but wear out the pavement of your street

Don't look for heaven, my heart,

but wear out the pavement of your street.

 Pindar, from Pythian Odes 

------------------------------------------------------------------

FROM 09 JULY 2007

I'm just not sure why he likes me, what he's got to go on at this point besides physical appearance. She shouts this over her shoulder because I am a few steps behind, trying my best not to intrude on the family portrait setting itself up in front of me. Lately we've taken to wandering the streets, walking it off as she likes to say and today we've ended up in front of the White House, stepping into the frame of who knows how many Christmas cards along the way. SEASON'S GREETINGS from OUR FAMILY ( don't mind the suspicious looking girl in the sunglasses) to YOURS! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

What do you mean you don't know why he likes you? Why wouldn't he like you? I stop and she keeps going, my words chasing her down because a Japanese man has handed me a camera. He is wearing white shoes and pressed white cotton shorts. His white polo shirt and a white visor are made from the same white terrycloth. His socks are brown though, and his short wife, also dressed toe to top in white, has a red carnation pinned to the (white) band of her straw hat. She looks plucky so I tell her so and when she hears the words in her own language she smiles, looking up into the frozen face of her posed husband, I snap a couple shots. There, I think, finally, a picture with a smile. They bow and I bow and then we all bow again before I'm able to push the camera back into the man's hands, the hair on his knuckles very black and sparse. I picture these same hands holding chopsticks, reading the newspaper on a crowded train, as I dart ahead through the crowds to where my friend stands, talking into the air beside her. I'm not like "oh woe is me, why would anyone ever like me?" because you know I'm not like that. I think I'm pretty great. I have a lot to offer, right?

Right. Of course. So what's the problem? She didn't notice, so I don't break her stride.

Well, I just don't understand. Why does he like me? What's he basing this on? A bus barrels past and her words get whipped up and swirled around in the hot air gushing by us. He doesn't know me. He barely knows me. Her face is red now, from the sun and the hot air, but also from the exertion, the emotion behind the words. It's real confusion. She wants to understand so the color rises in her cheeks.

Why do you like him? Why does anyone like anyone? We are waiting to cross the street. The Japanese couple sidles up to us. You do like him, don't you? Even though they don't speak English, I lower my voice. You kissed him and you weren't even drunk. That means something, right. Doesn't it? I want desperately, irrationally to appear respectable for these people -- to fix myself in the album of their memories as that upstanding young girl who spoke their language a bit, took that great picture in front of the White House.

I do. I do like him. She is forging ahead, through a group of middle-aged Italian men who whistle and stare and gawk. They make comments and gestures but she ignores them. The Japanese people turn left, toward the Mall, so I exhale and settle back into who I am today: someone who is wrung-out and and a bit lost in her own town. The sort of girl who finds consolation wandering the streets. I like him she says, and then turns around, all the way, to look at me straight on for the first time all morning. I like him, right? 

Sure you like him. I'm not sure what to say because all my answers have been wrong lately, but I keep talking, like a shark who will die if it stops moving through the murky water. Let's put it this way -- you like something about him. There is something you like that keeps you going back. And he likes something about you and it keeps him coming back. That makes sense, right?

Is that enough? She isn't moving. She's just standing there, waiting for an answer. We are smudged and dripping and almost shouting, surrounded by a mill and flow of people who came here to relax, to spend some time with the family, to experience history first hand or didn't know where else to go.

Do you remember when I fell for Martin? Do you remember what it was that I liked about him? She nods her head and turns, walking again and I'm glad that motion relieves the pressure of the moment. She doesn't say anything though, so I go on. I liked his teeth. He had the deliciousest, most toothy grin in the world and I loved it. I loved it. I fell for it.

She does not look convinced. So you liked his smile. I see a million people a day with nice smiles. What does that mean?

It's a starting place. You take something and you go with it and then you add on to it. I liked his teeth. And then I liked the way his teeth fit in his mouth when he smiled and then I liked how he smiled at me when I talked about killing every plant I've ever had. I'm about to be lost, about to be broadsided by a busload of memories, but I keep going.  And then I liked the way he wrote with his left hand in the library and the way his left hand wrote a note like an 8th grade boy asking me to the movies. And then I liked the way that we laughed all through the movie and the way his left hand grabbed my right hand and the way he kissed me by the back door. I am shouting now and a mother in squeaky clean tennis shoes, purchased for this trip, gives her daughter a look -- a God-forbid you should grow up and wander the streets, shouting like a crazy person look -- and again I am overcome with a desire to appear ok, hinged and functional for these people, guests in my city.

I don't know. It's such a big gamble. I mean, look how wrecked you were by Martin in the end. Whatever. It will sort itself out, right? We are in front of a coffee shop and her hand is on the door. Wanna get something to eat? This walking makes me ravenous. 

Right, I want to say. Right. It will sort itself out. I repeat it to myself because she is already inside, in line, and because suddenly, standing in the confluence of men, women, their children, of history, commerce, love, country, summer I am the one who needs convincing, not her. We only have words and images, projected and gathered, to go on-- only eyes and ears to take them in. And what can they hold? I want to shout.What can you build out of light and sound? Out of nothing?

it will all come out in the wash

I almost bought an old double washtub from the 1920's at the junk store this morning.  It was about waist high, sitting on its castors, and the word "IDEAL" was stamped into the tin sides.  I liked it immediately, could think of at least ten different uses for it that would make my home (and so clearly by extension, MY LIFE) just a little cooler, more nifty and interesting. In the end, I decided to see if it's still there next month and got back in my car empty handed.

On the way back into the city I imagined the woman who used the washtub for its intended purpose, perhaps beside a small wooden house on the edge of a very big plain.  Who knows how many sets of coveralls or flour sack dresses she had to get through, or if she rationed the water in the summer, but I imagine her scrubbing and beating and rinsing all day.  The clean clothes on the line wave in the breeze, a flag flying high against all the lonely unknowns beyond the bounds of the homestead. 

I spent the rest of the morning attending to the small details of my own housekeeping.  I paid my bills, bought coffee and cream to get me through the week, swept the kitchen floor, and bleached the sink.  All in under an hour.  Then I wandered around a museum, read my book in the park, and went to the movies for the second time in as many days.  So much of my life is stamped with the word "IDEAL."  And yet has the hollow ring of an empty tin tub.

Tonight I will gather up my clothes and sheets and towels and go to the laundromat down the road from my home.  I will feed the machine quarters and it will take care of most of the scrubbing and rinsing, leaving me to fight only the loneliest spots that never quite come out in the wash.  

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).

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.

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... 

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.

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