On Hold

Did another retreat this weekend. Feeling overwhelmed by electronica.

Adventures in Online Dating: Chapter 17 THE UPDATE

Website updates (the link should work this time)!

It seems only fair to do a quick update. All permissions granted. And it’s so fun, anyway, isn’t it!?

Dara gave up on eHarmony because it made her realize she’s actually still in love with X, who doesn’t know what he’s missing and would rather play games with quickies than have a real woman. Besides, she’s busy being an artist and who needs X anyway, right?

Noelle had her first date with her Match #1, a firefighter, no less, last week. They went to a gallery opening and had coffee too. Noelle reports that the ease of conversation they had on the phone transferred easily to their in-person chatter and yes, ladies and gentleman, he makes eye contact.

Jane had her first date with her Match #1 last week as well, and is out having a drink with him on a second date tonight. She reports that she’s continuing to learn “shit loads” about herself through online dating, a fact that we email about daily. And no one could sum it all up better than Jane herself, so let the woman speak:

“When I was emailing #1, we were talking about cell phones (he doesn't have one, but is getting one soon) and I was talking about how they were great and super convenient, but I had taken to shutting mine off in the past week or so. It was like silently telling the world, "Haha!! You can't have me!!" But then I was sort of bummed when I would turn it on and I didn't have any calls, because while I didn't want the world to have me, I still wanted the world to want to have me. And then I erased that paragraph, because I realized that the little cell phone story is really an allegory for my view of relationships and it was far too revealing.”

Despite this realization, she made it to her first date. But not without some badass primping:

“Just washed my favorite jeans and I'm wearing my cowboy boots, which I wear all the time and give me confidence. I wear them anywhere I feel that I might be made to feel self-conscious or judge, for whatever reason. I cling to these boots as some sort of touchstone: “This is who I am! I am gritty and I can kick you and it will hurt but they are sexy as hell and make an awesome sound when I walk that commands attention and if you disagree you can kiss my ass...” is what my boots say. About me. In my head.”

Jane, for what it’s worth, is sexy and a badass even when she’s not wearing her cowboy boots.

This writer has enjoyed three dates with Match #1. There is compatibility, attraction, and connection. There is not ease. There have been, yes, a few red flags—a few things that just don’t resonate with me. Not tiny flags. Big ones, like about the size of the ones that you see from the interstate whenever you’re within a mile of a Burger King. And it would be tactless for me to enunciate further here.

Match #5, from OtherSideoftheMountain, TN and I got together for a quick lunch a few weeks ago in Tinyville, NC. He’ll be a good neighbor to have. And I’m wicked curious about his farm. But friends it will be and that is completely fine.

This writer has also enjoyed an truly amazing date with Match #6, who has routinely impressed her with manners, phone calls, immeasurable manly attraction and smells (did I mention the beard and Carhartts?), flexibility when under pressure, sweetness of voice and touch, an admirable profession and hobby, and on and on. Future dates are planned over the next two weeks. Yes, my friends, Match #6 likes to plan. Glory be!

My boss has joined the eHarmony ranks from the sidelines, but every day gets closer and closer to contacting a New Match. My college friend has not reported back yet, except to say, “You know Katey, it’s not the money that’s holding me back.” A wise remark, I thought.

Meanwhile, a Bee from work has resumed her adventures with eHarmony, after hearing the buzz from us. She’s an experienced online dater and already, in three weeks time mind you, has found a New Match, turned off Matching with others, and had half a dozen dates and some pretty sweet lovin’ from her new artist boyfriend. Whew. When it’s good, it’s good.

And so the saga of the single women on mountaintops continues. Wish us luck as we venture forth!

Quick Note

Today, website updates! See the sidebar for details!

Tomorrow, a date with Match #6. Um. Guess I didn't write about that one. Perhaps the soap opera will continue in an upcoming post, including updates on the other eH buddies who have by now, indeed, had dates of their own. Oh, joyous mountain living! Hah!

Back on the Mountain

The retreat was great! Here's another lyrical essay:

A Woman Now

But I’m 16 and in gym class and somehow this is all ungraceful because yes, I’m the last girl in my class to get her period and no, I don’t have a pad or tampon or even a wad of toilet paper and no, I do not have any stupid quarters for those machines in the bathroom that don’t work anyway. The most ridiculous moment is this: me, tugging Emily Henderson’s arm on the side of the basketball court, saying: “Hey, Hey,” and she’s like, “Will you hold on a minute?” and I know she is saying this because Tyler Stoops is next in line for the lay-up drill and God, he really does have some sort of magic, doesn’t he?

First, there is the getting permission. If I were Tia Florea I would say something sassy, like: “My uterus is falling out! Gimme a Hall Pass!” Instead I manage a pinch-kneed wobble over to Ms. Knight, our androgynous PE teacher and the antithesis of all things feminine, especially once she gets a whistle in her hands like the one she’s holding now, knuckles bent over the metal, stop watch in her other hand, eyes unflinching.

She looks at me like What? and I look at her like Well…and I realize now that the Hall Pass will not be enough, that I have to ask if I can bring Emily with me because Emily has had her period for four years so of course she has tampons in her backpack. But when I say it, it comes out like, “I need to bring a friend with me.” Ms. Androgyny turns her head slowly, like a large snake that is preoccupied digesting something bigger than its own jaws, and with one eyebrow raised manages a husky, “Why?”

“Because I just started my period and I don’t have a tampon.”

She nods, reaches into her pocket to hand me two coveted goldenrod slips of paper. “Five minutes,” she says, then starts her stopwatch.

In the bathroom, Emily is ecstatic and I keep telling her to hush because she is one of those people who, blessed as she is, will never understand just how loud her own voice is. She’s got this buzz going about life and giving life and finally, she leans over the stall door and shouts, “KATEY! YOU’RE A WOMAN NOW!” which declaration about makes me want to flush myself down the toilet along with this mess of wrappers and new blood and hey, I thought this was supposed to be about full moons and little ceremonies, mom taking me on a long walk to tell me that, in some places, the women go to a special hut when it’s time to bleed. Someplace where everything is sacred and wholesome and there is no imperfection, no awkward shame, no sizing up and weighing down. Someplace where no one is grumpy, like how I am right now, what with Emily pacing around the stall and heaven knows how many people overhearing our conversation if you could even call it that. Christ.

I flush, unlock the door, step out into the corridor of stalls and there is Emily with her oh-so-womanly gaze and turn my face towards her, and meet it.

Convergence

And oh, this is convergence if I ever saw it.

A singing friend is still at my throat. The writing friend and I are working towards peace. My boss is back on the radar. My co-worker is now annoyed with my boss. My eHarmony Matches keep coming in and still, still, I can’t quite shake the feeling that part of it feels a little off because I’m, well, relating with a computer. And yet – Match #1 and I have met up twice, and will see each other again this weekend. I call a publisher I met at the Lit Fest and he says he was just thinking about trying to email me, we talk shop, I send him my writing. My MFA friend and I fall into a few great emails today, both us plugging our little hearts away from opposite sides of the country. An old blog reader who I formed a friendship with a few years ago calls me up, happens to be in the mountains for the weekend, and wants to hang out. My Colorado poet is on my answering machine twice this week, and already, I feel filled up again by his companionship. Rockin’ jeweler Jane and I are closer than ever even though she moved across the country a few months ago. Erica and I, after ten years of friendship (4 of which were on the rugby field) are emailing weekly now, happily sending little messages of goofiness and wildness when inspiration strikes.

The list goes on. Does it all seem disconnected? Or interconnected?

I picture the world in dots, tiny filaments of communication casting out from one dot to another, a small web of life emerging on the canvas in my mind. After so many filaments crossing at once, or even landing in the same spot all at once, one cannot help by try and decipher the image that is presented once all the lines gather.

And perhaps, the final convergence was tonight’s phone call from Cass.

When you have loved someone through stable and unstable times, you can tell right away in the voice (dare I say, in their breath) whether they are calling you from a good or bad place. Tonight, she calls from the good place. And she says those words: “I’m sorry.” And she says more words: “I didn’t call to talk about me, I called to talk about you.” And “Send me your new fiction. I’ll read it. I promise.” And slowly, so slow that if the line was being drawn from the dot of her in Portland, Oregon to the dot of me in Tinyville, NC, well, you might not even be able to see the line grow.

But it does, minute by minute. And we can talk about our writing, the MFA, the professors we love, the tiny publishing victories we’re each seeking. And we can talk about a few of the hard things, too. The intensity. The hurt. The results.

And we both confess: It is harder then we thought to hear each other’s voices. I cry, though I don’t know if she knows it. It’s subtle, but still, the tears flow. The lines from Ben Harper’s song come to mind: When it’s good it’s so, so good and when it’s gone, it’s gone.

And when I hang up I am not hooked. I might be heart-tired, but I am not hooked. I’d never go back to that, 3,000 miles away, loving her madness and sweetness all at the same time. Never, never again.

How nice to know that sometimes, yes sometimes, we actually do learn.

[NOTE: I'm going on a meditation retreat this wekend, so there will be no blog posts.]

More Lyrical Essay Adventures

Here's another go at it:

There He Is

There he is.

I can see him up there, at the crest of the hill.

Sid Scott. Star forward for the varsity soccer team.

Oh god, he’s running towards me, quads rippling from his Diadora shorts like some heavenly wave of muscle and sex and lord have mercy, I’ve got to get busy. Check hair, laces, tuck in jersey, and yes, that’s the ticket—juggle the ball and look swift, maybe kick it a little in his direction so he has to stop, punt it back.

“Hey,” he says to Stephanie, my teammate.

She smiles, her freckled cheeks like little starbursts of joy. “What’s up?” she says, because she is that smooth. She checks the clips on either side of her dark ponytail, bends down to tie a shoelace, making it all look so easy and so what if I’m jealous? So what if I’m sixteen and still haven’t for reals kissed? From where I’m standing now, I can smell the Old Spice Sid is wearing and it’s not a particularly controllable thing for a girl when she can no longer feel her own feet touching the ground, her body gone some place wobbly and vaporous, like how I felt that one time in Chem class after I oops mixed the hydrochloric acid with the bleach, but what I’m saying is experience shouldn’t matter. It’s a feeling kinda thing and I know now that this is more than a crush, that this could be—

“What time is your game tomorrow?” says Sid. His gaze is intent on Stephanie, determined as a striker before taking the winning shot. He rubs the top of his head, a dark mat of sweaty hair that outlines his pale, freckled face.

“I don’t know. I think it’s at four. On the lower field,” Stephanie says. She is done fidgeting and I have stopped juggling the ball in order to study this world of flirt, this little tutorial of tricks so that maybe, when he turns to run back up the hill he will notice me and my two braids, my blue eye shadow, my can-do lips.

“Good, I think I can come,” Sid says. “You want me to be there?”

Stephanie puts her hand on his shoulder for balance, then arcs her back to catch her left foot with her left hand and pull into a quadriceps stretch. Little A-cup breasts announce themselves across her jersey where before there was flatland and I think, yeah, wish I’d thoughtta that one. She sighs, takes her time, then looks at him. “Sure, come to the game. That’d be cool,” then oh, his muscles lift again and he is off, running back to the men’s field without a first glance my way but I am wide-eyed open-mouth flat-out spent. I take a breath. Find my body again. Walk over to Stephanie.

“Is he like, coming to our game? Coming to see you play?” I say.

She pauses. “Well…yeah.”

“Sid Scott is coming to watch you play? I mean, oh-my-GOD!”

I punch her in the arm because maybe I wanted to hit her harder or maybe I just wanted to say Hey, good work! or maybe that means When will it be my turn? but she steps back and looks confused, then laughs a little at something I don’t get.

“Katey,” she says, “Sid Scott is my brother.”

Victory on the Mountain!

Victory on the mountain, folks!

1. After ten weeks of not walking up the driveway because of my self-procured ankle hamburger in a soccer game accident, TODAY I MADE IT ALL THE WAY UP AND DOWN!
2. Not only that, but I raked and hauled gravel, filled ruts and smoothed bumps, cleared sticks and large rocks, and YES, drove my Volvo on up the driveway. She made it all the way up, first try, and I didn’t even have to ride the clutch very much. It occurs to me now that driving a truck up and down the driveway all summer is exactly what the driveway needed, because now that it’s packed I can get up there fine with a two-wheel drive vehicle.
3. I also had the motivation (thanks to the crisp, fall air) to sort through the woodpile, stacking scrap lumber and reclaiming usable logs for the Buck stove. When all was said and done I found I’ve got a small stack of very ready, very dry wood to burn (about 4’x3’x5’).

The result?

I feel like myself again!

More Adventures (Ch. 16)

This is how it is. There is a kiss of color in every leaf, but it’s only really detectable when seen en masse. At sunrise this morning: hills of soft amber give only a nod to the greens of summer. By dusk this evening, lime green bleeds into yellows, the hint of pink. In the same way, three doe graze in the lower field at first light, golden in the lighted mist. A different group come at dusk with one buck, camouflaged gray in the fading light. At breakfast, I can see my breath out on the porch. My scrambled eggs chill within moments and I do not care because oh, the sensation of goose bumps, the freshness of cold, and yes, Fall, Fall, Fall.

It’s not all in the colors, though. Once the air has chilled and reclaimed itself from the grips of humidity, it becomes immediately direct—spring water safe. Walking to the truck this morning, it is as though I can see clearly for the first time in months; here a fleck of mica, there a dying jewelweed, here a piece of quartz. By late morning the world is bright, each rooftop a ray of refracted light bending back onto itself, each hubcap a dizzying delight of pure fascination as it rolls, spins, whirls along the road from one township to the next.

But somehow, there are other things. There is the nature of nature and there is human nature. It is lunchtime and I am not nervous, but still, I say it:

“I’m not going to write about this.” We’re at a local restaurant. I order salad. J orders the special. “Seriously, I’m not going to,” I insist.

J smiles, a good smile, then laughs easily. His features are soft though his stature is chiseled, almost Bunyonesque. But, Oh, be careful. Do not romanticize.

What does he say next? I can’t recall, only that it is easy, only that it’s lovely to meet someone new and not have to travel far in physical distance or frame of mind to make it come together.

There is more. Past jobs, past relationships. Grad school and companionship. Coffee vs. beer, movies vs. television, indoor plumbing vs. outdoor plumbing. And all the while there are two conversations: The one I’m having and the one I’m writing in that endless scroll that carriages across my mind’s eye, ceaselessly assessing and incorporating. The same scroll that is measured by the beats of my heart, the rhythm of my breath, the cadence of my comfort.

Today, that scroll is split-brained.

1. Hey it’s lovely knowing you’re out there, just on the other side of the mountain, living by similar means, holding similar values. But we’re both busy…would there even be time to hang out? Connect? Make our lives overlap to form some basis of friendship? I’m an all or nothing kind of woman, see.
2. Hey, it’s lovely knowing you’re out there, but my heart-mind-body could really use some romance about now. Cooking dinner in for the evening, a little of Paul Simon’s “Negotiations and Love Songs,” a little singing or reading poetry out loud. A little cuddling for Chrissakes, every woman needs some cuddling. I’m an all or nothing kind of woman, see.
3. Hey. What am I doing? Do I really have time to get to know new people? Does he? I’m not looking for a glorified pen pal. I’m not looking for another here-and-gone. I’m looking for regular, comfortable, soothing (and yes, requiring work at times, goddamnit). But remember the present moment. Come back to it. Settle there for a while. Chill out. The present moment is an all or nothing kind of lifestyle, see.

Deeper Investigations into a New Voice

Tonight’s post was inspired by “In My Aunt’s Apartment,” a lyrical essay by Demian Hess. This has not been proof read, fact checked, or heart-checked by my family, so don’t hold them accountable for anything I say. This is my subjective recollection and creative re-telling of one incident.

It is that easy time after supper, after chores, but before bedtime. Dad is in his recliner, which makes him laugh, because he thinks Lay-Z-Boy’s are for old men and he is only forty. But this is the 1980’s and Reagan says thumbs up and we are big-house, nuclear-family happy even though we don’t believe in trickle-down economics. Mom is filing her nails, her feet resting on the floor where I sit, leaning into her legs. We fit like this, a family of three, one Lego piece alongside another, two dogs that bark and run in circles.

It’s basketball season and we are rooting for Drexler, Williams, Robinson, Porter, and Duckworth—our fab five of the Portland Trailblazers whose home game is broadcast LIVE! TONIGHT! ON NBC!

And there is a turnover, that fast: Drexler to Robinson, the fake, a pivot, pass it back to Drexler and whoosh!, 2 more points to put us in the lead and that’s when the camera zooms in on the crowd that is all colors and smiles, flags waving and lips shouting, and there is this white boy, wearing authentic NBA jersey shorts that ride so low on his waist the cuffs nearly touch the floor.

The boy fills the television screen and there he is with his bandana do-rag, flashing a “west side” gang symbol and I say—“Look, he’s such a wigger,”—and there is a turnover, that fast: Dad flies outta the chair at my face, his eyes like a tree bore, twisting into me and his words coming at me from some adult place that I do not understand yet—“What did you say?”

“I said that boy’s a wigger.”

“Don’t you ever, EVER, say that word in this household again!” His voice bends and cracks and I say, “Dad, dad, it means he’s pretending, it means he’s a phony, it’s a word from that comes from school—” but he hoists me up and points at the stairs which means Go to your room, and I am going, going gone.

Later, Mom will come downstairs to talk to me: “Do you know what that word sounds like?” and only then do I remember, nigger, that word on the list of words you never, ever say and I sob, “Yes, yes, I know what it sounds like but that’s not what I said. I said a word from that comes from school. It’s for a white person who pretends to be black.”

I go upstairs, stand in front of the recliner and tell this to my father, whose own father was a Methodist minister studying at Boston University School of Theology under the same professor as Martin Luther King, Jr. Whose own mother was first generation, a full-blooded Sicilian born in South Boston amidst a slough of Irish Catholics, who used words like dago and wop for her kind.

I tell this to my father who forgives me and goes someplace into himself that is sad, sad, like I’ve confirmed how society is changing for the worse and there is a turnover, that fast, where I promise myself I will never, ever say anything that comes from some place other than my own heart.

The Myth of the Rock and a Hard Place

When it rains, it pours…and the old adage can be taken literally in these mountains today, as we’ve had our first day of rain in weeks. The leaves drop their raindrop tears with every gust of wind and yes, yes, the springs are overflowing once again. But the old adage applies to the conceptual as well, and the past few weeks have accumulated a series of exhausting, yet telling, signs that seem worthy of examination.

By which I mean, one friend from the singing group has been at my throat with daggers and her personal agenda for three weeks running, and I’m about to give up on the friendship and the music altogether. Additionally, another friend spits fire at me when I try to surprise her with a check-in visit to see how she is doing. My visit is taken the wrong way and she hurls resentments, weeks-long grudges, and judgments at me from across her kitchen counter as if they were cutting knives and I the carcass. And last, my boss goes MIA in a move that looks suspiciously like a power struggle and an act to draw attention to herself—and act I refuse to partake in.

I am just trying to move forward in the best way possible. The singing friend is holding up the entire group with her wall of mistrust, egoism, and same-old same-old. The writing friend has built her wall of protection as a result of being too busy, too overworked, too left alone with all her work, and too unable to communicate her own needs to anyone. It’s hard to move forward with such forces slammed into my face and then, there’s been the added symbolism of wild animals running in front of my car, quite literally making it impossible to move forward. In the past 72 hours alone, all on separate occasions: 2 rabbits, one doe, two squirrels, one black cat, one dog, and a fawn all lept in front of my Volvo, two encounters of which led to screeching brakes, burnt rubber on the road, spilled coffee all over the dash, and—thank goodness—the narrow escape of their little animal lives.

Trying to move forward. Trying to carve out a new path—one where a girl can go on a date every once in a while with a new stranger, one where I am no longer restricted to being “from the old boarding school” or “from the intentional community” or “from the Montessori school” or “from the craft school.” A path where I can write fiction and dare to find a new voice in nonfiction. A path where I where my friends support my growth rather than buck against it or use it an excuse to form mistrust. A path where this is where I live (not just where I happened to stay), where this is where I am invested, where this is where I may become who I am going to be.

They always say you’re tested the moment after you claim something new for yourself. They say all the old and buried demons will come at you with startling know-how. I just never thought those demons would be in the form of my friends, nor did I ever think it would be so emotionally exhausting. Nor would I ever want to admit that it’s been a hindrance to my writing, my homework, my sleep, and my overall sense of well-being.

Hello walls, hello stubbornness, hello all things that stand in my way! I can see you now, how thin your bricks, how narrow your breadth, how false your ferocity. And guess what? I’m walking around you, moving on, hopping from stone to stone down a new path, one word at a time. Before you flinch and count my confidence as condemnation, look again—for you will see that as I hop I am also smiling, waving a hand at you, inviting you back when the world grows warm enough again.

Technical Difficulties

My phone line has been dead for two days - which means no phone calls to or from the mountain and no Internet. (I'm at the public library now, with T-minus 11 minutes and counting left in my time slot...).

This weekend: CAROLINA MOUNTAINS LITERARY FESTIVAL

Reading w/ local authors on Friday, Sept. 14 @ 3:30pm

On a publishing panel on Saturday, Sept. 15 @ 2:30pm

More details at my website: katey.schultz.googlepages.com

The Chirp

Tonight, Andrew Bird, live in Asheville. This, the man I've been waiting to see for two years!

Giving it a Try...

Is this a lyric essay? Too long? Too short? Not enough images? Oh, there is so much to learn!

Canyonlonds, The Needles District, 1999

This was a long time ago—I was twenty and on spring break—and everyone thought that going to Utah made sense. Canyonlands, we had said. Six days out and back, a college-sponsored trip through the Outing Program. It’ll be perfect.

But 36 hours and twelve miles in, perfection turned sour when, just before lunch (it would have been summer sausage with sweaty cheddar on rye), we stumbled across a man giving CPR to this other man, whose face was blood and flesh and oh, we knew right away, dead.

He had sent a third man out two hours ago, six miles to the nearest trailhead and no promising he’d find a ranger, a car, a cell phone. He was tired and there was the decision to make. He wanted to know, could we all administer CPR, breathing and pumping in shifts, until the rescuers arrived?

Instead, we gave him permission to stop breathing false air for his dead friend.

I looked down, deep, deeper into the crevasse the dead man had tried to jump across. An empty Aquafina bottle lay trapped in the red rock jaws below and I wondered if the last sensation he felt was that of the bottle slipping from his hands, or of his neck as it snapped back when he misjudged the distance, hooking himself on the lip of the crevasse and breaking his own spine. After that, there would have been no sound—only the soft slumping of his body as it settling onto the rocks below, gushing and crumpled as a bird flown too soon from its nest.

Lunch passed and soon it would have been time for dinner but no one was eating. Or talking. Or crying. Someone suggested a Quaker ritual. We gave the surviving man what little shade and privacy there was, then pulled every piece of bright tent fabric and clothing out of our packs to wave as a signal if the rescuers came. Sun-baked and weary, we covered the body and waited for the sounds of the chopper to break our silence.

When at dusk a helicopter finally rounded the canyon and hovered like a mechanical angel come to take the body away, it was just like the movies. Uniformed men and women jumped from the cavity of the chopper and held onto their hats, running low and shouting commands. After the blades stopped moving, we passed his body hand over hand above our heads to the only opening in the crevasse, then rested it politely on the stretcher. We’d covered his body with a sleeping bag but once, a rigamorted arm flopped free from the straps and dangled at my side, his cold skin touching my own with icicle precision.

For days, I would touch the patch of skin on my arm where his death had rubbed, the injustice of his accident like a scar tethering me to a sense of powerlessness, the absurdity of faith, the swiftness of a God if there was one.

One wrong step. Now one dead man, a 27 year-old schoolteacher from Texas, we’d learned. They flew away and made it all look so easy. We covered the blood with slickrock dust, burying death so it couldn’t snap back at one of us. I tried to hook the Aquafina bottle and rescue it from the cool underbelly of rocks below, but I couldn’t reach. Then, we held hands and hopped across the same crevasse the dead man misjudged.

Later, no one slept.

The easiest part was feeling lucky to be alive. The hardest part was feeling guilty. But three miles into our fourth day out, Johnny and Iz insisted on taking up the rear and smoked a joint to ease their pain. Within the hour, they’d taken a wrong turn and were hiking bore-headed and breakneck down an old, miss-marked trail.

Nate called it first, They’re Missing, he’d said, from somewhere behind me on the trail, and a plague of panic spread, compelling us to immediately walk off the trail in all directions, breathless already, stupid with fear. Within two minutes none of us could see each other and a voice clawed in the back of my mind that said No, Stop, that this was over the edge, that we’d all lost it. But Nate called again, this time from behind a huge boulder just ahead of me: Everybody stop moving! Walk back to a cairn and wait until we’re all together again so no one else gets lost. In one year he’d be overseas, a college dropout and fresh recruit for the U.S. Army, lost himself amongst a crowd of young soldiers.

We regrouped, pulled out our topos, and no one said what we were all thinking. There was no shade, each minute scarring our skin a deeper bronze, sucking water from our cells, small colonies of salt on our foreheads where our sweat had cooked away. Four of us stayed put, Nate and Griswold tracked our lost boys by the telltale Reebock logo on Johhny’s shoes, the same shoes we’d been making fun of all week since they were for basketball, not backpacking. “Come on guys, cut me some slack,” he’d joked, “I’m just a jock trying to fit in with you hiking hippies.” The same shoes, now, that would tell us he and Iz had headed down the wrong canyon, a canyon that didn’t end for 40 miles and only then, at a dead end.

The rest of us waited during the hottest hours of the day, hiding ourselves under tarps, long sleeves, anything to escape direct sunlight. We would sit for four hours, as promised, and Nate and Griswold would be back by then, whether they found Johnny and Iz or not. If they returned empty handed, we’d all hike out together—ten more miles—for help.

One wrong step, the foolish confidence of dope smokers, and here we were again only this time righteously pissed and scared shitless. What would we tell their parents? The college? What had they been thinking screwing around on a trip like this, the park still in the throes of a drought, the temperature dropping into the 30’s at night, and danger licking our heels since the get-go?

A fly buzzed, circled, teased my hairline and landed on my forearm. I raised my right hand and slapped hard, marking my own skin and startling the rest of the group.

The fly flattened, rolled off my forearm, and settled onto the slickrock at my feet. We watched it kick and die, and I wished for a breeze to blow its body away, away, my hand the mundane God, reacting for no just reason.

Kristen looked at me sharply and spoke, the first voice in a long time: “He didn’t deserve to die.”

Tall Orders

I am hunkering down, low, low, into the stuff of language, deeper, past layers of concepts and into the steeping pot of creativity. With a packet deadline for the MFA just two weeks away, this sinking has become my survival mechanism. It means more silence. More time at home. Only going out for practical reasons and the occasional one-on-one conversation for perspective. Otherwise, no, I cannot come over and watch a movie and no, I cannot go shopping and no, I cannot watch you blow glass in the glass studio. (But yes, I can and will sing on Monday night and go to the Andrew Bird concert on Tuesday night.)

My advisor’s orders for the next packet are tall. She has asked me to write a nonfiction lyrical essay and present her with the “new me” in nonfiction. No more fiction; at least not for this next packet—and no more of the old voice from my first and second semesters.

New. Fresh. Brave. Surprising even to myself. A voice heretofore unspoken.

Tomorrow, finish the Andre Dubus book, read up on lyrical essays, let the rhythms be felt, then begin by imitation. Copy style, rhythm, and voice and change only content.

Then break free of that. Listen for the places when the copied voice grows impatient and new one starts to talk. Then let it talk. Follow it. Let go. Close my eyes, and write until it stops.

Brandish weapons against all those other voices of discontent. Kill the editor. Sabotage the censor. Ignore the temper tantrum. Isolate the source of doubt until it is nothing but the silly call of a peeper frog alongside the road, who, when approached with any measure of closeness, is completely silenced.

But if you turn your back, walk away, or stay dormant for too long, the peeper will begin its call again, scratching at the subconscious. At this moment, lean in closer. Dare to shine a flashlight in its eyes and you will see how imperceptibly small such a loud creature is. Lean further and keep leaning, looking all fear in the eyes, and you will see that it is nothing but a mirror of your own face, a creation of the same mind that puts pen to paper, weaves stories in the night, hunts truths as if its life depended on it.

Observations

A neighbor tells me that the buckeye is turning early this year because of the drought. Either way, each day claims a few more leaves, yellow speckles across green leaves bright and bold enough to evoke Miro—his ambers and dashes of gold, the simple bravery of red, each of them unique when placed in such simple contrast.

I have a meditation friend whose gemstone blue eyes make the rest of the world lean in for a closer look. They are so brilliant it is as if such tone and shading of one of our most common colors has never before and never shall be replicated in the precise way as it is in her eyes. And somehow, when I look at her eyes, everything else pales in comparison…But when I return my gaze to the backdrop of her garden, her delightful dogs, a passing swallowtail, the rest of the world looks even brighter for having her in it.

What a gift, the gift of color. And as many colors as there are in the spectrum, there are as many emotions available in the realm of the human experience. The nervousness of a first date. The anticipation of new friendship. The loyalty of lasting friendships. The loss of the right words.

Hindsight is 20/20

It’s possible that all of the sudden, my world felt too small.

It’s possible that, like the knock-kneed wobbly-hipped hound dog I see off highway 261 every morning, huffing itself up from the pavement to greet the sunbeams through the fog with a series of long-voweled bellows, I needed something to call my own. The dog barks long and heavy to claim his day, then settles his old wire body back down onto his driveway where he will lay for hours, letting the warmth overtake him.

Call this his ritual, his daily prayer, his job well done. Call it anything, but know that it is one creature’s way of marking himself in the world, cutting a line through time where on one side rests the silence of each morning, and on the other rests the announcement of himself and the peace that comes afterwards.

The line I needed to draw has to do with communities; I can see this clearly only in retrospect. For too long, every person I interacted with knew me as from the old boarding school, from the Montessori school, or from the craft school—the three main, vibrant, primarily liberal communities in Yancey and Mitchell counties. I cannot count for you the number of people I overlap with on a daily basis who know me in any other way, because there are none.

The dog barks long and heavy to claim his day…I go in search of new friends who are willing to get to know me from the ground up. It is perhaps a line in the sand, a commitment to mark my own life here with a little more intentionality, to remind myself that I do not have to be limited to the context within which everyone knows me in. There is more to me than all the connections people can make from one community I’ve worked in to the next, and—more importantly—there are more possibilities for me than what walks in and out the coffeehouse doors.

A quote to close this observation, offered by a wise and generous reader who commented on yesterday’s post:

"She needed a lover and at the same time a lover was not what she needed. The need of a lover was, after all, a quite secondary thing. She needed to be loved, to be long and quietly and patiently loved. We all need to be loved. What would cure her would cure the rest of us also. The disease she had is, you see, universal. We all want to be loved and the world has no plan for creating our lovers." - Sherwood Anderson, "Seeds"

Adventures in Online Dating: Chapter 16 HAZARDS OF THE JOB

[Miss Chapter 15? Scroll down.]

Match #5 left a comment ON MY BLOG.

So much for Guided Communication, Dr. Warren, sending Second Questions, anonymity, and the like.

Here is what he said:

So, I'm sitting here printing off what seems to be a thousand pages of Old English ballads for a folklore class I have in graduate school, and I think, hmm, Katey (kinda of an unusual spelling) and she's a freelancer in Bakersville. Well, she's got to be easy to find via Google, and here you are. And here I am as I read the blog. Interesting (he says with a smile). I'm match #5, on the other side of the mountain. I'm actually not a member of eHarmony, just took advantage of the free weekend to see what would happen. Thought it would be fun, and it has been. But I'm not going to sign up for the site, so feel free to simply e-mail me at xxxxxx. Sounds like we could at least have fun being neighbors.
~J

Friendly enough, and humorous, and, well, good with the internet. I had actually been hoping to get to the Open Communication stage with J so that I could say, "Please do not Google my name...I'd rather that you get to know me as a person first and not through my writing." So much for that. Aiy, aiy, aiy!

So yes, I email him and yes and ask him not to read my blog (How's he supposed to distinguish between the narrative voice of the nervous online dater and the real me? How am I supposed to distinguish, for that matter!). I ask him about his dogs and if the buckeye trees are changing color on his side of the mountain yet because they just started to change a bit on my side. I ask him about his PR work and I tell him to fill me in since, clearly, he knows more about me than I know about him at this point.

Meanwhile, CollegeFriend from across the country also took advantage of the free weekend on eHarmony and sent a few communications out to New Matches, free of charge. And thank goodness she told me about this, otherwise I would have had no idea what J meant by his comment. If she likes what she finds, she's signing up. Go team go!

I'm afraid my little whim of an idea that started two weeks ago has turned into, well, exactly what it promises. Dates with interesting people. Real dates. Real people. Somehow I have this notion in my mind that this is what people do in cities...say, go out with so-and-so on one weekend and a different so-and-so on another weekend, until they eventually choose one so-and-so above all the rest and enter a monogamous relationship. Whether that's myth or reality, I'm learning a lot about myself and it's utterly refreshing to get to know someone outside the confines of my life up at the craft school (where hungry, horny artists abound...coming and going as they please).

So I email SH. Tell him thanks for a great date. Really, one of the best I've had. And I can't get his smile out of my mind.

Then I turn the computer off, off, off. Return to my Andre Dubus book, where I find perhaps the finest quote at the conclusion of his short story "All the Time in the World," a story about a twenty-something woman who has dated her share of men but is trying to change her habits, trying to find out what she wants and needs, and trying to take life one day at time. Here is the quote:

"She was hungry, and she talked with her friends and waited for her steak, and for all that was coming to her: from her body, from the earth, from radiant angels poised in the air she breathed."

Adventures in Online Dating: Chapter 15

Two hours in the coffee shop and one hour walking around downtown and one hour over a shared pitcher of ESB, and we are buzzed and walking towards the restaurant with wide smiles and easy laughs, and there are his eyes—bright dolphin blue—and his smile—absolutely endearing, at times almost boyish—and the conversation, which has been easy and unceasing since our date began at 3 p.m.

Inside, the lights are dim but the crowd is raucous, as we learn a wedding party has reserved the main dining area for a rehearsal dinner. That’s when I tell Match #1, henceforth SH, about our reservations.

“Well, they’re not in my name,” I say.

“Whose name are they in?” he asks but before I can reply, the hostess is at my side saying, “Faulkner, party of two?” and I nod my head, yes, then turn to smile at SH.

“When else do you get to respond to the name of a famous writer?” I say. “It’s from my dad. He does it all the time. Only he prefers to go by Hemingway.”

SH smiles and follows down the hallway as we are seated.

We are three hours at the fancy restaurant where the conversation never wavers, then SH and I are in my car heading down I-26 in the direction of the meditation center. It is nearly 10pm. He’s never seen a shrine room before and he’s interested, and so it seems like a right and safe way to prolong the evening.

But the visit is brief, interrupted by a tenant at the house who is eager for conversation and we are not, so we duck out and I drive him to his car, where he presents me with a bar of dark chocolate that he has brought all the way from Trader Joe’s (the BEST health food store ever and that I haven’t shopped at regularly since leaving Oregon five years ago). I smile, thank him, put the chocolate in my car, turn around after closing the door and we are arms locked, skin touching, full-on kissing, on the 4th floor of the Rankin Avenue parking garage where suddenly the bright lights fade to black when I close my eyes and there, only the sound of lips, breath, the absurdity of clothing.

There is nowhere to go and I like that because it means that if we want to keep kissing, nothing remains but to keep kissing…But my mind is a bit wired from the black tea so late in the day and I stop, pull away to say something—what, I cannot recall: One sentence? Mabye two? Something about the weather, perhaps?—and he doesn’t hesitate when he interrupts me to say, “You’re thinking too much.”

I smile. “You know, you can say that whenever you want to because 99% of the time you’re going to be right,” I say and at some point (Twenty minutes later? Forty?) there is a nagging tick in the back of my brain, something like hearing a train in the distance and waiting, waiting, waiting for it to arrive, but I close all thought to it and instead stay focused on the kissing, yes, lots of kissing, because by now who cares how many cars have driven by and I just love this PG-rated date with no pressure and all comfort…but the sound is louder now and I open my eyes to see that the woman who has parked her car next time mine is engine roaring, reverse lights blazing, r-r-r-ready to go and who is that annoying couple that didn’t even see me walk past, unlock my, door, and start the car?

Oops.

The drive home easy because I sing all the way, moon roof open to the scarlet orb above and there is a message on the machine from Noelle when I walk in the door. “Hi. It’s me. Call me when you get back. I want to know EVERYTHING!”

I sleep long and hard and wake up slowly. Drink tea. Read Andre Dubus’ Dancing After Hours. Check my email.

Email. Crap. Email = eHarmoy these days, since every three hours or so there seems to be a New Match, and I’m not sure I want to plow through any more of these but wait…What’s this?

A request from OtherSideoftheMountain, Tennessee?

Yes, a New Match (#5, we’ll say) from the small town on the other side of Roan Mountain and he wants to start Guided Communication. He runs his own farm and works in PR and loves animals and wants to live a quiet, sustainable, mountain life, and [Click…click…click…] he has sent his “First Questions” to me via eHarmony. (Cue that children’s song: “The other side of the mountain, the other side of the mountain, the other side of the mountain…to see what he could see!”)

The map in my mind comes into view again, my little red light of a heart on one side of Roan, and a new, white light, sending some signal, flashing through the night on the exact opposite side of the mountain. If this land was flat, I could perhaps roll a ball down the state highway and it would wind up at his feet. We’re talking THAT CLOSE. (Closer than my parents live, closer than some of my friends, and approximately 120 minutes closer than SH…but Oh! Last night had been so fun and we talked about EVERYTHING and, and…)

I take a deep breath. I hadn’t even considered the possibilities of dating more than one person via eHarmony. Yet another thing I wasn’t prepared for just two weeks ago when these chronicles first began. I’ve never even dated more than one person at a time in my non-e life. It’s just not my style, not the way my heart works, not something I’ve ever felt capable of.

Where’s Dr. Warren when you need him? There are seriously more hazards involved in this gig than I ever could have guessed.

Next steps? Who knows.