the right side of 30

It's that Stupid Trust Fall, All Over Again

2012-01-26T17:23:00.003-06:00

This week my adventure happened in the chiropractor's office. I've always been a little afraid of these guys, mainly because of the wrenching motion they sometimes use on your neck. (It looks a bit like something Jack Bauer would do when the clock is ticking down.)

But my new insurance covers such visits, and ever since I got to town, my back has been aching in the mornings, rendering me almost at old lady status in the way that I freeze when bending over, caught in mid-spasm.

It's possible this happened when I carried a TV down a flight of stairs. Or when I moved a bunch of type cases filled with lead. Possibly doing Pilates, but probably from the crappy mattress I've been sleeping on. But that's not really the point here.

The point is that I finally caved and went to a chiropractor who was recommended by two friends. (They left out a key detail, which is that the Doc could easily be on the cover of Vanity Fair. This will be important later.) He was very kind, and wrote down my laundry list of aches while assuring me that he would not break my neck and render me totally immobile. He asked me about my activities, because this is a holistic approach, after all. Our conversation went something like this:

Doc: Are you still doing yoga?
Me: No, I fell off the wagon. I'm trying to get started again.
Doc: I'm not judging. I made it through four yoga classes and thought downward dog was supposed to be a push up, because really, who can rest in that position? Is anything else giving you trouble?
Me: My knee hurts when I'm...
Doc: Dancing?
Me: No, just walking. (Of course I wouldn't admit this, but it does sometimes hurt when I'm dancing around my living room, pretending I'm Beyonce. How did he know??)
Doc: Do you have access to that spiffy new gym on Burlington?
Me: (sighing) Yes. I know I don't go there enough.
Doc: I'm not judging. I have a client who started a spinning class and her knee pain stopped.

So then when he assured me that my chances of having a stroke, according to the Canadians, who apparently crunch numbers better than we do, were approximately 1 in 8 million, I agreed to be "adjusted."

He then determined that one leg is shorter than the other--a condition that apparently runs in my family. My great uncle seems to get away with everything because one leg is shorter that the other. (Such as, "he doesn't do yard work, you know one leg's shorter than the other," or "she does all the cooking because, you know, he's got one leg shorter than the other," or even, "he's being a pain about this whole property dispute, but bless his heart, one leg's shorter than the other.") This little anomaly may prove useful for me someday, but during this visit, it indicated that my hips were out of line and I should relax and take a deep breath while he attempted to straighten them out.

And here's where things get interesting. Having never been to a chiropractor, I had no idea what kind of contortions they expect from you. So as he moved my arms and legs around, he said, "Now you'll feel like you're going to fall off the table, but I promise you won't. I've got you."

Believe me, I've heard that one before. And it always ends the same way--with me on the floor.

It's difficult to relax when someone tells you to. Especially when that someone is stone cold foxy, nearly lying on top of you, and shoving his weight into your back so that you feel like you're rolling right off the table. All I could think was, I am not a tiny woman. Physics has never been on my side. With enough momentum, my mass is going to accelerate right towards the floor, and then you're really going to have your work cut out for you.

I guess he's as strong as he is tall, though, because I did not crash to the floor. He looked a little puzzled and said, "I didn't get much there. Maybe next time."

When he moved on to my neck, he said, "There's a lot of tension here," and I thought, boy, you have no idea. And then he said, "Relax," and I thought, "Uh-oh. Here we go again." Apparently I still have trouble trusting people--I had a flashback to the eighth grade, when we all went on one of those bonding field trips to a camp where they made you do a "trust fall." And I distinctly remember my best friend standing up on that platform, crossing her arms over her chest, and falling backwards, her hair rippling around her like water. And just as clearly, I remember our hooligan classmates-- distracted by a passing bird, a yell from the other obstacle, or perhaps a word from our adorable Australian counselor--scrambling as her shadow covered them. And they dropped her.

So yes, next time is tomorrow. I will try to relax. I will try to trust that I will not end up on the floor. After yesterday's adjustments, I could turn my head again. Of course my job and my vocation means that I'm generally a wreck from my neck to my hips. As soon as I tell someone like this that I'm a writer and a printmaker, they say, "Oh, that explains it." It seems my body is keeping a record of print runs and pages written...I seem to reach this point every four or five weeks, when everything critical is tight and stiff and sore. So when the Doc said, "You're drinking too much coffee, but we can talk about that later," I thought, yes, we will be seeing each other for a while.

This Must Be Why They Call it Wild America

2012-01-14T21:59:00.007-06:00

It seems when you're the new girl in town, the adventure never stops. When you move a thousand miles from your home, there's a period of adjustment. You have to get used to regional differences--weather, unusual driving customs, the quizzical looks you get when you say "y'all." It takes a little while.

Friday was no different. Yes, it was the 13th, but that didn't concern me. Turns out it should have.

I learned my first lesson first thing in the morning, as I was walking to work. I parked in what used to be a parking space before it became a snowdrift, and immediately sank into several inches of snow. As I was crossing what I was pretty sure was the street, I learned that there are some very kind people in the world who shovel the sidewalk in front of their houses. That makes navigation fairly easy. Without this slice of pavement, it's oddly hard to tell what is lawn, what is street, and where the curb is.

This last bit is key.

As I crossed the next street, I misjudged where the curb was and did a face plant right there on the lawn. The little old man who was walking his dog had no trouble staying upright. The woman jogging through the slurry had no problem. I think I even made an "oof" sound as I landed. At least the snow bank was softer than I expected.

I thought one lesson was enough for Friday, but apparently I was meant to learn one more.

Sometime after midnight, I woke up and saw a strange shape outside the window. I lay there, frozen, staring, thinking that surely my eyes were playing tricks on me. That was not a person by my window. It couldn't be.

Then it moved. I lay there another moment, and it moved again. It was a man. And what looked like a German shepherd. And they both appeared to be staring into the window. The man moved like he was taking off his jacket and laying it on the ground.

I bolted down the hall and called my landlord (who lives upstairs), and told him there was a man standing outside my window. He said, oddly calm, "Well, we'll have to do something about that," and I thought, "Well, yes, that would be an excellent idea." Then he said, "But I don't have a flashlight."

From upstairs, he turned on the outside flood lights and I peeked around the corner into my bedroom, thinking I really should have grabbed the big hunting knife when I grabbed the phone.

The yard lit up like a stage, and I saw them. Two enormous deer, staring into the window.

The yard was full of deer tracks, but no footprints. Unless I'd just seen a shapeshifter, there was no man. No German shepherd. But without that snow to prove me wrong, I would have sworn they had both been there. How does a deer make herself look like a man peeking in a window? How is it that my brain can manufacture this kind of man, but not the kind who appears in the daytime and wants to take me out to lunch?

This sort of thing is embarrassing for a gal who grew up in the country. My mother had a similar encounter in the wee hours of the morning--years ago-- when she walked through the kitchen to see someone's breath fogging up the window. That someone was a horse, escaped from the neighbor's pasture. My mother, however, had ventured into the room like Lady Godiva. My father howled with laughter, for years talking about the horse that fogged up the window.

So it could have been worse. I could have been naked. I could have fallen on concrete instead of fluffy snow. I could have called the police, who I think would have been less amused than my landlord.

This learning curve's getting steeper. It's a good thing I'm taking notes.

You're Not in Carolina Anymore...or How I Became the Fish Out of Water, Again

2012-01-02T18:30:00.004-06:00

It seems I'm destined to be that fish-out-of-water story--how could I not be, with my habit of uprooting myself every two to three years? My dad said once that I was like a hummingbird--I didn't light in one place for very long. But since the last few moves have been below the Mason-Dixon line, this one is a bit different. My latest exodus has taken me to Iowa--a place I thought was going to be, as my grandmother says, "flat as a flitter." I was happy to find it has the same rolling hills that ripple across my native South Carolina. There's the same expanse of pastures, the same lowing of cows in the distance. The only significant difference so far is the lack of trees. It's so similar, in fact, that for the first few weeks in my new home, I had to keep reminding myself that I was in the midwest. When I told my new friend this, she said, "Don't worry. Pretty soon the weather will alert you to the fact that you're not in the south anymore." Ah, the weather.

Everyone warns me about the winter. It's sweet the way they worry about me freezing to death, how maybe I don't have sweaters or a coat that will ward off hypothermia, or how I might panic when there's a real snowfall, sort of like the way a turkey is doomed by a rainstorm. Before I moved, my friend's husband told her, "Lauren's a little Southern girl--she doesn't know about real cold. You have to help her!" And then she gave me a list of the three essentials that helped her survive Alaska with all extremities intact: 1) a full-length down coat, 2) silk long underwear, and 3) knee-high snow boots. I told her that maybe one of those wild mountain men that look a little like Wolverine might help and she said, "Honey, please. You don't want any man that wanders out of those mountains. Trust me." Does Iowa have mountains?

At dinner with my new colleagues, one confessed that after the interview for my new job, one member of the panel said, "Did anyone say anything about the winter? Nobody tell her about the cold until after she signs the contract." I think maybe they were serious.

One day in November, when it was 30 degrees and I was wearing my Alabama-winter coat, I said to my friend, "I'm glad it's finally winter." He chuckled, with this devilish look in his eye, and said, "This isn't winter." A few weeks later, on a day when it was 15 degrees and we were shivering in a field, I said, "Is this winter?" After a long pause, possibly because the synapses in his brain were slowed by the chill, he said, "Yeah, this counts as winter." But the winter is no match for the warmth of the folks who were waiting for me in Iowa City. I've moved a lot in the last fifteen years, and I never felt quite as welcomed as I did my first week here. New friends brought me into their homes and showed me around town, helped me find an apartment and invited me to Thanksgiving dinner. I knew I liked this town when I found good coffee shops and a great bookstore, when I bumped into someone I knew when I'd only been in town for three days, and when I walked past the old capitol and saw it had been engulfed by gigantic pink tentacles--a local artist's installation that reminds us to embrace our surges of creativity. That's just the kind of surge that brought me here, but the wave of kindness is what made me feel like I belong.

Found Art

2011-10-30T13:35:00.006-05:00

My great Southwest adventure took me through Texas, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico...somehow I looped back through North Carolina a couple of times and then ended up migrating west to Iowa. If you were to map my route over the last four months, it would look a lot like a trail of yarn after a cat terrorized it, or perhaps like a bowl of spaghetti dumped on the floor. Or perhaps like a garden hose after I have attempted to remember which flowers need to be watered, or...well, you get the idea. A direct route isn't nearly as much fun as the winding one, right?

I saw some incredible sights along the way, met some folks who will no doubt inspire characters in my next novel, and--not surprisingly--found a steady stream of art along the trail that led me here. It seems a highlight reel is in order, so posted below are a few of my favorites.

near my new home, Iowa City, IA

the old capitol, Iowa City, IA. (for more info on this migrating installation project, see http://muscatinerivermonster.com/

the iron studio's mechanical bull, Penland, NC

in the aspen forest, near Moab, UT

along the highway, on the way to Carlsbad, NM

inside the famous UFO museum, Roswell, NM

in the art museum, Roswell, NM

on the main drag, Las Vegas, NM

a side street in Santa Fe, NM

Madrid, NM

Ashley Pond Park, Los Alamos, NM

inside the Pearl Brewery, San Antonio

The Town that Didn't Exist

2011-09-22T16:32:00.010-05:00

Los Alamos has haunted me since the first time I went there, nearly three years ago. It has a fascinating history, tempered with secrecy and drive, fear and heartache--in short, all the things that make us human. So of course I had to go back this time around, when I could take my time exploring, not worried about keeping twenty teenagers out of trouble in the "Atomic City."

Before it was the home of the Manhattan Project, it was home to a boys' ranch school, modeled after the Boy Scouts and started in 1917 by Ashley Pond. The Army seized the ranch property in 1942, transforming it into Site Y, and built housing for the scientists who would follow. The "town that didn't exist" built itself around the project, using the school's existing buildings as housing for the scientists, offices, and a dining hall.

The museum, itself one of the buildings used by the scientists, has a moving collection of letters from engineers who were called to work on "the gadget." In letters that were returned because they revealed too much information, the writers explain how they were all given the same address--a P.O. box in Santa Fe, which was also put on driver's licenses and birth certificates. They sometimes refer to their work, in no detail, saying they weren't sure exactly what their work had to do with the war effort.

In later letters, they sometimes mention the moment when they learned how their engineering was used. The accounts range from curious to heartbreaking, and I have to wonder what it was like to be driven over thirty miles into the desert, to work on a tiny part of something, its purpose unknown, and then to see the headline in 1945 that revealed the result of their secret collaboration.

One room in the museum is devoted to the aftermath of Fat Man and Little Boy, a series of unearthly panoramic photographs that are difficult to look at. An adjoining room displays an array of atomic kitsch--from board games and candy (this is after all, the birthplace of the Atomic Fireball) to ladies' hats and a celebratory cake that feature the iconic mushroom cloud. Down the street, the Bradbury Science Museum offers more views on the history and technology behind the Manhattan Project, but its most intriguing room is one that is a gallery of photographs. The walls are filled with rows of 8 x 10 black and white photos of people who worked at the lab in

the 1940s. They are scientists, housekeepers, cooks, engineers, pilots and colonels, all with gray hair and weathered faces. Each one is paired with a statement, in their own words, that describes what they felt while working for the project, and how they felt after they learned of its purpose. It's deeply moving, reading these accounts, and surprising to see what was salvaged and what was destroyed--beyond letters, uniforms, and board games.

The Atomic City still seems shrouded in mystery. When I ask if the national lab is open to the public for tours (it seems reasonable, after all everyone else is offering tours), the docent looks shocked and says, "Oh, no." And there is no further explanation. A friend in Albuquerque tells me, "Nobody really knows what goes on there, or who does what. But you can still tell who's who, mainly by their shoes."

Many of the buildings used by the scientists are now being transformed yet again. The Fuller Lodge, formerly the dining hall, is now a community arts center, hosting classes and a gallery space for local artists. Another building is now the town playhouse, and many of the historic homes on Bathtub Row are private residences. If you know where to look, you can find Oppenheimer's former house.

Leaving town, I have more questions than answers: what is being preserved, and what is being transformed? What has been salvaged, and what has been lost in the memory of time?

Into the Belly of the Whale

2011-09-11T14:14:00.007-05:00

I'll admit, I'm not a morning person. I generally stagger around for the first few hours of my life, sipping coffee and speaking in short sentences. There are few things I'll get up before 6 am to see. But a cave makes the short list.

I signed up for a 9 am lantern tour of Carlsbad Caverns, not realizing that my motel room in Roswell was two hours from the cave entrance. But this was a tour by candlelight, and how often does a gal get a chance to see a massive cave in such a romantic setting?

It turns out I was lucky to see the cave at all. A massive fire had swept through the area just weeks before, forcing the park to close as it burned up to the pavement surrounding the visitors' center. But once I got there, I decided it was worth getting up before sunrise.

Our perky ranger guide told us the story of Jim White, who is credited with first exploring the cave. (Naturally the Native Americans in the area knew about the cave for centuries, if not longer, but White's exploration ultimately led to the subsequent awe and delight that enabled the cave to be preserved as a national park).

White, at the age of 16, was working as a wrangler on a nearby ranch when he saw what appeared to be an ominous plume of black smoke. Being a rancher in the desert, this alarmed him to a certain degree, and he rode out to investigate the fire. The smoke, as it turned out, was a gigantic swarm of bats. When he saw they were emerging from a hole in the ground, he was compelled to investigate. He explored on his own at first, taking only an oil lamp and a rope, and continued his spelunking for the next 17 years. In 1915 he began leading tours of the cave. Visitors were lowered 170 feet into the cave in a bucket that was once used to haul bat guano out. (While this sounds thrilling, I'm glad they've since built an elevator.)

In 1923 the cave was named a national monument, and was granted National Park status in 1930. In the 1940s, the park service began installing a lighting system that would illuminate the dramatic features of the cave. The lighting makes it possible to see the incredible stalactites and stalagmites, some of which are over 100 feet tall. The ranger, however, tells us that when the lighting was installed, Jim White was not shy about his discontent. He claimed the light deprived the visitor of using his imagination--and for him, the mystery was the heart of the experience.

By pure accident, my first glimpse of the cave was by the light of a candle in a glass lantern. Nine of us stumbled along behind the ranger in single file, holding lanterns out at arm's length as we tried to distinguish the depth of the chasms below us and calculate how high the stalagmites rose toward the ceiling. Without a doubt, this held a certain mystery that simply wasn't there in the big rooms, where the yellow-tinted light revealed how massive and complex the cave really is. The big rooms are spectacular, of course--I'd be lying if I said I wasn't entranced by the stalactites, hanging like giant teeth in a gaping mouth, the columns that look like an eerie kind of coral. But there's something to be said about seeing it lit by a tiny lantern, wondering just how deep the darkness is, and what you might do if the candle goes out. Whether it's for dramatic effect, or to preserve the memory of Jim White, the ranger takes a minute to turn off all of the lights in the cave, allowing us to experience total darkness. She then lights a tiny candle and holds it in front of her. "This is what Jim would have seen," she says, holding it by a feature that we know is a stalagmite…but in the light of her flame, it becomes one of Homer's mythical beasts, and it becomes clear that the park service and that adventurous rancher were struggling to preserve two very different things.

Girl Meets X-Files

2011-09-02T14:04:00.007-05:00

There are very few rules for what I've started to call my Great Southwest Adventure. But the one I try to stick to is this: as long as it's within four hours' drive, go check it out. Of course if I had unlimited funds for motel rooms, I wouldn't have this rule. But it's a good radius to keep, since as my uncle informed me, "Nothing in New Mexico is close together."

I allowed myself a couple of overnight stays, and decided that a Roswell-Carlsbad combo was at the top of the list. Now I know what you're thinking: staying overnight in Roswell? Is she crazy? And I'll admit three things:

1) I was an X-Files junkie back in the day. Big time. I was with Mulder 100%. The truth was out there. And boy, was it out there.

2) I outgrew this phase a little and started to think maybe all this alien stuff was a little far-fetched after all, seeing as how the most convincing evidence of interplanetary life was a bacteria picked up on Mars. I became a Scully.

3) One day at the internationally-known UFO Museum in Roswell has officially transformed me back into a Mulder.

The collection of witnesses' statements and affidavits was overwhelming. Now I'll admit there was some crazy kitschy stuff in there, like the life-size alien diorama that springs to life every thirty minutes or so, complete with a spinning saucer, flashing lights, and fog. Or the "alien autopsy booth" that was apparently constructed for use in a host of movies and TV shows filmed on location there. But there were also countless interviews with folks from this sleepy little town who claim to have seen the crash, worked in the lab where the "craft" was taken for study, and assisted with the recovery of bodies from the crash. It might be easy to brush these accounts aside, but after learning about how these people were threatened or ostracized at the time, and came forward years later when employers had died, when they had retired from the Army, or when the release of certain files meant they were no longer threatened, it makes you wonder what exactly happened on that night back in 1947.

Something happened here, though it may never be fully explained. What remains is a town shrouded in mystery--but one whose livelihood in part depends on that mystery. The UFO museum is housed in what used to be the Plains Theater--though the inside has been renovated, the facade looks much as is did in the 1940s. In fact, when you look at old photographs, you see that the whole downtown really hasn't changed all that much--but the historic facades are peppered with little green men. The town seems to have a sense of humor about this chapter in its history, but there is also an underlying effort to share the truths that the people here have experienced.

So is it any wonder that one of the most interesting features of the town is a sculpture called the Tree of Knowledge? Installed at the public library in 2008, it was designed by artist Sue Wink, who set up workshops that allowed the public to create clay tiles that would become the bark of the tree. The tree stands 17 feet tall and is made of over 2,800 of these custom tiles. Inside the metal limbs are words that relate to the library's function in inspiring creativity.

Being immersed in this cloud of intrigue, I can't help thinking that Roswell is a testament to our curiosity--whether it's to know what really happened on that infamous night, our quest to uncover knowledge that remains just out of reach, or simply our longing to find out what lies beyond what we know to be true. I might never look at stars in the same way again.

Choose Your Own Adventure

2011-08-09T21:26:00.002-05:00

I'm sitting outside today, avoiding writing the novel I've been setting aside for two years. I came to New Mexico hoping to be rejuvenated and inspired. I started this novel two years ago, after my first trip here. I was struck by the completely alien surroundings and thought it was perfect for my tortured protagonist, who was doomed for the "fish out of water" fate. I thought if I put myself back in the dry heat and the sand, then her voice would become clear again.

But it's been hard to jump back in this time. I broke the cardinal rule of writing, which was to stop my routine. I told myself that because I was in another graduate program, I had permission to slack off on the writing. I could't really expect to finish a novel while earning another degree, could I? But the result is that I feel like a hockey player who's been out with a concussion for a year. The stories don't unfold the way they used to.

What does occur to me, as I sit here procrastinating, is that all of those nature writers were on to something. I'll admit that their names sparked a bit of my own eye-rolling in graduate school. Dillard, Thoreau, Carson, Abbey--I begrudgingly read the heavy hitters, imagining them as people who had the means to leave their jobs behind and head out into the wilderness for months if not years at a time. I thought well, of course nature is beautiful and inspiring and terrifying--tell me something I don't know. They were interesting at times, but seemed redundant after a few hundred pages. I wasn't in a place to really appreciate it. How can you when you have to read two hundred pages by Friday and prepare a presentation of modernism and write a critique of a set of poems by the same night?

Earlier today, when I was still avoiding writing, having an internal debate about my narrator's voice and whether I should include multiple points of view, I watched an ant scamper along the table outside. It was a round table with a metal rim. The ant scurried along the rim, passing me three times as it traveled the same path. It seemed so hopeless, this ant traveling so far in a circle, over and over, going nowhere, with no end in sight. Finally I could't stand it anymore and said, 'Deus ex machina,' as I brushed it from the table and it fell into the grass.

And of course I'm not the first person to feel this way: trapped in an endless loop, feeling as if I'm always moving, yet going nowhere. As May approached, people kept asking me 'what are you doing after graduation?' 'what are you doing in the fall?' 'what will you do if you don't find a job?' 'what are you doing next year?' After a while it drove me crazy, and I thought, what if I just want to slow down and enjoy moments as they come for a change? What if I want to get out of this loop of motion, and just take it week by week, or day by day, and see what moments find me?

All spring, I searched for artsits' residencies. I thought I needed a capital-R Residency to give me permission to take a time-out to slow down and make my own work, and do what my heart wanted so desperately to do. A Residency is a reward, an opportunity, a free pass to delve into your craft, because that is its purpose. But after being denied several times, I thought: Do I really need to go through an application process in order to get what I want out of a residency? The answer, of course, was no. What does a residency provide? Time to work and reflect. A change of scenery. A work space. A chance to meet kindred spirits. Couldn't I create this myself?

And so I did. (Part of my procrastination includes reading "The Alchemist." As the narrator says, when one realizes his dream, all of the universe will conspire to help him achieve it. This has become more and more apparent as I look back on the last few years of my life, but that is another story.) And through an overwhelming show of support, I raised the funds I needed to travel to New Mexico. When I was asked to house-sit, my one month stay turned into two. I've now found a place to print the book that I put together while on this trip. I've earned small amounts of money that can prolong my stay. I've met amazing people who remind me of why I do what I do.

Now I feel a bit bad for brushing the ant off the table. He would have found his way eventually, but I, being trained in the goal-oriented rat race, was a bit too impatient. It's probably the same trouble I'm having with my protagonist, now that I think of it. We're taught in writers' workshops to make characters suffer, stay in the moment of the scene, but sometimes we worry too much about how hurry up and get to the end. So now I'm going to get back to her and see what she really wants. I think I agree that the key is time and space: realize your dream, chuck the fear of failure, and the universe will conspire to help you achieve it. Because the universe, it seems, likes a good ending as much as we do.

Kickstarter Project Underway

2011-05-31T18:34:00.003-05:00

So after hearing a friend's success story, and after taking my own advice from that Creativity class I taught last year*, I decided to bite the bullet and give Kickstarter.com a try. For those of you unfamiliar with kickstarter, it's one of those sites that will make you grit your teeth and say, "Why didn't I think of that?"

I'm a planner, for those of you who haven't been around me long enough to figure that out. I like to have certain parts of my future lined up. That is, I like to know things like where I'll be living, where I'll be working, approximate times I might leave for work and get home. I like to know when I might have days off, when direct deposit happens, and have an address that matches the one on my driver's license. But this is that time of year--post graduation--when all of that is predictably thrown into the wind and I go through a period of not knowing anything. I'm sure 99% of you know what this is like: that gnawing feeling that bites at you during the day, in the middle of the night, and while other friends are telling you about their day at work. It's the one that, late at night and after certain movies, causes me to second guess everything and think, "Why couldn't I be an engineer, or a doctor, or be a financial advisor, like my Dad said?" What in the hell possessed me to be an artist?

And then I remember. I have to be one. I can't pretend to be something else.

I have to move through those moments of fear--you know, the ones where you think, "What if this doesn't work out? What if I don't make any money? What if I fail? What will everyone think of me?" I have to remind myself that none of that matters. What matters is that I spend my days doing what I love, doing what makes me (and if I'm really lucky) other people happy. So what if it doesn't end the way I expected? Sometimes it ends better than I could have hoped. Sometimes I fall flat on my face, and something else incredible happens. I think it helps to take a long hard look at the word 'failure' and how we define it. Is it not getting the Hollywood ending we wanted, or is it being so crippled by a fear of the unexpected and unpredictable that we stop ourselves from fulfilling our dreams?

Here's the point where I refer you to the text I used in that Creativity class--"Uncommon Genius" by Denise Shekerjian. A bit old, yes. Outdated? Not entirely. In it, she interviews winners of the prestigious MacArthur prize, aka the "Genius Grants." There is one chapter that discusses this idea of failure, and our fear of it. It changed the way I thought of this whole life that happens when you're an artist--and it made me realize that the only true failure comes when you stop yourself from finishing before you ever start.

But I can't lie: as I was planning this kickstarter project, I stopped myself several times, thinking, "What if I launch it and it doesn't get funded? What if no one backs it at all? What will people say if it doesn't go?" It seems this habit is hard to break--this fear of failure is as ingrained as a muscle memory. But then I thought back to things my friends and family have said over the years, which were varied versions of this one thought: the only way you can insure that it fails is if you never try it.

So here's to Denise, and here's to all you folks moved by the creative spirit. Let's give it a go.

check out the project at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1201741110/not-just-another-roadside-attraction-a-letterpress

Searching for Indiana Jones, or How I Spent My Twenties Rolling in the Dirt

2011-04-18T17:57:00.004-05:00

Last week I finally made it down the road to Moundville, AL. It's home to the largest Mississipian settlement in the US, next to Cahokia. It took me nearly three years to go those ten miles, but once I got there, it awakened that part of me that longs to uncover the past with a shovel and a screen. I miss having dirt under my fingernails and a mystery to solve. I even miss the farmer's tan and the calluses.

Once upon a time, I wanted to be Indiana Jones. The female version, of course--and not that ridiculous Lara Croft in those laughably impractical shorts. I was going to be the

real deal. In my head, this would all be terribly romantic--I'd be traveling all over the world, digging up fragments of pyramids and temples, having red-hot love affairs with dashing scholarly men who liked to get their hands dirty. I'd know a dozen languages. I'd have friends on every continent. I'd discover some missing link, a lost language, a clay tablet that would change history.

This is what played in my head as I sat in my undergraduate lectures in a lovely gothic building with no air conditioning. It's possible these were heat-related fantasies.

Still starry-eyed and delusional, I went to field school in middle California, which meant unearthing a 18th century Spanish mission site adjacent to an Army base. This of course, meant excavating by day and spending our nights letting the fellas buy us drinks. (Is it too late to thank them?) It was vaguely like that scene in "Raiders," but without the brawling and the burning.

In the real world, post-graduation, I learned that the closest I was going to get was contract work with groups that called these adventures "cultural resource management." This

sometimes meant salvage archaeology, as in "Folks, they're about to build a Wal-Mart here, so let's open up some pits and recover all we can before they pave it." I dug test pits in cow pastures all across Tennessee. I surveyed the swamps in South Carolina. Once a farmer threatened to shoot my partner and me, and called the sheriff on us. My clothes were peppered with holes from barbed wire, and my skin was crisscrossed with cuts from the biggest briars I'd ever seen. I learned to shoot pool and differentiate between silt and loam. I turned 23 in the rolling hills of Tennessee, in a grid peppered with chert flakes and arrowheads. My cohorts cut my birthday cake with a trowel.

It wasn't a bad gig, but it wasn't like the screenplay I'd written in my head. In this world of contract survey, I learned that land polarized people: there were the corporations that wanted to move in and the communities that wanted to stop them. We were the hoop those business had to jump through: they had to use us to make sure they weren't destroying "sites of historical significance." Half the time the landowners didn't realize that we were really on their side: we hoped to find enough material to make the site relevant enough to stop contstruction. But more often than not, we didn't find enough material, and when I drove by a given site years or even months later, I could barely recognize it amidst all the concrete.

It saddened me after a while, feeling like I had a hand in the destruction. It seemed my dreams of scholarly adventure were just that: figments of an imagination fueled by Hollywood.

But when I went to Moundville, I was shocked to hear the story of how it had been preserved, how it came to be owned by the University of Alabama. One of the docents told me that in the 1920s, the mounds were covered in cotton. The land was owned by several people, mostly farmers. But one man, Walter Jones, wanted to insure the preservation of this site. So this man, who like everyone else, had lost everything and more in the Depression, developed a pattern that would save this site. He would mortgage his house, use the money to buy a tract of land, and donate it to the University. He did this systematically over the next several years, until he had purchased and donated all of the land that the twenty-six mounds rest upon. I'm always moved by stories like this--stories of people so determined to preserve what is meaningful to them, and the world around them, regardless of the personal sacrifice. I can't say I sacrificed much by digging in the hot sun and freezing winter, but I did feel like I was--in some small way-- fighting the good fight for preservation of history and culture.

This Week's Distraction

2011-03-14T17:35:00.005-05:00

I don't know what possessed me to agree to take part in a print exchange during the busiest time of the semester--maybe it was the temptation of receiving prints from ten other printmakers that will likely rock my little world. Perhaps it was an opportunity to forget about my thesis for a little while. Or I could have just been sleep-deprived and delirious--that's how I fell into the last one.

So this exchange has a theme: "Equilibrium or Dis-equilibrium." I feel like at this point in the semester--and let's be honest here, in my life--that's a recurring theme, and one I shouldn't have any problem responding to through ink and paper.

It proved harder than I thought, this equilibrium business. The rules of the exchange say that the prints must be dry when they arrive. I chuckled the first time I read this line, but now I'm cringing because it took me longer than I planned to come up with material for this image, I laid the ink on a bit thick in the monoprint phase of this adventure, and then a storm front moved through bringing the added bonus of ruthless humidity. I may have to take a hairdryer to them.

In the end, I recycled a bit of text and image from my thesis. The whole book deals with balance and imbalance, really--I didn't see it that way at first, but now it seems obvious. It's a collection of stories about relationships and romantic encounters that are viewed through multiple lenses: what was, what might have been. At times it pits fiction against fact, which I think is a recurring theme in all of my relationships. It seems to always come down to the unreliable nature of memory--I'm that gal who will argue that the first song we slow danced to was "These Arms if Mine," while the guy I danced with will swear it was "Into the Mystic." These songs are nothing alike--it's not like confusing Sam Cooke with Solomon Burke. It's like confusing a hamburger with sushi. So how can we recall the same event so differently?

Memory can lead to balance or the complete lack of it--maybe this is why it's so fascinating to me. And maybe I find my own equilibrium somewhere in the pull between the real and the imagined.

Adventures in Papermaking--Fiber #3

2011-03-05T10:43:00.003-06:00

In my first spring at UA, my papermaking class went on the annual "kozo hunt"--our affectionate term for the harvest of the elusive paper mulberry tree. It's also that one occasion where I get to use the machete that usually lives under my bed. In a process that's much more pleasant when it isn't January, we cut down tiny mulberry trees, cooked them, peeled off the bark, and proceeded to make paper from these fibers in the traditional Eastern way. The result was a beautiful paper that was strong, supple, and surprisingly transparent.

Transparent was exactly what I needed for part of my thesis. Kozo was the obvious solution. Though part of me felt adventurous thrashing through the brush and collecting little mulberry trees, I had to order fiber in order to maintain my sanity--the $40 was a bargain when I considered the two whole days it would take to harvest, steam, strip, and soak, and wash repeatedly.

I cooked the fiber on my kitchen stove in the biggest pot I could find. It was only after I dumped in the cup full of soda ash that I considered the possibility of passing out because of the chemical reaction and the lack of ventilation. (I should also say that earlier that evening, due to an unfortunate chain of events brought about by my friend whose car had run out of gas, said pot had a small bit of gasoline spilled in it. I had the good sense to scrub it out before I put it on the stove, but part of me still feared that I might be formally introduced to the nearest fire department when my apartment was a wreck and there was an ominous, bubbling pot of stinking fiber boiling over on the stove.)

After surviving the cook, I went to the mill to pull sheets and learned that I had two problems: 1) I forgot the retention aid, a substance akin to the slime on okra, which causes the fibers to properly bond and 2) Traditionally, kozo sheets are brushed onto boards and allowed to dry in the sun. (At school, our approximation is to brush the sheets onto the windows in the library. Folks put up with this for two days out of the year, but my edition of 200 sheets would likely be pushing it).

So, I pulled my kozo sheets western style. I left the chiri where it lay--persnickety folks pick out these dark bits of bark, but for me they added some kick. Also, these sheets would later be printed with black woodcuts, and so it seemed natural to leave some material that might create a transition from black ink to tan paper. (Have you ever tried to pick pepper out of potato soup? That's about half as irritating as chiri-picking.)

The result: slightly thicker, more opaque paper. Lovely nonetheless, and perfect for layering memories and birds.

No Ordinary Field Guide

2011-02-22T16:59:00.001-06:00

So what's this book about, you ask. A friend summed it up as "birds and botched relationships." It's snappy and accurate. I like it. The text is somewhat anecdotal, at times embellished, but always truthful--for someone out there, if not for me. It revolves around some relationships of mine that failed, were imagined, and ended before they began. There's empirical data about love and loss coupled with a parallel narrative about bird behavior. The result is a kind of field guide.

The book is comprised of layers of imagery, a way of reflecting the layers in memory. Most of the people who are referenced in these memories, I'll probably never encounter again. Some of them I will. I'd be lying if I said that didn't make me a little nervous. But I suppose all writers struggle with this: the eternal question of "what if they think this story was about them?" And what happens when the story really is about them? I'd like to cover my hide here and say, "Any relationship between these characters and real people is purely coincidental," but that wouldn't be entirely true. But what of those folks who say there's no such thing as coincidence? Where does that leave this little book--my blend of the real and the imagined?

This already came up once when a story of mine was published in Family Circle a few years ago. At least five family members thought the story was about them. Only that time, I could honestly say it was not--the idea came when I overheard a student of mine say that her sister had planned a fake wedding. That was too good of an image to pass up--so I composed a story around it. I made the story about the two sisters. When it came out in the magazine, people who knew me (but not well) said, "I didn't know you had a sister." I wanted to make a t-shirt to wear every day that proclaimed, "It's fiction!"

Maybe with an edition of 45, this won't be an issue. If say, Knopf picks it up, then I'll worry. In the meantime, I'm avoiding thinking about this issue by carving lots of birds into polymer blocks. They look like woodcuts, but are a little easier to print. With six weeks until my defense date, which from this point onward will be called "D-Day," I'll take 'easier' whenever I can get it.

Lost in Translation...Again

2011-02-17T21:56:00.000-06:00

I'm not a fan of footnotes, really. I generally find them distracting, like little tangents in conversations that you just wish you could fast-forward through. Literary gnats, if you will.

But it seems, in this case, that my first entry about papermaking was in need of a footnote. It was my grandmother who alerted me to this fact, when she called me and questioned my use of the word "cooch." Curious, having only heard it in reference to the "hoochie coochie" dance of yore, she first typed it into an internet search, and then, somewhat alarmed by the outcome, said in a slightly horrified tone, "Do you know what that means?"

I know, I know. We're dirty little papermakers. I relayed the origin as it was explained to me: derived from the French, coucher , as in "to lie down." This, of course, in reference to the papermaker's motion of pushing the newly-formed sheet of paper onto a felt in order to release it from the mould.

When, in turn, I told this story to a friend, she informed me that I had, in fact, misspelled the word to begin with. It seems we've butchered the pronunciation, but kept to our roots in the spelling. Guess the joke's on me again...I'll opt out of revision of the original posting simply because the whole chain of events still makes me laugh out loud.

Just FYI, there are certain similarities between couching and the aforementioned dance: grace, rhythm, timing, style. There's a certain chemistry involved between hydrophilic particles: the desire of the felt to cling to the paper. So the two aren't entirely unrelated. Don't you love those moments where the evolution of language comes full circle?

There are two things to be learned from this experience:

1. Language, in all of its mutations and eccentricities, is infinitely fascinating (particularly for us word nerds).

2. an internet search, even conducted by your grandmother, is going to yield more information than you ever wanted to know.

Kim Novak in the movie "Jeanne Eagels", 1957. (Photographer: J. R. Eyerman)

Husker, Do

2011-02-13T15:27:00.000-06:00

My friend Sonja learned to make paper from corn last summer in San Antonio. When she came back to Alabama, she said she wanted to make another batch and said, "You know a place we could get lots of corn husks?"

My father keeps a garden every summer, filled mostly with lush rows of corn. My grandmother also used to keep a garden, and one of my most vivid memories from my childhood is wandering up and down the rows of corn behind her house, parting the leaves like a beaded curtain, catching the ladybugs and letting them crawl along my fingers.

So my dad saved all the husks from his last corn harvest, and laid them out to dry in the back of his old green Bronco. In August, I stuffed them into my trunk and drove them back to Tuscaloosa, where Sonja kept them in her shower until we made our paper. (For the record, it was her guest bath. Someday I'll recount all the other unusual things that my friends and family keep in their spare showers, but not today.)

Our beat was a bit too long, for those of you keeping score. The corn fiber quickly turned to soup. Papermaker's Tip #181: It's best not to do internet searches and read trashy novels while doing a beat. You lose track of time, you end up with soup. We added it to the cotton fiber and the result was crisp, speckled sheets. Okay, but not ideal.

For my thesis blend, I beat the corn for a shorter time, threw in the silks, and ended up with a lovely paper infused with the memory of summer. I love to think that a little bit of South Carolina made it into this book--straight from the ground where I grew up--and with it, a little bit of my dad, and a little of my earliest sense of adventure.

Beat. Pull. Cooch.

2011-02-09T17:56:00.000-06:00

So as part of my MFA thesis, I'm recording the highlights and follies that occur along the way. My thesis is a handmade book, designed, printed and illustrated by me. Part of making this book from beginning to end means that I'm making the paper by hand. This, I've learned, requires one to get her Zen on and adopt the following mantra: "Beat. Pull. Cooch." (This is somewhat akin to the volleyball mantra that was beat into my head in high school, the old "Bump. Set. Spike."

I like papermaking because it allows me to feel better about my relationship with my old clothes, which is somewhere between "thrifty" and "hoarder." If I'm making paper, then it's okay to keep all those ratty t-shirts in my closet in the box marked "summer," because eventually I will transform them into luscious paper.

It's a magical process, really: Cut t-shirts into tiny squares. Soak in water. Beat with a roaring machine until they become fluffy pulp. Pull sheets with a mold and deckle.

Papermaker's Tip #117: It's important to be fully awake when operating the beater. I am reminded of this when some of the half-beaten cotton rag becomes tangled around the blades. I try to pull the fiber free, wiggling the blades back and forth. When it finally comes loose, the blade takes a chunk out of my thumb. My lovely ivory fiber is quickly turning pink, and I curse myself for never asking my grandmother what that verse was in Ezekiel that she recited when my mother cut her hand on a mirror and started bleeding all over her new rug.

A couple of band-aids later, and I'm pulling sheets. The pulp is pigmented green and tan, so no one will ever see those tiny red specks. But a little of the artist goes into every part of the process, I suppose.

The Great Christmas Tree Hunt

2010-11-30T21:54:00.000-06:00

Days until Christmas: 25.

It's that time again. Every year, on the day after Thanksgiving, my parents and I venture out the tree farm to pick their Christmas tree. Watching my mother roam the farm, holding the measuring pole next to each tree, I begin to see that it's a delicate mathematical and philosophical process.

My mother enters the tree farm and grabs a pole that has lines marked at 6, 7, and 8 feet. In search of the perfect tree for her 7-foot space, she wends a path through the pines and the cedars, landing in front of the firs. She stands the pole up next to a bushy fir tree and makes the same proclamation that she does every year.

"They should lop off those pieces that stick out the top," she says. "That's not really eight feet of tree."

It's clear that my mother and the tree farmer measure height in two very different ways.

The tree farmer's method, as one might generally assume, goes something like this:

h (height) = distance from bottom of trunk to uppermost needle on tree

In this photo, my mother is illustrating her measuring system. See how

she's pointing at the goofy little spire that shoots out the top of the tree? She's explaining to me that the height of the tree should not include this scrawny little sprout, and that it should be trimmed before its cataloging and sale.

Her equation is more like this:

h (height) = distance from bottom of trunk to the uppermost aesthetically balanced portion of tree

I laugh every year, of course, but I think she may have a point. Take, for instance, my 5'9 high school self, who had a bad case of 1980's bangs. Would you consider me 5'9, or 5'9 plus the height of my hair? The doctor always wrote 5'9 on my chart, no matter how high the tidal bangs were. (And believe me, they were up there--we had contests.)

In the end, my mom settles on the "8 foot" tree. After she subtracts the height of the shoot (s) and the length of the trunk that my dad will trim to keep the tree fresh (L), she will end up with a tree that brushes her 7-foot ceiling:

farmer's measurement - (s + L) = 7

Though she doesn't approve of this compromise, it won't stop her from moving the den furniture to make room for the tree. It won't stop her from filling the branches with ornaments she's collected for decades. It won't stop my dad from flinging the tinsel onto the tree, leaving as much on the floor and in his hair as he gets on the limbs. And it won't stop them from humming Christmas carols for the next twenty five days. What that tree brings into our home can't be measured in feet and inches, anyway.

Let's Get Trashed

2010-10-06T17:23:00.000-05:00

Flattened Musk Turtle

Today my students made sculptures out of trash. In an assignment that I borrowed from Maine book artist Rebecca Goodale, they chose an endangered species from Alabama and created a sculpture made from garbage they found on campus. What drew me to Goodale's project was the idea of building likenesses of these creatures out of the very materials that were destroying them. (In many cases, the 117 endangered plant and animal species in Alabama number only in the hundreds.) In a way, they became effigies, a reminder of how the little things we throw away add up. A reminder of how our actions--no matter how insignificant we may find them--have consequences.

They may appear kooky at first, with their bottle cap eyes and cigarette-butt legs, but there's a certain poignancy here as well. One look around campus after a big game weekend shows that the majority of us aren't all that concerned with our carbon footprint. Long after the tailgaters have left on Saturday, it takes all of Sunday to free the quad, the stadium, and the parking lots of their heaps of refuse. If this project had been assigned on a Monday, the sculptures could have been the size of Volkswagens.

Red Hills Salamander

It takes a special kind of person to make something beautiful out of rubble--but I see it happening more and more. I'm not sure if that's because more people are recycling in new and inventive ways, or if it's because my interest in the idea makes me see it everywhere. But I'm enamored with people who do this--whether they are artists, historians, architects, or the teenager next door. I saw it in Eastern Kentucky, in an old quarry that had been stripped bare. Tired of staring at this hideous scar, the town was making it into a golf course. In Birmingham, Alabama, the once thriving Sloss Furnaces had fallen into a state of decay in the 1970s and was scheduled for demolition--but after much public outcry it was salvaged, and later renovated into an educational center for metal arts. One of the most moving examples is in San Antonio, Texas, where a dilapidated rock quarry (abandoned in 1915) was reborn as the breathtaking Japanese tea garden. Through a heartbreaking period in the 1940s, the Japanese-American artist Kimi Eizo Jingu, who designed the garden, was run out of the city--thus giving the site another ugly scar. But in 1984, the garden was rededicated and has since been renamed the Jingu gardens in an attempt to pay proper homage to its creator.

Does it take a visionary to make beauty from garbage? Does it take genius? Or does it simply take a little creativity and conviction? This time of year, I'm always inspired by the MacArthur fellows--people who, with a little creativity and a lot of drive, make us see a piece of this world as passionately as they do, at least for a moment. It reminds me of all the things we're capable of, if we give ourselves the chance to try making our visions a reality. Based on the sculptures made from campus trash, I'd say that it doesn't take a "genius" at all--at least not in the intellectual sense that we often use to deride ourselves. It just takes the ability to look past what is in front of us, and imagine what could be, what should be, and how we might get there.

Gopher Frog

Solving for the Intrinsic Value of Art

2010-06-28T19:51:00.000-05:00

This week, as I sat down to dinner, a guy told me that he saw "no intrinsic value" in art. Stunned into silence, I listened to him explain, in his uber-scientific way, how once someone derives a brief moment of pleasure from looking at a painting, it essentially serves no further purpose. His thought process was fascinating in that way that a catastrophe is: simultaneously horrific and mesmerizing. As a scientist, he was accustomed to "value" that was quantifiable. When he finally asked what I thought, I gave him a simple answer--that for me, art was our record of culture and humanity, that it enriched our lives in a way that wasn't immediately measurable in the way that you solve for x, and that I couldn't imagine a world without it. "But I'm an artist," I said. "I'm a little biased."

Much later I realized what I should have said. I was sitting in a chapel at Mission San Jose, attending a special Mass for travelers that featured a choir and a mariachi band. The chapel had been reconstructed to look as it had back in 1720, when the first Franciscans held services there for Mexicans and Tejanos alike. As the band played, I felt the notes vibrating along my skin. A woman behind me sang in Spanish, in a voice so melancholy, so resolute, that it made my eyes fill with tears. Though I am neither Mexican nor Catholic, I felt welcome there, and I was saddened by my lack of deep cultural roots. I have no traditions that extend back two hundred years. I have no knowledge of my oldest ancestors, no memory of how they lived and what they brought to the lives of others. But as I stood shoulder to shoulder with strangers, holding their hands and swaying to music I couldn't entirely understand, I realized that I didn't need to know the words.

And this is what I should have said to the scientist that day at dinner: that art is a record of our greatest human joys and our deepest sorrows. It is the thread that binds us together through time and across oceans. It is how we translate what happens in the heart, and how we reconcile what we observe and experience in the world we create for ourselves. If I wanted to calculate the value of art, I would have to measure the distance between two people, and how fast the gap closes as we see each other more clearly. I'd have to quantify the amount of force that one person's story has on another. I'd have to find the sum of its parts and find the product of what happens when we communicate to each other what it means to be alive.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Alone

2010-05-12T16:00:00.000-05:00

What is it about summer that makes all of my friends decide to become pet owners? The reasons vary, from loneliness to boredom, but one friend told me that she was adopting a kitten because she needed a "guard cat" now that all of her neighbors were moving out, leaving her alone in a second-floor walk-up. I could only shake my head as I thought back to that same phase of my own life, when I had my first apartment to myself. I was 22 and single, and tired of going home to an empty home. Somehow I decided that a cat was the answer, and had friends that were a bunch of enablers. So I went to the the shelter and found a cat named Sugar--"because he's so sweet," the assistant said.

So I signed the check, had the chip put in his shoulder, and took him home. He hid under the couch for a while, but when he finally came out, he perched himself on the coffee table and stared at me like he was plotting what to do to me as I slept. It was a look I wouldn't see again for a long time, but one that says everything you fear about your partner is true.

He destroyed the kitchen at night. I awoke to the sounds of breaking dishes and clattering pans, convinced I had a burglar. He howled from behind the bedroom door and woke me by clawing my back. After two days, I knew the relationship was doomed. He was one of those needy types, clingy and desperate. But I've never been one for confrontation, have never liked to end things first. I'll admit, I sometimes give the cold shoulder or retreat, hoping the other party might become bored and disinterested. I'm not proud of that behavior, but it works sometimes. But Sugar was onto me, unfazed and resilient.

Part of me still wanted to make this work. What did it say about me to end the relationship so soon? How could I know it was so wrong if we barely knew each other? I resolved to give it one more try, to see this thing through to the end.

The dealbreaker was the Bathtub Incident. Ingrained in my head, it's that moment that will tarnish all future relationships. I'd come home from a long day at the office and retreated to a hot bubble bath. The door creaked and there was the cat, slinking across the tile, climbing onto the toilet to stare at me. His tail swished and I sank into the water, unfamiliar with the etiquette involved here, unaccustomed to being naked in front of strangers.

I knew what was coming. I recognized the look in his eye. He lept into the bath, claws bared. By the time he was ejected from the water, my skin had more red lines than a road map. His idea of fun wasn't the same as mine. We didn't want the same things. He couldn't respect my privacy. Clearly we weren't meant for each other.

It was over. We both knew it. On the ride to the shelter, he howled the whole way, but whether it was curses or apologies, I couldn't tell. "It's not me, it's you," I said, thinking the least he deserved was a little honesty. He clawed at his cat box in fury. I was banned from adopting ever again, and the clerk gave me that look that your friends sometimes give you after a bad breakup--that look that says, "You just didn't try hard enough." But some partnerships just aren't meant to be, and no amount of trying can change that. It's not a relationship that I think fondly of, but it's one that changed me for the better. Now I know that a little loneliness isn't a bad thing, and it's not a void you can forcibly fill.

The House that is Your Life

2010-03-23T19:03:00.000-05:00

Someone should write a survival guide for growing up—like the ones they give to freshmen when they arrive on campus. That’s what I was thinking as I lay sprawled on my living room floor in the middle of winter. In that moment, as brief as an eclipse, as strong as the moon’s grip on the ocean, it became clear: the life I’d grown accustomed to was over. In my new life, I was an English teacher with a mortgage, a few months out of graduate school. I could barely keep herbs alive, but was suddenly responsible for the education of freshmen. I needed an operator’s manual for this part of my life—something that explained why my new house came with a leaky roof and a snake that lived in the laundry room. I needed a carpenter to patch the holes in my walls, the rusted pipes in the basement, the wires that were crossed. But I couldn’t hire him to fix all of the things that didn’t work the way they should. Some of them I had to handle on my own, and some of them just couldn’t be repaired. This is what you learn in the house that is your life.

Each room is a chapter. There is the living room, where I built a fire each day in the winter because I was too stubborn and too thrifty to install a heating system. I was supposed to be a tough country girl, resistant to ice and cold. So I tossed freshman essays into the fire, wondering why I cared so much when they cared so little. Wearing a fur-lined aviator’s hat, I read page after page, drinking coffee that was cool by the time I reached the couch. Their grammar made me cringe. Their topics made me cry. Why were they confessing these stories to me? These things they would never tell their parents, couldn’t trust with friends? This is what happens when you grow up—their problems become your problems. You realize you don’t have it that bad after all, that there are others out there who ache, who worry, who wonder. The world becomes less and less about you, and more about what happens as a result of how you move within it.

There is the bathroom, where something like ninety percent of all household accidents occur. After an emergency house call, the plumber exhumed my septic tank—a scene fit for a horror movie––and handed me a bill that could have funded a low-budget one. This is the room where I’d discovered my hair was coming out in clumps. Where stepping on the scales showed I had lost more weight in a week than I had in six months (because no amount of running, rowing, or cycling at the gym ever pays off—ever). This was when my parents and my boyfriend arrived the same weekend to help me move my life out of a truck and into a house—two worlds collided under one leaky roof. The fallout was inevitable. Relationships began to rapidly decay. It became evident that different kinds of love are like different kinds of chemicals. They don’t always work well together just because it works out on paper. Some are more volatile than others. You have to consider the state they’re in, the bonds they have on the elemental level. People want to make you choose when you think you shouldn’t have to, and they want to excavate the strata of your heart like layers of dirt in the yard. They say they want to compromise, but “compromise” means something different to adults. It doesn’t always apply to plumbing, and it rarely applies to the heart. That’s somewhere in the back of the adulthood manual, back in the fine print.

The bedroom is in a constant state of remodeling, and I fear that it always will be. Some days there is fusion, some days fission. A fresh coat of paint can only hide so much. There are carpenter bees living in the beam by the window, their endless buzzing filling my chest and my ears, reminding me that I am not as alone as I think I am. When one leaves, there will always be another, and there is an eerie comfort in knowing that. They want so badly to get out of the world that they know and into mine, and I want to tell them to give up already. But I know that there is always someone out there more determined than I am. Since I can’t have my way all of the time, I have to learn to compromise. (There’s that word again.) Lying in a bed that now squeaks, I decide that a bedroom is a bad metaphor for love. It’s too juvenile and short-sighted. There are better comparisons out there.

There is the kitchen door, which I repainted when I moved in. At night, I can still see an oily handprint on the glass. It’s been there for months, left by the man I loved, the man who would later cleave my heart in two. He’d rested his palm on the glass the last time he’d driven in for the weekend, while he waited for me to unlock the door. He was good at waiting, and I was, too. For a while. But sometimes you don’t fully understand what you’re waiting for, and that leads to a different kind of compromise—the kind that feels like a rip tide. We’d broken up when we learned that love was not enough to keep us together, but I hadn’t been able to wash the door. It was one of those moments where you know you should let go, but you aren’t quite ready yet. Love doesn’t get any easier when you get older. It doesn’t always make sense, and it’s more complicated than it was in the stories about princesses and dwarves. But rips and tears make muscles stronger, and as I place my hand over the glass, I remember that the heart’s a muscle, too.

The laundry room is carved out of the basement. Exposed beams and pipes form a maze that the five-foot-long black snake takes delight in navigating. On the first winter day I did laundry, she dangled just above the washing machine, her lower half wrapped around a copper pipe. Her eyes level with mine, she stuck her tongue out as if to remind me that I was not the only one searching for a warm place to rest. “We’re in this together,” I said. “We have to learn to adapt.” Then I started the spin cycle and she retreated to the chimney. We had an understanding after that––there was enough space for us to coexist, as long as she stayed out of my bedroom and the mouse population declined. That might have been my first successful cohabitation.

This house is still in a state of flux. There are always floorboards that need to be repaired, leaks that need to be patched. This is how it will always be: this house will always need my attention, as if it is a living, breathing beast. I cannot simply storm out of it when we have a disagreement, just as I cannot leave my students when I think they’ve already given up. We have created bonds, and my actions are not simple anymore. I’ve heard people say that we have a certain “sphere of awareness”—that might be best described as how far we can see ahead of us, in terms of our actions and their repercussions. For children, it extends about a foot in front of them. For teenagers, a few yards. But you know you’re an adult when you start to see the consequences of your actions in windowpanes and bed frames, paragraphs and footnotes. When the small things start to matter because they are indicative of something larger, then you know that sphere is widening, and you are starting to see the patterns and complexities in the world that you are a part of, for better or worse. It may be a small part, and it may be a huge part—but this role you play will always be in flux. None of it is easy, love least of all. But I wouldn’t change a single action––for that would alter the outcome. This is what occured to me when the fragments of my life aligned in that odd moment, when I lay on the floor in my fur-lined hat, burning essays for warmth. When I looked at the rooms of my house and saw not nails and boards and fieldstone, but all of the choices that had brought me to this place where all of the parts collide into the shape of the person I had become.

Chaos. Chemistry. Magic.

2010-01-16T16:14:00.000-06:00

Today I’m learning the art of paper marbling. It’s something I’ve wanted to learn for a while, and so I finally gave up on waiting for the “right time” when there was a workshop that fit into my schedule. I got a kit, watched a few videos online, read a book, and converted my roughly twelve square-foot kitchen into a paper-making studio.

These are the days I miss the garage I used to have--that hallowed ground where I was at last free to be as messy as I wanted, without fear of spilling paint or tracking dirt in, or doing damage that would cost me my security deposit. I think there are two kinds of artists in the world: those who create only when they have achieved the proper studio feng-shui, where everything is neatly in its place, and those born of clutter and chaos, where materials collide like atoms and Big Bang style magic happens. I’m this second kind, of course. I have the paint splatters to prove it.

It was easier than I thought to rig up this marbling station. I felt a little like a mad scientist, mixing these bizarre chemicals that thickened water and allowed pigment to float. (How did they think of this back in the fifteenth century? Talk about Big Bang genius.) There was a little engineering involved in stringing this cat’s cradle of clothesline just right to avoid drips, and a little magical chemistry that happened when the floating pigment clung to the paper to make these pages that look good enough to lick.

My tiny kitchen may be cluttered again, but it’s strung from corner to corner with little victory flags. It feels good to learn a new skill, to finally do that thing I’ve been wanting to learn to do, and to make my apartment look like the place where an artist lives. There’s something comforting about having little pieces of works-in-progress hanging around. It reminds me that my life is a work-in-progress, too. It may be cluttered, and a little chaotic, but I like to think that means that magic can happen at any moment. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Let's Get Dirty

2009-12-23T14:57:00.000-06:00

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a little out of place, surrounded by experienced casters who stood around me clad in leather aprons and shin guards, lighting their cigarettes with propane torches. I’d given up on planning elaborate pieces, though, once the process of casting was explained. I decided to relax and give in to the muses, make whatever came to mind once my hands got dirty. My entire life these days seems to revolve around strict planning processes, so I was determined to free myself—even if just for a weekend.

I told the instructor I wanted to make a heart. He stared at me over the blue flame of the torch, his lip curling in that way that acknowledges the sentimental and unoriginal without being outright disgusted. Then I realized he was picturing some goofy cookie-cutter heart shape that might hang over a mantle or light switch. “An anatomical heart,” I said, miming the shape of valves and ventricles with my hands. Then he smiled, his tough exterior intact, spared from the torment of cheesy cliche.

As it turns out, it’s not so easy building a heart out of wax. It helps to have a mold of something roundish, like say, a sweet potato. Luckily there was one such mold lying around, for reasons that were never revealed to me. The instructor poured the wax into the mold and winced when it came out with blemishes. "Sorry," he said. "It looks a little banged up."

"Perfect," I told him, because what heart doesn’t have scars?

The next step was to create gates for the iron to enter the mold. Molten iron needs to be shown the way, apparently, so I had to attach wax channels to the heart, and orient it just right to pack it in sand. This is the balancing act—the part where you hold your breath as the heart teeters on the red wax stilts, hoping they’re strong enough to hold it up. Part surgery, part magic. The instructor knocked it over not once, but twice, and I froze, watching it tumble in his hands and along the table top. But this heart was robust, sturdier than the one that beat in my chest. It survived the gating process, the pour, the tumbles, and when I cracked it out of the mold with a hammer, it came out in one piece, still hot to the touch.

One of the other students, a man in his forties, asked me why I was building a heart. “Are you in the medical field?” he asked. I suppose I could have told him any number of things, like mine was broken and I needed a replacement. One that was more durable than the one made of tissue and blood, one that could better withstand the inevitable breaks and tears. “I might need a spare one day,” I said, and he laughed, as if that were a joke.

So I’m left with a sweet potato heart, one that has enough scratches and bruises to be anatomically correct. It’s forged from one piece of metal, and strong enough to withstand those things that my other one is not. It’s also a reminder to play once in a while—to push plans aside and let the right brain take a break. You never know what might happen, and I for one, never tire of surprises.

It's Getting Hot in Here

2009-11-30T13:23:00.001-06:00

This week, my adventure-seeking took me to historic Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, AL. Part of me has always wanted to try working in metal. I attribute this mostly to watching metal artists at Penland and partly to "Flashdance." In both cases, there were killer outfits, lots of sparks, and that seductive quality that comes with bending iron to your will.

I'd seen demos at Sloss, and I'll admit, the lure of the leather aprons and welder's goggles was strong. (I can't explain my affinity for uniforms and unusual protective gear; for all I know it goes back to knights and dragons.) When I saw some of the work coming out of the classes, I thought, hey, this might be the right time in my life to give this thing a shot. So I signed up for a weekend class and agonized over what I might make and how it might fit in with other projects in the works, and how I might ensure that I made some decent pieces and got my money's worth. I tossed and turned for a few nights, drawing plans in my sleep and wondering if my lack of insurance would come back to bite me in the form of a third-degree burn.

Somewhere in my planning stage, I talked to one of the instructors at Sloss, who kept referring to the old "foundry." The more he talked, the more it sounded familiar, like a fuzzy sort of deja vu. What followed was one of those moments where slivers of your past come back and align themselves into a mosaic of a picture--one that sometimes makes you feel like an idiot for not putting things together sooner. I'd heard my grandmother and her sister talk for years about a foundry where they worked. I remember finding cast iron bookends shaped like dogs and roosters everywhere in their house, and they would always say, "We got those at the foundry." After enough brain cells collided in my head, I realized that the foundry was this same kind of place--a dinosaur of a steel plant that was cranking out things that I was just days from learning how to make. Unfortunately this great epiphany happened while I was talking to the instructor, and I told him as much. It felt sort of magical to me, but he looked at me as if I'd just learned that the earth rotated around the sun.

This knowledge had me even more eager to take a walk around Sloss and make the wax patterns for my very first cast-iron pieces. I'd already felt like I'd be learning a historic craft and getting a peek into a vital part of history, but now the history was more personal. It seems that as I get older, I want to know more about what was happening in the world before I was in it--even the world that is the five-mile radius of Birmingham. Part of me felt like I'd learn a little more about my family by getting my hands dirty again, and part of me thought I'd learn a little about myself, too.

When I told my grandmother I was taking the class, she said, "Just don't burn any fingers off. That metal's hot." She then went on to tell me not one, but two stories of men who lost limbs due to contact with molten iron. She also told me that she was banned from the foundry after nearly stepping into one of the molds as the metal lay cooling on the ground. "They were just laid out in rows like beans," she said, and I pictured some leather-clad man grabbing her as her high-heeled shoe hovered over the mold.

I wondered then what sort of history I'd make for myself. I fretted some more about what to make--would I be surrounded by metalsmiths who made these incredible sculptures while I made something that looked vaguely like a biscuit? Would I be that one out of place person that makes everyone wonder how she got there? I mean, I'm a printmaker. My last foray into sculpture was in art school, when I made some hideous structure out of forks and made ceramic vases that looked like elephant ears. Something about that third dimension always threw me off. I had a bad flashback to grade school and pictured all the other artists in their cool goggles and spiffy leather jackets laughing at me between drags on their cigarettes. But I pushed these thoughts away and threw away my plans. I'd just go and see what happened. Open myself up to the creative spirit. And what followed was even better than I expected.

Next time: the molds are broken and cast iron is born...

Where I Come from, We Call that a Coup

2009-11-28T14:02:00.000-06:00

Why have all of my appliances allied against me? Some of you may be wondering why there's been no posting for so long. I would like to say that life just got so terribly exciting that I didn't have time to write--that I was in some exotic locale, miles from a wireless connection.

But the truth is so much less exciting. It seems that everything in my apartment decided to stop working at precisely the same time. A wicked chain of events that may or may not have started with a planet in retrograde ended with many small appliances staging a mutiny. It's one of those things that makes me wonder: what will happen when the machines turn against us?

It began with my iPod, which stopped playing as soon as my feet hit the treadmill. My laptop followed suit, on a Game Day. Banished to my apartment, I had declared it a writing day. (The Writing Day is very important, as it comes so infrequently now--it's like the Iron Man competition--a test of will and endurance, not for the faint of heart.) But as soon as I made my proclamation, the laptop rallied against me, its screen twisted in pixelated fury.

Then came the sabotage from he alarm clock. There was no music at 6 am. I awoke a frazzled, panicked wreck, fearing I was late, stumbling into the kitchen and turning on the coffee pot without adding any coffee. The day went downhill from there. These appliances, they work together. They know my weakness.

Then came the guerilla move. My flat iron refused to heat up, leaving my hair a fuzzy mess. My friend Mukti talks about things being "knackered." It's one of those fantastic British words that only seems applicable on rare occasions. We try to use words like "knackered" because they're just so cool, but we sound ridiculous when they just don't fit. But believe me, on this day, it fit.

My car was the last straw. It's old--a surly teenager in car years--so when it makes a sad scraping noise or a mournful grunting sound, I chalk it up to old joints and creaking valves. Maybe just a 'tude. But this noise it was making, it caused people on the sidewalk to stop and stare. It made other drivers slow down around me--and that never happens in this part of Alabama. It's as if everyone else around me thought the car was about to explode in a raging inferno. When my father heard the noise, he gave me that look that says, "Were you hatched from an egg? Are you the same girl I raised? Has all that rock music made you deaf?"

So the car, the William Wallace of my possessions, is now scheduled for medical attention. I'm hopeful it will be enough to bring it back to my side. Our peace summit will begin next week, and perhaps the other smaller, more fickle appliances will cave. I don't think I could stand any more betrayal--when the TV and the coffee maker side against me, I'll know I'm at my Waterloo.

Is There a Doctor in the House?

2009-10-25T22:40:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, there was a girl who was fearless. Her mother used to have to hog-tie her to go to the doctor, because she never thought there was anything wrong with her. This girl wasn't afraid of dirt or germs. She worked on an archaeological field crew. She had dirt under her fingernails and chewed them anyway. She ate fruit without washing it. She drank milk because it went well with cookies--not because she was counting milligrams of calcium.

Then that girl turned thirty, and woke up a hypochondriac. Was it too many pseudo-medical articles in the glossy magazines? Too many TV shows that had season finales involving brain tumors? Too many diagrams for hand-washing posted in public bathrooms at the university?

It's possible my body is conspiring against me, planning a coup. I'm not talking about moving slower and hearing a loud crack when I climb up from the floor. I'm talking about weird quirky things--things it never occurs to you to ask your doctor about.

For example: what is this eye twitch that I suddenly have? Out of nowhere, at any random moment, my eye begins to twitch (usually when something vexing has just occurred). I wondered if it was detectable by others, and one day I happened to be standing near a mirror when I felt it. I was horrified to learn that I could actually see it twitching, convulsing in a smarmy, melodramatic wink. My first thought? Brain tumor.

And when I developed blinding, nauseating headaches while teaching college English? I crawled into bed and hid under the covers until I fell asleep, convinced it was an aneurysm, that all the paper-grading had caused the vessels in my head to explode.

There's a fluttering that happens in my heart every once in a while. Sometimes it's when I'm swimming laps, sometimes it's when a good-looking guy winks at me. There was a time when I thought it was just heartache, but then my mother told me that multiple family members have ventricular fibrillation. Now my heart skips a beat and I immediately shove two fingers under my jaw to see if my pulse is racing, and I hold my breath, wondering if it will speed up, or if it will just stop.

But my worst nightmare? A tapeworm. I was convinced I had one when I was in grad school in Georgia. I'd worked at a vet's clinic a couple of years before, and washed my hands obsessively, convinced I was doomed from being surrounded by yowling cats and dogs, certain that my body had been infiltrated. And then there was that episode of "House"--the one where the guy has a tapeworm in his brain, and they find it by doing an x-ray of his leg, because, as the good doctor says, "worms love a good thigh muscle." And so for months I tried to think of a reason my doctor might x-ray my thigh, which is plenty healthy enough for a parasite. I still wonder about that one--it didn't help when two of my friends confessed to once having worms, and Dr. Oz said that one in four people are host to a parasite. How much does an x-ray run, anyway?

So what happened to that gal who never thought she had anything worse than the flu? When did I start worrying about which multi-vitamin was the best bargain? Somewhere along the way, it occurred to me that life was a little more fragile than I once thought. I learned I was not impermeable to disease, that my skin and bone wasn't the Fort Knox that I thought it was. So now I'm back to eating an apple a day, just in case the old adage was right. But you better believe I'll wash it under warm water, and rub it a little on my jeans (because three out of four doctors say the friction does more than the water) just to be sure I'm knocking off anything that might attach itself to my thigh, my brain, or my kneecap.

For My Next Birthday, Just Get Me Kleenex

2009-10-06T21:10:00.000-05:00

It was just like Kafka's "Metamorphosis." Only instead of waking up to discover I'd turned into a giant insect, I discovered I'd turned into a crier. I was never one of those people who cried during movies. My eyes didn't tear up at weddings, I didn't bawl when fictional heroes died in epic catastrophes. And I sure as hell didn't cry during commercials. But then I turned 30, and suddenly I needed an endless supply of tissues.

It's borderline pitiful. It's alarming. It's completely against my nature. But now everything makes me cry. My mother says it's because I have a heart, but I think she's just trying to do her motherly duty and reassure me that I'm not a basketcase. (She'd have me believe I'm like the Grinch, whose heart grew three sizes that day, but I still argue that it's the onset of some chemical imbalance, some planet in retrograde.)

This has been coming on for a while, what with me crying over countless TV shows, books, and clips on the news, but what really made me wonder about my new fragile state was the last time I was in the checkout line at Target. An elderly woman was leaving the store, very slowly, bent almost double, staring at the floor. I thought she was looking for something she'd dropped, but then realized that her husband was walking next to her holding her hand. She shuffled out the door, the man right by her side. By the time I reached the cashier, I was in tears and she was looking at me like I was crazy. I can't say what struck me so hard about that moment, but I may have to start wearing sunglasses indoors and risk being mistaken for a celebrity or a hipster. No one wants to be that woman crying between the sodas and the tiny flashlights.

This is a cruel twist of fate for someone like me, who never had to worry about her mascara running. I used to tease my mother for crying during sappy movies, or when she heard the national anthem, or when she read a birthday card I gave her. Maybe this is the universe paying me back. There's a sinister force at work.

Just so you know this is not an over-dramatization, here are a few of the things that have left me in tears most recently:

1. the last season finale of Grey's Anatomy (and really every episode for about a three-month span, as long as we're telling the truth here...)
2. My cousin's wedding, when she started crying while saying her vows.
3. That movie 'Australia.' Yes, really. (That scene where Hugh Jackman comes out of the fog on the ship--ugh)
4. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (possibly the saddest movie ever made--I lost more water weight than most women do in the sauna)
5. Ave Maria. Even the first few notes will do it.
6. That Jack Johnson song about the treehouse burning down. I don't know what it is about that treehouse that chokes me up.
7. And the kicker? Gene Simmons' Family Jewels. Is that even possible? (In my defense, it was the episode where his girlfriend finds the old woman's love letters in the desk and returns them to her in the nursing home--but still We're talking the highway-to-hell dude from KISS here.)

Gene Simmons made me cry? What has happened to me? Is it hormones turning against me? Did my heart finally catch up with my frontal lobe? Is this because I drink too much coffee? I suppose it could have something to do with being older and realizing that life is shorter than I once thought, or realizing that the time I have with the people I love is more limited than I used to think. It's true that time seems to pass tens of times faster than it used to, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't notice that the people I Iove are getting older, sometimes less healthy than they used to be. I suppose that these things remind me that life is too short to take for granted. But they also make me wonder if the people I love know how much they mean to me--have I told them that enough? Do they know how they've shaped my life? Do they know that I'm the woman I am because of them? Do they know I wouldn't trade anything for the time I have with them?

And to be fair, it's not always the sad things that get to me. Lately, it's those moments that show me people still have compassion for each other--it's those clips of the stranger running up the fire escape to pull the boy from the burning building. Those moments where someone tracks down the owner of fifty year-old love letters because she knows how meaningful they were. Those are the moments that remind me of how we can affect each other.

So if it takes a few TV shows and melancholy love songs to remind me of what the people in my life mean to me, then so be it. I'll sniffle through the commercials and then call the folks I haven't talked to in a while. I'll probably still tear up when my favorite characters are killed off during Sweeps Week, and when I see people rescue strangers on the nightly news. I'll still get all choked up when I see someone else cry, and I'll still have to leave the room when the war movies come on. I suppose this is the by-product of age and awareness, so for my next birthday, just wrap up some kleenex for me. I'll probably need one before the cake is cut.

Golf Cart Karma

2009-09-21T18:56:00.000-05:00

Today I was nearly run over by a golf cart--a big red one that said "Roll Tide." I suppose I had it coming. I walked out the front doors of the library, took one step, and the super-sized cart breezed past me, not even swerving to miss me. This is what happens when the campus is transformed for Game Day. I should know by now to anticipate the unexpected, the irregular, and the just plain crazy. I mean after all, how many people get flattened by golf carts on their way out of libraries?

But this is not a story about Alabama football. This is a story about karma. I have a history with golf carts, and it's not a particularly pleasant one.

Incident Number One: At the artists' retreat where I used to work, way up in the mountains, one of my jobs was to take care of guests. Sometimes this meant changing light bulbs, giving directions to the nearest Wal-Mart, or fetching fresh towels. But when certain groups arrived, it meant driving folks down the hill to the dining hall. It was the mountains, after all, and some people had bad knees and replaced hips, vertigo and whatnot.

So one evening, I was charged with driving a rabbi who was approximately as old as Moses, to the dining hall. He was a bit of a curmudgeon who, years before, had been convinced the chef was trying to poison him. He made it clear he didn't think I was capable of maneuvering a golf cart ride when he slid in next to me. He grumbled all the way down the hill, and I did my best to not give him whiplash, or move too fast that I startled him. When we got to the dining hall, I did my three-point turn to get him closer to the door. Unfortunately, there was a moment where I couldn't tell if the cart was in forward or reverse. I had a 50-50 shot and touched the gas. We lurched backwards and crashed into the cook's car. The rabbi snorted and poked his head out of his collar much like a turtle. "I think you hit something," he said in his raspy voice. Of course he told everyone at the table as potatoes and beans were passed around him. And of course he had to tell my boss, who I think I heard laughing in his office, hours later with the door closed.

Incident Number Two: Same cart, same location. This time, I was not driving. But the caretaker, whom everyone said looked like Richard Gere when he still had dark hair, had the pitiful little pedal to the floor as we spiraled down the drive to the lodge. He was on Mr. Fix-it duty, and I, for some reason, was helping. So en route to the broken thing we were going to fix, he decided to take a short cut and drive on a walkway that squeezed between the corner of the lodge and a row of healthy mountain laurels. "Hang on," he said gleefully--two words I have now grown accustomed to hearing from a man's mouth. In my head, we looked like that scene from the Duke of Hazard--you know the one--where the General Lee goes soaring over the pond and bounces in the dirt on the other side. Mountain laurel slapped my face and arm, leaving scratches that people would later ask about. We almost made it, but the pass was a little narrower that he thought, and we got stuck between the brick wall and the laurels, the limbs filling the space around us in the cart. The tiny wheels spun as he muttered curses he learned in the Navy.

So the way I see it, I did enough damage to golf carts to have a little something coming back to me. I could blame it on the full moon, and I could blame it on the aura of Game Day that fills the air. But this time I think I owe it to the rabbi, the caretaker, and the scratch-and-dents I added up along the way.

A Sprout by Any Other Name

2009-09-06T22:43:00.001-05:00

I used to despise them. They were slimy. Vile. Freakish little things that should be grown on another planet. I’d eat them about once every five years, just to test myself: Were they really as bad as I remembered? Was I being unjust in my boycott? Should I give them another chance?

Flashback to five years ago: I’m working at a retreat center in the mountains of North Carolina. It’s a remote place, way up a winding road. The food truck comes twice a week, a big event on the mountain. And on this particular day, the delivery includes a crate of Brussels sprouts. They move quickly from the truck to the kitchen to the tabletop. Too quickly. At dinner I sit next to my friend Mike, who once gave me a piece of advice that I thought briefly of tattooing on my body. I’d been complaining of too many things I longed to do, too many excuses I’d used to chicken out. His response was matter-of-fact. “You can do anything you want to. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

So when the sprouts hit the table, I consider his advice. I’m adult. I don’t have to eat whatever gets slapped on my plate. But I eat one, because 1) it’s best not to offend a cook who provides you with free meals (otherwise you end up like the rabbi who’s convinced she’s trying to poison you at every meal**) and 2) it’s time to re-evaluate my stance on the horrid little things. I make myself eat five. My tongue convulses. My stomach quakes. If there was a dog under the table, I would toss them to him, but I know he would wrinkle his nose and watch them roll across the floor.

Flash forward to this summer. It’s May in Michigan. Once again, I have landed in an artists’ retreat where they spoil you by cooking your meals. But these guys work miracles. They grill steaks with magical sauces, they make tiramisu while listening to trip-hop. I really want to take them home, just so they can cook for me forever. And the kicker: this dish that I can’t quite name, roasted and green, that tastes nutty and smoky and smooth. There’s something sinister and familiar about it. When I’m down to the last bite, the head cook walks by and I stop him. “Are these Brussels sprouts?” I say. He nods, grinning like the last guy who hustled me at pool. And the culinary world as I know it ends.

Skip ahead to this week. My kitchen, my roasting pan. I bite my tongue and buy the frozen sprouts. I dice them and roast them until they no longer look like slimy little marbles. Now they look like miniature cabbages, and I feel like a giant as I hold them on my fork. I’ve made my peace with the once vile little sprout, and I’m going back to the freezer section to stock up while they’re on sale (because apparently everyone else in this town feels the same way I used to about them). I’ll sit in my kitchen, the smell of garlic and a dozen other spices filling the room (because let’s face it, they still need all the help they can get) and I’ll make a list of all the other things I’ve written off too quickly, the things I’ve hastily blackballed. And then I’ll think of Mike, and I’ll try them all again. One by one, because tastes change. And the world as I know it will be different every day.

**a true story that must be saved for another time…

Basil Killer, Qu’est-ce que C’est?

2009-08-30T18:41:00.000-05:00

I thought herbs were supposed to be hearty. Robust. Hard to kill. I brought a pot of basil back to Alabama, thinking that it would, in some small way, bring some life to my apartment. I have no yard, no grass to walk around in barefoot, no tree to sit under. So the closest I can come to nature is to kidnap a basil plant and set it by the window.

I bought this plant in May and left it with my mother over the summer. It tripled in size, sprouted a foot. It was deliriously happy in its new home with my mother, the plant whisperer. In August, it was so big that we split it in half. She kept one half and I took the other home with me, thinking it was strong enough to survive, that she had taught it all it needed to know about me to continue in this world.

But it was no match for me. No plant is. This basil lasted eleven days. On Day Seven, it started to wilt. Its leaves drooped, their tips curled upwards like pleading hands pointed toward the heavens as if to say, “Why? Why am I with her?” It was difficult to watch its decline. I opened the curtains. I gave it water. I played dance music for it. We watched movies together--comedies, because laughter is good for any soul, right? I stood in front of it and begged it to tell me what it needed, why it was giving up. “Just tell me what you want!” I yelled. And then a leaf fell off.

“You probably gave it too much water,” my friend Mary said. “They say women have a tendency to over-water. Something about being too nurturing.” For a moment, I thought of that woman in "Misery."

I never considered myself to be “too nurturing.” In fact, I feel barely capable of taking care of myself most days. But here's where I should come clean. This is not my first herbicide. I’m a repeat offender. I’m tempted by beautiful flowering (or delicious) plants and think, “This time will be different. This time I’ll make it work.” But the result is always the same. A pot of dirt. A dry stump.

I bought my mother a plant for Mother’s Day last year. Some purple-blossomed thing that spiraled out of a pot—a name I can’t recall that sounded vaguely like Chlamydia. I bought it two days before I was leaving to go home, thinking I could take care of it for that short period of time. But the next morning, after less than twelve hours with me, the plant was already in distress. It was a shriveled, anxious wreck, its blossoms closed, its leaves curled. It looked like it was trying to retreat further into the dirt, screaming “What did I do to deserve this?” I told it to relax, that it was going to a better place. If it could just hang on for one more day, it would be with someone who knew how to make it happy.

It turned pale and the blossoms dried up. When I took it to my parents' house and set it outside, my dad looked at it and scratched his head. Our conversation went something like this [subtext included]:

Dad: What is that [pitiful unsightly thing]?
Me: It’s for Mom. It needs a little love [and perhaps a small miracle and some medics].
Dad: It’s pretty [or it apparently was at one time].
Me: It was gorgeous a couple days ago [before it thought it had a death sentence].
Dad: Give it some water. It’ll perk up [It can’t really look any worse].

The next morning, it looked slightly less pathetic. Mom planted it, worked her mojo, and when I went back a couple of months later, it was huge. In the ground, it had quadrupled in size. It had little bursts of purple everywhere, its green arms spiraling again in fuzzy green ecstasy. It had been resurrected. But I swear it trembled when I walked past it.

So this is me officially giving up on plants. Last year it was spicy oregano and squash plants. This year, basil. Both of my parents can grow anything—flowers, vegetables, melons, fruit trees. You name it, and they can grow it—provided there are no extenuating circumstances, like deer or lawnmowers. But I somehow got a brown thumb, one that dooms any plant it touches. Perhaps I did over-water—but the over-nurturing is still debatable. I would, of course, like to test this theory further, since I have a bad feeling it extends to other creatures, like cats, and parakeets, and men who stick around too long. (If one were to reread this story substituting "guy" for "plant," she would see an alarmingly similar pattern and outcome.) I’d like to figure this out, learn how to nurture and keep things alive, but my conscience won’t let me. I have enough victims in little terra cotta coffins. I have too much cellulose on my hands.

*If anyone has suggestions for hearty plants that are up for a challenge, let me know. I do love to be proven wrong.

What is This Growing in My Sink?

2009-08-23T17:47:00.001-05:00

I think this is was once a butter bean. Clearly a sign that it’s time for Operation White Glove. What is this covert operation, you might ask? A seek-and-destroy mission for all artifacts and refuse that have somehow been allowed to stay in my tiny apartment past their heyday. My cousin has an annual State of the Union Address with her closets: she sorts her clothing into two piles: things she has worn in the last year, and things she has not. If she hasn’t work it in a year, she takes it to the nearby clothing exchange. She then continues a similar ritual in her kitchen. The result? She can see her floors. She can open closet doors without fear of an avalanche. Though the state of my apartment is in fact its best burglary deterrent, I think it needs a bit of attention.

I should be so lucky to enact this ritual. I come from a long line of packrats––and I mean hard core packrats. We’re talking shelves full of plastic containers, sweaters that, while sadly fashionable in the 1980’s, will never, ever be acceptable garments to wear in public, even on Halloween. Bank statements from the 1960’s. Shoes with holes in the toes. Magazines from 1975. Corduroy pants that haven’t fit anyone in thirty years.

This, of course, begs the question: why do we keep these things? If I have a room (hypothetical, of course) that could be a spare bedroom, an art studio, or an exercise room were it not filled with boxes—the contents of which no one can recall–– then why on earth would I allow it to be a crypt for all of this junk? What is this “junk” anyway?

Of course, one might argue that the ugly sweater might be one that said homeowner wore when she had her first kiss. Or the shoes with holes might be a great-great-grandfather’s. In theory, the magazines could have held articles published by a friend. But what about those bank statements and the plastic peanut butter jars?

Now before I go picking on my family and friends too much, it’s only fair to examine my own closet.

Exhibit A: Electric guitar. Last time it was played: circa 2007. By my cousin’s rule, this artifact of my former life is past its expiration date. (Years since purchase: 16)

Exhibit B: Red velveteen sneakers. Last time worn: 6 months ago. Before that, I can’t recall. (Years since purchase: 11)

Exhibit C: This is a sad one. A pair of undies with a particular beloved pattern. (Years since purchase: 9)

Why would I keep these things? The guitar’s an easy one. I was going to be a rock star. My guitar teacher, whom the 15 year-old Lauren had a tremendous crush on, helped me pick it out in the store. The sneakers? They’re red and fuzzy. Also splitting at the seams and have a spot where I spilled soy sauce when I was 22 and living in my first apartment. Are they comfortable? Not really. Do they remind me of my former self? Of course. And the undies? Who the hell knows. They’re about to go in the trash. Really? Has it been nine years? I swear, they don’t look nine years old. You would never know if I hadn’t told you.

So it is evident that the pack rat gene is running rampant in my body. I can imagine my atoms clinging to extra electrons (just in case!), my double-helixes harboring a little extra genetic information (you never know when you might need it!), my waist clinging to those few extra pounds (might come in handy some day!).

There must be a more efficient way to stockpile these memories, to part with these remnants of my life, these things that I no longer need. Can I keep the memories without keeping the sneakers? Sure. Does that make it any easier to throw them away? Not so much. Am I hanging on to these artifacts, or are they hanging on to me?

But enough procrastinating. Enough defense of objects that serve no purpose anymore. I will now attempt Operation White Glove. I can’t take my cousin’s ruthless approach––too many books wouldn’t make the cut. But I will now go in search of a middle ground. I will separate my memories from these objects, file them away, and make room for more of the things that matter. Wish me luck. And keep an eye out—those sneakers on eBay might be mine.

A Walk in the Clouds

2009-08-17T19:22:00.000-05:00

Bandelier National Monument. Home of the cliff dwellers. Destination of a teenage writers’ group. Excursion that will soon be etched into memory. It turns out that of all the national parks in the US, this is the one most like “Chutes and Ladders.” I was expecting a certain amount of hiking and sweating and altitude sickness, but what I wasn’t counting on was the near-vertical ladders that extended so far they took me back to the 1980’s.

But let me pause to paint this picture more accurately.

It’s June. 90 degrees. 6000 feet. (Now might be a good time to mention that I’m a South Carolina native.) There are twenty-three teenagers in our group who are in various states of physical fitness and awareness. Some see the big picture. Some see only twelve inches in front of them. Some climb like mountain goats. Some more like tortoises. I’m somewhere in between, so I didn’t think this would be all that difficult. A sign said we were about to climb 140 feet of ladders, and ordinarily I might have had Indiana Jones-style visions that would make my heart pound––but on this day my heart was pounding for different reasons.

Probably due to 1) the fact that no amount of jogging 100 feet above sea level can prepare you for hiking at an altitude of 6000 feet, 2) my newly discovered allergy to something in New Mexico (Cottonwood? Juniper? Dirt?) that had quickly become a sinus infection, and 3) the realization that the only way back down this sheer rock face was the same way I was going up—but backwards.

I wouldn’t say that I’m afraid of heights, but it was easy to envision myself slipping on a rung, falling on my head onto the rock below, and taking out a couple of other tourists along the way. In my mind, it was a little like “Donkey Kong” without the barrels. And no do-overs. I hugged the rungs and went up last, sweeping the rest of the group. It seemed like an hour had passed by the time I got to the top, where the rest of our girls were exploring the cave, bouncing around like they were made of rubber, unfazed by how far they were from the rest of the earth.

I’d hoped they would move slowly up the ladders—mainly so I could move slowly and not lose face. But no dice: they were all about the destination. Journey was too old school. “Isn’t that some band from the 80’s?” they said.

You know those people that tell you not to look down? They’re right about half the time. This was one of those times.

By the time I caught my breath, the group was ready to go back down. They looked down at the crumbling boulders and scrub brush below. Way below. And then they took their time, which meant my heart got to beat at normal speed. Some of the girls were hugging the ladder just as I had on the way up, suddenly aware that sometimes the trip home is the hardest. They chose their steps carefully, their knuckles white, and one of them kept telling stories to take their minds off the sheer drop to the earth below.

Being a leader of a group like this separates you in some respects—it allows you to be an observer of everyone—the dynamics that change daily and those that haven’t changed at all since you were their age. But it also reminds you that you’re not one of them—you’re separated by years and experience, but also by something like authority. You’re friendly, but you’re not friends. You sometimes have to be the bad guy and keep them in bounds, and no matter how close your orbit, you will always be an outsider. But you are constantly watching to make sure that no one else in the group is sharing your experience—not one of them should be feeling excluded the way you are.

So I was glad to hear the girls begin cheering each other on—coaxing each other down one rung at a time, with no more worry of who got to the finish line first. Maybe the thrill of getting to the top had worn off. Maybe they were tired. But part of me thinks it was something else.

Thus far, our typical pattern was this: they scurry ahead, led by short attention spans; I follow behind, more or less like a sheepdog to see that no one gets lost, breaks an ankle, or falls into a hole. I’m a fixture—one they wouldn’t notice was missing until it was time to drive home or eat a meal. But today, they stop at the base of the ladder, and I realize as I am backing down, that they are cheering for me, too. They are not scurrying to the next ladder, rushing towards the bottom. They are waiting for the herder. I smile to myself as they offer their words of encouragement, and it’s not as bad as I thought backing down. My heart pounds a little less, and I don’t picture myself crashing to the earth, leaving a Lauren-shaped crater like Wile E. Coyote. Their voices are close, and the earth is closer. And when they sing that Journey song that I have always hated, I laugh to myself, and feel a little less like an outsider—a feeling at 31 that I wish I’d felt when I was their age. I smile, proud that they have found this place, and that they didn’t need the herder to point them to it.

And the Skies are not Cloudy All Day…

2009-08-14T11:26:00.000-05:00

Part of me always wanted to be a cowgirl. It might be why I collected model horses as a kid. Why I buy vintage boots on eBay. Why I watch shows like "The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.” regardless of their believability or accuracy. So when I took a job teaching a summer writing class on a ranch in New Mexico, I pictured myself in a wild west adventure. I had visions of Tombstone and True Grit—part of me really expected to see tumbleweeds, mustangs, and the lean silhouette of cowboys riding along the tops of the mesas. When I got there, I learned that the ranch was no longer a working ranch—but they did still offer trail rides for people like me, who wanted to inject a little Southwest romanticism into their lives.

I should note here that it had been at least ten years since I’d been on a horse. But the desert was calling, and it was persistent. So my friend and I took the morning off and saddled up with a man who was a cross between the Marlboro man and Buffalo Bill. He had a fringed jacket and a cigar, and gave me a boost onto a palomino named Trigger. “As long as you know the front end from the back end of one of these,” he said, “I think you’ll be okay.”

We soon learned our wrangler was an actor. He’d been in more movies than we could count—he told us about working with people I’d dreamed of turning my books into feature films, the royalties from which might finally get me that new car or that regular haircut. We talked about Pretty Woman, the hero’s journey, Billy the Kid, and Georgia O’Keeffe. This place was so rich in history, and insight, and creativity, that it made me wonder how it might change me--if I managed to stay on the horse.

We rode past the cabin where they filmed “City Slickers,” down into an arroyo, and up by the mesa that O’Keeffe painted over and over again. Then our wrangler took off into a gallop and we followed. A pounding filled my ears—it might have been my heart banging against my ribs. It might have been Trigger’s hooves pounding the earth. “Why have I not been doing this every day of my life?” I thought. "What have I been doing with my time?" I held my hat as we rumbled through the scrub brush and prayed Trigger had more grace than I typically do. I had visions of that scene from “The Man from Snowy River”—the one where the hero rides the horse down the side of the mountain that appears to be a 90% grade—and I remembered that when I quit my teaching job, I gave up my life insurance. I never got around to writing that will, either. Not that my possessions amount to all that much, but still. I like to think that all my stuff wouldn't be sold on eBay.

We turned by a cluster of juniper trees, their limbs stretching out like the claws of some mythical beast. The last time a horse tried to lose me in a tree, I ended up with a black eye—but I stayed on. I was a willful child. So when it became evident that Trigger was going through the tree, I leaned to the side, then ducked to avoid being clotheslined. It's hard doing the limbo on horseback, and no amount of yoga can help you defy the laws of physics. I was never any good at physics, and I was no match for the juniper. Its stray limb snagged my shirt like a hooligan in a hockey brawl. When I emerged from the trees, I looked like one of the Clash.

My friend said, “At least it wasn’t a cactus.”

The wrangler laughed, said, “Are you decent? You need a saddle blanket?”

My shoulder burned, my shirt hung in shreds. But I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face.

Battles were won and lost here. O'Keefe painted here. Lucas filmed here. Hell, they might have even filmed the moon landing here. And I lost my shirt here.

“I think you’re an official cowgirl now,” he said, and I felt like, at least for a minute, maybe I was. I won’t be wrangling cattle, and I probably won’t be cast in the next wild west movie. But I’ll sew up my favorite blue shirt and smile when I wear it, thinking of the mesas that captured the hearts of so many writers, and painters, and filmmakers before me—that place that made my heart clatter in my chest. That place where the afternoon light turns the sand gold and the rocks red. That place where you can still see the silhouettes of cowboys and mustangs dotted along the ridgeline, if you tip the brim of your hat down to block the sun.

Mama Said There'd be Days Like This...

2009-08-13T22:36:00.000-05:00

Turning 30 is one of those things that makes you re-evaluate your life. This isn’t really news to anyone, of course. It stung a little bit, I’ll admit, staring at the inferno that blazed on top of that little cake. But it was turning 31 that made me realize that I was poking along through my life in the slow lane—at least by my own assessment. I’m one of those people who, at some point, made a list of things I wanted to do in my life. One incarnation might have looked like this:

1. publish a novel
2. have novel turned into blockbuster screenplay starring John Cusack and Sandra Bullock
3. tour the world, beginning with Scotland, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand
4. become an archaeologist and unearth something spectacular in Egypt
5. drive a ’67 mustang on a race track
6. become a famous painter
7. go to Alaska
8. fall madly in love

Those were meant to happen by age 30, by the way. That’s a partial list.

So while my life has thus far been an eclectic collection of (mis)adventures, I realized as I blew out 31 candles that there were far too many things that I haven’t done—things I thought I would have done by the time this day came around. My wish, when leaning over this cake, was to be braver, be bolder—stop making excuses and start doing the things that I’ve been putting off. I’m pretty sure that travel brings adventure, but I’m equally sure that I don’t always have to leave the country to find it. So what follows is one girl’s search for a life less ordinary. It might be a different state, it could be another continent, but there’s a good chance it could be just down the street in the town where I live. My hope is that when 32 rolls around, I can scratch a few things of the list. I expect, along the way, to chart those events that are unordinary, earth-shattering, and just plain bizarre.

Days until 32: 220