To The Nightclub in Prague That Played “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

So this is what it’s like, I thought, to feel liberated.

Old Town Prague

The club is packed, Saturday night. Lights are dim but colors flash here and there. We have had enough pilsner to feel loose but not lost.

1992, three years after the Velvet Revolution, one year before Czechoslovakia dissolves into two countries. Democracy rips through the country: free speech radio stations, small business popping up on every block, free market, free press and this, the capital city, can’t contain the sheer joy of it all.

“Load up on guns and bring your friends

It's fun to lose and to pretend

She's over-bored and self-assured

Oh no, I know a dirty word”

We move onto the dance floor. I’ve known this kind of freedom my whole life. But here, tonight, all anyone talks about, thinks about is freedom. Doing. Being. Think of the possibilities. They can think of nothing else.

“With the lights out, it's less dangerous

Here we are now, entertain us

I feel stupid and contagious

Here we are now, entertain us”

We are in Old Town, off the St. Charles. Centuries-old buildings cluster in the middle of the city. Bohemians don’t like to fight and despite all the wars in Eastern Europe, they refuse to let their city be a casualty. A Velvet Revolution. Old Town is lush that way. A living Mucha painting. Nothing stands still. Everything breathes.

Mucha Poster

“And I forget just why I taste

Oh yeah, I guess it makes me smile

I found it hard, it's hard to find

Oh well, whatever, nevermind”

To Indiana

You were a shock. A bigger shock than my first car accident. A bigger shock than moving to New York. You’re right up there with having a baby and traveling to Cyprus.

I never thought about Indiana. The most I knew was that Indianapolis had the Indy 500, but I didn’t know what that was. Something about cars. John Mellencamp sang proudly of you and a woman from somewhere in Indiana lived on my dorm floor freshman year. Sure, I could pick you out on a map, but your name conjured nothing for me. Blank. Empty. As it turns out, much like your stretches of highway.

And I was torn. Graduate school decision. My first-choice school, Northern Arizona, accepted me and when I went to visit, the director advised I go where I got the most money, do not go into debt for a degree in poetry. They all gave me money, but Purdue gave me the most. Goodbye Grand Canyon. Goodbye Florida oranges. Hello…..? What? What the hell is in Indiana?

First, I noticed all the young men. Not because I was a straight, single young woman, but honestly, I’d never seen so many look like this. In one place. It was like the Twilight Zone episode where everyone is creepy-perfect. Their jaws too squared and sharp. Their shirts just a little too tight and their chests just a bit too wide. Jeans with shirts tucked in. Baseball caps, always backward. White. They were all white. All my students. I would just call on “Michael” or “Justin” and 12 would start to answer. I learned all their names; I just didn’t know who was who.

A shocking number were farm kids. From actual farms. They grew up waking before dawn to feed huge animals. I learned about de-tasseling and combines and grain silos and the ways a farm can kill you.

They wore flannel plaid shirts. Unironically.

I was surprised by the architecture. Old wooden Victorian houses on 9th Street, one after the other, rising up the hill. Slightly tilted, the siding askew, either from shifting foundations or poor craftsmanship or the wind from the plains beating them. Not like the unmovable brick houses of Texas. These houses aged as if they were alive. I lived in one: second floor apartment, looking out onto the street. When winter arrived, I heard the couple below argue. He hit her. I froze.

Small town, mid-America. I should have known it before I got there. It’s TV America, radio America, Hollywood-makes-a-football-movie America. If you were French and someone asked you to describe America, you would first say New York and then a place like Indiana. Open fields. A little church. Everyone a few pounds heavier than they should be. Big smiles and people who say “fella.”

But you are a place where things grow. You have an actual harvest season. Men and boys, women and girls hunt in the fall. They get dirty and bloody. They put their hands into nature daily and grab it. They rise and brush their palms on their jeans. They walk away satisfied.

To “Insivibilia”, a Podcast from NPR

Driving home from MicroCenter, 43 minutes away, with my son, we decide that instead of listening to music on the radio, which means 32 minutes of changing the station to either find a song we both like or avoid a song one of us hates and only 11 minutes of actual music, we will listen to a podcast. “Invisibilia” is new and this episode makes the case that blindness is a social construct. We hear about a man who echolocates, creating through sound visuals of the world around him, visuals that show up in the brain in the very same place they would if he used his eyes. He can see, literally see, without eyes.

Whoa.

I turn to Whit, “This is amazing.” He nods. We never say much as we listen to podcats, but we look at each other during striking moments. We laugh. We listen harder together when the story gets complicated.

Photo of Van Gogh's Self-Portrait found here

Hearing stories stitched with mood music, different voices, sound effects, narrative bridging devices, like a well placed pause that only works in spoken stories, is better than a movie, better than music. Storytelling this way is poetry and prose, the language both clean and connected. The podcast is a social construct between the storyteller and the audience, between the story and the image of the story, between the sounds we distinguish as words and music, voice and instrument, and the tiny bones that vibrate when the sound reaches them. A social construct.

Writers talk about the human need for story; indeed it is the very thing that makes us human. We need to tell our stories and we need to know the stories of others. But, maybe what we really need is to hear the stories: another human voice, shaking with fear, cracking with grief, brightening with joy, rising with anger. A voice I can see. A sound I can feel. Seeing, but not with my eyes. Hearing, but not with my ears. Breathing with my heart.

To the Amber Screen Monitor I Had Senior Year Of College

The more common green screen was irritating, so we went for the amber. Gold C prompt against the black background. This wasn’t a system for a math geek seeking out a formula for all the prime numbers, or a computer kid learning FORTRAN. I was a poet. He was a philosopher. We had two cats.

The computer was in a sun-room, on an antique dining table, the chair’s seat thread-bare. If I leaned back, taking two minutes to fill in the image before I continued writing, the back of the chair would separate ever-so-slightly from the legs, creaking.

My study, Front St. Amber monitor & daisy-wheel printer

I would write in the morning, before class. In the winter, the tall windows would frost, I could see my breath. A space heater glows. The sun rises. The cursor blinks. Orange seeps in every crevice.

Poems about trees, about family, about our narrow kitchen. About Picasso, about snow, about Bach. Poems with pain, or at least, what I thought was pain. Poems about anger. Poems about love. Or at least, what I thought was love.

A year later, I had my own apartment and a degree in English. I was a houseparent at a group home for teenage girls, though I was just past teenager myself. I was as eager to leave this town as I had been to come here. I had the computer. He had the cats. I had my poems, amber words burning into the morning dark.

To Tuesdays

I love the sound of you: Tuuuuessssdaaaaay. The hard “te” sound dropping and caught in the glove of the “u”, sliding through the “s” and landing in the “day”. Does “Saturday” sound as pretty? As complex and alluring?

You are the most zen of days. I’ve gotten past the disappointment of Sunday night, the clumsiness of Monday, and with you, I am on the optimistic side of the week. I will follow where the day goes, where the week goes and it will all be copacetic. We got this.

You are the day of decisions. Good decisions are never made on Wednesday, when the fatigue of the two days behind and the work of the two days ahead clouds every choice. Friday decisions are the most regrettable. I am in my best mind with you.

Ruby Tuesday, Taco Tuesday, Tuesday Weld, I will gladly pay you Tuesday, Super Tuesday, Tuesday’s child is full of grace, Fat Tuesday, President Truman’s “Meatless Tuesdays” when we would all avoid beef to aid the war in Europe. Tuesdays would save lives.

Give me a Tuesday any day.

To '03 & '04, the Years I Spent With Back Pain

I don’t remember you clearly and I did not love you at the time, and this is not the kind of love I hope others get to share. Like mean lovers I finally broke up with but spent years healing from, I realize now, there’s value in the experience.

The doctors would ask me, “Can you live with this?” I know now they did not mean it as literally as I heard it. I could hardly walk. In the mornings, my three-year old son would want to crawl up on the couch next to me to read a book, and his touch would sear me. I took him to a movie, and we spent most of the time in the bathroom while I threw up because of the pain. I thought, when they said, “live”, they meant, “Is this going to kill you?” My heart was still beating; I was still breathing. I guess it’s not going to kill me. Probably not.

I learned that doctors speak in metaphors. “Live with” means “tolerate” or “bear.” No, I cannot bear it.

Doctors see what they are trained to see and treat the way they are trained to treat with the tools they are trained to use. The internist said back pain is hard to define, origin often unknown. Take Tramadol. Neurologist orders the MRI. The disc has completely slipped out of the spine and is crushing the nerve. He treats the nerve, orders spinal injection that makes the pain worse. Physical therapists say it’s how I move and so I practice moving every day. The yoga healer wants to lengthen. He wants me to stretch myself out of pain. He is dying of cancer and coughs his way through my treatment. I don’t blame him for wanting everything to be longer.

Herniated disk L5

The surgeon says, “If you hadn’t been so macho and waited two years to see me, I would have said you have 100% chance of recovery. Now it’s 80%. I do this every day.”

I learned that medicine is an art with some science added, the opposite of physics: science with some art added. I was the canvas and they painted me in the style of their genre: impressionism, abstraction, realism. Thank God I did not find the deconstructionist.

Healing is slow, thin layers of trust, of faith, smooth over day after day so that finally, one day, two years after surgery, there is no more pain. None. The whole day. From “healing” to “healed.” Rarely do we ever make that move.

To Rainbow Trout

I don’t know what it is about fly-fishing that makes people want to spend thousands of dollars on a summer vacation at a dude ranch in Colorado, but because of that, the Rainbow Trout Dude Ranch welcomes them. And so they hired me, just finishing my first year of college, to clean the guest cabins.

View from Conejos Peak: I'd hike this on my days off

Fly-fishing for rainbow trout starts early and guests gather in the lodge for coffee to warm up. Though it’s June, we are high in the mountains and the summer heat doesn’t rise this far. The staff is up, too, eating oatmeal and bacon with syrup over everything, and we will begin our work when the guests leave on horseback, heading down to the river. They bought cowboy hats in Taos before coming here. Their brims fade behind the pine, the scent of the trees brushes by me.

Most of them have never been fly-fishing before. And while they are learning how to wade in the river, stand firm against the rushing water, discover their patience, I am in their cabins. Beer bottles empty on the oversized end table. A bottle of gin with the top off. A red-plaid shirt hangs off one side of a chair. James Michner’s Lonesome Dove, open, cover up, in the bathroom. I tidy, finding the line between cleanliness and privacy. They know I am coming, will want to know I have been here, that they can make a mess and I will take care of it. And I will pretend to not see the life underneath it all.

They come for the fishing, the horses, the rodeos, the mountains, the wood cabins and the lodge, the vespers and the talent show on Saturday night. They come for the peace, the clean, the space, the time, the slow motion, the ease. They have faith these exist and they will not be disappointed.

Me with Britta. End of summer '86.

I have come for the work, for the unknown, for the challenge, for the change. I come, mainly, knowing somehow, I will meet someone I need to meet, who will undo me, unfold me, take my arms out to the side as far as they will stretch. Her name is Britta; she wears small round turquoise earrings and she has a band of sunburn across her nose. She invites me for a hike and it’s not until midway up that she asks my name. I think, somehow, she must already know it. I think she knows the name I was meant to have, the name the universe gave me. I can hear it in the water rushing below, the trout shining the words: Madeline, Sage, Rocko, Laredo...

To the Metal Tags on My Dog’s Collar

Indy

We rescued Indy when she was 8, drove 4 hours each way to pick her up from a family who had given up on her. We’re greeted at the door by a woman and her two young kids. As we are leaving, the boy says, “Mom, are we going to get another dog?”

“No! We are never having another dog!”

Part of me wants to scoop up the kids and take them with me, also. I’ve room in the van.

At least we saved the dog. For the ride home, she is busy: at the window, back and forth between the seats, barking at us every few minutes. She’s all terrier. A terrier that’s been misunderstood her whole life.

I wonder how I will know what she wants. Our other dog we got as a puppy, trained him how to let us know he wanted to go outside. Or he trained us.  I knew if he bumped his nose lightly against my leg and then sat down, no blinking, he needed to go out.

The first afternoon with her, she came running into my office, barking loudly at me and she was perfectly clear: "I have to go outside NOW." She stamped her feet and make a fuss: now, now, now.

Until the summer of her bad knees. She could hardly walk and the stairs were out of the question. How would she let us know? A bark could mean someone’s at the door, the wind is blowing, the other dog is playing. She decided to shake, rattle the tags on her collar, over and over until I came down. "Let me out."

Her knees got better, but still, in the morning, she stands at the bottom of the stairs and shakes her tags. 5 AM. Snow falling. "This is urgent. Hear me. Hear me."

They will never have another dog.

To the Map of the Hundred Acre Woods on the Inside Cover of the Winnie-the-Pooh Books

 

Because you are hand-drawn, because you were slightly faded, because I paused every time I opened the books, because I would study you and decide which chapter I would read. Because of these things,I loved you.

Because Christopher Robin standing next to the words “My House” was really me and I was really him, laughing and saying, “Silly old bear.” Because “the place where the Woozel wasn’t” was everyplace, but it was especially this place, the small clump of trees Pooh and Piglet circled, their fear growing with every new set of footsteps. Because I was Pooh with a pop gun and brave and I was also Piglet, nervous, wearing a scarf regardless of the weather. I loved you.

Because you were a shortcut to the stories, because I could simply study the map while I retold the stories to myself: Pooh as rain cloud, Tigger stuck at the top of a tree, Eyeore taking the burst balloon in and out of the empty honey pot, finally delighted. Because Pooh would have to learn the lesson of getting stuck, suffer the indignity of Rabbit hanging tea towels on his feet, require the strength of the entire Hundred Acre Woods to free him. I loved you.

Because you were not Dallas, because you were not my house, because you were not my brothers and sisters, because you mapped my imagination so perfectly I almost could not bear at times that you were not a real place that I could go. Because some day I would have tea there, a smackerl of something, because there are no adults there, because being six is old enough.

To 1:00 AM

You are my favorite hour to wake up in. There is hope that I will go back to sleep, that the day I just left is gone and the day ahead will still be whole, productive. I can roll over at 1 AM and still think my way back to dreaming.

At midnight, voices and faces from the day before are outlines in the dark, impressions receding but not yet faded, faint enough to be unclear, dark enough to know they were deep. Did I hurt someone’s feelings? Did I miss an appointment? Did I walk right past her and say nothing?

But at 2 AM, the dark is not just blank, it’s empty. Everyone in the house is asleep. The dogs are snoring. I am the only consciousness. The most existentially terrifying of hours. Being and Nothingness. I cannot swim out of this hour. I cannot think through this hour. I cannot lift this hour off of me or move it away from me. It becomes me. I am lost.

3 AM is pure devastation. I will never get back to sleep. I will never write a book. I will never be a good teacher or mother. I will never travel widely. I will never run another marathon. I will never meet a president. I will never be the president. I will never run for school board. No, I will run for school board, but I will never be elected. I have 27 things to do before noon and I will get only 2 of them done. I will never retire. I will never be happy again.

At 4 AM, I just get up. I am sore from sleeping and the alarm will go off in one hour, so I might as well. I can do some research on my project, write a little. But late afternoon will hit me hard. I will have to close my door, close my eyes, and pay back this debt.

What about the nights I do not wake up? The nights I go to sleep at 10 and wake up with the alarm the next morning? The night I go through several REM cycles and solve all my problems in dreams? The nights my body heals with rest? Ah, those nights are few. They dot the surface of a year like Orion in the night sky, pointing an arrow that only the trained can see.

To Bookcases and Bookshelves

Companion Library Book Series

In the house on Caruth, the den was wood paneled with built-in bookcases on one wall. To the right were the kids' books: Junior Classics,Winnie the Pooh, Companion Library Books that had two stories in every book, so I could flip the book over, turn it and start a another one.

But to the left were the serious books. A row of Collier’s Encyclopedia. A Time Life Series on Life and Science with pictures of men from Amazon tribes with scarred, unsmiling faces. A yearbook series of the 1960’s covering the major events: space travel, Kennedy’s assassination, Woodstock, Nixon’s election. Nursing textbooks from my mom’s years at Charity Hospital. They smelled like medicine, pages thick and shiny. Photos of babies with measles, grown men in diapers, deformities of hands and ears and mouths. Our Bodies Ourselves. Fully illustrated. Fully.

In high school, for research papers, I would go to the local university library, through the bright lobby with wooden desks, 4 chairs tucked into each, the neat line of card catalogs, students bending over the drawers, picking over card after card. I’d walk past the wide rows of reference books to the staircase in the back, to the 5th floor, the stacks. Rows not much wider than myself, books from floor to ceiling, the perfume of paper and ink and metal. It was the scent of intelligence and romance. Surely, I would meet my first lover in the stacks.

Gradually, I filled up my own bookcases with slim volumes of poetry. Had I been a novelist, I would have needed more space, but the economy of poetry has always saved me. My bookcase was a mirror, a story, a play in 72 volumes: TS Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsburg, Robert Creeley, Adrienne Rich, Laura Jensen, Jack Gilbert, Pablo Neruda, Rilke. Longman Dictionary of Poetic Terms. The Oxford English Dictionary I read with a magnifying glass.

A couple shelves of our books

Every now and then, with a move or rearranging, I re-order the books. Sometimes by era, sometimes by genre. Alphabetical. Pull them off the shelf. Touch each book, flip the pages. I wonder if my son pulls them down when we don’t notice. Does he study them as a maps into his parents’ world? Are the lines he reads beauty or nonsense? Does he know the difference?

To Milk in My Coffee When I Was Two

Me and my mom circa 1970

Two-year olds don’t drink coffee. Unless they are born in New Orleans. Unless their mother is busy with three older children: uniforms, lunch boxes, homework in the book bags, combing hair so that Sister Laverne would not again give a look that says “I know you mean well, dear, but can you do something…”

Two-year olds don’t drink coffee unless they need it. Unless they are worried. About Winnie-the-Pooh stuck in the hole. About going to school. About the homework sheets and pencils and book bags and lunch boxes. What is in the lunch boxes exactly? Is it peanut butter? I hope it’s peanut butter.

Two-year olds don’t drink coffee.

But I did.

I needed my coffee. Thick with sugar and milk, more like warmed coffee ice cream. Going down my throat, I could feel the heat outline the center of my chest, eventually my whole body, saying, “You are this big.”

I needed my coffee. My mom making me a mug as she poured hers. Just me and her. In the kitchen. I am on her lap, the top of my head just high enough for her to rest her chin on. We both take a sip, lower the mug back down. Sip and lower. Sip and lower. Morning is here. Sip. Lower.

1969. We are new to Dallas. My dad comes in, pours a cup, reads the paper across the table. The crepe myrtles that line the driveway burn in the spring heat. In 7 minutes, he will go wake the older three on his way to the shower. I will stay here until she lightly taps my back, “Ok Shel, time to get movin’” and then I will lose her to the day.

I will live this ritual for the next 46 years, bringing me to this morning. Even the year I think I don’t like her. Even the week I travel to Prague. Especially the first morning I teach a class. The day my son dies.

But for now, I am two, and I lean back. The smell of her robe, of the coffee, of the sugar and the milk.

Sip. Lower. Sip.