There's No Town Called Big Sur, continued
Watching the sun set into the ocean can only happen on a cliff like this, high above the end of everything, in a place like this, along together and at peace with our traveling. We've been waiting for this for so long I don't know what it is anymore. A bright red Japanese-flag sun dips lower, towards the elusive horizon, wrapping itself in the tall grasses, blackening them with its shadow. The haze of California (though we are hours from Los Angeles, so it's all natural fog) makes the whole sky look like the aftermath of an explosion, which I guess is what the sun really is, after all.
He pulls out his camera, the orange and brown strap betraying its age and generation, decades before us. Every time I dig back into my memory for a classic moment to retell, the camera is there; do I remember because of the idea that I should be snapping a shutter on the night, too? Or simply because a photograph exists, a tangible reminder that illuminates the other sensory details more clearly than the average time-from-the-past? The sun still burned as red as a flame, wherever that recollection was born. We tried to lift our bare feet, protruding from the end of the unzipped sleeping bag, into the frame, to capture our presence at this sunset, our participation in this memory, but he couldn't back far enough away. So the photograph couldn't be manipulated to reveal the whole truth.
Other things the photograph forgot: my feet were cold, and I was surprised. The purple-bruised feeling of cold toes had already begun to fade in my seven-months in California-summer mind. My sleeping bag, the one pulled over us like a blanket, smelled like dust, from the gale-force windy night we spent in a tiny, blue tent, on his one-square-mile island three weeks ago. The right side of my neck was beginning to ache, from leaning against his flat, hard chest and twisting towards the disappearing sun. I loved him, and still do, but that never shows in photographs, even when our feet make it into the print.
We timed it, counting in Mississippis until the entire sphere had sunk below the ocean's arbitrary line against the sky, but here's another thing no one told me about California: you can still see the sun through the ocean. I sat up then, startled, actively bewildered at the bizarrely obvious realization. I can see through water, and the sun setting is actually the Earth rotating away from it. The sun isn't giving up on us, on California, on the ocean or land, on me, and she waits beneath the surface. A glimmering reflection, the explosion in a watery mirror, remained, promising me she'd be back in eight hours, and my mouth hung upon at the sense of it all. Everything made sense. We had driven all the way out here and all the way across the country and all the way to the Big Sur, a place that doesn't really exists to learn that the sun never really disappears and to tell everyone else about it.
He laughed, at my expression, and because he was taken aback as well. "Wherever we make it to this weekend, that's what we tell people." He made me promise. "Tell them we drove to Big Sur to see the sunset."
Monday, March 31, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
There's No Town Called Big Sur
He pulled the car over near a blue highway sign because this was the kind of drive where we would follow tourist arrows and random urges for a croissant. We we listening to "Missed the Boat" by Modest Mouse and I was thinking we had discovered the perfect setting for that track: late California afternoon, highway, sun sliding toward the ocean, road trip, no plans. I had never seen an elephant seal. They live in places that are called "rookeries", which I found adorable and funny, so we followed the sign to a parking lot and looked down over a chain link fence to see a couple of sea mammals. At first, I could barely pick them out against the sand, their already sun-brown bodies matted with the dirt they slap on their back to keep cool. Elephant seals can get sunburned. A young one, which Kevin said was probably an adolescent, moved and then I could see them all, like road bumps on the beach for miles. I watched my first seal dance himself across the sand, a frustrated, messy movement that resembled a series of bellyflops. Elephant seals only have the elephant trunk-like noses when they are in heat--and only the males get the magnificent phallic facial development--so I didn't see any of those, because this was the time mothers had just given birth. They snored in the lowering golden sun and did their exhausting bellyflop dating and sometimes climbed right over a sleeping comrade but somehow maintained an air of grace. In the only photo of me there (with no elephant seals in the background), I am pointing to the beach below, laughing.
I was riding cross-legged in the passenger seat, barefoot, absorbing the new Feist album, reluctant to admit how much "Sea Lion Woman" was growing on me. He drove, because he had seen this highway a few weeks ago, and I never had. It's not the kind of road where you can enjoy the view while you drive; the sharp curves lined on both sides by life-threatening rocky plummets and the inevitable California rental car--the Ford Mustang convertible, usually red or yellow--doing 70 in the oncoming lane.
The feeling that we had reached the end of the world, at this moment, on this evening, and together. We had been traveling for almost four years and we'd finally gotten to Route 1, the Pacific Coast Highway along the edge of California. It was September and we were driving on a cliff at the edge of the world and we didn't know where we'd sleep that night. The road wound like a snapped rubber band, perched on a steep red rock outcropping, a hill of rubble leading to the heat-glimmering sand and to the painfully bright ocean.
About an hour later, he found a little pullout shoulder of sand, surrounded by tall, waving silhouettes of sea grass, backed in and popped the hatchback. I slipped on my green flip-flops and pulled myself out of the car, surprised by the new chill in the air up here, above the ocean. He left the song playing and we climbed into the back, a spread sleeping bag beneath us and one to keep our bare knees warm while we watched the sun set right into the water.
to be continued...
He pulled the car over near a blue highway sign because this was the kind of drive where we would follow tourist arrows and random urges for a croissant. We we listening to "Missed the Boat" by Modest Mouse and I was thinking we had discovered the perfect setting for that track: late California afternoon, highway, sun sliding toward the ocean, road trip, no plans. I had never seen an elephant seal. They live in places that are called "rookeries", which I found adorable and funny, so we followed the sign to a parking lot and looked down over a chain link fence to see a couple of sea mammals. At first, I could barely pick them out against the sand, their already sun-brown bodies matted with the dirt they slap on their back to keep cool. Elephant seals can get sunburned. A young one, which Kevin said was probably an adolescent, moved and then I could see them all, like road bumps on the beach for miles. I watched my first seal dance himself across the sand, a frustrated, messy movement that resembled a series of bellyflops. Elephant seals only have the elephant trunk-like noses when they are in heat--and only the males get the magnificent phallic facial development--so I didn't see any of those, because this was the time mothers had just given birth. They snored in the lowering golden sun and did their exhausting bellyflop dating and sometimes climbed right over a sleeping comrade but somehow maintained an air of grace. In the only photo of me there (with no elephant seals in the background), I am pointing to the beach below, laughing.
I was riding cross-legged in the passenger seat, barefoot, absorbing the new Feist album, reluctant to admit how much "Sea Lion Woman" was growing on me. He drove, because he had seen this highway a few weeks ago, and I never had. It's not the kind of road where you can enjoy the view while you drive; the sharp curves lined on both sides by life-threatening rocky plummets and the inevitable California rental car--the Ford Mustang convertible, usually red or yellow--doing 70 in the oncoming lane.
The feeling that we had reached the end of the world, at this moment, on this evening, and together. We had been traveling for almost four years and we'd finally gotten to Route 1, the Pacific Coast Highway along the edge of California. It was September and we were driving on a cliff at the edge of the world and we didn't know where we'd sleep that night. The road wound like a snapped rubber band, perched on a steep red rock outcropping, a hill of rubble leading to the heat-glimmering sand and to the painfully bright ocean.
About an hour later, he found a little pullout shoulder of sand, surrounded by tall, waving silhouettes of sea grass, backed in and popped the hatchback. I slipped on my green flip-flops and pulled myself out of the car, surprised by the new chill in the air up here, above the ocean. He left the song playing and we climbed into the back, a spread sleeping bag beneath us and one to keep our bare knees warm while we watched the sun set right into the water.
to be continued...
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Wish List, continued
- Homesteader abilities in a vaulted-ceiling house. Stretching homemade mozzarella, white and rubber0band tough, pulling tart strands into loping braids. The pungent scent of fermenting yeast and leafy hops from a glass vat in the basement; stirring powdered alchemy with a giant spoon into ales and hefeweizens.
- A large wooden sewing table, a brass foot pedal and a hidden machine, folding up out of the oak panel and centuries past. The rhythmic connection between tapping foot and needle, both dancing up and down into delicate white scars across a landscape of gingham, jersey, denim, cotton.
- Non-leather bound, complete set of Encyclopedia Britannica.
- Endless cycle of new shoes, especially kitten heels, pull-on boots, wrap-around canvas sandals, peep toes, and the ability to walk flawlessly in all of them.
- Room enough for all those shoes.
- The Elements of Style by Strunk & White, foolishly discarded back to the college bookstore, the semester I switched from a Journalism major to Creative Writing.
- A coffee shop with one exposed brick wall, full of cycling local art--black and white photographs, mixed-media collages--where they know my name and that my favorite drink is a chai latte. A wide, sidewalk-facing window lined with bar stool, where I will watch the foot traffic, local characters in flannel, cowboy boots, chiffon dresses or Amish, strolling down the sunny small-town Main Street whenever I need a distraction from the notebook in front of me.
- Any kind of boat, preferably a fast one. It sounds terribly pretentious, but I cannot resist any creation that may move me closer to the shifting, time-fluid water, that would allow me to float out across the waves, into oblivion.
- Sepia-toned, standing globe, balanced on polished mahogany haunches. Country names in thin gold filigree, tiny papier-mache mountains for my fingers to trace in Siberia, Nepal, Colorado, Chile.
- Endless frequent flyer miles, for the places I must see again (the Grand Canyon, Rome), the places I want to show him (the Eiffel Tower, Venetian canals, Monet's gardens at Giverny) and the multitude of places I fear I will never have the time to see even once (Costa Rican jungles, Amsterdam and Holland tulips, the beach cliffs of the Peruvian Andes, Great Pyramids, Irish pubs, Vancouver winters, Mexican honeymoon sunsets)...
- A clothesline in a wide, rolling green backyard.
- Just a rope, hanging a single tire, from a single tree, in my own front yard.
- A simpler time.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Wish List (a new essay)
- Dirt that exists for my hands to sink into. Cool & pebbled, birthing sunset tomatoes and prickly cucumbers. I would never wear dusty olive canvas gloves in exchange for the sense of touch. I will go barefoot and carry lines of dirt in the cuticles of my toenails. I will learn what it means to sweat.
- A dark tan, short-waisted trench coat with lots of brass buckles, zippers.
- Fireplace, stone or brick, that holds real logs, burns licking, snapping flames. We will chop our own firewood, heaving the cold axe like a pendulum, the silver blade whistling past my ear. The cold air cracks with a splinter, bits of wood flying into my red flannel shirt. My pulsing heart, my heavy breath visible in November air.
- The lightest, most unobtrusive laptop computer ever made, so that I may carry it on my palms to the top of a hill I can call my property to survey the land the only way I know how.
- Only organic linens--cotton or bamboo sheets and towels, soft and unassuming in sage, mint, sea mist green or ivory. Neutral. Safe for his skin.
- All four seasons to their extreme. Mountains covered with winter snow, penetrating ice; blustery autumn explosion leaves, crisp apples and cracking pumpkins; dewdrop-wet shining grass, pastel tulips, purple croci, birds and blooming spring with a front porch; sweaty, sandy wave-crashing summers of sea, kelp and conch shells. Montana winter, New Hampshire autumn, New York spring and California summer. Four hourses.
- Real pearls, long, looping strands of iridescent pink and white oyster babies.
- A claw-fotted bathtub, big enough for a family, in the middle of a grey marble bathroom, with antique gold faucets, surrounded by water-smoother river stones.
- A jungle zipline tour--to speed like a blur of light through electric green tropical canopies and feel leaves almost whipping against my bare legs, almost.
- To always live near water that moves. To continue the spiritual path of Naticook Lake, Cayuga Lake, Hyalite Resevoir, and the Pacific Ocean.
- A room full of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, full. A ladder on castors and a giant chair.
- An enormous white wooden desk, in a room with hardwood floors and a heathered blue rug, set in front of a wall of French doors. The view of the water, always windy, blue- and white-striped umbrellas, old driftwood paths to walk when I cannot sit at the desk any longer.
- Knowledge of the night sky. To know in my bones and speak out loud words like cassiopeia, ursa major, sagittarius, orion.
- The ability to create a rainstorm, to orchestrate the volume and timbre of thunder, and the hue of grey in the sky. Escaping into enormous thunderstorms that last all day, a stack of books and a warm mug. Wishes for water, bathrub, library, fireplace are all born of this unending thirst for a long-lasting rain.
to be continued...
Monday, March 24, 2008
Observations at Stewart Park, Saturday 3/22
Seagulls swarm the shore, swooping down from the surreal, cloudless sky at the sight of a plastic bag full of broken bread. The wind today is cold but not biting, the sun warming either it or me. I watch the old man in a grey coat scatter the bread. Cayuga Lake looks almost as an ocean today, the wind coaxing small whitecaps out of the waves. My hands jammed deep into my fleece-lined pockets remind me that speing comes slowly, and it's early yet.
Lately, I've been missing California. It's not the weather I miss, exactly, but the atmosphere. Winds blow differently. Water, I think, means something else. but days like today, when the crystals of winter ice are splintering in the background like a thousand falling bells, but I can crack the car window and wear only a hoodie and let in the possibility of bare feet and wet grass, I remember why I came back to the Northeast.
Spring here is a real celebration, a full-blown breaking open of the chest cavity into song. Our beaches here in the middle of New York'd treed hills don't have sand, but those tiny crashes are wave enough for me. It is only because I have lived through the heavy grey of winter's veil, and in fact loved the snow falling and packed into lawn-shaped squares like a new white earth on which to tread, that I am rewarded with the screm-out-loud joy of my chapped fingertips in the first out-the-car-window air. Here, the first thing water means is an icy windsheild and a driveay to shovel, but we still love the lake in spring.
Seagulls swarm the shore, swooping down from the surreal, cloudless sky at the sight of a plastic bag full of broken bread. The wind today is cold but not biting, the sun warming either it or me. I watch the old man in a grey coat scatter the bread. Cayuga Lake looks almost as an ocean today, the wind coaxing small whitecaps out of the waves. My hands jammed deep into my fleece-lined pockets remind me that speing comes slowly, and it's early yet.
Lately, I've been missing California. It's not the weather I miss, exactly, but the atmosphere. Winds blow differently. Water, I think, means something else. but days like today, when the crystals of winter ice are splintering in the background like a thousand falling bells, but I can crack the car window and wear only a hoodie and let in the possibility of bare feet and wet grass, I remember why I came back to the Northeast.
Spring here is a real celebration, a full-blown breaking open of the chest cavity into song. Our beaches here in the middle of New York'd treed hills don't have sand, but those tiny crashes are wave enough for me. It is only because I have lived through the heavy grey of winter's veil, and in fact loved the snow falling and packed into lawn-shaped squares like a new white earth on which to tread, that I am rewarded with the screm-out-loud joy of my chapped fingertips in the first out-the-car-window air. Here, the first thing water means is an icy windsheild and a driveay to shovel, but we still love the lake in spring.
Friday, March 21, 2008
More forays into the experiments of form -- nonfiction needs some new form words, I think. Poetry is allowed to call anything poetry, but nonfiction is all about the essay. I don't think this thing here is a poem, but an essay? Well, maybe. Maybe an essay is whatever I want it to be and that is more freeing.
I wrote this a little while ago. I really like it, but I don't know if this is the right form for these bits and pieces. I created the "Top Five" approach because Kevin & I play this game where we give each other a category and have to choose our top five (female singers, breakfast foods, articles of clothing, etc.) We actually did this once, and these were our answers. Then I elaborated on what actually took place, to make it more interesting for you all...
Top Five Favorite Dates*
*Date is loosely define as any sequence of hours spent alone together, whether formally arranged or happenstance, during which, kissing, holding of hands or a general sense of romance may have occurred.
His
1. As a Christmas present, you took me for one night to a rustic cabin at Elkhorn Hot Springs (which has since been shut down for fire code violations). We soaked in the outdoor pool and used the indoor sauna made of slick wood; we played trivial pursuit in our cabin which was sagging under the weight of so much snow. The wood stove kept filling the room up with smoke. We made mac and cheese and vegetarian hot dogs. You were sick in the middle of the cold night; we still don’t know if it was the smoke or the hot dogs but you haven’t eaten them since.
2. You came to Montana to see me for spring break, when we were still new. I had been in school there for two months; I had been waiting to see you stand by the mountains. We walked to the Co-op in the snowy streets to buy premade take-out. In my dorm room we spread the comforter on the tile floor and watched “Wonder Boys” while we ate broccoli cheddar soup and couscous salad, then made love there on the floor.
3. I had only been to Lava Lake in the winter, when it was an ice sheet I could walk right onto, so I took you back in the summer. We hiked through a meadow and over a wooden bridge where we felt the spray. When we got there, I raced ahead with the camera, to take a picture of your face the first time you saw it. But I was awestruck and forgot. We sat for hours on the rock and wet our feet; when I saw a chipmunk, I turned too quickly and dropped my lens cap into the rocks, so a part of that day remains.
4. See #3, hers.
5. You were taking a nap when I asked if I could join you. You said my eyes looked like sunflowers and it gave me the courage to kiss you, for the first time.
Hers
1. I drove from NH to NY to see you on New Year’s Eve, the first one we would spend together, in the middle of a year during which we barely saw each other at all. I was dressed up for you and you took me to the Autumn Café where we shared carrot ginger soup and enchiladas. Full of cooks with dreadlocks and patched pants, I felt so warm and at home.
2. See #2, his.
3. We had weeks of winter break together and spent it all in upstate NY, finally ending up in Ithaca, in my third floor apartment. We went to Moosewood, and you were embarrassed because I buttoned one you missed in your fly in public. After we saw “A Very Long Engagement” with subtitles, at the independent movie theatre, we walked home. There was snow on the ground and it started snowing again, and the Christmas lights were still up all over town.
4. In the middle of a sticky July, when we lived together in Montana even though it had been less than a year, you came home from chemistry lab and pulled me out the door and drove me around Ted Turner’s ranch to the crumbling wooden building we call the shack. And we just stood beneath it, pretending it could be our house, and saw the buffalo in the distance.
5. We had been lying on my bed for hours and you said “I don’t know what to do. Because I like you but I’m leaving. And I don’t know whether I should kiss you or run out that door.” But then you did kiss me, for the very first time.
I wrote this a little while ago. I really like it, but I don't know if this is the right form for these bits and pieces. I created the "Top Five" approach because Kevin & I play this game where we give each other a category and have to choose our top five (female singers, breakfast foods, articles of clothing, etc.) We actually did this once, and these were our answers. Then I elaborated on what actually took place, to make it more interesting for you all...
Top Five Favorite Dates*
*Date is loosely define as any sequence of hours spent alone together, whether formally arranged or happenstance, during which, kissing, holding of hands or a general sense of romance may have occurred.
His
1. As a Christmas present, you took me for one night to a rustic cabin at Elkhorn Hot Springs (which has since been shut down for fire code violations). We soaked in the outdoor pool and used the indoor sauna made of slick wood; we played trivial pursuit in our cabin which was sagging under the weight of so much snow. The wood stove kept filling the room up with smoke. We made mac and cheese and vegetarian hot dogs. You were sick in the middle of the cold night; we still don’t know if it was the smoke or the hot dogs but you haven’t eaten them since.
2. You came to Montana to see me for spring break, when we were still new. I had been in school there for two months; I had been waiting to see you stand by the mountains. We walked to the Co-op in the snowy streets to buy premade take-out. In my dorm room we spread the comforter on the tile floor and watched “Wonder Boys” while we ate broccoli cheddar soup and couscous salad, then made love there on the floor.
3. I had only been to Lava Lake in the winter, when it was an ice sheet I could walk right onto, so I took you back in the summer. We hiked through a meadow and over a wooden bridge where we felt the spray. When we got there, I raced ahead with the camera, to take a picture of your face the first time you saw it. But I was awestruck and forgot. We sat for hours on the rock and wet our feet; when I saw a chipmunk, I turned too quickly and dropped my lens cap into the rocks, so a part of that day remains.
4. See #3, hers.
5. You were taking a nap when I asked if I could join you. You said my eyes looked like sunflowers and it gave me the courage to kiss you, for the first time.
Hers
1. I drove from NH to NY to see you on New Year’s Eve, the first one we would spend together, in the middle of a year during which we barely saw each other at all. I was dressed up for you and you took me to the Autumn Café where we shared carrot ginger soup and enchiladas. Full of cooks with dreadlocks and patched pants, I felt so warm and at home.
2. See #2, his.
3. We had weeks of winter break together and spent it all in upstate NY, finally ending up in Ithaca, in my third floor apartment. We went to Moosewood, and you were embarrassed because I buttoned one you missed in your fly in public. After we saw “A Very Long Engagement” with subtitles, at the independent movie theatre, we walked home. There was snow on the ground and it started snowing again, and the Christmas lights were still up all over town.
4. In the middle of a sticky July, when we lived together in Montana even though it had been less than a year, you came home from chemistry lab and pulled me out the door and drove me around Ted Turner’s ranch to the crumbling wooden building we call the shack. And we just stood beneath it, pretending it could be our house, and saw the buffalo in the distance.
5. We had been lying on my bed for hours and you said “I don’t know what to do. Because I like you but I’m leaving. And I don’t know whether I should kiss you or run out that door.” But then you did kiss me, for the very first time.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
7:30 AM: I deboard in Los Angeles International Airport, feeling again like a child, my loose brown pants billowing as I walk the endless hallways of airline travel, following the rush of people to the nearest monitor, gate, coffeestand, magazine rack, following without understanding. I find a map and a gate number and a route to take, stop at a television to see the results of last night's NCAA game. Ohio State lost, and my dad had them picked to win it all, so I call to console him. My head is reeling, and I desperately need food and caffeine.
8:00 AM: After eating a croissant, with a "Venti" paper cup of coffee in my hand, my shoulders aching to loose this backpack, I discover a singular miracle of LAX: a tiny, cement outdoor patio. Fresh air in an airport. The greatest of paradox, the reason I so despise air travel. I push through the glass doors and breathe deeply the humid, smoky morning air of a coastal metropolis. I crouch in a corner and peel the lid off my steaming coffee, still too hot to drink. There are smokers and cell phone chatters and the patio is crowded with people in suits who know where they're headed for the day, but all I want is to stand on my concrete bench and peer over the wall, over the barbed wire fence, over the tarmack and into the mountains I know are out there in the smog. After a few minutes, the smoke makes me crave the cigarettes I gave up years ago, so I retreat inside to bunk out at my next gate.
8:30 AM: Kevin calls, Kevin calls! He can't wait either, and I board the plane feeling exhausted and euphoric.
9:00 AM: I've never been on such a short flight, such a little hop, but it was worth the extra money, extra ticket, to get there faster and without a rental car. I've never been to California. I've never moved like this before. The impulses he arouses are unexplainable. The plane bends sharply to the left, like a downhill highway curve and we are over the mountains, directly over the mountains. They are all I can see. I realize, though I grew up among mountains, though I now live at the foot of the famously omnipresent Rockies, I have never seen mountains from above. Although its still March, these tops are green, draped in summer green, like a photograph of the ocean with shadows where the sunlight should be. Deep, penetrating waves of ancient rock stretched for miles, shrouding themselves for me in the distance, waiting for my arrival, welcoming me with the sheer terror of their mass, the realization of metal that could so easily curve around these boulders. I'm waiting to land, and tears come into my eyes and I whisper "thank you" to the pilot, for bringing me here this way.
8:00 AM: After eating a croissant, with a "Venti" paper cup of coffee in my hand, my shoulders aching to loose this backpack, I discover a singular miracle of LAX: a tiny, cement outdoor patio. Fresh air in an airport. The greatest of paradox, the reason I so despise air travel. I push through the glass doors and breathe deeply the humid, smoky morning air of a coastal metropolis. I crouch in a corner and peel the lid off my steaming coffee, still too hot to drink. There are smokers and cell phone chatters and the patio is crowded with people in suits who know where they're headed for the day, but all I want is to stand on my concrete bench and peer over the wall, over the barbed wire fence, over the tarmack and into the mountains I know are out there in the smog. After a few minutes, the smoke makes me crave the cigarettes I gave up years ago, so I retreat inside to bunk out at my next gate.
8:30 AM: Kevin calls, Kevin calls! He can't wait either, and I board the plane feeling exhausted and euphoric.
9:00 AM: I've never been on such a short flight, such a little hop, but it was worth the extra money, extra ticket, to get there faster and without a rental car. I've never been to California. I've never moved like this before. The impulses he arouses are unexplainable. The plane bends sharply to the left, like a downhill highway curve and we are over the mountains, directly over the mountains. They are all I can see. I realize, though I grew up among mountains, though I now live at the foot of the famously omnipresent Rockies, I have never seen mountains from above. Although its still March, these tops are green, draped in summer green, like a photograph of the ocean with shadows where the sunlight should be. Deep, penetrating waves of ancient rock stretched for miles, shrouding themselves for me in the distance, waiting for my arrival, welcoming me with the sheer terror of their mass, the realization of metal that could so easily curve around these boulders. I'm waiting to land, and tears come into my eyes and I whisper "thank you" to the pilot, for bringing me here this way.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
To, part one, continued
12:30 AM: I arrive in Salt Lake City on the highway after midnight, sliding around curves of streaking red brake lights, surprisingly not alone on the exit ramp for the airport. My small hatchback pulls into a parking spot nearest a shuttle stop as I could find, then settle in for the night.
12:45 AM: Surprisingly, the driver's seat laid flat is a comfortable bed. I pull my thin corduroy jacket around my shoulders, close my eyes to the street lamp overhead and try to sleep. After dozing on and off for about an hour, I notice the one flaw in my plan--northern Utah gets cold in the middle of the night.
2:00 AM: I wait, shivering, wearing my backpack, for the airport shuttle.
2:30 AM: Find a row of empty waiting chairs and curl my legs against the metal armrest, try again to sleep.
4:30 AM: Too afraid of falling asleep and missing the calls for my flight, and incredibly uncomfortable, I give up trying to sleep, and begin to wander the halls and explore the silent, sleepy crevices of Salt Lake City International Airport, casually looking for my gate.
5:00 AM: I am sitting in the most comfortable red leather armchair I've ever felt, my heavy head lolling backwards as I stare at the TV monitor announcing Departure gates. Only an hour left until my flight is to leave, and no gate has yet been posted.
5:15 AM: Too compulsive to wait any longer, I return to the hallway I previously identified as the United Airlines arena, to troll the gates for the flight to Los Angeles.
6:20 AM: I am finally on board an aircraft. Slumping against my window, I close my eyes and feel the familiar fluttering in the pit of my stomach. I smile, remembering countless flights to the mountains of Montana, and hours pacing in the airports of central New York, waiting, waiting, waiting for the last painful, stretching hour. This time, it has only been two weeks but we are beginning again. I've never been to California.
to be continued...
12:30 AM: I arrive in Salt Lake City on the highway after midnight, sliding around curves of streaking red brake lights, surprisingly not alone on the exit ramp for the airport. My small hatchback pulls into a parking spot nearest a shuttle stop as I could find, then settle in for the night.
12:45 AM: Surprisingly, the driver's seat laid flat is a comfortable bed. I pull my thin corduroy jacket around my shoulders, close my eyes to the street lamp overhead and try to sleep. After dozing on and off for about an hour, I notice the one flaw in my plan--northern Utah gets cold in the middle of the night.
2:00 AM: I wait, shivering, wearing my backpack, for the airport shuttle.
2:30 AM: Find a row of empty waiting chairs and curl my legs against the metal armrest, try again to sleep.
4:30 AM: Too afraid of falling asleep and missing the calls for my flight, and incredibly uncomfortable, I give up trying to sleep, and begin to wander the halls and explore the silent, sleepy crevices of Salt Lake City International Airport, casually looking for my gate.
5:00 AM: I am sitting in the most comfortable red leather armchair I've ever felt, my heavy head lolling backwards as I stare at the TV monitor announcing Departure gates. Only an hour left until my flight is to leave, and no gate has yet been posted.
5:15 AM: Too compulsive to wait any longer, I return to the hallway I previously identified as the United Airlines arena, to troll the gates for the flight to Los Angeles.
6:20 AM: I am finally on board an aircraft. Slumping against my window, I close my eyes and feel the familiar fluttering in the pit of my stomach. I smile, remembering countless flights to the mountains of Montana, and hours pacing in the airports of central New York, waiting, waiting, waiting for the last painful, stretching hour. This time, it has only been two weeks but we are beginning again. I've never been to California.
to be continued...
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
To, part one
Bozeman, Montana to Salt Lake City, Utah to Ventura, California
6:00 PM: Get in my 1983 Toyota Camry in the driveway of our house at the foot of the mountains, with just a backpack full of California clothes--skirts and tank tops and sandals, and one nice interview outfit.
6:15 PM: Stop for coffee at the drive-thru espresso shack in Gallatin Gateway. Drive through the winding roads of Gallatin Canyon, where I first learned Montana and you, where I first saw a buffalo, and where I jumped off a rock into the river and floated to shore.
7:30 PM: Just outside of National Park, I pulled into the usual gas station for another cup of coffee. I'm about to enter the Targhee National Forest of Idaho, with its sharp hills and logging trucks. The sun's last light disappears behind the pine trees and I will be in dark for the remainder of the drive.
to be continued...
Bozeman, Montana to Salt Lake City, Utah to Ventura, California
6:00 PM: Get in my 1983 Toyota Camry in the driveway of our house at the foot of the mountains, with just a backpack full of California clothes--skirts and tank tops and sandals, and one nice interview outfit.
6:15 PM: Stop for coffee at the drive-thru espresso shack in Gallatin Gateway. Drive through the winding roads of Gallatin Canyon, where I first learned Montana and you, where I first saw a buffalo, and where I jumped off a rock into the river and floated to shore.
7:30 PM: Just outside of National Park, I pulled into the usual gas station for another cup of coffee. I'm about to enter the Targhee National Forest of Idaho, with its sharp hills and logging trucks. The sun's last light disappears behind the pine trees and I will be in dark for the remainder of the drive.
to be continued...
Monday, March 17, 2008
I've been thinking a lot about creative nonfiction "theory" (theory in quotation marks, because by that I mean MY theories of CNF and nothing official). In the process of trying to read as much work as possible by potential professors of mine (if I get into their schools for the MFA I so desperately want) I've been reading a lot of very experimental nonfiction, including a wonderful book for people who think poetry and nonfiction are really different things City: An Essay by Brian Lennon (Penn State)!
It seems to me that there is a pendulum that swings in most art forms between very strict, traditional straightforward work and completely experimental, and reading another fantastic collection The Next American Essay ed. John D'Agata has demonstrated a range of work on the experimental side of the pendulum. More importantly, it revealed to me something I really needed to learn: while I appreciate the talent required to produce a very poetic, experimental work, it's not my thing. My two favorite essays in the book were by Annie Dillard and Joan Didion--wonderfully poetic, artistic nonfiction writers, but ones who focus more on traditional forms and poetic language than poetic form in the essay. I've struggled for most of my career to balance my desire for poetic language with my need to explain and extrapolate in a scientific voice periodically, as well as my love for the form of the essay. Basically, it was nice to discover I can think about the choices available to me as a writer, appreciate all the possibilities and still stay true to my own voice and style.
Anyway, all that being said, I do enjoy playing with poetic language and essay format, and one of my favorite choices lately has been to write really brief nonfiction pieces that read more like poetry. It hasn't occurred to me until recently to start pulling those pieces together into an essay, so I'm going to start. I'm beginning work on an essay comprised of brief scenes that detail my trips to see Kevin when we were in a long-distance relationship. I'm going to start with the smallest details--what I wore, what I packed, how I got there--no major scenes about the arrival or departure or seeing him. Just the details.
So, I will begin that later today. Just wanted to get some thoughts down...
It seems to me that there is a pendulum that swings in most art forms between very strict, traditional straightforward work and completely experimental, and reading another fantastic collection The Next American Essay ed. John D'Agata has demonstrated a range of work on the experimental side of the pendulum. More importantly, it revealed to me something I really needed to learn: while I appreciate the talent required to produce a very poetic, experimental work, it's not my thing. My two favorite essays in the book were by Annie Dillard and Joan Didion--wonderfully poetic, artistic nonfiction writers, but ones who focus more on traditional forms and poetic language than poetic form in the essay. I've struggled for most of my career to balance my desire for poetic language with my need to explain and extrapolate in a scientific voice periodically, as well as my love for the form of the essay. Basically, it was nice to discover I can think about the choices available to me as a writer, appreciate all the possibilities and still stay true to my own voice and style.
Anyway, all that being said, I do enjoy playing with poetic language and essay format, and one of my favorite choices lately has been to write really brief nonfiction pieces that read more like poetry. It hasn't occurred to me until recently to start pulling those pieces together into an essay, so I'm going to start. I'm beginning work on an essay comprised of brief scenes that detail my trips to see Kevin when we were in a long-distance relationship. I'm going to start with the smallest details--what I wore, what I packed, how I got there--no major scenes about the arrival or departure or seeing him. Just the details.
So, I will begin that later today. Just wanted to get some thoughts down...
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Light Off, part three
The village of Bechem seems smaller than the campus of the training college is contains--we walk the length and back easily in two hours, stopping along the way to greet people my mother knows. We pass the small cart selling scratch-cards with a code that buys cell phone minutes, its glaring red and yellow sign, the line of eager college students that snakes around it; side-streets off the main road packed with small houses, wooden beams and mud, tin roofs. Large white van taxis speed past, with one passenger leaning out the window yelling "Kumasi, Kumasi, Kumasi"--its destination--so that any would-be travelers can flag it down with its making any formal stops.
Children in green and yellow polyester uniforms play soccer at recess, or crowd towards the gates to point at us and shout "O Bruni!" (Hey White Lady). I feel both embarressed and special, wanting to rush over and high-five them all, let them touch my skin, and tell me what they're learning, then flush with anger at myself for thinking myself so important, so anthropological. I am not a researcher, I am a visitor. A tourist-scientist. The only way I can approach this place is detached, analytical, and I know that by doing that I am missing out on those all-importnat casual kitchen-table conversations that make Scott Carrier's work so compelling, the sound bites that get you into National Geographic.
For today, I am content to take a walk with my mother and chat with her. She has stories about nearly every block, each storefront a teacher's wife, each restaurant the location of a life-changing conversation. "There," she tells me, as she points out a bar simply called the Spot, no more than a few wooden picnic tables, "is where Martin and I used to drink Star Beer and talk about home and educational theory."
"Ma Pauline!" someone yells from behind us, and we turn to see Emmanuel, one of the secretaries in the principal's office at the college, running towards us. He looks young, maybe five years older than me, but I know he has a wife and twin three-year-old girls who nearly died of malaria last year. Aside from work at the college, he runs his own print shop, though he doesn't own a printer or photocopy machine. Essentially, he is a designer, producing copy and layouit for such varied projects as the college's official examination answer sheets and posters for local events. Hewas working from a piecemail construction he had put together himself. A monitor here, a keyboard there, until he could open the shop. My mother, admiring his dedication and passion, had a brand-new complete Dell setup sent his way last year, and he wants to take us to his shop, to see it in action.
...
The village of Bechem seems smaller than the campus of the training college is contains--we walk the length and back easily in two hours, stopping along the way to greet people my mother knows. We pass the small cart selling scratch-cards with a code that buys cell phone minutes, its glaring red and yellow sign, the line of eager college students that snakes around it; side-streets off the main road packed with small houses, wooden beams and mud, tin roofs. Large white van taxis speed past, with one passenger leaning out the window yelling "Kumasi, Kumasi, Kumasi"--its destination--so that any would-be travelers can flag it down with its making any formal stops.
Children in green and yellow polyester uniforms play soccer at recess, or crowd towards the gates to point at us and shout "O Bruni!" (Hey White Lady). I feel both embarressed and special, wanting to rush over and high-five them all, let them touch my skin, and tell me what they're learning, then flush with anger at myself for thinking myself so important, so anthropological. I am not a researcher, I am a visitor. A tourist-scientist. The only way I can approach this place is detached, analytical, and I know that by doing that I am missing out on those all-importnat casual kitchen-table conversations that make Scott Carrier's work so compelling, the sound bites that get you into National Geographic.
For today, I am content to take a walk with my mother and chat with her. She has stories about nearly every block, each storefront a teacher's wife, each restaurant the location of a life-changing conversation. "There," she tells me, as she points out a bar simply called the Spot, no more than a few wooden picnic tables, "is where Martin and I used to drink Star Beer and talk about home and educational theory."
"Ma Pauline!" someone yells from behind us, and we turn to see Emmanuel, one of the secretaries in the principal's office at the college, running towards us. He looks young, maybe five years older than me, but I know he has a wife and twin three-year-old girls who nearly died of malaria last year. Aside from work at the college, he runs his own print shop, though he doesn't own a printer or photocopy machine. Essentially, he is a designer, producing copy and layouit for such varied projects as the college's official examination answer sheets and posters for local events. Hewas working from a piecemail construction he had put together himself. A monitor here, a keyboard there, until he could open the shop. My mother, admiring his dedication and passion, had a brand-new complete Dell setup sent his way last year, and he wants to take us to his shop, to see it in action.
...
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Before I continue with the writing I began yesterday, I should clarify two things:
1. I'm not writing these segments in any particular order. They are neither chronological, nor are they in the order I expect to put them when constructing the essay as a whole.
2. I'm only writing as much as I feel I can each day, so part one is not neccesarily complete...yet.
Ok.
Light Off, part two
My stomach had been upset all day, and I wasn't sure whether it was the spiciness of the food (a trait I usually avoid, so my stomach may not be used to it), the fact that I may have eaten slivers of meat in the soup at lunch (having been a vegetarian for four and a half years, even a little may upset me physically) or the bits of faucet water I realized I'd been unintentionally swallowing while brushing my teeth at night. Probably none of those things. Probably the fact that nothing around me was familiar. Whatever the cause, I took one bite of a perfectly bland fried yam at dinner and rushed to the bathroom to vomit.
When I was finished, I felt good, the euphoric good of being rid of nausea, so I went to find my mother, who was out on the front porch with Cosmas and Clement. The porch--really just an extension of the interior's cement floor, painted red and surrounded by white wooden posts. The boys were playing ping-pong, with paddles, a ball and no table or net, just bouncing the ball off the cement floor and at each other. Lights had just gone off, so we wanted to spend as much time outside as possible, where the sun still lit the campus. I propped myself up on the railing and cheered the game on, giggling with Cosmas when he fell diving for a shot, and laughing at Clement's singing.
As twilight began to descend, Cosmas grew more hysterical, until his older brother finally decided it was time for the game to end. With a magnificent final volley, Cosmas took the win, and collapsed, laughing, onto the porch. His mother emerged from the house, smiling at my mother and I, and agreed that Cosmas could show me one soccer trick before he had to go to bed. In the creeping dark, Cosmas tried repeatedly to perfect the rainbow kick, flipping the soccer ball over his head from behind, and I tried to capture his large smile on my mother's delayed digital camera. We both gave up, but I have a series of photos of Cosmas, in various stages of embarressed laughter, turning over his shoulder, rolling his eyes in disappointment.
Adjoa had Clement bring four white plastic chairs off the porch and into the driveway/lawn of their house, so we could sit and talk directly in the bright moonlight. She wrapped pieces of cloth around our legs, to stop the mosquitos easy access, and Cosmas joined us, silently sitting, glad to be in the company of the mother he adored and my mother, whom he doted after, so proud that she had returned to visit him, had fulfilled the promise she made. I drifted in and out of the conversation between the two matriarchs, content, as I was so often during the trip, to absorb the idea of Bechem, the smells and sounds and gossip of a village as an outsider. Adjoa talked about which teachers still hadn't warmed to her husband, Mr. Mensah, the newest principal of St. Joseph's Teacher Training College, and she told my mother more stories from the reign of President Rawlings, speaking in the second person.
"You woke up in the morning and there were bodies hanging from the trees. You didn't ask the questions--nobody asked questions, because, then, who knows what would happen?"
1. I'm not writing these segments in any particular order. They are neither chronological, nor are they in the order I expect to put them when constructing the essay as a whole.
2. I'm only writing as much as I feel I can each day, so part one is not neccesarily complete...yet.
Ok.
Light Off, part two
My stomach had been upset all day, and I wasn't sure whether it was the spiciness of the food (a trait I usually avoid, so my stomach may not be used to it), the fact that I may have eaten slivers of meat in the soup at lunch (having been a vegetarian for four and a half years, even a little may upset me physically) or the bits of faucet water I realized I'd been unintentionally swallowing while brushing my teeth at night. Probably none of those things. Probably the fact that nothing around me was familiar. Whatever the cause, I took one bite of a perfectly bland fried yam at dinner and rushed to the bathroom to vomit.
When I was finished, I felt good, the euphoric good of being rid of nausea, so I went to find my mother, who was out on the front porch with Cosmas and Clement. The porch--really just an extension of the interior's cement floor, painted red and surrounded by white wooden posts. The boys were playing ping-pong, with paddles, a ball and no table or net, just bouncing the ball off the cement floor and at each other. Lights had just gone off, so we wanted to spend as much time outside as possible, where the sun still lit the campus. I propped myself up on the railing and cheered the game on, giggling with Cosmas when he fell diving for a shot, and laughing at Clement's singing.
As twilight began to descend, Cosmas grew more hysterical, until his older brother finally decided it was time for the game to end. With a magnificent final volley, Cosmas took the win, and collapsed, laughing, onto the porch. His mother emerged from the house, smiling at my mother and I, and agreed that Cosmas could show me one soccer trick before he had to go to bed. In the creeping dark, Cosmas tried repeatedly to perfect the rainbow kick, flipping the soccer ball over his head from behind, and I tried to capture his large smile on my mother's delayed digital camera. We both gave up, but I have a series of photos of Cosmas, in various stages of embarressed laughter, turning over his shoulder, rolling his eyes in disappointment.
Adjoa had Clement bring four white plastic chairs off the porch and into the driveway/lawn of their house, so we could sit and talk directly in the bright moonlight. She wrapped pieces of cloth around our legs, to stop the mosquitos easy access, and Cosmas joined us, silently sitting, glad to be in the company of the mother he adored and my mother, whom he doted after, so proud that she had returned to visit him, had fulfilled the promise she made. I drifted in and out of the conversation between the two matriarchs, content, as I was so often during the trip, to absorb the idea of Bechem, the smells and sounds and gossip of a village as an outsider. Adjoa talked about which teachers still hadn't warmed to her husband, Mr. Mensah, the newest principal of St. Joseph's Teacher Training College, and she told my mother more stories from the reign of President Rawlings, speaking in the second person.
"You woke up in the morning and there were bodies hanging from the trees. You didn't ask the questions--nobody asked questions, because, then, who knows what would happen?"
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
A first chapter...
Last July, I went with my mother to a rural village in Ghana where she had lived and worked in the 2005-2006 school year. As a nonfiction writer interested in social and political issues, of course I was thrilled to accompany her, and to be exposed to a world so different from the upper-middle class, White suburban world I came from. However, since my return, I've struggled with writing about Africa (not least of all because of the famous essay by Binyavanga Wainaina found here: http://www.granta.com/extracts/2615). How do I address the vast differences, the stark poverty, the subtle beauty, the colors, without being simultaneously preachy, overbearing and ineffectual.
My decision to finally begin writing about Ghana was preceeded by an idea, harshly thrown into my world by the Godfather of creative nonfiction: Lee Gutkind. Scenes. Work only with actual scenes, real moments, dialogue. Detail the setting and characters in depth, as in Dickension fiction. Do not waste any time whatsoever on explanation, interpretation, extrapolation (ok, that last bit isn't Mr. Gutkind, it;s me, for this essay only and in particular).
.
So, this is the first installment of a series of short scenes, which will hopefully become one full essay about the electricity problem in Africa. Rather than being overbearing, I am simply telling the story of the times of intentional electricity shutoff I experienced during my ten day trip. Let's see what happens...
Light Off, part one.
Sweat pools in the crevices of my body--most noticeably and uncomfortably in the curves beneath my breasts. I threw on a polyester sundress, which, I'm learning, does not breathe, even at seven p.m., even though it is dark. I am sitting on the concrete painted floor, my bare white legs shining in the flourescent glow of the single, battery-powered lamp in the room. It sits on the coffee table, and Cosmas and I play with cards. The electricity will be off for another eleven hours, at least.
We know this because it was scheduled. The power outage spans the entire country of Ghana, with the occasional exception of a neighborhood or two of the capital city Accra. What was once a frequent inconvenience has now become an institution. Every third day, the main power grid is shut down, and all of Ghana loses power for twelve hours. I haven't yet learned why--whether it's an infrastructure problem, poor circuitry or money-saving scheme is still a mystery. All I know is that it's intentional.
Cosmas giggles before he flips over the next card, then quickly smacks his palm down on top of the Jack of Spades. Cosmas is a small nine years old, with a wide, white smile and gangly limbs. He is extremely shy, but his laugh is enormous. Even as a child, he has mastered the fine art of casting his head back to let out a giant laugh. Since he's only nine, I don't mind when he cheats at SlapJack. It's the first night he's opening up to me, so I don't have the heart to tell him you're not supposed to peek at the cards before you flip them down.
I lean against the brown floral velvet upholstery of the couch behind me, and rub my mother's leg. She, in her long blue shift, her wild Italian curls frizzed in the humidity of July in Ghana, is dozing sitting up on the couch. She smiles down at me; I know how happy she is to share this place with me, for me to meet this other family and begin to understand the life she led last year.
to be continued...
Last July, I went with my mother to a rural village in Ghana where she had lived and worked in the 2005-2006 school year. As a nonfiction writer interested in social and political issues, of course I was thrilled to accompany her, and to be exposed to a world so different from the upper-middle class, White suburban world I came from. However, since my return, I've struggled with writing about Africa (not least of all because of the famous essay by Binyavanga Wainaina found here: http://www.granta.com/extracts/2615). How do I address the vast differences, the stark poverty, the subtle beauty, the colors, without being simultaneously preachy, overbearing and ineffectual.
My decision to finally begin writing about Ghana was preceeded by an idea, harshly thrown into my world by the Godfather of creative nonfiction: Lee Gutkind. Scenes. Work only with actual scenes, real moments, dialogue. Detail the setting and characters in depth, as in Dickension fiction. Do not waste any time whatsoever on explanation, interpretation, extrapolation (ok, that last bit isn't Mr. Gutkind, it;s me, for this essay only and in particular).
.
So, this is the first installment of a series of short scenes, which will hopefully become one full essay about the electricity problem in Africa. Rather than being overbearing, I am simply telling the story of the times of intentional electricity shutoff I experienced during my ten day trip. Let's see what happens...
Light Off, part one.
Sweat pools in the crevices of my body--most noticeably and uncomfortably in the curves beneath my breasts. I threw on a polyester sundress, which, I'm learning, does not breathe, even at seven p.m., even though it is dark. I am sitting on the concrete painted floor, my bare white legs shining in the flourescent glow of the single, battery-powered lamp in the room. It sits on the coffee table, and Cosmas and I play with cards. The electricity will be off for another eleven hours, at least.
We know this because it was scheduled. The power outage spans the entire country of Ghana, with the occasional exception of a neighborhood or two of the capital city Accra. What was once a frequent inconvenience has now become an institution. Every third day, the main power grid is shut down, and all of Ghana loses power for twelve hours. I haven't yet learned why--whether it's an infrastructure problem, poor circuitry or money-saving scheme is still a mystery. All I know is that it's intentional.
Cosmas giggles before he flips over the next card, then quickly smacks his palm down on top of the Jack of Spades. Cosmas is a small nine years old, with a wide, white smile and gangly limbs. He is extremely shy, but his laugh is enormous. Even as a child, he has mastered the fine art of casting his head back to let out a giant laugh. Since he's only nine, I don't mind when he cheats at SlapJack. It's the first night he's opening up to me, so I don't have the heart to tell him you're not supposed to peek at the cards before you flip them down.
I lean against the brown floral velvet upholstery of the couch behind me, and rub my mother's leg. She, in her long blue shift, her wild Italian curls frizzed in the humidity of July in Ghana, is dozing sitting up on the couch. She smiles down at me; I know how happy she is to share this place with me, for me to meet this other family and begin to understand the life she led last year.
to be continued...
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Here, as my opening offer, are a series of short pieces I wrote about or at the ocean, while living in southern California. It was a summer place, that confirmed for me a long-standing suspicion that I need to live near water in order to thrive.
I'm torn & confused by these pieces, especially their form. Do they belong together, or separate, or with something in between?
Untitled: Notes on the Ocean
The first time I went to the ocean in California, he was with me. We walked along the pier and it was windy and I felt so much like a little girl. We bought French fries at the little wooden shack—there is always a little wooden shack at the ocean—and we ate apples and crackers and cheese all the way down at the end of the long wooden pier.
I suddenly remembered salt. I had forgotten the smell of salt during my years at the interior of the country. You never smell salt in the air of upstate New York or in the mountains of Montana, or in Yellowstone National Park. But there it was, like the ocean, a scent it had never even occurred to me to miss, all of a sudden pummeling me with familiarity. The wind whipped my hair into that salty tangle, and I searched for an answer to this puzzle, stunned and curious.
In New Hampshire, when I was a girl, the ocean was only an hour’s drive and we visited often in the summer time. I adored those sticky sandy days—days of seafood, and days of blistering, peeling burns. Days of seagulls and swooping, diving surprise. We got sand everywhere—everywhere, even inside our bathing suits and we couldn’t get it off our feet and then I’d have to ride in the hot car for an hour with sand up my butt and my two annoyingly energetic little sisters and I just wanted to fall asleep.
But somehow, despite all that, they were little treasures, absolute pearls in memory of squinting anticipation and ultimate brightness.
Now, I live in California. I have to keep repeating that out loud because it’s so foreign. When I think of myself, the New England girl, squinting in beach day photographs and burning in seconds under any sun, living in southern California, the utter surprise of the circumstances that brought me to the western shore makes me laugh a little.
There were lots of people fishing off the pier, and it struck me as odd; I realized I didn’t even know what fish you could catch in the ocean, especially right up on the shore. There is a lot I don’t know about California.
The ocean is so wide, and so long, and holds a bounty, but somehow, we can’t all get our hands on it. All the laughing families and men with beer cozies are fishing just for fun. But the two men whose bicycles sag from the weight of all their possessions fish so they can eat tonight.
We walked on the beach a little and saw a lot of trash and a lot of squirrels, which I also didn’t know lived on the beach. People rode bicycles and little pedaled carts, but I didn’t see anyone building a sand castle or tanning on a towel, with their bikini unhooked in the back. There is a difference to the ocean here that I can’t quite locate, a casual sag into the everyday. I want the magic of the beach back, and the wonder.
This may end up being about growing up, or this may really just be about water.
* * *
The second time, we were together again, and we went to the ocean at night, whispering feet padding right up close to that dark, terrifying water. Everything was a shimmering, fantasy blue, a navy of magic and secrecy. I eyed the waves suspiciously and a little obsessively as we just walked along the empty sand, far from the pier and from any people, and I was struck by how blue they were in the darkness. There was only half a moon, but even in that strange half-dark, the quality of blue was certain and faint at the same time—the hue was absolutely there, but I knew if I took my eyes off of it, the twilight might vanish below the waves, where it had been born.
As we pushed deeply against the sand, and my calf muscles began to tighten, I took his arm. We were swelling with the waves, our breathing a little heavier than usual. “Wait,” I said. I wanted to watch them crest, anticipating the beautiful white caps that would charge toward us.
We stood for minutes, watching wave after wave of silent heartbeats push against the shore, then suddenly burst into sparkling constellation tops. I was having more trouble breathing standing completely still: trying to master these waves, trying to understand the tidal pull and how it connects to the moon, trying to understand how I got to California and what this place and this night would mean in years to come, trying to dig deeper into his skin and trying to comprehend the swirling darkness of true love.
I didn’t want to get too close to the water, because I knew I’d be pulled in and no one really knows what’s down there, but the mystery was so beautiful, so magnetic, I would have drowned happily in that moment.
We walked on, and found the stars and a sparkling pile of kelp, and went back to the car.
Neither of us could really speak in bed that night; we just kept thanking each other for the evening, and kept knowing we should be thanking the ocean, and kept knowing we’d never really have the words.
* * *
I am consistently mystified by the surrealism of this Californian town built on the edge of the country. The ocean is a sorceress—she has an inexplicable power, her constant movement like floating tendrils of hair, stretching from the unseen center to all shores of the globe. Tonight she conjured a penetrating fog, thick and unbridled, that trickled into the streets of this seaside town. I was pulled outward to the sand, a tug from within drawing me down the wide wooden planks of the pier, searching for some unknown, nonexistent source.
Eventually, I was completely surrounded by ephemeral clouds, heavy with the suggestion of water. Though I stood on the pier, built out across her, I couldn’t see the ocean, nor could I glimpse the vast gleaming light of the city back on the shore. Each exhale appeared as smoky condensation in front of my face, but my bare feet didn’t feel cold. I sensed no movement in the air, but a wind turned the pages of my notebook for me. I was deep inside another story—a sad island story of ghosts or pirated history and innate loneliness: the story of fog. But I was not satisfied.
When I was a girl, we would visit my father’s grandmother in her tiny stone house at the base of Mt. Washington. I would stare for long longing hours at the top of the mountain, dreaming of the day I’d be old enough to climb it, desperate to touch the clouds, draped over the distant peak. I wanted so badly to know the secrets of those half-real clouds, like pulled-apart cottonballs. If I could only be way up there, I thought, if I could only discover what the inside of the clouds looked like, if I could only take a piece of the clouds home with me.
I’ve been to the top of Mount Washington since then and have found no answers, only heavy rains, high winds, dizzying grey like the frosted mirrors of an amusement park funhouse maze. And I know that if I could somehow float out onto the air about the Pacific tonigh, I would find nothing, no truth, only the same maddening emptiness.Being at the edge—of the coast, the pier, the answer—isn’t enough. I want to be more than surrounded—I want to be wrapped into this fog, to feel it heavy against me like a blanket. I want to fall backwards into it and not hit the ground, to learn its truth.
I know this isn’t how fog works, or clouds. But I sit against the wood, and I still sigh deeply and wish. I hear the wind snapping straight the flag in opposition, or silent in surrender; and I feel the cold in my bones before it can touch my skin. I know I’ll never stop going further and further in search of the heart of these mysteries; I’ll keep hoping. And maybe someday I will write the answer down before it swallows me whole.
* * *
From a distance, the fog and the ocean seem connected, pulled together, one swimming army charging the land. But I know that isn’t the truth, because sometimes I get real close, close enough to see, crawling forward to the edge of the coast until my toes are nearly in the cold water. Creeping out from behind a rock and holding my breath when the tide comes in close, as if the white crackling foam that skirts the waves might be dangerous, I learned about the space that exists there. I’ve been right there, in the space between the fog and the sea.
It is a dangerous space, laden with a mystery that bites at my lips and quickens my heart, a space that you could never share with another person—the presence of others changes it into a peaceful picnic oasis of a place. A place where the rhythm of the moon and the absence of the fog make me long for cold darkness, make me hunch over. The seaglass-colored flood of memory and time isn’t malicious, but electric—the liquid form of lightning. The ocean sends strange creatures to the sand to greet me, whispers of exoskeleton and colors like the first part of a sunset. Her retreating tide hardens a path before my waiting feet. Walking there on the beach is a process of being born, my solitary pilgrimage into the heart of the storm.
Because it’s there, in the center of her moods, that I can see where the fog truly lives, above me and out over the ocean, a silken veil about to fall that never does. The curtain hangs above the ocean and me, simultaneously warning and tempting us. Our alternate sky. The fog, a frustrating, grey refusal to exist, just waits there, above the scattered, broken sea treasures and talus offerings, watching over the mighty wood the ocean has washed bare. I am on the verge of tears, nearly begging the fog please please please join the ocean again—dive back inside her salty throat and give me back the endless horizon and the hope of a sunset.
And I realize that the ocean is begging too—that’s the reason she moves. She dances the only ballet she knows, all for the fog. She pirouettes out onto the beach and within her own wet belly, creating waves and giving birth to clouds and trying to pull down the sky. I am her consolation prize, like a ship that can’t seem to find the shore, drawn to the periphery of the world again and again, hiding myself in the sand, and the possibility, and the space in between the fog and the ocean.
Sometimes I dance with the ocean, running out after her withdrawal, and scampering back out to the dry refuge of land when her swell comes back to claim my dirty footprints. The ocean’s cries are static hum, a roar that I can’t hear until I leave her side, after we waltz for a while. A few times, I let her win, her precious water fingers teasing my ankles and picking at my bare toes. But I only stay for a second, for just a hint of interaction, because we both know skin is no substitute for the sky.
I'm torn & confused by these pieces, especially their form. Do they belong together, or separate, or with something in between?
Untitled: Notes on the Ocean
The first time I went to the ocean in California, he was with me. We walked along the pier and it was windy and I felt so much like a little girl. We bought French fries at the little wooden shack—there is always a little wooden shack at the ocean—and we ate apples and crackers and cheese all the way down at the end of the long wooden pier.
I suddenly remembered salt. I had forgotten the smell of salt during my years at the interior of the country. You never smell salt in the air of upstate New York or in the mountains of Montana, or in Yellowstone National Park. But there it was, like the ocean, a scent it had never even occurred to me to miss, all of a sudden pummeling me with familiarity. The wind whipped my hair into that salty tangle, and I searched for an answer to this puzzle, stunned and curious.
In New Hampshire, when I was a girl, the ocean was only an hour’s drive and we visited often in the summer time. I adored those sticky sandy days—days of seafood, and days of blistering, peeling burns. Days of seagulls and swooping, diving surprise. We got sand everywhere—everywhere, even inside our bathing suits and we couldn’t get it off our feet and then I’d have to ride in the hot car for an hour with sand up my butt and my two annoyingly energetic little sisters and I just wanted to fall asleep.
But somehow, despite all that, they were little treasures, absolute pearls in memory of squinting anticipation and ultimate brightness.
Now, I live in California. I have to keep repeating that out loud because it’s so foreign. When I think of myself, the New England girl, squinting in beach day photographs and burning in seconds under any sun, living in southern California, the utter surprise of the circumstances that brought me to the western shore makes me laugh a little.
There were lots of people fishing off the pier, and it struck me as odd; I realized I didn’t even know what fish you could catch in the ocean, especially right up on the shore. There is a lot I don’t know about California.
The ocean is so wide, and so long, and holds a bounty, but somehow, we can’t all get our hands on it. All the laughing families and men with beer cozies are fishing just for fun. But the two men whose bicycles sag from the weight of all their possessions fish so they can eat tonight.
We walked on the beach a little and saw a lot of trash and a lot of squirrels, which I also didn’t know lived on the beach. People rode bicycles and little pedaled carts, but I didn’t see anyone building a sand castle or tanning on a towel, with their bikini unhooked in the back. There is a difference to the ocean here that I can’t quite locate, a casual sag into the everyday. I want the magic of the beach back, and the wonder.
This may end up being about growing up, or this may really just be about water.
* * *
The second time, we were together again, and we went to the ocean at night, whispering feet padding right up close to that dark, terrifying water. Everything was a shimmering, fantasy blue, a navy of magic and secrecy. I eyed the waves suspiciously and a little obsessively as we just walked along the empty sand, far from the pier and from any people, and I was struck by how blue they were in the darkness. There was only half a moon, but even in that strange half-dark, the quality of blue was certain and faint at the same time—the hue was absolutely there, but I knew if I took my eyes off of it, the twilight might vanish below the waves, where it had been born.
As we pushed deeply against the sand, and my calf muscles began to tighten, I took his arm. We were swelling with the waves, our breathing a little heavier than usual. “Wait,” I said. I wanted to watch them crest, anticipating the beautiful white caps that would charge toward us.
We stood for minutes, watching wave after wave of silent heartbeats push against the shore, then suddenly burst into sparkling constellation tops. I was having more trouble breathing standing completely still: trying to master these waves, trying to understand the tidal pull and how it connects to the moon, trying to understand how I got to California and what this place and this night would mean in years to come, trying to dig deeper into his skin and trying to comprehend the swirling darkness of true love.
I didn’t want to get too close to the water, because I knew I’d be pulled in and no one really knows what’s down there, but the mystery was so beautiful, so magnetic, I would have drowned happily in that moment.
We walked on, and found the stars and a sparkling pile of kelp, and went back to the car.
Neither of us could really speak in bed that night; we just kept thanking each other for the evening, and kept knowing we should be thanking the ocean, and kept knowing we’d never really have the words.
* * *
I am consistently mystified by the surrealism of this Californian town built on the edge of the country. The ocean is a sorceress—she has an inexplicable power, her constant movement like floating tendrils of hair, stretching from the unseen center to all shores of the globe. Tonight she conjured a penetrating fog, thick and unbridled, that trickled into the streets of this seaside town. I was pulled outward to the sand, a tug from within drawing me down the wide wooden planks of the pier, searching for some unknown, nonexistent source.
Eventually, I was completely surrounded by ephemeral clouds, heavy with the suggestion of water. Though I stood on the pier, built out across her, I couldn’t see the ocean, nor could I glimpse the vast gleaming light of the city back on the shore. Each exhale appeared as smoky condensation in front of my face, but my bare feet didn’t feel cold. I sensed no movement in the air, but a wind turned the pages of my notebook for me. I was deep inside another story—a sad island story of ghosts or pirated history and innate loneliness: the story of fog. But I was not satisfied.
When I was a girl, we would visit my father’s grandmother in her tiny stone house at the base of Mt. Washington. I would stare for long longing hours at the top of the mountain, dreaming of the day I’d be old enough to climb it, desperate to touch the clouds, draped over the distant peak. I wanted so badly to know the secrets of those half-real clouds, like pulled-apart cottonballs. If I could only be way up there, I thought, if I could only discover what the inside of the clouds looked like, if I could only take a piece of the clouds home with me.
I’ve been to the top of Mount Washington since then and have found no answers, only heavy rains, high winds, dizzying grey like the frosted mirrors of an amusement park funhouse maze. And I know that if I could somehow float out onto the air about the Pacific tonigh, I would find nothing, no truth, only the same maddening emptiness.Being at the edge—of the coast, the pier, the answer—isn’t enough. I want to be more than surrounded—I want to be wrapped into this fog, to feel it heavy against me like a blanket. I want to fall backwards into it and not hit the ground, to learn its truth.
I know this isn’t how fog works, or clouds. But I sit against the wood, and I still sigh deeply and wish. I hear the wind snapping straight the flag in opposition, or silent in surrender; and I feel the cold in my bones before it can touch my skin. I know I’ll never stop going further and further in search of the heart of these mysteries; I’ll keep hoping. And maybe someday I will write the answer down before it swallows me whole.
* * *
From a distance, the fog and the ocean seem connected, pulled together, one swimming army charging the land. But I know that isn’t the truth, because sometimes I get real close, close enough to see, crawling forward to the edge of the coast until my toes are nearly in the cold water. Creeping out from behind a rock and holding my breath when the tide comes in close, as if the white crackling foam that skirts the waves might be dangerous, I learned about the space that exists there. I’ve been right there, in the space between the fog and the sea.
It is a dangerous space, laden with a mystery that bites at my lips and quickens my heart, a space that you could never share with another person—the presence of others changes it into a peaceful picnic oasis of a place. A place where the rhythm of the moon and the absence of the fog make me long for cold darkness, make me hunch over. The seaglass-colored flood of memory and time isn’t malicious, but electric—the liquid form of lightning. The ocean sends strange creatures to the sand to greet me, whispers of exoskeleton and colors like the first part of a sunset. Her retreating tide hardens a path before my waiting feet. Walking there on the beach is a process of being born, my solitary pilgrimage into the heart of the storm.
Because it’s there, in the center of her moods, that I can see where the fog truly lives, above me and out over the ocean, a silken veil about to fall that never does. The curtain hangs above the ocean and me, simultaneously warning and tempting us. Our alternate sky. The fog, a frustrating, grey refusal to exist, just waits there, above the scattered, broken sea treasures and talus offerings, watching over the mighty wood the ocean has washed bare. I am on the verge of tears, nearly begging the fog please please please join the ocean again—dive back inside her salty throat and give me back the endless horizon and the hope of a sunset.
And I realize that the ocean is begging too—that’s the reason she moves. She dances the only ballet she knows, all for the fog. She pirouettes out onto the beach and within her own wet belly, creating waves and giving birth to clouds and trying to pull down the sky. I am her consolation prize, like a ship that can’t seem to find the shore, drawn to the periphery of the world again and again, hiding myself in the sand, and the possibility, and the space in between the fog and the ocean.
Sometimes I dance with the ocean, running out after her withdrawal, and scampering back out to the dry refuge of land when her swell comes back to claim my dirty footprints. The ocean’s cries are static hum, a roar that I can’t hear until I leave her side, after we waltz for a while. A few times, I let her win, her precious water fingers teasing my ankles and picking at my bare toes. But I only stay for a second, for just a hint of interaction, because we both know skin is no substitute for the sky.
For a long time, I've been thinking about doing this, but have always talked myself out of it. I have a livejournal. I've never liked when people have more than one blog; it's too confusing.
But I needed something more.
To get me up and writing again. So this blog is an experiment, an imperative. A dictate. I am to write something in here every day. It can be a revision, it can be a stream-of-consciousness prose poem; it can be a simple report or observation or brainstorm.
For strangers of me, or of my writing, I write creative nonfiction, a shape-shifter of a genre, whose purpose as I see it is to fill in the gaps left behind by poetry, fiction and journalism. I want to capture memoir, truth and beauty, politics and outrage, a sense of the world at this very moment. Sometimes that takes the form of a long essay, sometimes fragments best read as a zine, sometimes short prose poems. I want to channel Joan Didion, Terry Tempest Williams, Eve Ensler, Jo Ann Beard, Scott Carrier, Rick Bass, Barry Lopez.
Once a day, at least. I'll showcase those small hidden places we call lacunae, the spaces of air between the smallest bones, to unravel the mystery.
"Maybe every essay automatically is in some way experimental--less an outline traveling toward a foregone conclusion than an unmapped quest that has spriung from the word question."
~ John D'Agata
But I needed something more.
To get me up and writing again. So this blog is an experiment, an imperative. A dictate. I am to write something in here every day. It can be a revision, it can be a stream-of-consciousness prose poem; it can be a simple report or observation or brainstorm.
For strangers of me, or of my writing, I write creative nonfiction, a shape-shifter of a genre, whose purpose as I see it is to fill in the gaps left behind by poetry, fiction and journalism. I want to capture memoir, truth and beauty, politics and outrage, a sense of the world at this very moment. Sometimes that takes the form of a long essay, sometimes fragments best read as a zine, sometimes short prose poems. I want to channel Joan Didion, Terry Tempest Williams, Eve Ensler, Jo Ann Beard, Scott Carrier, Rick Bass, Barry Lopez.
Once a day, at least. I'll showcase those small hidden places we call lacunae, the spaces of air between the smallest bones, to unravel the mystery.
"Maybe every essay automatically is in some way experimental--less an outline traveling toward a foregone conclusion than an unmapped quest that has spriung from the word question."
~ John D'Agata
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