30 May 2012

Some lines along Secession

More Tired
I'm more tired than I've ever been in my whole life I tell Squirrel after a particularly harrowing string of days. Go to sleep, she says before hanging up. The next day she sends me a plane ticket to visit her at the Left Handed Captain's house on the shores of Lake Secession.


Packing List
4 dresses with pockets, 6 books, 2 aprons, pens & hairpins, ibuprofen. 


Middle Seat
Sweetheart, can I buy you a drink? the man in the window seat asks as the drink cart rattles our way. Forget the drink, the other one says, she looks like she needs someone to buy her a good steak and a month of sleep. They are nice men, these two good old boys in their Clemson caps and fishing vests. They hand me each a bottle of Wild Turkey and then pretend not to notice that I can't stop crying. 


ipod: shuffle: first song
Sufjan Stevens: Seven Swans
A Good Man is Hard to Find
Once in the backyard, 
she was once like me, 
she was once like me. 
Twice when I killed them, 
they were once at peace, 
they were once like me. 
Hold to your gun, man, 
and put off all your peace, 
put off all the beast. 
Paid a full of these, I wait for it, 
but someone's once like me. 
She was once like me. 
I once was better. 
I put off all my grief. 
I put off all my grief. 
And so I go to hell, I wait for it, 
but someone's left me creased. 
And Someone's left me creased


Tenderness by the hand
Used to navigating the open seas by stars, the Left Handed Captain is at a loss when it comes to keeping the moving blue dot on the course charted out for us by google maps. We pass the exit for Fair Play, South Carolina 3 times before I fall asleep amidst the pile of bags and fishing gear in the back of the truck. When I wake, the truck has stopped at the end of a gravel driveway. Squirrel leads me with tenderness by the hand to the guest room of the house on the shores of Lake Secession. A real live dead alligator is splayed out across the floor and the collected works of Flannery O'Connor sit on the table by the bed, as though waiting up for my arrival.


Crawford's Country Store
South Carolina Department of Natural Resources: 7 day fishing license 90994213
Issued: Crawford's Country Store
$11.00
Yeah, Mang
The back wall of the country store is lined with jigs, lures, weights, hooks. Bait. Tackle. There, the Left Handed Captain, stands, talking crappie and bass with his high school buddy Dixon and another guy who stretches out his hand and says Max Crawford, ma'am with a nod. Their voices are slow and cool and deep and I find myself floating on the surface of this particular lagoon with no trouble at all.   


It doesn't take long
Aww hell, Kate, I whisper to myself. Don't you practically do this very thing for a living? Skin is skin and a needle is a needle. It doesn't take long before I can reach into the bucket, fish out a minnow, thread the hook through its lip, and cast in under a minute.  I let my line drift, let the tethered minnow think he is leading the charge. And then I reel him back in.


Certain Sensibilities/High Life
We pass the boiled peanuts back and forth across the boat and I marvel how much the afternoon tastes like my childhood in Japan, all salty legumes and dried bits of fish on my fingers.  The Left Handed Captain is a man of certain sensibilities, some of which extend to the lining of his intestinal tract, so he leaves the six pack of High Life to me and drinks something from a bright colored can that is supposed to taste like sweet tea, only no sweet tea your mama would make. When we stop to fill up the tank, he comes out of the shack with a giant dill pickle and my heart almost explodes trying to contain the perfection of the day.

All is indeed lost
The land is wooded, with gentle hills and patches of good pasture between the stands of trees. I watch for houses with handsome bunches of cattle and imagine knocking on the doors of these homes and asking for work or if there are any awkward, taciturn bachelor sons who need the love of a good woman. I'm a hard worker, I'd say, and what's more I'll make biscuits on weekdays and pies on the weekends. As we pull into Abbeville the Left Handed Captain points out the Burt Stark mansion and tells me this is where the Confederate Generals decided to surrender, where Jefferson Davis looked at the great price of secession and declared All is indeed lost. I picture his nice full head of hair and high cheek bones. I wonder if any of his great great great grandsons are awkward taciturn bachelors still farming these parts, hankering for a piece of good pie; secretly wanting a more perfect union with the north.

Handful of hushpuppies
Squirrel dips the crappie fillets in buttermilk and flour and drops them into the skillet while I stand over the kettle of bubbling peanut oil and wait for the hush puppies to roll over in their bath. The Left Handed Captain keeps the daiquiris flowing, his mother opens jars of pickled okra, and his father teaches us dice games. We laugh and laugh.  At the end of the night I put a handful of hush puppies, heavy as musket balls, into the pocket of my apron and sneak down to the dock to throw my edible rocks at the lake, my only weapons against Secession.  

Girls are shitheads, too.
Squirrel and I leave the Left Handed Captain to his book by the falls. We tell him we want to go shopping! and then over our drinks, laugh at how he believed us, two rumpled old gals that we are.  We find a bar called The Velo Fellow and I fall for it immediately, for the rhyming name, half french and half english, for the bicycles everywhere, for its cool dark sanctuary. Squirrel tells me all her sadness and worry about the Left Handed Captain and then I tell her of my exhaustion and fracture. The bartender listens as he dries a flat of clean glasses and doesn't even ask before bringing us another round. Men are such shitheads! Squirrel says after we've said just about all that needed saying.  Yeah. But girls are shitheads, too I remind her.

Moonshine cocktails
In Greenville we meet the Left Handed Captain's friend from college.  He has dark, dark hair and bright blue eyes and the best manners of any man I've ever met, a real southern gentleman.  He takes us to a distillery where they make moonshine. The rawness of the liquor burns its way down my throat and I feel the wiring of my insides, already stripped and frayed, spark. Back at his house the southern gentleman makes moonshine cocktails with strawberries and home-made ginger ale while we get ready for the party. I put on my new dress (pink and black flowers, pockets), pink lipstick, a brave face.  Outside hail the size and weight of quarters pelts the bathroom window, snapping the dogwood and azalea blossoms from their stems.  

This is how the conversation goes
He tells me he is 22, almost done with a degree in philosophy. I catch him staring at my breasts. I am in no mood to be charming and certainly no mood to be charmed.

So you're from Washington, DC? 
Yes.
There are a lot of great museums there. Do you like art?
It's okay, I suppose.
You know what city has great art museums?
Do tell.
Florence.
Florence, South Carolina? I've never been.
Oh...um...I mean Florence, Italy. It's beautiful!
Yes. Most of Italy is, I hear.
Do you like music?
Some.
You should listen to this guy called Sufjan Stevens. You'd really like him.

Easy now, Old Gal. Only spinsters call young men whippersnappers.  
I bite my tongue and smile for the first time.

Thank you for the suggestion. I'll have to look into that.
Yeah! He's great. Hey...are you on facebook?

Turn away and stamp your feet
It is Palm Sunday and the pews are filled with men in pastel polo shirts and women in sleeveless sundresses. The choir mistress is ancient and perches unsteadily on a stool, looking at the congregation over her beaky nose like an egret gazing over the water.  A woman announces from the doorway that there are lemon meringue pies and seven-layer salads left over from the church social on sale, a bargain at $7 apiece. Across the way I see Max Crawford from the country store. The minister notes how good it is to have Sister So and So back after all the trouble she went through with her sugar diabetes. We wave our palm branches during the hymns. You sing hosanna now, the minister booms from the pulpit, but when God's plan doesn't look like what you want do you turn away and stamp your feet and yell CRUCIFY HIM? At the end of the service we file down the aisle and leave our palms at the alter. 

 After church, sitting on the dock at Lake Secession, I think of the poem 
I read every Ash Wednesday, 
of reading it this Ash Wednesday, 33 days prior, in particular, 
in the poetry corner at a man's house.

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgment not be too heavy upon us

Secession, rebellion, submission, redemption. We turn and we turn and we turn again.  

Teach us to care and to not care
Teach us to sit still   
(from Ash Wednesday, by TS Eliot)

Spare half hour
The airport restaurant overlooks a sculpture garden. We eat salads and talk about the weekend in the spare half hour before I must go through security. I look at these two people across the table, people who I love so much, who are trying to figure out what it means to love each other. I wonder what will become of all of us, about all the ways we could die, or kill each other, trying. 
     
Middle seat, again.
Are you coming or going? the man in the aisle seat asks me. Both, constantly. I close my eyes and sleep.

--
(for Squirrel, JPB, and JLR).

28 May 2012

continuing quest

In my continuing quest to better understand suffering, to somehow cultivate a gracious & wise response to disappointment & trouble, this is one of the most helpful things I've found.

27 May 2012

tightrope

A crazy, crack-addled woman lost her baby all over my shoes and I held the hand of an old man who laid, out of his mind with fear and pain, on the floor for 3 days before anyone found him.

And yet...

...we live in this and yet... 

25 May 2012

sight for the...lame?


I broke down on Monday and ordered a pair of "free" glasses from the internet.  I don't know if it was the pollen or the incessant crying (most likely it was the incessant crying while sitting in piles of dead leaves under blossoming trees) this spring, but every morning I'd wake with eyes crusted tight shut.  After twenty minutes in the shower, I could usually pry the superior palpebra from the inferior palpebra just enough to drop an Acuvue Oasys HYDRACLEAR PLUS disposable lens 2.25/8.4 onto my tender, wincing sclera. Though I've never been in a revolutionary mob, I imagine this act is something akin to throwing a molotov cocktail at one's own face. I'd brace myself, launch, and then press my palms deep into the ignited sockets, jump around the bathroom yelling Shit shit shit! Get it together, Kate! Shit! and then proceed with my day as though walking through a dense, private fog (again: due to a change in atmospheric or emotional pressure...who can really say?).

On days I couldn't quite face self-immolation, I'd leave my pride in my underwear drawer and wear my glasses. Not only can I truly NOT see out of my glasses, they look bad, really bad.  The frames sit lopsided on my face, like a skinny kid trying to see-saw with a fat kid over the bridge of my nose. To compensate I'd walk around with a half-cocked head tilt, giving me the air of a chronically bemused airhead -- something no one really wants to see in their nurse and something I certainly didn't want to see in the mirror.  Furthermore, the trail of bruises on my thighs, hips, and arms testify to my utter lack of depth perception. I walked into so many corners of desks, stretchers, walls that one of the doctors suggested that maybe I'd had a cerebellar infarct. Ataxic gait. Homely girl.

And so, on Monday, I decided to take care of business.  I sat down at my desk, found a website that allows you to fill in a couple of blanks, and then sends you a pair of glasses in the mail for the cost of shipping alone.  I took a picture of myself, "tried on" a couple of pairs, chose a color, almost went permanently cross-eyed trying to measure my pupillary distance in the bathroom mirror, entered my prescription, paid my $9.95 for 2 day delivery, and patted myself on the back.  

Simply ordering a pair of new glasses seemed to take care of the problem; on Tuesday morning I sprang out of bed with crystal clear vision and all day Wednesday I didn't so much as blink.  Today, though. Today was terrible.  My eyes itched and twitched and my R contact migrated across my eyeball like a nomad across the desert.  I squirted 10 cc syringe after 10 cc syringe of saline into my eyes.  I missed a line on a 32 year old man with veins as thick as rope running across his forearms. And it had nothing to do with the fact that he was handsome and funny and invited me to come see his band play this weekend. Shit shit shit! Get it together, Kate! Shit! I left early and drove home through the deluge of rain with my right eye closed, burning.

A small blue box was waiting for me on my steps.  I took out my contacts, took off my scrubs, and then rummaged blindly through the desk for a pair of scissors.  Inside the small blue box sat a smart blue case and inside the smart blue case lay...not the glasses I ordered.  Or rather, according to the invoice, the glasses I ordered but not the glasses I meant to order. Because I didn't see or couldn't see or didn't take the time to check to see if I was ordering the women's frames or the men's (Presbyopia, dyslexia, or chronic inattention to fine print - the jury may never reach a verdict on this one).  But I put them on anyway and my world exploded with the texture, color, perspective and clarity I've missed for so long. Finally, I can see. And I don't care one bit how I look. 

I called Squirrel to tell her the good news - vision triumphs vanity in the end, old gal! - and she tells me to send her a picture.  Over the phone I hear her click on the file, laugh, and then pause before saying You actually look like your true self in those glasses: a former chemistry major who reads comic books. And then I hear her fall out of her chair laughing. Nerdy flirty thirty!

I can't argue with Squirrel or the facts.  May we all have eyes to see the truth of who we are, what we can be in just the right light.


22 May 2012

the days lately, kately.


battle calls & musket balls

evening runs past rows of nuns

live oaks & bicycle spokes

iced coffee & orange poppies

tending flocks with hot docs...wearing crocs (gotta mock!)

champagne flutes & boorish brutes

comic books & grappling hooks

sleepless nights & vampire bites

oatmeal cookies & honest bookies

writing letters/shedding sweaters/getting better/loosing fetters

new home #2, #3

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."

J.R.R TolkienThe Hobbit 
---

Peach ranunculas in a blue jar on the window sill. An orange bowl full of purple grapes. An old brown chair, a stack of crimson books. A yellow apron on its peg. Only the green typewriter is missing in this violet hour.

19 May 2012

fiance in the waiting room


The younger men ask, mostly, because they hope to get lucky, even from a hospital stretcher.


Girl, I don't see no ring on that finger. You on lock down or still up for grabs? 


Old men are more skillful.  Courtlier.


Thank you, Sugar. You take care of your husband this good? If I was 40 years younger, he'd better watch out cause, let me tell you, I'd snatch you right up.


(Well let me tell you, Mr. Jones... if I was 40 years older...)


Young women ask to even the playing field, to see how we stack up against each other.  I tell them to take off their clothes and hold their babies while they go pee in a cup. I ask them about their menstrual cycles, their sexual habits, their bowel movements.  They want a turn at asking the questions.


You got kids? No?! Hmm. Well, you got a fiance, right?


Usually I don't mind.  An honest question deserves an honest answer and I've got nothing to hide or be ashamed of.  Their questions have very little to do with me. It's much more about them, the holes and the missing pieces in their lives.


My patient tonight was in her 70's.  She drove herself to the hospital when her heart started to hurt. I helped her unbutton her blouse, tied the strings of her hospital gown, brought her ice, called her sister, and tucked more blankets around her while she waited for the doctor.


You sure do work hard, Sweetheart.  What time you get off? 11 pm?!  Is your husband keeping dinner warm for you, I hope?


I'd like to think that if I had a husband, he'd be the kind who would keep dinner warm. But no, I'm not married. 


You're not married? Why on Earth is a sweet girl like you not married?


I read once that in a courtroom, an attorney should never ask a witness a question unless he already knows the answer or truly wants to know the answer.  In the courtroom of my own mind, where I am prosecutor, defendant, witness, jury, and judge, this is a question that no one ever asks or answers.
---

Can you go get my fiance out the waiting room?


Sure. What's her name?


Sheila.


What's Sheila's last name?


I don't know?


What do you mean you don't know? I though Sheila is your fiance.


She is. But I just met her on the bus the other day.

14 May 2012

new home #1

Even before I moved I crawled inside this song and made myself a new home.  Ain't it feel right? Ain't it feel nice. 


04 May 2012

honestly!

Honestly! What's the point of living in the capital of the Free World if you go to three different post offices in one week and still can't get your hands on a sheet of Twentieth-Century Poets FOREVER stamps?