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Utopian Attitudes
As we left the outskirts of Sioux Falls, our drive to the Yankton Reservation took us through an expanse of checkerboard farmland. It was deemed an open reservation due to the mix of Native Americans and white landowners within its boundaries, and this became clear as we pulled into Wagner, which looked as all-American as any other farming community in the Midwest. We met Father Field and his wife Mary, Rocky, Elmo, Edna, Peter and Annette that day—names of people we would come to know very well as we built a church they had been asking the Diocese to provide for them for many years.
Our second stop was Greenwood, which rests in the nipple extending below the rectangular state at its southeast corner, its meandering outline there defined by the Missouri River. The church we would be replacing with the one we would build was eerily quiet—its interiors musty from being closed up for quite some time because the community that once utilized it had moved to Wagner to be closer to the services a town provides. I’d never been as moved by “The Lord’s Prayer” as when I saw a large framed needlepoint of it, written in the Sioux language, hanging in the vestibule. It was as rag-tag as the little strip of land along the Missouri River we found ourselves walking along that day—the waterway nothing more than a stream indolently moving through a deep ravine the river had made before being dammed upstream. The quiet spot held a collection of abandoned churches and a few run-down houses, and I could feel the sweep of history, though not the bustling one that had long been silenced along the jagged banks.
After the lush vegetation of Greenwood, our next stop—Lower Brule, a closed reservation—felt barren and dry. We met Marilyn, Boots, Gloria and Mr. Small Jumper, all eager to greet us because they welcomed our help. Father James, who was younger than most of the priests we’d met in the mission field, had been assigned to the isolated reservation that held nothing but buttes and flats spanning for miles. When we left the Lower Brule, we traversed the Crow Creek Reservation, moving through undulant gold grasses as we listened to Randy explaining that the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota were all arms of the Sioux tribe, and that the first-letter change of their names designates their linguistic differences—certain words used by all the Sioux would begin with “D,” “L,” or “N,” depending upon which segment of the tribe the speaker had been born into.
As we headed farther north and west, we drove a rain-soaked road that rose and fell away, mimicking the undulant profile of the hills. The Missouri River tracked us, slithering out of sight through distant gorges and reappearing when the cliffs gave way to expansive meadows. We glided along the silvered ribbon winding through velvety green for several hours until we came to a field of flattened grass that was littered with beater cars, giant speakers, several pine bowers and an odd assortment of people, both Native American and white.
The four-day, out-of-doors Convocation was in full swing. Christian hymns blared from the speakers as we walked through the trampled prairie grass rousing grasshoppers with every step. I attempted to make eye contact with the Native Americans I passed, but my searching looks were met with stoic distance. I sat alone for most of the afternoon, watching puffy clouds glide effortlessly through an enormous sky as I wondered why my attempts to connect were being met with such resistance.
I realized there was so much to learn. I had always taken my ability to connect with other human beings for granted, and I had already been told once since we’d arrived that I was being very idealistic. What else is new? I thought, admitting that I could see this in most of my dealings, though I wouldn’t have been so quick to put a name on my emotional makeup. It was a bit like being categorized, then stamped with a number to be shelved in the “Idealist” section of the library. How did I come about these “utopian” attitudes? I wondered as I scribbled in the notebook in my lap, the smell of pine infusing the air.
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This is a participating post in #LetsBlogOff. The question du jour: “What do you take for granted?” I hope you enjoyed my realization about taking human connections for granted; to see the other posts answering this question, click here for the full roster.
Night Tiptoed In
She certainly used her surroundings for creative fodder, as is illustrated in this passage describing the Wild Turkey from Our Southern Birds: “Any one who has followed the trail of the turkey through its native woods, or who had made the acquaintance of some lustrous purple-legged baron hatched from a wild egg and raised in a poultry yard, will not grudge this species the phrase that has often been applied to it—‘noblest of American birds.’ An appreciative southern wrier, Mr. Lanier, once suggested that the Wild Turkey would be a better choice for adoption as our national emblem, instead of the rapacious and quarrelsome Eagle; but, however suitable to American ideals and character this change might be, it is not likely to take place, for the reason this splendid game bird is being killed off at a rate that insures its disappearance from all but the wildest parts of its ranges. In short, the Wild Turkey will probably be nearly extinct before the general public becomes acquainted with him…”
Fall was coming full on and the bluff was being leached of its greenness, the leaves coloring as they clung to the barely hidden branches of trees that heaved them into the dull sky. A thunderstorm raced through, bellowing as the limbs danced its bidding. I went to the screened porch to feel the drifts of mist racing up the gully, enjoying the cool moisture caressing my face. As the storm moved away, the sun radiated red-orange, spilling its hues like a paint pot someone had overturned, its contents seeping earthward until it infused the entire atmosphere with its pigments.
I was just beginning to learn how the weather affected the spot on which we were perched. The wind would race over the cusp of the rocks that formed our foundation, blasting around the house and rattling the windows with its fury. As one gust would die, another would rush forward, its fist closed tightly to pound the door and to pummel the trees, which were forced to cling all the more mightily to the puny soil beneath their roots. The beating seemed more sinister at night as everything went black beyond the windows. I was drawn to the cold panes, curious to feel the fury of the gusts—the rattling of the pulsing glass keeping me company as I watched for shooting stars. They would arc through the sky every so often and I had finally made enough peace with my life to have wishes ready to salute their passing.
As night tiptoed in on a dusty pink horizon wedged between layers of soft blue one evening, I wrote, “I can say I will not be a writer as many times as I like but it will never keep me from writing.” The next morning as the sun rose above the far horizon, I listened to the “stars” of a writer’s conference read poems and fiction on public radio. The broadcast pulled at my insides, making me want to write as they had written but I was stuck in some strange rut of fearing the very thing I desired the most (and the thing what would set my spirit free if I’d only allow it).
Even as my internal angst with my identity roiled, I must have been embodying my desire to become a writer without even knowing it because a man I knew continued to approach me with his own need to accept himself as a writer. He was not nearly as far along as I was in the discipline of journaling and I felt his desire to connect with a kindred spirit ooze from him when he would seek contact with me, a needy look in his eyes giving away his internal angst. I guessed that having an exchange with someone who was struggling as much as he was shored him up, something I thought about frequently as I fumbled through my own chaos.
As I bought myself a new writer’s notebook one afternoon a thought flashed into my mind. I stood looking at the shelf of journals, lips pursed as I tried to decide if my idea would cross any inappropriate boundaries, when the doubt fell away and I decided to buy one for him. The next time I saw him, I gave it to him along with one of the special pens I favored. I wished him well when I handed it to him and I could tell it meant so much to him. The next time I bumped into him, he thanked me profusely and I could feel his anxiety mixed with joy over the book of blue-lined pages he clasped in his hands, the blank surfaces gnawing at his desire to fill them, hungry as they were for his words.
I wanted to tell him that the moment before he began his path toward a desire to write would likely be more peaceful than any moments following; wanted to tell him about how the impulse to write complicates a normal life in ways that are difficult to explain. But I decided it would be best for him to find this out in his own way in his own time. After all, that’s an important part of a writer’s journey, and who was I to say where his process would take him and how it would unfold? If nothing else, writing is an incredibly personal discipline, one that demands of its collaborator his or her own blood, sweat and tears…
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Mountain Song
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We sprinted through the Miami airport to make our connection because the customs queue through which we had been processed from Costa Rica was a bogged-down mess. Once we were finally on the plane to Atlanta, my excitement was making it difficult for me to write—the fragmented thoughts, scattered words and jumbled feelings exploding onto the page in an incoherent mish-mash of joy and impatience. A friend of ours, Jerry, had made the trip with us, as had our priest from Chattanooga. It was the first time I’d been around either of them for as long as a week and I’d grown fond of Jerry’s voice, the inflections that made his southern drawl so friendly had a lyrical charm that only a down-home boy could convey. He and I had laughed for days about the fact that when Jim sent the Padre to the hardware store to buy rope, he’d asked for ropa, which garnered him nothing. The clerk obviously couldn’t understand why he was intent on purchasing clothing when they didn’t sell garments there!
Once home, I managed to capture a few days to myself because Jim was off on a business trip. Sam slept beside me as I journaled the first morning—all fours up in the air, a snoring mass of golden-hued hair. As I stroked his belly, it occurred to me that the value of home was truly priceless. Storms had roared through the night before, trailing in their wake a shooting star. In another mood, I might have taken that as a sign of promise but I was weary and bereft. My goal for the day was to let go of my gaunt frame of mind so I could enjoy the atmosphere in which I was luxuriating as Bridal Veil Falls sang over my shoulder in an earthly percussive arrangement of smattering water against unyielding boulders. A dove’s contented coo reproached me for having any feelings other than gratitude given that I was finally tranquilly at home. I’d been pouring words into my personal journal, which had helped to clear my head somewhat—there was something about spilling the quandary of my life onto its pages that always made room for a modicum of ease. The sun, which had made a personal call as it rose above the fog-choked valley, was casting long shadows on my writer’s notebook and causing the point of my pen where it met the page to gleam.
I was made for this quiet, this solitude, this calm, and I reveled in the fact that Jim’s trip had given me the time to myself, which I believed would help me sort through the mess we’d made of things. As I sat there wondering what changes we could undertake that would help us right our wrongs, the wind rode up the mountain, whistling like the engine of a speeding train. It was then that I noticed it was happily marking time on the porch, its rhythm moving the rocking chair as it took a breather. I loved the idea that the undulant currents wanted to take a respite, and the fact that they had chosen my deck as a hangout delighted me to no end.
Questions as to the quality of my writing were surfacing—the realization dawning that when it was rushed my work lacked the vivacity of the material created during times of complete absorption. Had my work reached the level at which I should be so concerned with publishability? I wondered. I longed for more time for revision, but I had also seen that the process was not always my friend; that the flesh of my poetry was too tender to be ripped apart and expected to heal without exhibiting scars. Was I a skilled enough practitioner to prescribe the proper ointment for the treatment of these lesions?
This question was a quirky one because I wasn’t inclined to write what would be considered “publishable” work anyway. I simply didn’t see myself creating the type of poetic constructs I saw in most of the magazines I read because I felt the work I came across in the mainstream press lacked a certain narrative beauty I wanted to achieve. And yet, I had to admit that I wrote for the approval of others because. “It’s impossible for me to give myself the very thing that I need to feel accomplished: an appreciation from a source other than myself,” I wrote that morning. How vulgar this looked in black and white! I thought; yet, vulgar as it was, wasn’t this the truth for every writer? Even if a writer was unaware of the fact that he or she needed this give-and-take, I bet there were none among us who didn’t crave attention for what he or she produced.
I finished my coffee as these thoughts reached an unresolved end, stilling my mind to focus on the sun as it broke through the cloudbank. The scene was hyper illuminated as she infused the towering billows that fanned out like a long ball-gown with her verve. How glorious would it feel for the upper reaches of your hair to burn—a filmy, shimmering cotton, torn, singed and arranged in a glittery display? I wondered. As I stared into the blazing harshness, a hawk skirted past, dipping just below our rock outcropping as silent as night. I picked up the book I’d chosen to read, watching as the attentive raptor made several circles above the falls. As I caressed the tattered cover of Strains from a Dulcimore, a book of poems by Emma Bell Miles, the hawk keened twice and then dove earthward.
I thought the moment was remarkably serendipitous, as Miles had once ambled along this very bluff gathering inspiration for her writing, her watercolors and her sketches. Had she also marveled at the quality of the light, the hawks, the waterfall as she traipsed through the woods so long ago? Her world—in the 1890s—was one of a densely forested mountaintop sprinkled only with the occasional cabin, a far cry from present-day Walden’s Ridge with its pricey real estate and busy streets.
Her other published works included The Spirit of the Mountains and Our Southern Birds, but it was her poems that moved me, and I felt grateful to have had the time to sit with them as the sun climbed ever higher in the sky, setting the yellowed surface of the worn pages I flipped through aglow:
Mountain Song
Sing me another song tonight—
Tell me a story, Love—
A queer old dear old dreamy tale
Of gulch and cliff and cove;
A song of wimpling waters where
The trout’s white bellies gleam;
A story scrolled against dark pines
In wood-smoke blue as dream.
Sing me a song, low, elfin-sad,
That mountain-folk know well;
Tell me a tale of candle-light
In cabins where they dwell.
For O my heart has ached to these
Ere love began to be,
And you, Dear, are but part of this,
The life you lent to me.
-Emma Bell Miles
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The Puzzle of My Life
It’s remarkable how quickly #LetsBlogOff comes around and the topic today is “Where do you get your ideas for creating what you do…Do you have a favorite writing table or a quiet corner in your house or apartment?” My ideas have varied birthing points but rest in only one repository—my writer’s notebook—which carries them forward, keeping them safe and alive until I’m ready to use them in projects such as this memoir. I’ve been in the hospital for a week—heading home today I hope—and I’ve filled page after page with sensory perceptions about my time here that I know I will use somehow somewhere. My Lucille Ball-esque run-in with the ice/filtered water machine is likely the only thing you won’t be seeing recorded anywhere amongst my copious notes (a girl’s gotta reserve some dignity!). To see how other #LetsBlogOff participants glean their creative ideas, click here for a full list.
The Puzzle of My Life
We were back in Siquirres. The morning had dawned rainy, the tip-tap of large drops drumming the tin roof making me so drowsy I slept longer than I should have. When the other noises of life finally penetrated my consciousness, it was the birdsong that capped all the other sounds. It was, in fact, always difficult to ignore in surround sound but I had to admit on that particular morning there was a difference—suddenly, the twittering of the birds seemed positive, quite a turnabout for me given how negative I had been of late.
I was far from proud of that and I wished I could learn to be different but I was having a tough time making an altered attitude stick. “Maybe it is time for me to grow up,” I wrote in my writer’s notebook, which was normally sturdy but was so damp it had become pliable—flexible to the point of disintegration. Was it possible that the environment here would help me to become strong if I could learn how to be more flexible or would I fall apart as quickly as this pressed cardboard book I’d grown so dependent upon?
Kimberly and Gertrude were taking the bus to Siquirres so they could have lunch with me, a break from the grind that I celebrated. I would give Kimberly the Barbie Coloring Book and Crayons I brought her. Little did I know as I placed them on the table in the kitchen they were bringing me gifts that would mean much more to me than the silly nothings I had brought from the states. Mrs. Green had sent me a wooden calendar. I was moved and humbled by its exquisite craftsmanship and the beauty of its presentation. She had made it, which meant all the more, and this level of generosity was so in keeping with the deep respect the people continued to show me.
Having news of her made me remember how close Gus and Mr. Green seemed. They would sit for hours on the porch talking about the most inane things, and every chance I had, I would light like a fly on the wall to listen in on their musings as I crouched in the corner of the porch. I learned that Mr. Green gleaned most of his medical inclinations, for which he was touted, from his wife. She was always recommending this treatment or that one, such as a “prescription” for Marcie, who had a sore throat. Mrs. Green insisted that she mix banana vinegar with black pepper, heat the mixture, and gargle it.
One day one of our volunteers had asked Mr. Green if he could think of anything he didn’t have that he might want. He thought for a long time, his ample lips pulsing as he rubbed the knob of his chin, then finally answered, “It would be money. I have everything else.” I was sitting with him one afternoon when a harmless crazy man, well known around town for his antics, passed by. He had a yellow ball cap socked on his head sideways, the bill pointing to the right making him look far younger than he was. Rick Astley’s song “Never Gonna Give You Up” was blaring from the house across the street and he began dancing to it—quite well actually. When the song trailed off, he opened his mouth wide, looking side to side to see if anyone was admiring him, then held his hands up in the air, fingers splayed, as if to say, “Hold your applause!” Mr. Green and I laughed until we were doubled over in pain.
The rain had finally stopped and the sun was shining brightly. This was the tropics I remembered: sultry to the point of suffocating. The mosquitoes had multiplied greatly from the abundant moisture and I was battling a swarm of them when I bumped into Philip Wheaton on the way back from breakfast. A jack-of-all-trades who prided himself in the breadth of his skills, he had visited the job site several times, and was now helping with some of the new church’s paperwork. He typed with one hand flying and the other resting on the edge of the typewriter—his shoulders moving back and forth with the rhythm of his characters as they indented the paper in fuzzy black blobs.
He was tall and loosely jointed. Not too well groomed, yet not dirty. It was as if he’d been haphazardly put together and I marveled at his thin sideburns extending almost to his mouth. They angled off to a point as they reached for his lips, little more than skinny triangles of graying hair. His eyebrows were barely there, but the hair that did remain was wiry and unruly. He had a great deal of personality in his eyes, especially when he smiled. His great receding hairline was combed back, lending his sideburns more prominence and giving him the appearance of a scrooge or some other Dickensian character. I pegged him as rangy as he ambled along on spidery legs. He was almost hyper about his work, or extremely intent at the very least. As he talked about this project or that project, his brown eyes danced in his wide, creased face.
I was terribly homesick, was missing Sam so much I ached with it. I had brought a jigsaw puzzle to work and it had helped me to pass the time, but as I worked it, I thought of how simple it seemed to put together piece-by-piece compared to the puzzle of my life. I looked around the large front room with its alternating dark and light wood floorboards, walls made from the same, strong dark wood plentiful in Costa Rica—some of which had been painted yellow. In that moment of observation, I felt more isolated than I could bear but I couldn’t let the longing hold: the feeling was far too melancholy. I stood so quickly the chair crashed to the floor behind me, then headed to the kitchen for a glass of water. I felt ever more alien in the sparsely equipped room with its tiny refrigerator and petite stove, which were dwarfed by a huge porcelain sink spouting only cold running water.
I gulped down the water as I sunk into a chair covered in faded Naugahyde—the once bright pink, caramel and pert green flowers on the upholstery long faded to pastels. There was a tan mat woven from rushes under a tiny coffee table draped with a bright, though very dirty, linen shawl, which had been stitched with a decorative motive in silk threads. The furniture was straight and hard, and I sat on the clammy unforgiving upholstery thinking how relieved I was that I’d be heading home to greater comfort the day before my 31st birthday. I’d been trying to think of a way to sum things up as far as life in Siquirres was concerned and I’d hit upon the theme that life vibrated: music, birdsong, weather, the vivacity with which everyone spoke—everything vibrated. I might have given the idea “life vibrates” more power if my thoughts hadn’t been as dry and cracked as the dustbowl. There was no spark for the jungle, only the excitement of going home.
As I approached 31, I made the commitment to myself to try and rebuild whatever it was that was broken in me—not remake it as it had been but to refashion it into something stronger and real. God help me do it right this time, I thought as I packed and let the thrill of the fact that the next day I would be “home, sweet home,” fill me with hope.
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Otra Ves
Our move to the “mountain house,” as we had dubbed it, was in full swing. I was surrounded by boxes and awaiting the arrival of the moving van. I would be so happy to get the chaos behind me and snuggle into the new surroundings as I put life back together piece by little piece. And yet there was a bitter-sweetness to it all: it was my last morning at lakeshore and Mother Nature had sent a fogbank to wrap me in cotton wool as I sipped my hot mug of coffee standing on the deck that now had none of the homey touches it once held. The sun, dulled by the moisture’s mantle, was rising ecru, its reflection dimmed on water bathed in wispy steam as the lake’s warm body fended off the chill of the air.
I was pouring as much creative energy into my writer’s notebook as I could snatch from my busy days—knowing my nesting into a new home would make it difficult for me to settle into any intensity of writing beyond what felt like water in the desert—a meager smattering of liquid on a vast expanse of parched sand. The mornings were becoming quite chilly, the blooms on the flowers shivering as the cool breath of changing seasons touched their softness. A cloud, flat and gray—looking cold as marble—obscured the sunrise as it floated a delicate orange through powdery blue with the day’s progression. The phenomenon of a mood only a morning could hold was fleeing right before my eyes as I watched in wonder.
As the light changed, I wondered how I had managed to build a relationship with someone whose thinking was so opposite my own. Jim and I had watched the movie Barfly the night before and as I was admiring the acting, he said he saw no point to the film; that it was ridiculous. I disagreed but knew better than to challenge his stance. As far as I was concerned, in one line, the plot made its point when Mickey Rourke’s character, Henry Chinaski, remarked, “No writer can actually write in peace.” The comment seemed off-handed, of course, but that was just good screenwriting and directing. The line exploded in my head, haunted me as I slept, and stayed with me to jangle my nerves as I watched the orange sky spark into a burst of light. Could this possibly be true? I wondered. I craved peace, craved a settled life in which I could breathe and write. Would it be more of the same procrastination if I did somehow have the calm I believed would support a writing life? This thought unnerved me because it was the idea upon which I was pinning all of my hopes and dreams.
“My writer self finds only tiny cracks in which to sink her fingers as she climbs the shear rocky wall of this bustling life,” I wrote later that day. “She squeezes me down to try and seep through, just as a footfall on the crack blocks her light. She muses her next move only to crash into a ravine—bruised, battered and silenced.” This frustrated piece of me held sway—pouting through the throngs of life’s activities that included a mix of formal gatherings and private parties, vestry meetings, and a brutal exercise class I was taking to try to punish myself back into shape. She grew even more silent during a ski trip to Steamboat even when I spent a gloriously quiet day propped in front of the fire while the others were off skiing. I couldn’t eek a single word from her, and she and I seemed to be officially polarized in a nasty standoff. I just kept making notes, even inane ones, hoping I could tease her out but she was a stubborn conscientious resister.
As I settled into the mountain house, there was plenty to record. I was in awe of the natural mood of the landscape surrounding the home stepping down the cliff. The fog was different at the higher altitude—like sheets of milky white tissue paper that hung behind the trees, coming and going as it desired. The lake in the distance below blazed like a diamond when the sun burned the cottony moisture away. It was colder “on high” as well, and the wood slats on the deck sparkled with dainty flecks of ice. Frozen veins of it had carved lifelines into the glass-topped table, the pattern sophisticated and intricately elemental.
Though I was reveling in the newness of these surroundings, it took the desert surrounding Santa Fe, New Mexico, where we went to shop for fine art for the house, to bring my writerly voice back. As we rose above the clouds on our way there, we broke into sunshine illuminating a tightly knit cloud-front that could have been a lumpy sweater made of knotty virgin wool. It was unrefined and rough, but plush. I wanted to run my fingers over it and fondle the softness, even if it would have disintegrated at my touch and wisped through my outspread fingers like the vaporous matter it was rather than the wooly coat of a sheep that I imagined it to be.
“Snow should look like this as it falls thick and heavy, clumping here and there,” I wrote, “but Mother Nature retains the control when the wet flakes fall, orchestrating the blanket to be flat and uniform, each flake joining hands with another to bond in a perfect union. Yes, control is everywhere.” Why couldn’t my own humanly bonds hold this level of perfection? I wondered. I suppose the answer should have been obvious—I was not even remotely in control of my situation, but then who ever is?
We drove to Taos while we were in Santa Fe, through a vastness that illustrated how ethereal rain could devour the much weightier earth, chewing great rivulets wherever it willed. The sun glowed crimson on the rocks, the sheen of the dirt seemingly aglow from within. Snow rested in rocky furrows worn by time and weather, and I thought about how this was certainly another world—stranger than any I’d ever known. I wrote a poem entitled “Otra Ves” on the plane on the way home, a few good moments entering into the mix but not much of it remaining worthy of a mention. The point of the poem is missed opportunity, particularly where dealing with Native Americans was concerned. In hindsight, I see now that life was preparing me to deal with this issue head-on. “Otra Ves” ends: “We wouldn’t force custom to sleep/ We’d teach the wilderness to be wild/ We’d cling to our land like a child to its mother.”
I came away from the desert of New Mexico feeling awed by the light and the landscape, questioning, Where else in the world would cacti bloom from heaps of pure white snow? And with that paradox looming, I turned away from a time of materialistic gluttony to prepare to head back to Costa Rica. What might the tens of thousands of dollars we had spent on art have done for the people we were “serving” there?
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. Thanks for stopping in!
I had great fun in being featured on the Building Moxie site yesterday. To see a few poems that I continued to work over the years (I didn’t abandon many, only the ones like “Otra Ves” that could never find their centers) click here.
A World of Reverie
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After a week’s worth of struggle that found Jim and I trying to settle back into our lives in Tennessee, we managed to call a truce. We simply had to; we were heading to Seattle with a group of his business associates and it made no sense to go if we were not even speaking. When we arrived, we were shown to a room on the fourteenth floor perched above the downtown business district. The buildings surrounding us rose into the palest blue sky, interrupting distant slices of water that curved to shore and mimicked the same subtle arc of the hotel window. It was as if the spots of aqua were placed in perfect geometric alignment at the edges of the man-made scene, natural baubles to ornament the uniformity of the city’s architecture.
Sailboats dotted the dissected pieces of blue, looking as though someone had tossed a basket filled with magnolia blossoms, gleaming white in the sunlight, onto the water’s surface to let them bob in the breeze. Being at the whim of the tides, a cluster of them eddied toward the shoreline as the mountains rose behind them—some speaking in amplified voices of deep charcoal while others farther afield whispered in the coolest shades of blue-gray. As I pulled the heavy drapes to one side of the room, it was as if the buildings confronting me were as varied as a pile of river rocks—some slick and new, others worn from perpetually tumbling at the bottom of a swift-flowing stream.
I took my writer’s notebook to Pioneer Park so I could record my impressions of the rather downtrodden part of town. I sat on a bench and surveyed the filthy cobblestones, the dirt in between them littered with cigarette butts, and pigeon feathers and droppings. Large trees mottled the courtyard with leaves along one edge where a group of Native Americans were lolling. They were nearly replicas of each other—long black hair tied in ponytails; dark skin; faces, pocked with past acne scars, built of high cheekbones and flat noses below dark eyes. They talked of prison, hard times and detox units, the word “man” ubiquitous in their laments.
My vigil was interrupted by a dirty man carrying a soiled denim jacket and a plastic bag. When he plopped down on a nearby bench, a rush of breath escaped his lips as his butt met the wood slats. He began throwing dried husks of bagels from the plastic bag onto the stones, drawing scores of pigeons. They pecked the filthy ground, skittering into each other in their attempts to grab as many crumbs as they could. As I sat there, I had the strange feeling that I was intruding on a world of constant pain—almost as if I had not earned the right to sit on that bench which had likely served as someone’s bed the night before. I have not paid my dues, perhaps, I thought, and I could tell by their glances that the ragged beings gathered in that park agreed with me.
They were certainly curious, yet they seemed to palpably hate what I represented. They openly jeered at several women passing by but for some reason they left me alone. Maybe this is an homage to my silent suffering, I thought as I made my way out of the plaza, happy to no longer feel like bacteria under a microscope. Little did I know this wouldn’t be the last time I would come under the scrutiny of these marginalized Americans.
That episode convinced me that it was best to stay away from the inner city so I was happy we were immersing ourselves in nature for the lion’s share of the trip. We boarded the Victoria Clipper to make our way to the British Columbian capital, and as I took a seat, I felt the rolling of the ocean rocking us as if we were perched upon a piece of driftwood it had set sailing for its own amusement. I was in awe of the vibrating hulk of a vessel that made my feet feel as if they had been hooked to jumper cables. When the horn exploded, the blast of noise was all the more startling in tandem with our lurch forward. As we clipped along, the water spraying from under the hull foamed and churned, marking a trail behind us.
We’d not been underway for very long when I saw them: loons! I’d longed to hear them in person my whole life and here I was, frustrated to find myself locked away in a massive boat with the engines throbbing in my ears. They were tiny slips of matter floating atop the choppy straights, beaks turned downward before they dove, disappearing below molten liquid that swallowed them. The empty surface silvered so quickly I thought for an instant I’d made up the fact that they had been there at all. The cliffs that cascaded to the water drew my eyes away from the empty swaths of the sound, firs atop the gray stony plateau fingering into the sky. There was a lonesome lighthouse that seemed so desolate in its setting it made me sad to think it spent night after dank night weathering the cold alone.
As I watched Seattle’s skyline disappear, the rows of statuesque cranes, their tall arms extending skyward like they were saluting some great watery dictator, made it clear this was a shipping town. In the distance, Mt. Ranier was obscured, as it was most days—smoke and haze parting only once since we’d arrived for me to have a glimpse of its mammoth shape, its snow-mottled top rising far above the other mountains with rugged, knobby tops of their own. The ring of peaks reminded me of a bumpy origami sculpture that sprawled for miles. As we passed Whidbey Island, an assortment of waterfowl traversed the choppy waters, diving and resurfacing like continual shivers on the skin of Puget Sound.
We vibrated across the water in the gloomy gray of a northwest morning—the sun we’d enjoyed the day before locked away above a thick layer of billowing clouds. In Victoria, the surroundings were so misty that the seascape read like an endless expanse of palest graphite beneath leaden clouds. The masts of sailboats wobbled as if trying to draw rudimentary letters in the dull sky, and seals swam playfully in the harbor. I could have watched them for days as they nudged each other with their whiskered snouts and heaved themselves onto any surface they could reach. They would drape their big flippers this way or that as they raised their noses high in the air, their barks sounding like hoarse coughs as they extended their necks. I marveled at their muscular chests that puffed proudly as they let the world know they had something important to say and that they were saying it boldly. Large gulls bobbed in the harbor, waiting to be fed by tourists gathering on the waterfront walkways and I realized I’d never seen such an abundance of marine life in one place at one time.
The next day we took a trip to Rainier and I couldn’t believe the proliferation of grasshoppers clicking through the air as we walked through the Grove of Patriarchs where Marmots were wooly and brazen as they posed for photos, their protruding teeth yellowed and their flat black feet shirred like a closely cropped fur coat. The mountain seemed like a felled giant, waiting for the right time to pounce as it felt our light footfalls. It made me want to tiptoe as gingerly as possible so that I wouldn’t awaken his ice-covered fury. The snow gave me the impression that the top of his head had grayed from worry but what could he possibly have to fear?
It was as if the glacier faults drawn across its hulk formed a wearied brow puckered in sleep. Wild meadows running partway up the mountain’s back and arms formed a burly body—like a teddy bear’s, but it was clear that his thrust was far from sweet or serene. We climbed and climbed as we tried to reach his heart but he kept it hidden from us, allowing us only one patch of reachable snow, which was mottled with rock flour, during a day-climb. I felt we’d come upon as much of his forbearance as we would receive just before we crept away. I looked back toward him as we were leaving, seeing his breath form wispy clouds though his chest never once heaved with his breathing.
As we drove back to Seattle, I realized I was nervous about going home because I didn’t feel I was doing anything with my life. Somehow, it was easier to pretend that this was not the case when I was absorbed in the sensory details a new environment brought to bear on the senses. Sure, I made contributions through Jim, but there was no truth in them for me so there was no satisfaction in them either. This was all the trickier since my commitment to him kept me from being myself. I felt that if I didn’t begin to get a grip on this, I would be lost from ever being a truly happy and fulfilled person and partner. I wanted to find something to do that I was passionate about; I wanted to be close to my partner, but to have a piece of me that was fully mine. I somehow knew, twenty years his junior, that I needed to be a fulfilled being in order to be a good wife. I wanted to improve my self-esteem so that I could be happy, to develop my spiritual self and to learn to relax. Was this really too much to ask?
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Yes, Man!
I had stayed in Siquirres for the day, and my head was pulsing from the dampness, the moisture-laden air making every noise more intense. There was a great deal of sound in the outpost town. A bell clanged at the Catholic church as the priest chanted into a microphone, the words reverberating inside the big, domed concrete block building then echoing out into the streets. Roosters crowed and the train engine thrummed as the cars clanked into each other, jerking as the slack was eaten by motion. The furniture maker next door running his lathe paused, letting it sputter noisily until he was ready to make it sing again when it happily devoured the wood he fed it. Dogs barked and squealed as large diesel trucks coughed on the highway, then throbbed as the drivers employed their Jake brakes to slow down. A motorcycle fired and a baby cried simultaneously, the twin sounds creating a high-pitched drone.
When the woman next door sneezed, it sounded as though she was in the room with me—that’s how little noise the wire mesh covering the windows held back. As I listened, I felt so absorbed that I transcended the noisemakers to become the noise: I wasn’t the furniture-maker but the whine of the lathe. I wasn’t the priest or the microphone, but the chant. I became the woman’s sneeze, then, as her hands moved from her face to the dishes she was washing, I was the sloshing of the water rendering her hands raw. I wondered if her skin was as rough as the palms of the elderly black man’s who had shaken my hand the day before. His fingers had felt as though he had laminated them and then roughened the plastic coating with sandpaper. He’d said to me, “Good to see you, yes, man!” The minute he turned away, I was met with the surprise of my life. Barney trundled up with a bouquet of flowers and a basket filled to the brim with chili peppers and limes.
He handed me the gifts so self-consciously that my heart melted, an intimate moment that held only for a fraction of a second because the weather upped the ante on its terrible mood and gushed water, sending us both running for shelter. We stood beneath a tarp that Jim had strung between two trees and I struggled to think how I could recapture the mood so I could express my gratitude for his gift but he sensed my earnestness and pulled his poncho over his head, tossing back a goodbye and slipping away. As he sloshed through the thick mud toward home, I watched as he passed a pregnant dog drinking from the gutter—the filthy water rushing under her lapping tongue. He didn’t so much as glance in her direction and I stood there regretting that I hadn’t been able to tell him how much his gesture had meant to me.
I couldn’t begin to guess how many inches of rain had fallen in two days’ time. I simply knew it was significant because my clothes were so soggy they were beginning to sour. Lying on the bed in the mornings was unfriendly because the sheets were so damp they might as well have been pulled right from the washing machine. This was difficult for me and I hated myself for it. I kept thinking that surely there was some way for me to find the strength to gracefully deal with all of the challenges I faced, but good-humored acceptance continued to allude me.
After a brief respite of sunshine at midday, the sky scowled and the thunder rumbled yet again—threatening from a distance and growing louder with each chant. The ocean must have been aiming to free itself from its contents because water came in great torrents that obliterated everything from sight. I unpacked the goodies that Barney had given me and realized I was growing a bit more accustomed to life in a country where sweet limes were bitter and they called avocadoes pears. I would always remember mornings that dawned with jungle noises and the smoky smell of a fire lit by the furniture maker next door as he burned the sawdust from the previous day’s work—neither of which I’d ever experienced in my life until I had landed on a coastal plain where moss dripped like an old man’s beard from misshapen trees.
We were preparing to head home and I felt happy that I’d spent some time working on the material for “Mornings at Lakeshore” because we would be moving into a house perched on a beautiful bluff overlooking the northern edge of Chattanooga. I’d be floating far above a bend in the Tennessee River rather than steeped in the lake setting that had inspired the writing. My new world would be a levitating one that I imagined would bring its own fascinations, the newness of which I hoped would make up for my loss of the lushness of living on the water.
I watched Jim fuss with the building as he prepared to leave the job site unattended—his expression as earnest as a mom preparing to send her child off to the first day of school. I understood his passion for what he was doing but I felt the eggshells I’d been dancing around on were becoming slicker and more dangerous as the viscous of the slimy whites thickened every time I made a pass over the crumbled mess. At what point did the tiptoeing stop making sense? I wondered. At what point did I say screw it and set my heels firmly on the ground?
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See Her Way Into Daylight
We’d been mostly catching rides from people as we traveled between towns, and more times than not we suffered through vehicles like Donald’s. I wasn’t a car snob by any stretch of the imagination—the ugly brown-gold Vega I had in high school proof that I’d drive anything—but I did feel that penny-wise/pound-foolish treatment of a piece of transportation was just plain silly (Okay, I know that love affairs between guys and their cars are legendary but this is an altogether different subject!). If a vehicle was meant for getting one from point A to point B, shouldn’t it do so in a modicum of comfort and dependability regardless of its appearance? Apparently not in life according to Donald, who had recently had his truck repainted—a bright red color with a giant yellow and black zigzagging stripe taking over its body so grandly that the paintjob screamed, “My next life will be lived in Las Vegas!” In order to afford the makeover, he’d ignored the lack of padding in the seats, which meant the body took a beating careening along the bumpy roads. He had also ignored the engine that coughed and the clutch that stuck so unmercifully that the stick shift beneath the floorboard must have been worn down to the thickness of a swizzle stick. We were basically riding along in a very pretty tin can with a passenger-side door that would only open from the inside, and a driver’s side window that would not roll down. I suppose it won’t surprise you that he was gushingly proud of his ride!
As I contemplated what to do with my writing, the only other person around was a local laborer Jim had hired who spoke only Spanish. He had a bitter expression stamped on his face that made me slightly afraid of him so I ignored him as I massaged the material, hoping he would give me the same courtesy. Staring at the page with my scrawling handwriting on it, something occurred to me that I should have realized before but had not: I had a tendency toward personification in my writing. The notes I’d made in Panama City Beach were proof: “The sky presents a checkerboard this morning. Sections of dark and light march from the ocean as if a known pattern had been predetermined. Maybe there was a director just offshore, giving each parcel of sky its dancing orders so that the segments would prance and twirl in pretty order. This is the type of day I long to have tucked into my routine—a day when everything feels moist and beautiful; a day when I can sit on the sofa and read, and no one will think ill of me. The ocean knows how to escape the jouncing mental activity of life: she whispers it every day—her breathy foam cascading, the chorus one of dark and light, of wetness, of persistence, of murmuring hypnotic laziness. She sings to me that it’s okay. I want to sing back but I have no idea what to say.”
As I scratched out words and jotted ideas into the margins of the overly messy sheets of paper, I heard the crunch of tires on gravel. I didn’t think much of it until I heard Jim yell, “No!” as forcefully as he could. He jumped out of the truck so quickly I wondered if he’d remembered to put it into park. I followed his angry gaze and saw why he was so upset. The man he’d left laying block was sawing off the rebar that was protruding from the top block at the edge of a window opening. I guess it was the first time the laborer had seen rebar and he didn’t realize that if the stabilizing steel wasn’t running through the heart of the blocks, a strong earthquake could tumble them like they were children’s toys. Jim stood there with his arms akimbo, shaking his head while the man kept on sawing. Since no one within shouting distance spoke Spanish but the laborer, there was no way for Jim to get it across to him that he shouldn’t be removing the rebar. Yelling “no,” which he understood perfectly, mattered not for whatever reason as the spiteful man defiantly moved his blade rhythmically across the metal, each grating pass causing Jim to wince.
With the laborer’s ineptitude, Jim’s mood turned dark so I tried to stay out of his way. I did so that evening by losing myself in revisiting “Mornings at Lakeshore”—the series I’d started and then abandoned. I figured the writing would help me to feel closer to home and maybe—just maybe—at some point would gel into a collection of poems. But even if all I gained were a couple of hours for pleasing explorations, it would have been time well spent.
I sat at the kitchen table of our jungle house, positioning my notebook to catch as much light as I could from the bare bulb hanging from its socket in the ceiling, and remembered home where there was beauty at the edge of a vibrant lake:
• Her eyes sparkled yesterday like a satin dress of brilliant blue. She peeked at me from between the rooftops as I climbed the hill, her sunny sheen illuminating everything around her like a dazzling smile. She is dark now, as it is too early for her to show herself. The streetlights twinkle on her surface as if hinting at the glittering eyes she will use to see her way into daylight…
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A Road Less Traveled
Once I arrived, the setting inspired me—a good first sign I decided as I drank in the spiky mantle of cattails edging the marsh that spread out around the hotel. The murky water filling the shallow expanses sparkled like it had been sprinkled with bugle beads. I unpacked and wandered around the room like a testy lioness, finally giving myself a break as the early evening sun transformed the water into a festive crackle of light. I drew a chair to the window to record what I was seeing in my writer’s notebook, regretting my decision to leave my camera at home so that I would be forced to capture everything I saw in words. Though I was happy for the exercise, I missed looking through the lens to capture the details of such a resplendent setting.
When the tide went out to sea, it left a slick plane of polished mud stretching out from the hem of the mounded land on which the hotel was built. Hummocks of grass sprouted in the water, which took on the color of a knife blade as the sun glided westward. A brown rabbit fed on the green tufts, its ears moving like the sonar of a ship as its nose twitched with its chewing. A woman called out to a friend as she passed it, causing it to raise its soft head and sniff the air before hopping into a thicket of stunted bushes, the bottom halves looking as if they’d been stained by tobacco from an incessant submersion in sludgy water.
Just before sunset, the light infused the water until it appeared backlit like an ice-skating rink. A meandering walkway cut a linear silhouette through the center of the scene, and a rail of pickets framed the water and two figures standing separately on the edge of a copula that punctuated its end. They were perched on opposite sides of the octagonal surface that rested just above the face of the water—the man leaning forward with his arms spread, hands grasping the railing and hips cocked in a stance that “read” frustration. He changed positions often as if his thinking was too tumultuous to allow him to stand still.
The other figure was a woman whose gaze seemed to burn itself into the horizon. What questions did she ask? I wondered. Had these two bodies, black against the glow of the water, ever been intimate with each other? It wasn’t likely given how they inhabited separate worlds at such close range, and yet something about them made their stories seem intertwined. Why would I think this as each of them walked silently from the pier, keeping whatever struggles they were experiencing secret? And why did I assume they were grappling with something? If there was conflict, it would not have been with each other; was it with the sea, or only in me?
I was beyond nervous to face the other writers at the conference—something I had never done and something I had little confidence in doing—so I walked to the edge of the bay the next morning before it was time to meet to try and calm myself. The bank was pocked with holes into which crabs rushed on tiptoes, scampering around like ballerinas on point. Several challenged each other, face-to-face as they sidled across the mud, their shiny, claw-tipped arms raised like swords. Their warring world was far from clean, but the muck in which they lived was elemental, unlike the toxic waste spilling from the factory across the Intracoastal Waterway. It belched smoke and steam at a serious rate, and I’d noticed that cloud towers had formed at sunset the night before near the spewing of the pollution. I’d wondered then if nature was hoping to rain the toxins down before they had a chance to erupt into the atmosphere.
The summer solstice had arrived at 11:57 p.m. as I tossed and turned, feeling overwrought and chiding myself that my nerves were getting the best of me. It turned out that my anxiety wasn’t unfounded because as early as my first session, it was clear I wasn’t going to do well at the conference. I managed to keep myself steady through the first day, retreating to my room as soon as an excruciatingly slow dinner had passed. I was polite enough as I made small talk with the older women at my table, all hoping to publish cookbooks or craft books about knitting and crocheting. I knew I was being arrogant but the quality of the writing that had been shared that day was disappointing. Once back in my room, I stood watching the edge of a front approach and wondered if I shouldn’t just go home.
The explosion of gray felted clouds comforted me until the rain came, tough as nails as it pelted the windows. Far above, a half-moon, muted by mist, emitted a fuzzy light as the storms began to overtake it. When the torrents were unleashed in full, the pounding heavens echoed my internal chaos. I decided to leave the next morning, feeling conceited that I’d dismissed the majority of the attendees because I did not feel as if they were serious writers while also feeling clear that this was not the way I wanted my writing education to unfold.
On the way home, I was barreling north on the highway near Savannah—speeding along at 90 miles per hour—when an old man in a pickup truck crested a hill in front of me, driving the wrong way in the fast-lane of the highway. Had I been passing someone at that moment, it’s not likely I would have survived the collision that would have been unavoidable, though he might have made it given he was perched in an ancient Ford pickup as solid as a hunk of steel. I shuddered as I watched him blunder on his way and prayed that he would not meet anyone else head-on. The experience made me cringe; made me grateful that I had lived to cringe, and I vowed to try to be more appreciative of the opportunities I had in my life, even when they turned out to be disappointing.
Back home, I found myself so emotionally charged that it seemed I was spilling myself on the sidewalk, emotions leaking out of me like perforations had sprung up in my psyche. I couldn’t seem to get back to my writing, the conference having taken the wind out of my sails, so I did the best I could by scribbling missives into my writer’s notebook: “You are almost a stranger to me, oh book that glues my guts together and holds the secret dream I nurture in silence. Why is it called free verse if it is never free? After all, someone had to pay the price to write it, no?” Do words have a shelf life? I wondered. If so, would mine be out of date before I’d ever figure out how to make them palatable enough to consume?
In a week’s time, we would be heading back to Costa Rica and I caught myself humming, “Do you know the way to San Jose?”—the answer, of course, being yes. Before we departed, I made a trip to Atlanta to have my car serviced and felt so weary that I began to seriously wonder what was wrong with me. It frightened me that I was such a sad case of the walking wounded. My therapist had me reading M. Scott Peck’s A Road Less Traveled because I found myself so solidly groping for direction and a measure of peace. I tried to let the book help but it simply made me wonder why I’d come into adulthood with such issues like character disorder and whether I really needed to know what my dis-ease was called.
I felt spent, even as I craved the motivation to carve beautiful words into the spongy surface of a page, any page. For whatever reason, they simply would not come. Peck implied that God is love but I couldn’t seem to feel how the concept of a divine being fit for me because my soul was scabbed over with so much pain that the concept of unconditional love seemed like such a foreign thing. I did hunger to learn so I continued to try to make sense of his advice as I dealt with the stress that I was possibly on my way to losing Jim and my own life. If I continued to digress into the hard-bitten places I seemed destined to live, I didn’t feel my life would be worth much anyway so it was difficult to see the point in trying.
“I want so badly to ‘get it all together’ so I can have an effective life,” I wrote, “but I seem to become all the more ineffective the harder I try.” Jim and I attempted to talk about how lost we had become to each other but he remained adamant that I had not been working at our relationship so I limped away, yet again, feeling as if everything that had happened was my fault. How could I work at anything when I didn’t have a clue as to who I had become? I wondered. Our life had gone through so many changes, as had I, and it was remarkable to me that he was able to stay unscathed. I felt that I had lost myself under the weight of everything I was handling. “It’s ironic that I’m so materially fortunate,” I wrote, “and that I feel uncomfortable with my life I can’t enjoy it. It’s time to grow into it so I can be an effective person in the world and in my relationship. But how?”
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Water Pumps and Troy Boys: A Legacy for #LetsBlogOff
I decided to take my writer’s notebook onto the beach, intending to make some time for words before our friends arrived but the sun had other ideas for my afternoon hours. It quickly warmed me into submission, turning the pristinely blank page I was poised to sully into a blinding white sheen. As I stared at the great expanse of water that petered out at the extremity of the sky, my pen seemed remarkably heavy. Before long, I gave in to the ocean’s whispering and dropped into a dizzy sleep.
I startled awake when the nettling of palm fronds entered my consciousness a few hours later. The light had changed and the wind had picked up, making the sea oats sway resolutely as they caressed my skin. The beach was deserted, the only thing marring the stretch of sand as far as I could see a beaten-down Adirondack chair slumping at the ocean’s edge. Its posture was giving away the fact that it was dreading the incoming tide that was lapping thirstily at its splintered feet. Its brokenness was such a poignant sight and it struck a deep chord of loneliness in me. As I studied its bereft pose, I spotted several dolphins rolling in the waves just offshore, the flashes of light on their skin, which gleamed like patent leather, tipping me off that they were there.
As I squinted into the ocean’s glow, I realized there was an entire school of them frolicking in the water and it overjoyed me. I decided to watch for a bit, crouching along the highest point of the beach where ragged plants formed a fuzzy outline at the cusp of dune after dune—the growth as stubbly and sporadic as a teen boy’s new beard. Buried in the spritzing grasses, I felt one with the chattering world. I could have easily been plant matter as I felt my hair being swept around by the brisk currents of air, one with the spiky green tendrils of plant life surrounding me. My hair dancing wildly, I stayed anchored in the cool sand, watching as the pod of dolphins disappeared into the deeper blue of the choppy Gulf of Mexico. It was one of those days when I had to force myself to go inside.
That night, I left the doors to the bedroom open so I could let the sweet, sticky darkness wash over me as I slept. The dampness complemented the ocean’s murmuring, and I fell asleep remembering how the night had ridden in on the coattails of a giant molten sun heaving itself behind the clouds. It disappeared without a shred of remorse, and had I longed to call it back, it would have scoffed at me—its schedule of traversing the heavens much more important than my piddling desires to stay steeped in light.
The next morning, the world dawned misty and gray, a scene wrapped in moisture from the ocean’s pull. As I went out for an early run, I noticed it was one of those special mornings when both spheres were holding their own in the sky—the sun waxing and the moon waning, as delicate as sugar lace being slowly melted away by the intense heat of the dominant star. The gang descended that afternoon and the hoopla commenced, leaving scant time for reflection, reading or writing. The long weekend passed quickly, and Jim flew off to some business meeting, leaving me to drive home in his oldest son’s car. It overheated every eighty or so miles, the six-and-a-half-hour trip turning into a ten-hour nightmare of hitting one small town after another to see if anyone had a water pump for a Jeep Woody. Time after time, the answer was, “No dice!”
The first place the SUV acted up was Troy, Alabama. I sat on the curb at Mike’s Downtown Gulf in a foul mood as I observed the Piggly Wiggly across the street. I let my impishness reign as I perused the signs in the window, which seemed awfully suggestive for some reason. “Breast and Roll 99 cents” sounded like a cheap version of kinky foreplay. Another declared, “Thigh Box 99 cents”—a new-fangled ritual, perhaps? Where were the whips and chains? I wondered. No deal on handcuffs today?
The owner of the station, Mike, would have been the perfect fit if someone had decided to form a contemporary version of the Beach Boys. He sauntered up to me and blurted out, “Just three months ago I was cutting meat at the Winn Dixie.” Great! I thought. A butcher had disassembled my transportation in bay number 2! Undeterred by my look of dismay, he continued proudly, “I cashed in my stocks and bonds when they tried to transfer me to Birmingham, and bought the station.” I congratulated him as he flitted off to pump gas for an elderly gentleman in a van with a faded Tom’s logo slowly disappearing from the peeling paint.
After two hours of lolling on the curb, Mike and his mechanic announced the car was fixed and ready to go. I drove away feeling hopeful but guarded—the anxiety of watching the gauge wearing me down. I was just about to relax when I reached the interstate at Montgomery and the hulk of a car overheated again. I decided I’d have to marshal all of my mental resources in order to make the best of the trip, which relegated me to the apron of the highway time after time while the car cooled down.
I sat fuming as heartily as the Jeep, deciding to make a list of the southern-style oddities I’d seen during the drive in order to keep from going insane. There was the sign at the Ebro Dog Track proclaiming “Over a Million Dollars Won Each Year.” I wondered if there shouldn’t have been fine print that read “$10 at a time.” On the outskirts of one tiny town, I had watched big-haired women flow into and out of Pretty Please Beauty Shop—a name that couldn’t have been more southern if it had tried. I declared that if I ever made it home, I’d gather all my things and move to Random Road, a dirt lane that meandered into the woods in the middle of nowhere. Wouldn’t that be the perfect address for the frustrated writer? I thought. I’d disappear into the woods and never come out. Three decades later, they’d find me dead, my little cabin filled to the brim with manuscripts that would be touted as some of the most lauded writing of all time. My oeuvre would be exalted and I’d take my place in the pantheon of literary superstars à la Ernest Hemmingway and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Ah, what a legacy that would be!
Back on the road, I made it to eighty-two in my game of counting ragged tire treads that had been flipped from careening tractor trailers before the temperature gauge started its climb to the red line once again. My anger trumping caution, I decided I was close enough to home to push the Woody past its limits. When I pulled into the driveway and parked the beast of a car, I let the evening envelope me with its lush air overrun with fireflies. I stood and watched them winking in the dark, imagining that they were celebrating my odyssey’s end. Though the day had been hellacious, I did my best to let it go and celebrate the small miracle of a sliver of peace before the next day dawned hectic and frenetic. The weather had bloomed with high humidity seemingly overnight—a sign that spring had decided it would give itself over to summer with vigor. I looked forward to tomato sandwiches and fresh vegetables from my uncle’s garden but not the storms that would roll in during the afternoons, making the lake posture like the ocean as the tumults brought their forces to bear on its surface.
The tempests would grow so menacing at times that I couldn’t pull myself from the window as I marveled at how darkly they scowled. There was one particular tree beside the condo that always seemed to have the most difficult time—the savage pushing and pulling of the wind aiming to take it to its knees. I thought about how life could certainly feel that way from time to time, especially on days as frustrating as the one I had just found myself enduring. I turned out the lights and let the images from my drive north sift through my mind. The experiences did seem so random in some respects, but wasn’t there possibly a pattern to them that would make sense in my life someday, somehow? What would it all mean as I continued to navigate the road running along the spine of my life—in vehicles dependable and not so trustworthy, and during days when the universe would buoy me along or during those when I was challenged to my very core?
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This post was a participating entry in the current Let's Blog Off skirmish. To see a host of other talented writers telling their views on the subject of defining a legacy, click here.
