"I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation - a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every state I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move."

- John Steinbeck

Detail of the Woods

I looked at all the trees and didn't know what to do.

A box made out of leaves.
What else was in the woods? A heart, closing. Nevertheless.

Everyone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else.
I kept my mind on the moon. Cold moon, long nights moon.

From the landscape: a sense of scale.
From the dead: a sense of scale.

I turned my back on the story. A sense of superiority.
Everything casts a shadow.

Your body told me in a dream it's never been afraid of anything.

- Richard Siken

Artistic Surprises

Last weekend I took my mother to the Berkshires for her birthday. One of our planned-for visits was the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

My mom has always been a fan of his paintings. Most people are, I suppose, and for good reason - they are easy to enjoy. They are old-timey and nostalgic, perfect little slices of Americana. Come Christmas, our house fairly drowns in Norman Rockwell paraphernalia - books, statues, ornaments. I like them. I approve.

But as we wandered through the museum, which is beautiful and simple, a small white house set atop some rolling hills deep in the mountains, this particular painting caught my eye.

It's called Southern Justice (Murder in Mississippi). He painted it in 1965, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. It honors three civil rights workers who, as retribution for their work helping African Americans register to vote, were kidnapped by members of the Ku Klux Klan, driven to a secluded area, beaten, and executed at close range.

Three real men. The shadows of the killers to the right, holding their rifles. The last man standing, looking towards his death, is what I kept coming back to. The set of his shoulders, the defiance in his eyes as he holds his dying friend in his arms. The dark monotony of the colors, the heaviness of everything, all that stark light. The brushstrokes at the top are severe, almost angry. The texture of the painting was so thick, I had to fight myself from reaching out to touch it.

I kept leaving to explore other rooms in the museum, but drifted back to this painting again and again. I couldn't stop looking at it. I'm not sure I've ever reacted so viscerally to a painting before. Something about the blend of hopelessness and strength absolutely arrested me. The light in his face.

Turns out Norman Rockwell was a photographer first. He'd hire models, or more often than not, use his own family and friends as subjects. He'd decide upon a pose and a setting, take photos until it was exactly right, and then use the photos for reference while he painted. The man still standing, in the photo that became the painting, was actually one of his sons.

He painted a lot during the Civil Rights Movement, in fact. Many difficult subjects, a lot of bold and very liberal work. I kept finding myself drawn towards those paintings, the bleak, complicated ones, rather than the nostalgic stuff he is normally known for.

Prior to this I pictured Norman Rockwell - if I thought about him at all - as a sweet old man in a sweater vest. A blend of Mr. Rogers and Jimmy Stuart, maybe. I see something totally different now. And I find it a wonder that he is remembered for his (admittedly lovely) paintings of children and puppies and young couples in love, when he also was capable of creating something as chilling and dark as this.

In summary: museums are for learning!

Dear Life

"He had often wondered what difference it would make.

But the emptiness in place of her was astounding. 

He looked at the nurse in wonder. She thought he was asking her what to do next and she began to tell him. Filling him in. He understood her fine, but was still preoccupied. 

He'd thought it had happened long before with Isabel, but it hadn't. Not until now. 

She had existed and now she did not. Not at all, as if not ever. And people hurried around, as if this outrageous fact could be overcome by making sensible arrangements. He, too, obeying the customs, signing where he was told to sign, arranging - as they said - for the remains.

What an excellent word - "remains." Like something left to dry out in sooty layers in the cupboard. 

And before long he found himself outside, pretending that he had as ordinary and good a reason as anybody else to put one foot ahead of the other. 

What he carried with him, all he carried with him, was a lack, something like a lack of air, of proper behavior in his lungs, a difficulty that he supposed would go on forever."

- Leaving Maverly, Dear Life, Alice Munro

...if nothing else, this passage is a lesson in the power of simplicity.

Aloneness, Plus a Dog

Today marks two weeks of what I'm dubbing "living alone for the first time in my life." That's extreme wording for what is a temporary situation, but this is a two month jaunt of aloneness, so hey. It qualifies.

I had such big plans. Beginning on day one I was going to rise with the sun. Read, write, coffee, every single morning before work. Work hard and well at actual work, then come home and make myself a healthy and affordable dinner, play with my puppy, and then read, write, dessert. I was going to be scholarly and ambitious and serious and quiet. I was going to think deep thoughts.

What an a-hole. Christ.

These were all good, lofty intentions. But I forgot to account for my general exhaustion, which has been large and looming. This summer was one long, enormous ramp up for a hectic fall. Jobs have been quit, finances have been reorganized, parties parties parties have happened, plans have been made.

So, what did I do once the silence finally descended? I collapsed in on myself. (Predictably.) Sprawled out on the couch. Fucked around on ye olde internet. Watched reruns of Criminal Minds while eating handfuls of chocolate. (Matthew Gray Gubler, my nerd crush, continues to make me adore him.)

So of course I felt real shitty about all this, until I remembered, who the fuck cares? I'm allowed to sit and vegetate. What on earth is wrong with taking a week or so to be a lump, a loaf, deeply lazy? Nada.

And sure enough, post-resting, this week has been different. I've already finished two books this month and have four more to go, so I stopped at my favorite bookstore in the village and treated myself to a few lovely new titles. And over the past few days, I've been sliding down into the head space I have been so craving. That place where everything goes quiet and soft around me, but on the inside I feel electric and zippy with thoughts and with words.

Balance. It's so key, so elemental. I admire people who can function with ease in a chaotic life, but I'm just not one of them. I can handle it when times get crazy; I can function and squeak on by. But in order to feel correct, I require balance. And balance is different for everyone, but to me, its simple things: quiet. reading. music. running. sunlight. fresh air. a good friend to laugh with. yummy things. sleep.

Today was perfect. A good day at work, lunch out with friends. An after-work four mile run in the cool wind and the warm, thin September sun. A snacky dinner of pita, hunks of cheese, and a tomato and cucumber salad. And now, time at my desk. The candle next to me is "gingergrass and lemon" scented. A hot cup of chai tea to my left, a small bowl of graham crackers and chocolates to my right. My dog, asleep in her bed on the bottom of the bookshelf, her soft snores my warmest company.

And, sure as anything, the urge to write comes back.

I know I need these things. Routine, and health, and quiet. And when I don't take the time to prioritize them, I lose my way, again and again. I'm not sure how to make a habit out of putting myself first, but certainly I'm a better person when I've done it.

As my mom sometimes says to me, an eye-roll in her voice, "Just go for your run. Maybe you'll be a nicer person when you get home."

Hm.

Two weeks down, six or so to go. Maybe by the end I'll actually be artistically productive. Or, at least, a nicer person. One can hope.

Quite Frankly

They got old, they got old and died. But first -
okay but first they composed plangent depictions
of how much they lost and how much cared about losing.
Meantime their hair got thin and more thin
as their shoulders went slumpy. Okay but

not before the photo albums got arranged by them,
arranged with a niftiness, not just two or three
but eighteen photo albums, yes eighteen eventually,
eighteen albums proving the beauty of them (and not someone else),
them and their relations and friends, incontrovertible

playing croquet in that Bloomington yard,
floating on those comic inflatables at Dow Lake,
giggling at the Dairy Queen, waltzing at the wedding,
building a Lego palace on the porch,
holding the baby beside the rental truck,
leaning on the Hemingway statue at Pamplona,
discussing the eternity of art in that Sardinian restaurant.

Yes! And so, quite frankly - at the end of the day -
they got old and died okay sure but quite frankly
how much does that matter in view of
the eighteen photo albums, big ones
thirteen inches by twelve inches each
full of such undeniable beauty?

- Mark Halliday

On September Adventures

This morning I woke up early, poured myself some coffee, and said a weepy goodbye to my lovely husband. He's a writer whose third, and most important, book has just come out, and he's headed off on a national book tour for several months.

He travels often, but even the dog seemed to know he'd been gone for awhile this time. She chased him down the stairs of our apartment building in a hysterical howling fashion, and since he left, she's been glued to the windowsill, nothing but watchful waiting.

This is an exciting opportunity for him, and it's also kind of one for me. I'm 32 years old and I've never lived alone. I've lived with roommates in many, many apartments - in Florida, in London, in Hoboken and in Manhattan. Roommates who were close friends of mine, roommates who were strangers I found in the wilds of Craigslist. I always knew, as a teenager, that having a few years to live on my own was something I needed to do. And I considered living with a roommate to still be living on my own. The desire to be alone-alone just wasn't something I possessed. I just wanted my own room, in a town of my own choosing. I wanted to paint my bedroom walls any color I wanted, and pick out my own bedspread, and have my own shelf in the kitchen. That was enough for me.

I also wanted friends within reach, and that's where the roommate idea came into play. In high school and college, my mom used to tease me for my love of the TV show Friends. "That's not real life," she'd say, with a sniff. "People don't really live that way, so get used to it."

And I remember thinking, even as a teenager - but...yes, they do. And that's what I wanted. So, that's what I created. And it was a lot of fun, while it was happening. In particular I loved watching Lost with Karen, my brief-stint-in-NYC roommate, while her little dog napped in his bed in the corner.

But it's true that I've never genuinely lived alone. And while Hollsby (le husband) will only be gone for a couple of months - maybe two, maybe three, with occasional drop-ins back home for a night or so - I'm going to look upon it as my own little solo adventure.

If I want to walk in the front door after a day at work, make myself popcorn for dinner, and sit around eating it in my underwear while watching girly movies, so be it. If I want to go out every night, so be that, too. If I want to not use the stove even one time, except for as a storage device for my extra pots and pans, well, fuck it, whose going to stop me?

I joked to him, just last night, that without him here to cook for me I will probably forget to eat. He will likely return home to a rail-thin wife with a drinking problem and also maybe a tattoo because that is something I've been casually pondering.

He considered this. "The tattoo is fine," he pronounced. "Maybe not so much with the rail thin, though."

He was away earlier in the summer for a week, and I went briefly insane. I boarded our dog so I wouldn't have to take care of anything, and went out every single night - to literary readings, to parties, to the movies. I ate almost nothing except for cereal and potato chips in bed. I drank every night, and I rarely drink, so this was odd of me but enormously fun. By my last night home alone, I was coming down with a bad cold, so I tried to heat up some soup on the stovetop. But I accidentally lit the wrong burner, and while I thought my soup was warming, I got distracted because the movie Mermaids - of all things - was on TV. So when the fire alarms began to go off with a vengeance I was confused, until I realized I'd accidentally been heating up, and then burning, old bacon grease in a leftover pan. Not my chicken noodle soup. The apartment smelled like a peculiar version of bacon-hell, my dog was crying and hiding in the corner, and the smoke was so thick I literally thought about crawling around so I wouldn't die of inhalation. I had to open every single window I have, put on every fan, and stand, in my underwear (of course), under the alarm flinging around a towel to make the noise stop.

By the end of that week I had a terrible sinus infection and had to miss two entire days of work. But lordy, was that a fun week.

This time around I'll try to be a real human adult. Two months of that kind of behavior would clearly put me in a casket, anyway.

My real plan is to use this time to prepare for graduate school. I start up an MFA in creative writing in January, on top of having a day job. So beginning on September 1st, my plan has been to hold myself accountable to what will be my grad school schedule: reading six books, and writing 30 pages of manuscript, per month. I'll start casually this month, reading whatever books move me and writing anything I like. Then I'll try to step it up, adding more focus to the mix, in October.

In honor of this, I spent Monday cleaning and organizing my office, so my writing space would be clear and welcoming. And on September 1st I began and finished my first book - a fun pick, Stephen King's Joyland. What an awesome feeling that is, and has always, been - to begin and finish a fun, breezy book in one languid, rainy day.

So, tonight. After work I will come home, walk the pup, and head to the library. I will pick out five more books, anything that moves me, anything that feels right. And I'll come home, try to remember to feed myself, and then settle into this newly organized, bright and friendly book-room of mine, to begin practicing for my own new life.

You can have adventures by leaving, by moving, by going somewhere new. And admittedly those are my favorite kind. But you can also have them at home, by living in a new way. And I'm genuinely excited for mine to begin.