When I was sixteen years old, I stood on a bridge near the city limits line and watched a small, street-sign be unveiled by the mayor. He was gregarious man who enjoyed his status and his accessories. He was easily recognizable by the sash he wore constantly, embossed with the word "Mayor." It was the middle of the day, and the "Sash Mayor," as some people called him, had commissioned the road signs for all the ways in and out of the city. I was there with a journalist from the community newspaper. I was a senior in high school and participating in a program in which I shadowed the journalist. She was sent to cover the signs. I went with her. We stood on a bridge near the city limits line with the mayor in his sash and a sign that said, "Welcome to Portsmouth, Ohio. Where Southern Hospitality Begins."
I read the sign and for the first time was aware of the slogan that spoke volumes about the town. I remember thinking, "Huh," when I first read it. It seemed just about right.
By the time I saw the sign, I'd been through the South several times. Every family vacation was spent walking a battlefield or a cemetery or both. On our way to Florida, we stopped to see cousins in Alabama. I read a lot of southern literature. Carson McCullers especially interested me. She seemed to know what life was like in towns like mine. People were lonely, they projected personalities onto you, they were odd and twisted and sometimes kind.
I loved the grand decay of the South. I loved the preserved houses - both grand and average. I loved the manners. I was too young to understand the underlying issues of class and race...that would come later. I saw that sign and I started comparing. I had a small inventory of southern values...
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Sunday, May 4, 2014
This or That Path
I was torn. I was at that point, that space at the tip of the crevice between two paths. It's not a crossroads. It's two roads diverged. That's where I was: standing there looking at one and slowly rolling my eyes across the divider to look at the other. While I studied each, I started to get tense. I could feel my hostility in the knots in my neck. I was only mad at myself, either for allowing myself to have choices or for not being able to make a choice when faced with two fairly decent prospects.
I could stay in Los Angeles and work in hotel development. I could move back to southern Ohio and teach at the university near my hometown. In one scenario, my relatively new interests in architecture and planning would be indulged. In another scenario, I'd be teaching - which is what, according to almost every professor in my MFA program - a serious writer is supposed to do. To go down the hotel development path was to give up on my dream of writing.
Maybe I was really angry with myself not over having choices, but letting voices from my graduate writing program plant the teaching equals serious writing notion in my head in the first place.
Maybe I was really angry with myself because I wasn't really writing, and I knew that was the only way to be a serious writer. I had to do the thing. I had to do the work. Instead, I was huffing and puffing over which path would provide me the most time to write - and the most material. Among other things. I let the choice be a distraction. Which was really another path altogether.
When I felt uneasy or uncertain, I usually bothered one person in my life. I left work early and drove over to Noel's apartment. I didn't call ahead, which said a lot about how I was feeling. We were the type of people who made plans in advance. We didn't interrupt one another's time. It was too jarring. But this time, I already felt jarred, so I just walked up to the stoop and knocked on the door.
It was four o'clock and Noel was still in his bathrobe. He opened the door, saw it was me, and swiftly shut the door before I even had the screen door open to step in. I took a breath and opened the screen door, the front door and stepped inside. Noel was sitting on the couch, remote back in his hand. I walked over and sat at the other end of the couch and started in.
"I have two options," I said.
He glanced over at me before fixing his eyes on the television screen. Light poured through the window behind the TV, and it made the fixture look like it had a halo. It glowed. I continued.
"Remember that article I read about placemaking?" I asked.
"Sure," eyes on the glow.
"Well, it turns out that there's a division at work that collaborates with cities on transforming old, historic buildings into new, updated hotels."
Noel nodded, eyes on the glow.
"I could work for that division. I could do it. I think it would be highly satisfying."
He nodded.
"Or," I said. "I have this chance to move back to southern Ohio to live in a farmhouse with L. for a year. I could teach at the university."
He sighed.
"I could work in development and help determine the shape of some towns, but what does that have to do with writing?"
He turned away from the glow. "What does that have to do with writing?"
"I don't know."
"Who are you if you're not a writer?"
"I don't know."
Letting go of that identity was the hard part. As long as I had a low-responsibility job, I could say I was a writer - I was working one gig while working on my art. If I was teaching writing, I could still claim to be a writer - I was seeking refuge in academic life while working on my art. If I started taking meeting with developers and talking about historic architecture and usability, I couldn't be a starving artist, a struggling artist, or an aspiring writer. I would be this other thing.
The choices were so limited in my southern Ohio imagination when I was a teenager that I couldn't grasp a life beyond the one thing I chose - and then I couldn't imagine a life being that choice, either. I didn't know hotel development jobs even existed. People became teachers or civil servants or nurses or school administrators. I only thought of being a writer because I read magazines and saw the bylines. I also saw them rubbing elbows with celebrities, but some of that was just the magazines to which I subscribed. As my experience in the world expanded, my idea of who I could be did not. I wanted to be this one thing. Who was I if I didn't want to be that anymore?
Who would I have been if I'd known that things aren't always all or nothing?
I was this one thing. I had to do whatever the heck I could to stay this one thing.
I could stay in Los Angeles and work in hotel development. I could move back to southern Ohio and teach at the university near my hometown. In one scenario, my relatively new interests in architecture and planning would be indulged. In another scenario, I'd be teaching - which is what, according to almost every professor in my MFA program - a serious writer is supposed to do. To go down the hotel development path was to give up on my dream of writing.
Maybe I was really angry with myself not over having choices, but letting voices from my graduate writing program plant the teaching equals serious writing notion in my head in the first place.
Maybe I was really angry with myself because I wasn't really writing, and I knew that was the only way to be a serious writer. I had to do the thing. I had to do the work. Instead, I was huffing and puffing over which path would provide me the most time to write - and the most material. Among other things. I let the choice be a distraction. Which was really another path altogether.
When I felt uneasy or uncertain, I usually bothered one person in my life. I left work early and drove over to Noel's apartment. I didn't call ahead, which said a lot about how I was feeling. We were the type of people who made plans in advance. We didn't interrupt one another's time. It was too jarring. But this time, I already felt jarred, so I just walked up to the stoop and knocked on the door.
It was four o'clock and Noel was still in his bathrobe. He opened the door, saw it was me, and swiftly shut the door before I even had the screen door open to step in. I took a breath and opened the screen door, the front door and stepped inside. Noel was sitting on the couch, remote back in his hand. I walked over and sat at the other end of the couch and started in.
"I have two options," I said.
He glanced over at me before fixing his eyes on the television screen. Light poured through the window behind the TV, and it made the fixture look like it had a halo. It glowed. I continued.
"Remember that article I read about placemaking?" I asked.
"Sure," eyes on the glow.
"Well, it turns out that there's a division at work that collaborates with cities on transforming old, historic buildings into new, updated hotels."
Noel nodded, eyes on the glow.
"I could work for that division. I could do it. I think it would be highly satisfying."
He nodded.
"Or," I said. "I have this chance to move back to southern Ohio to live in a farmhouse with L. for a year. I could teach at the university."
He sighed.
"I could work in development and help determine the shape of some towns, but what does that have to do with writing?"
He turned away from the glow. "What does that have to do with writing?"
"I don't know."
"Who are you if you're not a writer?"
"I don't know."
Letting go of that identity was the hard part. As long as I had a low-responsibility job, I could say I was a writer - I was working one gig while working on my art. If I was teaching writing, I could still claim to be a writer - I was seeking refuge in academic life while working on my art. If I started taking meeting with developers and talking about historic architecture and usability, I couldn't be a starving artist, a struggling artist, or an aspiring writer. I would be this other thing.
The choices were so limited in my southern Ohio imagination when I was a teenager that I couldn't grasp a life beyond the one thing I chose - and then I couldn't imagine a life being that choice, either. I didn't know hotel development jobs even existed. People became teachers or civil servants or nurses or school administrators. I only thought of being a writer because I read magazines and saw the bylines. I also saw them rubbing elbows with celebrities, but some of that was just the magazines to which I subscribed. As my experience in the world expanded, my idea of who I could be did not. I wanted to be this one thing. Who was I if I didn't want to be that anymore?
Who would I have been if I'd known that things aren't always all or nothing?
I was this one thing. I had to do whatever the heck I could to stay this one thing.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
The Glass Carafe
There was still a touch of romance in the way I was living: road trip, farmhouse, coming home. I could end my twenties in more than style. I was making a promise to myself, not with words, but with gestures. I would follow roads and take in scenery and stare out the front window while I tried to understand the whole of my experience.
Pieces of the life I was after were lies. Pieces were honest attempts. Pieces were manufactured for comfort and pieces were avoided at all costs. Some days were Nutella on a cinnamon bagel and some days were plain white toast.
Every day, though, one small measure of a routine was played out. One of us boiled water. While the kettle was on, we might brush out teeth or start working on our hair. The unbleached, brown paper filter was inserted into the top of the small glass carafe and the coffee grounds scooped in with a clean spoon. If we were using the fancy coffee, we dumped it into the filter straight from the shiny package. Then, one of us had to man the pour over. We didn't know to call it pour over. We just poured it over. L's grandmother had been using that very Chemex for over thirty years. The glass carafe was older than either one of us. Like so many things in the house. We lived in a space in which you didn't encounter history. You confronted it.
Or you made your way with it.
Modern appliances wouldn't have felt quite right anyway. No toaster. No coffee pot. We had a fussy microwave. We had two crock pots and a sink full of dishes most of the time.
Pieces of the life I was after were lies. Pieces were honest attempts. Pieces were manufactured for comfort and pieces were avoided at all costs. Some days were Nutella on a cinnamon bagel and some days were plain white toast.
Every day, though, one small measure of a routine was played out. One of us boiled water. While the kettle was on, we might brush out teeth or start working on our hair. The unbleached, brown paper filter was inserted into the top of the small glass carafe and the coffee grounds scooped in with a clean spoon. If we were using the fancy coffee, we dumped it into the filter straight from the shiny package. Then, one of us had to man the pour over. We didn't know to call it pour over. We just poured it over. L's grandmother had been using that very Chemex for over thirty years. The glass carafe was older than either one of us. Like so many things in the house. We lived in a space in which you didn't encounter history. You confronted it.
Or you made your way with it.
Modern appliances wouldn't have felt quite right anyway. No toaster. No coffee pot. We had a fussy microwave. We had two crock pots and a sink full of dishes most of the time.
Monday, April 21, 2014
First Feminist
She wasn't the first feminist that I knew, but she was the first feminist I looked up to. I thought, "I could be like her." All my idols were too distant: Naomi Wolf and Gloria Steinem and multiple women writers who came from east and west coast backgrounds. It just wasn't something you saw much in my hometown or in the region. My high school teacher told me it was "cute" that I was a feminist. I didn't have one other friend in school that I talked to about equal rights or why I cared about the movement. I don't remember ever talking about feminism with my gal pals in high school. Instead, I studied it privately. The staff writers at Sassy magazine were my friends. Or if not my friends, then at least my teachers.
When Ann walked into the classroom on that first day, I could already feel my life changing. It wasn't her. It was who I was slowly becoming. I was finally starting to participate. When I learned she was from the region, I finally started to see what could be possible for me.
When Ann walked into the classroom on that first day, I could already feel my life changing. It wasn't her. It was who I was slowly becoming. I was finally starting to participate. When I learned she was from the region, I finally started to see what could be possible for me.
Saturday, April 19, 2014
On 52
It's hard to love the road, but have little love for the people who live along it. I have a fondness for them, in small ways, but when one insists on circling me on his four wheeler while I pump gas on a gravel lot, I lose what little affection I carry for the folks as a whole. When I pass a man wearing a "Cool Story Babe Now Go Make Me a Sandwich" t-shirt, I lose a piece of the respect I was saving for them.
On the other hand, my love isn't about people. It's about place. I know all the arguments about how people make a place. But I'm not settling into one town and making a home. I'm driving through.
On the other hand, my love isn't about people. It's about place. I know all the arguments about how people make a place. But I'm not settling into one town and making a home. I'm driving through.
Friday, April 18, 2014
Ashland Burial
I made it to eastern Kentucky again, to see my friend's grave. It was around this time a year ago that I learned that she'd died. She passed away almost six months before I knew it. About once a year, I'd look up her phone number and give her a call. Instead of a phone number, the internet gave me an obituary.
Our story was weird and winding. I can't say it ends at her grave. Now that I know where to find it, I can't say that I won't go back to see her again. I want to take things to leave with her: magnolia blossoms, Virginia Woolf books, a university ball cap. I might try to talk to her. This time, all I could say was, "Goddamit, Ann." I had to roll a coffee table across a mausoleum floor and stand on it in order to even touch her...headstone. It's not a headstone. It's a name placed on a marble drawer front. There's a brass vase attached, and faux flowers filling it up. I pushed them out of the way because faux petals were obscuring a part of her name.
There was a sofa sitting in front of a stained glass window and I sat there and looked up at the letters that formed her name and the dates, well, those significant dates. Birth. Death. It's really that simple. You don't see timelines with graduation dates or wedding dates or favorite accomplishment dates. We get two dates, and what little control we have over either.
I'd say no control, except in her case, she had control over one of the dates. It happens. People take control of their second date.
I can't say I've spent a lot of time in mausoleums, but it's strange in cemeteries where you have headstones just a few steps away from the mausoleum. Headstones often have titles, too: daughter, mother, beloved wife. There was no title this time. Just her full name and her two dates. And a brass vase filled with faux flowers. They were purple.
It was cold, and smelled like a cheap motel swimming pool. There were rooms, and the one where she was had a stained glass window with the word "Light," built into the design. I thought that was odd because the room was dark. I sat on the sofa and I looked up at her name and her dates and I sobbed for a minute because I wasn't ready for the enormity of it, even though I'd had a year to get used to the idea. There will never be goodbyes or any sort of closure. There will be me on an ugly floral couch spitting curse words because I'm angry that I lost a friend who didn't want to stick around.
I couldn't find her at first. I walked along all the outdoor mausoleum graves and didn't find her. I finally called the number and the lady gave me the code to get into the larger building. When I told her who I was looking for, she remembered her off the top of her head. "Turn right, then at the end of the hall turn left, then she's on the top left," the lady said. I thanked her. I thought it was kind of fitting that I was back in Ashland, chasing Ann down. I'd done it before, years ago, when I came back to the river for a few days at a time and tried to make plans to see her. I'd drive to Ashland to meet her and she wouldn't be at our meeting place and I'd call her and get no answer. I'd call her parents' house and they'd tell me where they thought she was supposed to be and I'd go there and run into her aunt or uncle, who'd tell me I just missed her. Sometimes I'd find her and sometimes I'd go home bewildered at how quickly set plans could fall apart. I'd be frustrated, but rarely angry. I needed her too much to be angry with her. Maybe I idolized her a little too much, too. Maybe that's whey she dodged our rendezvous. Maybe she was busy, even then, wrestling with the thing. The thing that led to her name and dates on the wall in the mausoleum.
I stood on the wheeled coffee table and I placed my hand on her name. Then I climbed down and put the coffee table back in front of the sofa and then I sat on the sofa for a long time. I sat with her. She can't dodge me now. And I'm angry over it. I'm angry that I didn't have anything to say but "Goddamit." I'm angry that there wasn't a date for the year that we met, that she directed a project created by me and my friend, Amy, that she made us crawfish etouffee and we watched the Academy Awards. I'm angry that she used to dodge my visits and I'm angry that I wasn't a better friend. I'm angry that I didn't know that she was dead for six whole months. For six months, I lived in a world in which she no longer existed and I didn't know it. I'm angry that the sofa is ugly and the room is cold.
I'm angry at Appalachia for taking her. It made her and it took her and I'm angry that we have at least one half of that equation in common.
From the ugly sofa in the cold room, I could hear the traffic from the highway that runs beside the cemetery. I don't know if I'd find the sound comforting or maddening. Maybe a few of the cars are driving on, just passing through town, on their way to some place else. Maybe a few carry young women who are getting out of town. Who are getting out. Who are dodging hard lives. Maybe not.
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Eddie Listens In
Eddie was still sitting on a milk crate near the wall when she walked in the door. He sat with the glass in hand, hanging between his legs. When she walked in, he looked up at her and shrugged. It was obvious that he'd heard every word. The corners of his mouth were turned down. His eyes were big, like he'd just witnessed a car accident or seen a ghost. She sat down beside him and took the glass.
"Did you hear it all?" she asked.
Eddie nodded.
"Do you think we can find her?"
Eddie nodded.
"I'm not going to get any help from Daniel."
Eddie shook his head slowly.
She stared at the glass in her hand. "You know," she said. "Talking to Daniel just now was a little like eating glass."
Eddie got on his knees and turned to face her. He put a hand on each of her shoulders. "Babe," he said. "Don't take this the wrong way." He lowered his chin and looked up at her with wide puppy eyes.
"But you kind of like the taste of blood in your mouth."
She could have reacted by throwing the glass, or taking a bit out of it and spitting it at him. She could have screamed and thrown her hands up and stomped around the house. She could have gotten angry. She could have denied it. Instead, she thought of all the difficult tasks she took on, including her boyfriend and her high maintenance tenants. She thought about how she was taking on the task of finding the little girl. She'd have to decide what to do with her once she did find her. The options were bleak: police, Daniel, kidnap the kid herself.
"Did you hear it all?" she asked.
Eddie nodded.
"Do you think we can find her?"
Eddie nodded.
"I'm not going to get any help from Daniel."
Eddie shook his head slowly.
She stared at the glass in her hand. "You know," she said. "Talking to Daniel just now was a little like eating glass."
Eddie got on his knees and turned to face her. He put a hand on each of her shoulders. "Babe," he said. "Don't take this the wrong way." He lowered his chin and looked up at her with wide puppy eyes.
"But you kind of like the taste of blood in your mouth."
She could have reacted by throwing the glass, or taking a bit out of it and spitting it at him. She could have screamed and thrown her hands up and stomped around the house. She could have gotten angry. She could have denied it. Instead, she thought of all the difficult tasks she took on, including her boyfriend and her high maintenance tenants. She thought about how she was taking on the task of finding the little girl. She'd have to decide what to do with her once she did find her. The options were bleak: police, Daniel, kidnap the kid herself.
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