Dark

I used to wonder what those big black areas were on night maps of the US.  At least, until I moved to one.

Two nights ago I went for a walk, crossing a bridge near my house that goes over a very big river.  To go out walking alone at night to begin with is a new experience for me; living in DC for most of my life, I would always take the subway anywhere at night, and I certainly never went out walking late for fear of becoming the victim of a crime, as so many of my friends did.  I am still getting used to the lack of public transit and crime both.

Anyway, I got halfway over the bridge and realized just how totally dark the night was; although the bridge had lights, there wasn’t any light along the river, or on it.  The glow from the small lights on the bridge seemed to be sucked into total black, the little light decaying like a quantum mechanical wavefunction that has penetrated into a zone where it ain’t supposed to be.  The darkness was one one hand very beautiful, but I felt somehow uneasy, unsettled, and frightened…it felt a bit suffocating, like being wrapped up in a big black sleeping bag and not knowing where the zipper is.

When you see that kind of dark, you realize just how vast and how empty America really is.  That the default is not cities, and civilization, but huge swaths of untamed land and water.  Normally I bring a flashlight with me on my walks, but this time I hadn’t.  ”What if the power were to go out?”  I thought to myself.  Halfway across the bridge, the darkness below me became overwhelming.  I turned around and headed back downtown before I reached the other side of the bridge:  State Highway 2497–where, as Shel Silverstein might say, the sidewalk ends.

That was Friday.  Saturday night I went driving with the fella (because yup, after many years of my being a tumbleweed there is a fella now, and I adore him to pieces) down a country road; the same unlit road that winds along the river.  Utter total black cut only by his high beams; I’ve never seen anything like it (at least, not in the US.)

The moon over the river by my house, and the country road without lights. You can see cars going by.

 

 

Now that the frogs have gone to sleep for the winter, and the cricket orchestra has gone home, the night is deep out here, and still, and lonely.

So when you wonder how to wish someone well in a rural area, wish him that his headlights never fail.

Midnight Train to Georgia

L.A. proved too much for the man,
So he’s leavin’ the life he’s come to know,
He said he’s goin’ back to find…
a simpler place and time.

And I’ll be with him
On that midnight train to Georgia,
I’d rather live in his world
Than live without him in mine.

I always loved this song. Never figured I’d live it though, and find myself with a one-way ticket to a small sleepy town.

It wasn’t really that I couldn’t make it though…I was on a roll when I left my postdoc, and I might possibly have gone to a big research university if I held out for a few more years. I just…didn’t want to. I’m thirty, and the year I hit the academic job market the bottom fell out. There is a time in life when one enjoys being a tumbleweed, and moving all around the country as an itinerant and underpaid postdoc. That time is in the past for me. I didn’t want to spend another year or ten without a semi-permanent job in hopes of (maybe someday) finding a job at a research university. I like to teach; I like undergraduates. Some might claim I am good at it. And I didn’t want the pressures of grant-writing and advising and finding jobs for my students.

So when an exit ramp abruptly came up and I was offered a job at a reasonably good liberal arts college in a small town, I took a deep breath and I took the blue pill or the red one, depending how you choose to look at it. And out here you know, the fella is right–it is a simpler place and time; one where you still dial seven digits to call someone and only the last five matter; one where–forget locking your door at night, some people don’t close theirs, and then they get bitten by mosquitoes.

It’s a place where you can go out on the street and walk at night, and not worry at all that you will be mugged, and where there isn’t any need for a bus because if you need a ride you ask a friend. It’s a place where a man is man enough to call a date a date, and the biggest headline in the news will be something like “‘A moose just fell from the sky!’” Mennonites shop at Wal-Mart with the English folk, and give you the right of way right kindly at stop signs. Around here everybody walks the straight and narrow, because if you don’t the whole town will know.

So that’s that. Unlike Georgia there isn’t a literal train passing through here–that is how far in the sticks I am, and it’s an unlikely place for a girl who’s lived next to subway stops all her life. But metaphorically speaking at least I’ve enjoyed both the journey and the destination.

Second Chance

My English teacher once told me I ought to try writing from the point of view of a fella. It’s surprisingly hard! But here’s a story.

I stood at her doorstep, the full Kentucky moon shining like a spotlight so that I was on stage, with a one-line part in my high school play again. All them bright lights had wiped my mind blank, so I forgot the line.

She looked so soft standing there. But somehow with that moon all shining overhead when the moment came, I froze.  Things blurred and melted and it was all too fast and suddenly she was like hot fudge melting all soft and warm in my arms. I kissed her forehead feeling like I was watching myself from the outside and hearing myself say something about how I had a long drive home.

Well then I tried to let go but she held on and lifted her eyes to me full of question marks. She was awful sweet and smelled of roses but it was all so strange. “I can’t…” I heard myself say in a strange voice that sounded like a frog.  Wasn’t that I didn’t want to kiss her, exactly, but it had been five years since I kissed a girl and what if she thought that was all I wanted her for.  So I pushed her away, hands clutching my stomach as though she might steal my insides.

Well poor thing stepped back like she’d been burned, but her hands were still on mine, until she realized she was holding my hands and I wasn’t holding hers back. Then she dropped my hands too and backed away right miserable, and she shrank into a corner like a dead spider and wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, collecting herself. She musta thunk I didn’t like girls.

“Not your fault,” I answered automatically, looking miserable right back. The muggy July air was pressing in around me and I broke a sweat. I couldn’t say much more and couldn’t breathe and turned to leave, and I said goodbye and she looked at me and didn’t say it back.

Well I got in my car and went to drive off but I turned the key and turned it back.  And I got back out of the car and I says to her–I says “Wait.  Sally, you are real pretty, it is just that it was our first date.”  And she smiled polite but kinda cold, and I figured I better drive off before I put my foot so far down my throat that I’d have to drive fifty miles to Doctor Wilkins to get it surgically removed.

Well the drive home to Fox Chase was a long one, because I was kind of worried.  Where 121 crosses 65 I had to pull the car over for a moment and think. Because she really was a very nice girl, and the way things had gone down wasn’t good…I’d hurt her feelings, hadn’t meant to.

That night before I went to sleep I sat down and penned a postcard to her in bright blue ink.  I wrote it out three times and the first two I threw out and the third said this:

Dear Sally,

I am awful sorry about last night.  I was just nervous and when I get nervous I act awkward.  You are a pretty girl.  If you like I would like to take you out next Friday.  We have a tractor pull around here and it is silly but around here it is kind of a big deal.  If you would like to come I will pick you up at 3.

-John

Three days later it must have reached her as I thought of her and the next second my phone rang.  First I thought it was a coincidence but then I realized I’d been thinking of her off and on all day for three days.

Well she says to me–”John,” she says, before I can get a word in, “I thank you for the card, and yes I’d like to go out again.  And don’t you worry about being awkward.  I believe the day will come when you don’t feel that.”

And I was grateful but kind of embarrassed so I pretended like I didn’t hear and I says to her, all casual-like, “Well Miss Sally, how about we go to the drive-in and I will pick you up on Friday.”

Friday rolled around and as promised I went to get her.  She was waiting for my car when it pulled in, and I stepped out and she smiled and invited me in.  And when I was in she sat me down and fetched me some water, and I drank it and funny thing was this time I didn’t feel nervous at all.  Well she had her hand on my shoulder and I looked up–and she was expecting me to be all awkward and instead I hear myself say “Sally, may I kiss you?”

And then before she could say “yes” I stood up and I did what I shoulda done last time and I kissed her like she was the last woman on Earth and all of eternity rested on that kiss.

Well that was fifteen years ago in a different world, before there was the YouTubes and Internets and Barack Obama.  It was before I married Sally Sharp and made her Sally Orloski, and the two of us moved out to Fox Chase.

Once in a while she asks me “so why’d I make you so nervous, John?”

And I says to her, I says “cause you were a girl!”

So she says “Well John, now I’m your girl.”

And she is.

This Weekend’s Interesting Sight…

…was a big water tower emblazoned with

I just hope he shows up after I am done lecturing. I imagine the experience might be rather disruptive otherwise.

It is quite an experience to try and listen to the radio around here. When I tried, I could barely pick up a word of President Obama’s speech on health care; as I turned the dial literally pretty much all I could get strongly was

“The Sermon on the Mou-CCCCHHHHK–the Everlasting Light–CCCHHHHHKK–Mah wife left meeeeeeeeee and my old red coon dog died….”

Which is not to say that I don’t have a sweet spot for country fellas, but you know, I am still looking for a station that will give me weather reports without mentioning the day’s brimstone forecast.

Phew

Oh my but it has been a few crazy weeks. First I hurt my back and I had trouble walking for a while (and for at least one night I couldn’t stand up). Then just when I was just starting to feel better I caught what I believe was the swine flu (people off campus are like “I can’t believe you caught the swine flu,” but the truth is on this campus at least a hundred students had it (I mean, those are the reported cases) and nine or ten were out from my classes. My immunity was low because I hadn’t been able to take care of myself properly when I couldn’t stand up, so it was a matter of time.

Thankfully I caught the flu on a Friday so I had the weekend to recover. Really you are supposed to skip five days, and in any event they say you are still contagious 24 hours after your fever breaks. But disgustingly because I could not skip more classes after skipping a few because of my back, I had to drag myself to work on Day 4–me at work, and flu viruses come free. I hated myself for doing it but I was good and stuck; there was no way out. I just tried my best to keep my office door closed and keep a low profile; what else can you do? And I believe I did manage not to infect anyone else in my department or in that class.

Tonight I finished a grant proposal. Anyway it has been an exhausting few weeks, but I was very happy today–the professor whom I admire most in this department told me “it is very impressive that you even tried a proposal during your first month of teaching.” What the truth is is that now that I feel mostly better from the flu and my back, all that extra time that went into just fighting the hurt went into the proposal and it wasn’t that bad.

I kind of wonder how much of having the flu and hurting my back was related to mental stress. It is hard to deal with a new house, new car, new place, new job, new lifestyle, all of that, and maybe my body just reacted by collapsing, or something.

Anyway my grant is in, and I feel mostly better now. This job simply cannot on a regular basis be any more difficult than the first month has been–no way, no how. And so I feel a little happier thinking that maybe I will stop feeling like I am drowning now and be able to do some research so they don’t throw me out, and that it will all be downhill from here.

Cityscapes

In good news, my back is recovered. In bad news, after a few weeks of students sneezing on me, I have contracted what is most likely the swine flu. This weekend, I am hence spending a lot of time asleep. And…

…In my dreams, I see the city. I see the subway thundering into the station with its bright orange carpet, and the flashing lights at the edge of the platform saying the train is about to arrive. Emerging from the cool underground of the station into daylight, I see black glass buildings that line the streets and scrape the sky. In the hot summers, the outsides of the subway stations where the buses stop are full of the sharp smells of grime and hot Plexiglass and cigarettes and men returning to the halfway house after a day’s work. Bus #81 goes to my house and #22 takes me to work, and I know the crazy people who ride the #34 at night so well that some of them will emerge from their insanity for a moment to say hello.

The hum and buzz goes on, there, just I am not there. The #81 and #22 are running, and the crazy man on the #34 will not pull at my sleeve tonight demanding that I say hello. The hole I left when I left has closed behind me, as eventually happens when a person dies.

I miss the subway and I miss the grime and I miss the crazy fellow on the #34. But also, it all seems farther and farther away. Tonight, far from the skyscrapers, I looked deep into the country skies, and saw stars I had never seen before.

Quote of the Day

“I enjoy my job. Though I would enjoy it much more if I had weekends free.”
-A Colleague

It’s true. I’m tired, and it’s only Week 4. Granted the last two weeks my back has hurt, and that’s part of it, but still.

My friend, who was thinking of moving to Dubai, tells me Dubai is a great place to live unless you bounce a check or go bankrupt, in which case you go to jail, and do not pass go and collect $200. Which got me thinking; life is not entirely under your control–you may think “that will never happen to me,” but maybe it will. Jobs, places, people–they are all okay when things are hunky-dory. The more important question is how they treat you when you are down.

Teaching is one of those fair weather friends. When you are feeling fine it’s fun; it’s when you are sick or tired that it gets you, because there isn’t a respite.

And I would suspect that, as a general rule, what applies to life applies to human relationships. It’s not how the person treats you when it’s going well, because it’s easy to be all cuddles and snuggles then. It’s how he treats you when the kids are screaming. Or when the nearest jobs the two of you can find are triple-digit miles away from each other, so that you have to give up the thing you have spent your life training to do or give up snuggling him at night, and you can’t complain because you knew this would be a problem when you said “for better or for worse.” Or when she wants another kid and you feel like you couldn’t even afford the first, and by the way the infirmary just called and said Junior has the swine flu and can one of you please come and pick him up before he spreads it to the entire school.

Because I would imagine that it’s when you hit the rocks that you find out what the boat you have put your life in is made of, and when you find out what I doubt you can ever really know until you tie your life to someone else’s: who exactly it is whom you have tied your life to.

Back Country

Two weeks ago, the day before classes started, I carried a box I should not have up two flights of stairs, and acquired a moderately bad back sprain. After a week of trying to teach through my back hurting, because you cannot miss your first day of class (let alone if you are a new professor), I suddenly had a very bad back sprain.

Having just moved I had no anything in the house that was useful in such a situation–no heating pad, no ice bag, no Advil, zip. So I got in my car and tried driving to Wal-Mart. One lane was closed for construction along the way and I got a bit confused–and at that point my back began stiffening up in earnest, so that I now had an excruciatingly bad back sprain, and was in a haze of pain. Thus, even though I know where Wal-Mart is by now, somehow I took a wrong turn off the highway and found myself lost in a cornfield–the inevitable consequence of taking a wrong turn anywhere near here.

Now and again in life you find yourself far from friends and family and hurting, and totally disoriented and pulled over in a cornfield. You yearn desperately to go home, and then you realize with a sinking feeling that you are already there, just now “home” is a place without friends or family or the familiar coziness of knowing which general direction Wal-Mart is in. But after a moment or two of fear and self-pity and wondering how you ended up here, you snap out of it–because you realize that how you got yourself into this particular pickle no longer matters. You are in it now, as deep as the seeds, and nobody is going to come and pull you out. You can break down and cry, but it won’t help a thing, and nobody is going to come and dry your tears–you will sit alone in this cornfield with your back hurting unless and until you find your courage and the highway both. Which somehow, I did.

As it turns out I found Wal-Mart, too, and leaning heavily on my cart, I managed to stand up long enough to get a heating pad and other random back stuff. But that Wal-Mart run was the last straw that broke the professor’s back. When I came home I forgot my keys in the door, collapsed in bed, and simply could not get up again, not even to get a glass of water. I laid on my back all evening staring at the ceiling and being thirsty, until like a botched PowerPoint transition evening faded into parched nightmares about grizzly bears circling my house. As far as unpleasant nights go, I’d say that was one.

But while I was lying there helpless and hurting, my longtime best friend (who is an awful lot like family) phoned. I told him I was okay, but he knows me better than I know myself and he could hear that I wasn’t. He asked me if I wanted him to come out. I said no. So my best friend did what only a best friend does, flew out post-haste the next day and after letting himself in informed me that I had forgotten my keys in the door.

The first thing he did was make sure I wasn’t thirsty, and I have never appreciated a glass of water so much in my life. I am not sure either what good deed I did to deserve a friend who would help me out that way, or what I would have done without him.

Over my feeble protests that I could teach even if I couldn’t stand up, my friend made me e-mail other professors asking them to please take my classes for a few days. I was so totally embarrassed–remember, I have just stepped on the tenure track, and within a week of being hired I manage to incapacitate myself and inconvenience the entire department. I’d say asking for help stressed me out more than the pain. But they were all very kind–and to spare them a bit, my friend even gave my quantum lecture himself.

I felt hugely better after my friend showed up; it wasn’t just that he could get me water and tidy up the house a bit, so that I was much more comfortable–but somehow just not feeling totally alone made me feel so much better that I could relax and focus on taking care of my back, and a week later I am 95% back to normal. I won’t be playing rugby for another week or two, but I had three hours of lecture Wednesday and Friday, and they were okay.

For the last few days every morning I have woken up and found myself feeling a large increment better, and regaining my mobility has truly been a wonderful experience. Today, finally, was the first day during which there were periods of several hours when I didn’t hurt at all.

The sudden absence of pain feels both wonderful and strangely empty, which is difficult to explain except to say that if you had been running your head into a wall continuously for two weeks and suddenly stopped, you’d be relieved, but you’d also probably wonder what to do with all the free time you suddenly had.

Kahlil Gibran writes, when his Prophet departs from Almustafa,

Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls,
and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?

I suppose what he means is that even in gaining something, you leave behind a way of life. For example, when you enter a serious relationship, in losing aloneness I imagine you lose some other things too–some independence, some freedom, and the possibility of someone else coming along who snores less, or whatever.

When pain–physical or emotional–goes away I am not sure what it is you lose; maybe when you no longer have to struggle with hurt continuously, you go from being in fighting mode to being complacent. And you don’t feel as strong or as courageous, or as though you are winning a battle with something.

But who cares? I am overwhelmingly happy to be back to myself again. Gibran’s Prophet can keep his independence and all that; I have my hands a bit full right now managing my new house/new car/new job/new city/new life, but once I feel like I can survive out here, I’ll be awfully happy to lose the aloneness too.

I guess the main lesson I took away from this experience is always to appreciate good health, and the absence of pain. To ask for help lifting a heavy box, because otherwise you inconvenience your entire department and your friend for a week. And furthermore that it is not only okay to let your friends see you in a state that is not your best, but to trust someone to see you at your worst makes the friendship stronger.

So with those thoughts let me sign off, and wish all of you happiness and good health, and please wish me the same.

Cartography

Back slowly improving but still hurting like the devil–figured I’d emerge for a moment to write a little story; take my mind off lecture tomorrow. When I am feeling well I love teaching. But teaching is so schedule-inflexible, and thus so unforgiving of the teacher’s being sick or injured that some days I am reminded of those mystery shows, when they open the suit of armor and find a skeleton there because it never had time to fall over…

---

“Here,” he said, “take my map.”

She fingered it hesitantly, and it had the feel of paper that had been folded and folded again. “I can see you use it a lot. Are you sure you don’t need it?”

He shook his head. “Get ‘em free at every rest stop in Kentucky. I have a couple.” He folded the map up the wrong way and laid it on her knee. “Take this one.”

So she did.

Some people are book smart but clueless about life; she was that way and she knew it and didn’t fight it. Part of her particular brand of clueless was that she had a terrible sense of direction, so bad that if you told her to wave her left hand she’d have to think for a second. So the truth was that maps were of great use, and she was grateful for his and took it without protesting too much. She wasn’t certain he was telling the truth about having another one in the car, but map or no map she also knew he was the sort who could take care of himself.

And privately she thought to herself that he was book smart and he was life smart was the reason she liked sitting next to him looking at maps.

Well a few days later she got an envelope in the mail with his name in the upper left, hers in the center, and a few dollars of postage on the upper right hand side. She tore it happily open to find two new maps from him, with a carefully written note in green ink saying he’d sent them to replace the used one he’d left.

She folded the new maps carefully away, while keeping the dog-eared one within easy reach. Which might seem a backwards thing to do, and you might think she did it because she was book smart and not life smart. But if you knew her a little better you would realize that she was the sort to like his map the best because it was his, and to like it folded up the wrong way because he’d folded it.

Which is to say she was fonder of the sweet Kentucky fellow than he knew, and hoped the road brought him by again.

Glass

Just finished my first week of class. Somewhere along the way I threw out my back moving furniture, and if you have ever lectured for hours with your back protesting, you will guess that the week has been a difficult one. So Friday afternoon after three hours of lecturing, I am decompressing in my office, and thinking about the fragility of life, and health. About why I am scared of bugs, which are certainly not bigger than me, and why I sometimes am similarly scared walking into a nursing home. This little poem is the result of today’s musing.

I am terrified of daddy long-legs.
Not because they are bigger than I am,
but rather because they are so small and fragile
and spindly
that I think if I breathe
they might break.

When I was little
they took me into the hospital to see her.
Shock-white hair, a tube in her nose,
adrift in a sea of crisp sheets
she was fragile and spindly.
Terrified, I backed out of the room.
Not because she was bigger than me,
but because I thought
if I looked too long
she might break.

[Edited to add: Marian Allen replies in the comments with something I thought should be added to the main post...]

Pick up the daddy long-legs.
Scoop him into your palm,
Encage with loosely curling fingers.
Carry him from the house
And set him free.

Look at the fragile ill,
The fragile old.
Cradle her with your gaze,
Embrace with your attention.
She will not break.
She will come alive.

So true, and may all of us remember it.