Febuary 20, 2014

It was the lightning that woke me, not the thunder. Someone is taking your picture, said the dream brain. Ayla came into the room upset and went to her father. She has always gone to her father for comfort in the night. From the time she was two until the time she was four, she would wake up once every night and go to her dad, who would get up and lift her and put her back to bed. That was all she wanted. I don't remember him every getting mad. He said he knew it wouldn't last forever. He was right.

At work I was approached by an older man who appeared to be kind and harmless. Then he wanted to know my last name. Despite the fact that he could look it up--I'm a county employee--I didn't give it to him. It creeps me out that this town is so small people can recognize my car and know where I live. The man invited me to church. "You have to be careful," I told Noah this morning. "Someone can seem really nice at first and then just invite you to church."

Today is an odd day. It smells like the sea. It's warm and wet and I feel like I live in some sleepy beach town, with wind battered shutters and a stormy pier. I don't know. We are frustrated. It is a season of frustrations. All unbloggable. Our saddles are full of burrs.

Yesterday I got off work and you could tell it was going to be spring. I took a route I usually don't, one that winds through the neighborhood Noah and I cruised in May 2012, when we were visiting Brevard for the first time. I thought about myself then, looking at the rolling lawns, the unfenced yards, the untidy forest laced throughout the houses. The way I envisioned our lives here, full of Southern tropes like rocking chairs and record players. I couldn't reconcile the past me with the now me. Every year a part of me thinks that spring isn't going to return. I think that's why I nearly cry on the first day we can sense it coming. Everything seems impossible until it happens.

Winter's Tale

My neighbor took this picture

of the fantastic sky and that's

our house on the left. 

Yesterday morning after reading the news, something I never do, I started wondering if we had enough food to last us 24 hours. We did, but something about the media and everybody on Facebook saying that we are about to be hit by the new ice age, that the White Witch is descending upon the south to plunge us into a snowy hellscape from which we might never return, that WINTER IS COMING Game of Thrones style, has a way of making you question whether you've bought enough fatty foods and are your vibrator batteries going to last you through. They were telling folks to fill tubs with emergency supplies of water. I felt this was a bit inflammatory. And I knew I would go outside and eat snow before I would consume anything from a bathtub.

I asked Noah to go to the store for the second time in two days. I was concerned that the grocery store might actually shut down, something I have never witnessed in all my life, living in Denver and going to school with a foot of snow on the ground. Well the grocery store didn't shut down, but the liquor store did. It is the armageddon, I thought, and then I took my dog for a walk down a snowed in street at night. They don't have plows or technology here, so the world was still and absolutely white washed. It was snowing in a strange way, hard grains spattering the furry hood of my Yeti jacket. We went down to the field and the dog reveled in the snow like a dolphin on the waves. She danced and leapt in the field where I could see the husky remains of some harvested crop peaking up through the snow in abandoned rows. I want to call it corn, but I don't think it was. In the far distance was a hill, and high up on the hill I could see the lights of one house shining hazy through the falling snow. It felt like whoever lived in that house and I were the only people on earth.

The tiger-striped dog rocketed back and forth and bulldozed into me, body-checking me with her joy. I'm not crazy about this dog who always has such high expectations for me and destroyed my Minnetonkas. But she was in her element. The sky was that orangey pink, you know, still pregnant with snow. We were alone. It was dark but snow-bright and we weren't afraid. We turned to go home and a car came down the street. They spotted us and turned on their brights which felt accusatory somehow. I called the dog but she ran toward the car--don't worry--and the car didn't really slow down. The dog danced away. I raised my palms up to say sorry and as the car passed I saw it was the police. I thought they might give me a ticket for having a dog off a leash but they just kept driving in their ominous way, beyond us and into the night. There is no story here, just a woman and a dog saying hello to the earth before turning and heading for home.

These Things I Would Like To Confess

One: One day working the cash register at Borders, an older man came through my line with his adult daughter. They were tourists from Poland. "My husband's grandfather is from Poland!" I said in the way of a bored customer service worker trying to get through a shift. The woman translated this to her dad, and his deeply folded eyes lit up. "He asks from where in Poland?" she said with a pleasant accent. I put their books in a bag and told them I didn't know, but wanting to give them more, I went on to say that he had emigrated to the US with his family as a teenager, and they had settled in Chicago before eventually moving on to Southern California. The old Polish man was slightly hunched and intense in the way of elderly Europeans from movies--people who we are meant to understand have had a past. He asked what the family name was, and the daughter explained that he might be able to tell what region they were from by the name. "Zitny," I said, and it was at this point that I remembered that Noah's grandfather is not in fact Polish but Czech. "Did they leave before the war?" Oh shit, I thought. I am getting in deep. "Yes," I said firmly, because I had heard no family lore of Noah's family living out World War II in Europe, and I would not trade war stories with the man, even though I kind of wanted to. I waited for this dignified elder to catch me out. He only corrected my pronunciation of the word Zitny and then reached out to shake my hand, smiling. "He says you are people of the same country," she said. "Countrymen." I smiled and hoped for a forgiving God.

Two: Three nights ago I repeatedly watched the youtube video of figure skater Bryce Davison's skate catching his partner, figure skater Jessica Dube, in the face--the moment that sent her to the hospital and both of them to therapy for PTSD. I did this because I thought it was romantic.

Three: My children were excited for the first two snow days, over it by the third, frustrated by the fourth. Today they have slipped into existential despair. "Will we have to go to school on Saturday?" they ask me, and "Does life have meaning?" They are fretful that their spring break will be taken from them. "Don't worry," I told them. "I won't let them touch your spring break." We have plans for spring break and if Transylvania County Schools comes clawing with their skeleton fingers and scythe, hungry for even more of our joy, I will pack two bags of clothing and apple products. I will set out west across the plains. We will leave our rain boots behind.

(Four: Someone send help I just applied olive oil to my scalp because of something I read on Pinterest)

How I Live Now

Here you see how I looked this morning when I sat down to write a spell, like Blanche DuBois or I don't know, Laura Bush might, in my kimono top and pearls. A real southern tragedy with sloppy lipstick and no bra, liable to show up drunk at the country club and skip church on Sunday. It's embarrassing to show these pictures I have snapped of myself, embarrassing like everything I have done as of late. The more I promise myself to stay off Facebook, the more I find myself ranting on it, the more I tweet the less sense I make. My emotional and spiritual state is shabby-chic, dignified and pretty pieces falling to ruin.

Yesterday I drove to the store, pulled into the parking lot, and then drove straight home. I was supposed to be getting something for dinner, but SOMETHING FOR DINNER is a puzzle that triggers a nervous breakdown these days. I have tiny nervous breakdowns every time I go to the grocery store. Sometimes they are not tiny at all. Every time I leave that place I am a bit more decrepit than I was before.

The brain is dizzy and in its own wonderland. Last night after seeing a promo on an American snowboarder, I dreamed we had moved to Lake Tahoe. I fantasize about adding tirades against Transylvania County Schools in the acknowledgement section of my book. Thanks to Transylvania County Schools, this book was in real danger of never being finished. Thanks to TCS, I have made a mockery of myself on social media. Do you know my children had school one day last week, at this time when even eating and peeing are unwanted intrusions? I don't understand anything anybody is talking about, I cannot keep up, I cannot create structured sentences anywhere outside of the book. Don't touch me, I am in labor, get the kids out of the room. Aside from Tahoe, all my dreams are of being trapped. I use my ruby lipstick in place of red slippers, smack your lips together three times, find your way home. I wake every day with the gnawing feeling that there is something I'm supposed to be doing but I can't think what, so I make coffee and put on my pearls and sit down to edit my book.

The elusive thing I'm supposed to be doing is life and this is what editing looks like on me.


(PS: Please know that Noah has been making many dinners and doing all the cleaning, which is even more than he does already, in normal times when I'm not a crazy editing book birther) (Please know I have pizza and sushi on speed dial)

New Shirt and Editing Cocoon

I am in an editing cocoon. Which this morning means that I put on red lipstick and cried over a mass wedding at the Grammy's, but I know you don't judge me.

I have been editing this book on and off for years, but this is the final push. So for now, I can't come around these internet parts any more.

I will be back and I hope to see you then.

Here is my new shirt:

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Drop Martinis

Left to right: Noah's brother Zach, Zach's wife Susie, Noah, Noah's sister Sophie, Noah's sister Lucy, Noah's brother Carlton, Noah's sister Mercy, Mercy's husband Trey, Noah's dad Carl. No, they are not Mormon nor Catholic.

We were in her bed, I was stroking her hair, and Indy said, "I want to go back to California and live in that hotel."  "I do too," I said. "I miss the sound of the downstairs," she said. "You miss the sound of free drinks being poured, too?" I said. I shouldn't have been surprised. The thing is, Indy has always had good taste.

The above picture was taken at my father-in-law's 60th birthday celebration, the day after Christmas. He rented out a room in an Italian restuarant and we ate ourselves silly on burracotta and ham with truffle oil and limoncello fusilli and things I don't even remember now. When the picture was taken, I was exactly 1.5 lemontinis deep. The lemontinis were a point of contention among us, because the nice South American waiter recommended I try a Cosmopolitan or an Appletini. As a feminist, I feel required to order whisky straight up anytime I walk into a bar, especially after a statement like that. It is exhausting having to defy stereotypes all the time. This is just one more advantage of being born male: you don't have to defy the patriarchy every time you order a drink. The appletini recommend really was insulting, and I told him so. Then I promptly ordered a lemon drop martini. My brother-in-law laughed at me, but I told him that by not intentionally defying stereotypes, I was META defying stereotypes.

The word among the siblings was that Their Old Dad was going to make some major announcement at the Italian restaurant. Well I am here to tell you, he didn't announce anything. He said some things about baptism that I don't really understand, having given birth to pagans, and then raffled off an ipad. (I didn't win it, so it doesn't matter). "What's the announcement?" we all said after. "Announcement? What? There's no announcement," he said. It seemed true although it's possible there was supposed to be an announcement and he forgot it. He turned 60 and is definitely senile. Probably right now he is on a plane somewhere over the west pacific getting ready to release a rap album and is like shit, I forgot to tell everyone. Anyway, the sense of letdown was palpable--we were primed for announcements--and so I think I was driven to pull the above pictured move to compensate. This picture is a pretty good idea of who I was in California. My favorite thing about it is how everyone else is so over me, except for Noah.

In Brevard, I am the mom who forgot to send her kids to school. If you think this is beneath notice, you don't live in a small town. The story of how: We got home from sunny California to New Year's Eve and a heater that wasn't working. "It's 45 degrees in the house," Noah said as I came in the door wearing my chic travel clothes and smelling of paradise. "I told you not to set it so low," I told him helpfully, and went to turn it up. Only it was set to 63, and it wouldn't turn up. At first we were optimistic that it would be fixed. Our landlord came over, 9 pm on a frigid New Years Eve, and climbed into the crawlspace below our house, a place where we have seen giant hornets and portholes to hell. Our landlord is an older gentleman and also a badass. He stayed down there some time before emerging to tell us it couldn't be fixed tonight and leaving us with a space heater. See, he mistook us for fellow badasses. Here's a space heater, quit your whining, some people live in Ohio. Noah drew me a hot bath and put the heater on in the bathroom, but the water turned tepid moments after I got in it and that is when I lost touch with my best self. I stomped and stormed a bit--after chiding Noah for doing the same thing--before climbing into bed wearing four layers and my North Face parka. So comfortable, you can imagine. We all spent the night huddled in our room, the heater was fixed in the morning, and really the only real tragedy was that in my anger I wasted a glass of prosecco.

The point to all this is that I slept until noon and spent the rest of new years day drinking flat prosecco, unpacking, and recovering from hypothermia. Noah and I then tried to watch some season four of Dexter, which is the godawfulest thing I've ever seen, and went to bed late, still on pacific time. In the morning I made my merry way into work, Thursday, January 2nd, and it was there I learned from a patron that school was in session.

School had started back up. On a Thursday. One day after New Year's. Not on Monday, because that would be a normal thing to do, and nothing here is normal.

I didn't really care that the girls had missed a day of school, because they needed the day to rest, and any school district deciding to start school back up on Thursday, January 2nd, isn't really worth my time.  This is the very same district that cancelled school today when the sun was shining and the roads were dry, and that has threatened to call child protective services when my daughters missed six days of school total. Noah and I laughed and it wouldn't have mattered much, if it weren't for what happened the next day. The next day, (January 3rd), Noah was at work when a total stranger walked by him and said, "Oh, I heard your kids weren't in school yesterday!" At which point, of course, Noah quit his job, bought an Airstream on a credit card, and we cut our ties and left this small town forever, driving too fast, swilling lemon martinis, leaving all our possessions and cares behind.

Leave Your Fires Behind

Last night I lay in bed, my brain racing with a million different ways to say it all. I am a Pacific time girl in an East Coast zone. I try to sleep at ten but lay awake til one. Did it all really happen? Did we rise at 7:30 on a December Sunday and walk with our children down the street to the ocean? Did I meet Elizabeth Aquino, whose writing and person I deeply admire? Most importantly, did I really drive the 405 freeway, by myself with the windows down? The trip to California swept me into a dream, like Viola tossing in the waves after the shipwreck, a dream of blue sky and warm air and a vibrant, pulsing city. It spit me out on a gray day in Charlotte, onto a cold sidewalk waiting for the airport shuttle, where I stood more like a shrew than a heroine,  my brain unable to reconcile what had happened to me with where I was. One life from the other.

In what will surely come as a shock to none of you, I admit that I am ready to leave Brevard. With it being the New Year and all, there is the pressure to make some sort of resolution, some declaration. But as I said on twitter, I don't make resolutions, I can barely make grilled cheese. I'm not looking for an overnight determination to change, I am looking for a different sort of resolution. A way to resolve our current circumstances with where we want to be. I tuck my girls into bed at night and almost every time they tell me that they miss Colorado. It's as if my yearning has crawled out of my chest, become a visceral beast prowling the halls, clawing into their brains through the ears. They didn't used to say it so much.

A friend of mine posted a word on facebook today:

Querencia: (n) 

a place from which one's strength

is drawn, where one feels at home;

the place where you are your most

authentic self.

I am troubled by thoughts that awaken in the night. About this blog and why I can't write it. I wonder if, to write my best fiction, I need to be hidden away, not bare in the way a blog requires. I am worried about being authentic. I am worried about publishing my book. I am worried that I never will. I am worried that someone will call me "sir" again. I waver constantly between two extremes: grandiose determination, and crippling self-doubt. I lie awake at night and remember the ocean. How I stood beside it, and it felt like home. 

I Woke Up Like This

"Girls who run with the wolves aren't here for boys to love."--source

 “Within the Yoni is the origin of the worlds, the Gods and all living beings.” – Vedas

"The Galactic Center is a feminine source of energy – dark, invisible, mysterious. We have to be quiet to receive its messages, and the cosmic wisdom comes through our bodies, our hearts, our dreams, our feelings and intuition – not through our rational minds. According to Christine Page, in her book 2012 and the Galactic Center, to some ancient cultures, the Galactic Center was the womb of the Great Mother, out of which the universe was born." (source)

The day broke cold and white, every branch and blade and leaf encrusted in frost, the earth turned into a galaxy of sharply limned stars. I have worried that Wellbutrin would cut me off from this process, the deeply feminine cycle of hibernation culminating in insight, but today it does not seem so. I am integrating, a woman's work, taking disparate pieces of the being and putting them together to make a whole. An imperfect but complete whole. A bunch of mumbo jumbo, some would say, to which I would give my new refrain, I don't care if you fucking like it. The solstice is a symbol for those of us who are inextricably linked to the seasons, who rise and fall with them, sighing like the sea. When it arrives I will be on a plane bound west across the country, one coast to another, soaring straight into the light. I dreamt of a narwhal and heaving crusts of ice, swaying on a blackened ocean. It's symbolic, she said when she washed three years worth of my hair. It's a new beginning. The filaments of me did not resist the cutting. The frost was on the grain but the day ended in a sherbet sunset, early, carnival colored, promising the things to come. 

In the Moment, Unedited, For What It's Worth

Someday, I am going to

order every book from my amazon wish list
and read them.
Own a vacuum cleaner that works.
Organize four years worth of my daughters' school papers and
nine years of their artwork.
Attend every meeting at the school and then
pull my children out of the public system
teach them about Hindus and Wagner and
how to survive 9 days in the wild.

Someday I will go to every social outing I say I will
Follow through on my offers to volunteer
cutting snowflakes for second graders and
baking snacks for the Girl Scouts and
spending quiet hours repairing brittle old books.
Cook wholesome meals and never get
tired or
lean against the counter rubbing my temples or
retire to the bathroom for twenty minutes while the water boils over
and the children fight
and the windows steam with all the tension
of a busy house
on a December night.

Someday I will paint this old Victrola that I bought
for 45 bucks at a yard sale
that worked at the time but broke
when I moved my children across the country--

--away from their cousins and snow and grandparents
away from white Christmases and smoked oysters and
the shadows of the clouds on the face of Long's Peak.

Someday I will gather
everything that is broken or disorderly or
wounded
and resurrect it.
Learn how to put new paint on old scars
and make the best!

--But this isn't true.
The artwork will mold in the outdoor shed
and the Victrola will sit in the corner
gathering dust, its ribs
remembering the sound
of old music.

And when I am old
if the longings of the Victrola
wake me at night
from a dream of Long's Peak,
I will sigh my heavy body and remind it
it has done what it could.

Sometimes I Write and Sometimes I Just

My sister and I, two years ago. The Nie Nie to my Cjane. Right?

Last night was the Oskar Blues holiday party. It was at an indoor rec center. There was a Christmas tree made of lettuce and shrimp and it smelled just like you'd expect. I drank less than two full beers and that was enough to encourage me to play ping pong and air hockey and even Dance Dance Revolution, but not dodge ball. Two enormous televisions were given away, but neither one to us, so who cares? When we left it was mild like Colorado May. "I can't drive," I told Noah. "I know," he said. "I saw you go for that second beer and stopped drinking."

Today just as I woke up and was deciding whether to cry or puke, I got a text from another OB wife. ("Do any women work at Oskar Blues?" someone asked me once. "One," was my reply). It said, "Ouch". I agreed and laughed and started to cry.

(Noah actively seeks out female applicants for brewing jobs, but so far none have worked out, due to availability and distance. Of course, the tasting room is staffed and managed mostly by women but I'm not sure that helps?)

Today I drove Noah to work under pouring rain from a sunny sky. "Why is it doing this to us?" I moaned, knowing that in Colorado it is frigid and snowy. "Because a long long time ago, someone in Brevard did something very, very bad," he said.

It rains and rains and rains. In 16 days we leave for California. I can't wait to get the hell out of here.