hours after my return.

It’s a blessing to be loved and missed, and it reminds me of a round I know:

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.

Here, in this home, the people make the place as but the land shapes the people. We gather together in eddies, like those found in the rivers that carve out of our mountains. And we gather together like mountains in a chain, community upon community, holler after holler.

Last night the singers. Tonight, the former core students. Tomorrow morning, the neighbors (while we grunt-shovel-dig and repair the road). Tomorrow afternoon, the boarding school reunion. Sunday, craft school friends.

Remember to breath, hang on for the ride, and stay up into the deep recesses of nighttime to write, write, write (last night that meant staying up until 2am…easy to do when I’m still on west coast time).

Home Again, Home Again

The pavement ends and where the gravel picks up, a deer bounds across the road. I’m in dad’s truck, hauling luggage and groceries in the hot afternoon sun. The breeze is forgiving and the humidity better than I expected. Once the deer clears the road, I look ahead to assess the damage. PD warned me that we’d had hard rains since I left and that part of the driveway may well have washed out.

Washed out indeed. There’s no way my Volvo will make it up the first fifty yards to my little makeshift parking lot. Today, I’m in the truck though, and I slip it into low gear and start to gain speed. It hops, skids, and bounces far from gracefully through the carved waterways that scar the driveway. The vehicle has the horsepower to handle this but it’s not four-wheel drive, hence the skidding. But I make it up and around the first bend in one try, then up to the gate and on through for the final ascent. Again, the last stretch of road is just as torn up as the first, and I press the pedal down, skirting the crevasses and skidding new scars into the driveway.

At the top of the drive I glance back in the rearview mirror: avocados, Rainier cherries, and tofu decorate the truck bed like party favors. I look up and see the house on the side of Fork Mountain and laugh. I am finally, finally, home.

Today’s website update: Pictures from home!

Day 27

Tipsy and heartsick topsy-turvy. I spend the evening with an ex-boyfriend in order not to think about the ex-girlfriend. Talk about a coping mechanism. Just shoot me now.

Twelve hours left in the city of rain and there are stars like little fires visible through the branches of the cherry tree in this SE Portland backyard. It’s been four weeks of redefining boundaries, of staring at my own naked heart and trying to decipher love from lust, love from nostalgia, love from sickness, love from sympathy, love from compassion. I cannot say I necessarily have more answers than when I came. I have more life experience and I am not the same writer I was when I left. I am not the same lover, either.

Bring me the real deal and nothing in between. This, my new mantra for love and for the writing life. I have no patience for mediocrity unless it is going to somehow help me get where I want to go, love who I want to love, and be loved by someone I deserve to be loved by.

Day 26

Website updates! See the right hand sidebar. In Portland tonight, fly to NC tomorrow, first night back on Fork Mountain will be 7/4.

Day 25

My brain has been hijacked. It's the last night of the residency; words and worlds collide.