resistance :: June 20, 2023

Once upon a time, last spring, a dozen small ducklings sailed in a box on the U.S.S. Postal Service and arrived at my door. The journey was short, but long. They traveled in the dark. Cold air seeped in through the holes in the box, the tiny cup of water ran dry. When I opened the hatch two days later, the ducklings peeped with relief and questions. I tipped them out onto the rug and they ran around in confused circles until I boiled an egg, chopped it into pieces, and floated it in the refilled water cup. The smell reminded them of home and tasted like a place they once knew. Their tiny heads got heavy and they fell asleep on the rug in a pile shaped like a box.

They grew and died, one by one. That same year in the woods a coyote family and a wandering bobcat grew sleek and clever on a diet of hopefully tended duck. When the slugs emerged the following spring to eat the daffodils, I mourned the gap in our small food-chain, but I did not open the emails from the hatchery. When I drove past the feed store, I stubbornly refused to read its announcements until hatchling season had come and gone.

It was not a time for ducklings. Everywhere, suddenly, people went to get a pint of ice cream, or a pair of pants, or a chance at a new life, and died. The people who were left began to run around in confused circles. No one knew what home smelled like anymore. Hardly anyone could sleep, but when they did, they lay alone in the dark, flinching at strange sounds and clicking their thirsty tongues.

My news feed in those days was buzzing with a story about a newly discovered flower somewhere west of the Pacific. It was a color no one had ever seen before (though the indigenous people of its home forest had a name for it so ancient it could no longer be pronounced). It would only bloom when held in the hand of a child still in its innocence. Beauty was in demand, as was innocence, so a black market of seeds sprang up almost instantly, but when the seeds arrived, the gardeners discovered all the children had grown up overnight. The seeds were put in the ground or thrown into the compost and forgotten. During this time, messiahs roamed the country selling sachets or truth serums, or more rarely, bottles of water said to quench every thirst.

One day I was sitting alone in my bedroom thinking of the ducklings. I remembered them sleeping, their bellies full of egg. It was foolish, but I took out my phone and looked at images of them fresh from the box: their downy yellow and black feathers, their dark little feet and beaks. There was a knock at the door; I answered it and found a woman standing there. I could tell immediately she was one of the messiahs. She had a slightly disheveled appearance and there was a twig in her hair. She spoke, but her voice was hoarse and I couldn’t understand her. This embarrassed me, so I looked down at her shoes. They were the kind of shoes you saw sometimes in old movies, little brown oxfords with a sensible heel, slightly scuffed. My thoughts about her softened. The woman rummaged in her bag. I did not want to buy truth serum or sachets, so I shook my head, but she held out her hand anyway. In the center of her palm was a shiny black seed. She put the seed in her mouth and swallowed it. When she opened her hand again, she was holding an egg.

“Come in,” I said immediately. She did. She took off her coat and set the egg on the table. We watched it for a moment to make sure it wouldn’t roll off. The egg was pale blue and incredibly beautiful.

“I would love some cake,” the woman said in her hoarse voice. I was startled. I began to say I had no cake, but the smell of baking had filled the room. On the table beside the egg was suddenly a cake, a pot of coffee.

“Of course,” I said, and we sat down together. The egg lay between us. Sometimes it rocked a little, as if something was inside — a small something, wanting to get out. We watched the egg and ate our cake. The rocking was so slight I sometimes thought I had imagined it.

“No one wants these anymore,” the woman said, hovering her coffee cup just above the egg’s trembling shell. Her voice was smoother now, but a little sad.

“I do,” I said, surprising myself. Between us, the egg was now shell pink. It became very still, almost as if it had never been alive. The woman and I glanced at each other and my cheeks grew hot at how bright my hope had been. She cleared her throat as if she might say something else, but then the egg give a little jolt. A crack appeared near the top. It widened until a small triangle of pink fell off. Beneath it, I could see a tiny, dark unfurling.

“It’s a petal!” the woman whispered.

“It’s a wing!” I shouted at the same moment.

…

At the sight of this small hatching, a word was on my tongue, a word so old I could almost remember how to say it. I whispered it out loud but not even my ears were quick enough to grasp it. The word curled itself into the air and out the window and spread across and across the sky.

…

Later, I gave the woman the spare bedroom. When I asked her name, she said, “Many lifetimes, all is coming.”* She was very tired. I politely removed the twig from her hair and left her alone to rest. The house was quiet, all the cake was gone. The egg was where we had left it, sitting in the center of the table, now green as a spring caterpillar, now purple as a bruise. It shed layers of shell, revealing first a glimpse of feathers, then a curl of leaf. It had been that way for hours, for days, for years. I went to the kitchen and got my big porcelain bowl, lined it with a towel and brought it back. As carefully as I could, I lifted the egg and held it for a moment. It was warm, pulsing with its hidden life. As I watched, its shell would crack and split then knit itself back together. Breaking and healing, breaking and healing. I brought it close to my face. It smelled like the damp rot of woods or the sharp saltiness of seahorses or the heat of blackberry leaves in August. I set it down as carefully as I could inside the bowl to wait.

*attributed to Sri K. Pattabhi Jois

---

Happy Solstice, my friends!

I’ve had that little story in my mind for weeks now. It felt right to get it on the page for this first day of summer. The world is as crooked and splintered as it’s ever been, but I’ve been listening to hope-givers lately. Sitting in the cool early morning sunshine. Weeding the oh-so-neglected garden in five minute bursts. Planting red flowers at every corner of the house. Reading one poem every day. Practicing yoga while it’s still dark. Learning the birds’ voices. Discovering a green heron, a trio of stags, a small ermine. Eating the strawberries as they ripen.

School is finished for the year! It’s been wonderful, exasperating, instructive, and challenging. I love it. But I’ve been looking forward to having the summer so I can get back to my own writing again. Of course, now that the summer is here, so is my internal resistance. I’m continually amazed at my ability to procrastinate about my art. If someone else gives me a task, no matter how inane, I will do it immediately. But I can endlessly put off writing or creating something of my own. Maybe you know the cycle? I plan to write first thing in the morning, but when the morning arrives I have a headache, or I didn’t sleep well, or I decide I really should clean the bathroom first. Or I actually sit down at my desk and write and then I am overwhelmed with fatigue and all I can think of is sleeping. If not fatigue, then a sudden conviction that I am on the wrong path and I was never supposed to write at all. That conviction can send me on an existential spiral for days (in which, of course, no writing gets done). It has taken me many years to recognize this pattern of resistance, but this year, I am more ready for it. I am finally at a place where I can start to ask why it happens. That’s going to be my focus this summer, actually, looking at whatever fear is keeping me from engaging with my own art.

Some things I am doing to conquer resistance and facilitate creativity this summer:

• Re-reading Christian McEwen’s World Enough & Time very slowly

• Journaling. So much journaling.

• Limiting my screen/watching time by taking the browser off my phone (I already got rid of addictive apps) and reducing TV/movie watching to the bare minimum.

• Walking without music/podcasts/audiobooks

• Going to nature when I feel fatigue or other physical resistance

• Setting specific, daily, SMALL, writing goals

• Affirmations (e.g. My creativity is endless. I have time to write.)

• Creating space for boredom (“It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.” ~ Virginia Woolf)

A few weeks ago around my birthday, I walked into town with a backpack of my old journals and sat in the park to read them. The combination of walking in silence and revisiting my old selves (I have many, don’t you?) was a pretty potent experience. At 52, I can see so much of my path now, can see how far I’ve come and how steadily I’ve kept to the same goals even though my experience day by day has not felt that way at all. I’ve been an indifferent journaler most of my life, but still, the words have accumulated. They’ve marked out the edges of my experience and my growth as a woman. I feel so grateful for all the imperfect attempts, all the scraps collected, all the longing and trying recorded there. I’ll keep at it. I have a feeling it’s going to unlock some good things for me this season.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with resistance, or your journaling practice, or whatever comes to mind. I always read your emails and comments and do my very best to respond to each one.

Thanks again for being here.

tonia

Some hope-givers I’ve enjoyed recently:

• Zach Bush with Rich Roll on the Future of Human and Planetary Evolution (This one inspired the story above.)

• Janine Benyus at OnBeing on Biomimicry

Reading:

• Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath // Heather Clark - reading this nearly 1000 page book with a friend and already learning so much I didn’t know about Plath.

• Sarah Waters’ novels - I’ve mentioned her before, but her books have been such a fun break from all the serious school reading I’ve been doing.

• White Cat, Black Dog: Stories // Kelly Link - weird and good. I love these modern retelling of old fairytales.

Thinking about:

• Oliver Burkeman: Just go to the Shed

• The Fabulist in the Woods

September, Third Week :: 2021

The neighbor, we think, has a new gun. A semi-automatic from the sounds of it, as he does target (?) practice (?) in the late afternoons. The stutter of explosions ricochets around our tiny valley doubling and redoubling until the dog tucks tail and runs indoors and we follow suit, ears ringing. We’ve lived rurally for over 15 years now and while I will never own a gun, I understand why other people keep a rifle in the back closet. It’s helpful for scaring off coyotes and cougars, dispatching a suffering hen, or bringing home a freezer full of venison. To each her own.

I don’t feel so gracious about the semi-automatic though, and I confess that my neighborly feelings have taken a hit lately. Every barrage bouncing its echo around our woods seems a reminder of all that is wrong with America; I have to bite my tongue to keep from shouting something rude into the void. Honestly, it’s just one of the many ways I’ve been floundering for weeks. The computer fiasco (that is still unresolved, cross your fingers for me!) combined with upended wedding plans (still waiting on a visa), the emptied house, plus the whole world being broke in all the ways…I don’t even know what to do with myself some days.

My funk these last weeks led me, as funks do, to revisit some old social media haunts. Can I just say that two years out from having my own social media accounts I am finding those places absolutely bizarre and frightening now? I scrolled through pages and pages of people turning themselves into set pieces and still lifes, dousing themselves with cynicism, or swimming in a stream of crisis/argument/drama that never stops. I saw lots of beautiful things and a lot of wonderful people, too, of course, but it leads me to wonder what we are doing to our minds and our ability to process, reason, and think independently. (If you’re so inclined, maybe step back a moment and see how much everything in those places looks and sounds exactly the same depending on which pond you’re swimming in.)

It took me a while to shake off the heaviness of that social media immersion, but I’m finding my energy again and thinking about new routines and rituals. I dragged myself back to the keyboard this week to work on a story. (“Why tell stories? We do it because we’re sick of reality and we need to create what isn’t yet there.” ~ Colum McCann) And I’ve got a spare room now, which I’m making into a quiet space for yoga and early morning meditation to start the day. I find that early morning time essential to recovering my calm and equanimity. It’s a place I can deliberately set down the things that cling to me, like my neighbor’s choices or my self-flagellation over the lost work, or the weight of the world’s calamities, and choose to reorient myself toward the peacableness and gentleness I want to inhabit.

“Because the mind is an important and sacred place, keep it clean and clear.” ~ Ryan Holiday

Next week I have plans for a little Autumn reset, an idea I gleaned from my Ayurvedic counselor. Autumn is my golden time of year, but I often find the transition from summer to fall a little harsh, so I’m going to take a couple of days to eat simply (gentle foods and warming broths) and rest my mind and body around the Equinox.

I hope that will lead naturally into my other Autumn goals:

• retreating from Internet persuasion,

• seeking less commentary and pursuing more deep reading,

• taking in less news and spending more time around a table in conversation*,

• making fewer plans and doing more consistent, patient work on whatever is in front of me.

Plus all the good baking and cooking with autumn foods, leaf walks and rainy days, and the first fires in the woodstove to look forward to.

Do share what plans you are making for Autumn and what ways you are finding peace in the midst of the world’s noise and complexity. I look forward to hearing from you.

xo

tonia

Gathered:

~ Finished the delicious translation of the Reynard the Fox tale this week. Gorgeous Old World storytelling featuring the wily, feral, charismatic Reynard evading the King and his crowd and naturally exposing the hypocrisy and machinations of power. Beautiful interiors, food, and vocabulary (plus female characters who are useful and intelligent!) Such a fun change of pace from my usual reading.

~ The Hawthorns are ripening here so it’s time to make Hawthorn Cordial again. Last year I served this at our Samhain dinner and it was delicious.

~ My daughter is writing the most charming kid’s novel about a girl who moves to France and can talk to animals. It’s absolutely fabulous. (And so is she.) You can find her website here and if you want to cheer her on, subscribe and help her grow a community online. <3

~ Mary Beard’s lecture on the classic myths and how they aid the cultural exclusion of women from power. “The ancient world is preoccupied with gender because patriarchy is never easy with itself.” I’m looking forward to getting her book, too.

*Ivan Illich: “Learned and leisurely hospitality is the only antidote to the stance of deadly cleverness that is acquired in the professional pursuit of objectively secured knowledge…I remain certain that the quest for truth cannot thrive outside the nourishment of mutual trust flowering into a commitment to friendship.”

"lead is not gold..."

“For many of us, wound means truth. In a sugared world, holding your gaze to something broken, bereft or damaged seems like the deepest, most articulate position we can take. We see this move all the way through the modern arts. It’s what gets the big grants. Myths say no. The deepest position is the taking of that underworld information and allowing it to gestate into a lived wisdom that, by its expression, contains something generative. The wound is part of a passage, not the end in itself. It can rattle, scream and shout, but there has to be a tacit blessing, or gift, at its core.

Many stories we are holding close right now have the the scream but not the gift. It is an enormous seduction on behalf of the West to suggest that jabbing your pen around in the debris of your pain is enough. It’s not. That’s uninitiated behaviour masquerading as wisdom. Lead is not gold, no matter how many times you shake it at the sun.”

~ Dr. Martin Shaw, “Small gods”

“The myth I hold is not that of the curse on the family, the guilt hovering forever as a result of a bad deed; but instead the vision of life haunted by some unerasable good deed: a life that can’t lose for long, or at least forever.  Not Oedipus doomed, but Aeneas bearing the unshruggable potential for later life  - this is the pattern I note.”

~ William Stafford, The Answers Are Inside the Mountains

glenlivet

They came while he was away in the hospital tossing in acramped room, sweating for each breath.  Pneumonia,the doctor told him and he blanched at how deep into old age he’d come.  All that was left to do was break a hip, feelhis mind smooth into dementia, then he’d be gone.  Carol brought him home on her lunch break;his arms were bruised from needles, his nose raw from tubes, his back achedfrom lying in bed.   They were alreadythere, watching some history program on his TV, looking up innocently as thedoor opened and Carol maneuvered him in.

“Hey, there he is. How you feeling Joe?”  This fromDerrick, who had Carol’s wide set eyes and curly black hair.   He’d started calling him Joe when hegraduated from high school.  Too old for“grandpa” anymore, Carol said. 

“I’m a hell of a lot older than him and I’m not too old forit,” he’d said, but Carol just smiled and patted his hand like he was a crankyinfant.

Derrick’s greasy -haired girlfriend waved from the couch buthe didn’t have the energy to look at her. Jessica, or some such thing. Carol led him to the bedroom, got him settled in his recliner, fetchedhim a glass of water and a blanket. 

“Derrick and Jess will be here.  They’ve got my old room, across thehall.   Jess used to work in a nursing home, dad, soshe knows what she’s doing.  You’ll befine.  Remember I’ll be gone for the nexttwo weeks in Arizona, okay?”  He wavedher away.  He’d seen her more this weekthan he had in the last year.  She leanedover and hugged him.

“It worked out so good, didn’t it?  You needing someone to stay here and Derrickand Jess needing somewhere to stay? Definitely a God-thing.”  Shesmiled broadly, pleased with herself. Pleased she didn’t have to take time out of her life to nurse him, heknew.  He lifted the side of his mouthand she accepted it as a smile. 

“Bye dad!  Loveyou!” 

****

It was his femur, not his hip.  He’d been looking for the bottle of Glenlivethe’d stashed in the garage. Predictable.  High shelf, unevenfloor.  He’d lain on the concrete fortwenty minutes until Derrick heard him over the TV.  Now they had him trussed up in his ownbedroom, immobile.  Jess came in everycouple hours to help him shift positions, go to the bathroom.  She was stocky and square, with glasses thatwere always sliding down her nose and blotchy skin.  She smelled of sweat, but so did he.  Far as he knew, her entire vocabularyconsisted of, “That better?” and “All done now, Joe?”  with an occasional, “Mmmmm, dinner!” When sheleft, she always shut the door, even though he asked her to leave it open.  The air was stale, and he was sick of lookingat his own four walls.   In the house heheard doors opening, things shifting, bumps against the wall.  Derrick said they were just doing housework,keeping things up for him.  Derrick hadgrown fat in the months since he’d come. 

Carol called every Saturday from Arizona.  She’d met some guy on a hike at the GrandCanyon, quit her job over the phone and moved into his house.  It would last a few months, then she’d beasking him for money again.  “Just untilI find a job, dad.”   He’d be lucky tohave any money left.  Derrick was alwaysbringing him receipts for groceries, or gas, asking for a few bucks for this orthat on top of what he was paying them to be there. 

****

When he finally made it out of the bedroom a few weekslater, he thought he’d walked into a stranger’s house.  It was dark, all the blinds down. His couchwas gone, the set of armchairs by the window where he liked to read.  They’d been replaced by a brown sectionalthat took up most of the room.  His TVwas gone too, and the narrow, painted cabinet it was stored in.  In its place was a bigger TV, something blackand flat, perched on a plastic stand, vomiting wires and gadgets into theroom.  Derrick was sitting on the couch,playing one of his video games. 

“Hey Joe!  What do youthink?  We’ve been fixing things up foryou!” 

Jess came from the kitchen carrying a Diet Coke and wearinga grin.   She went and stood by Derrick,set one of her hands on his shoulder.  Hefelt disoriented.  Was he supposed tothank them?

“Where’s my furniture?” he asked.  “Where’s the couch?”  Jess’ grin dimmed a little. 

“We stored it for you, Joe. Mom’s got that unit over off Columbia? We thought…you know…maybe this place could be a little cheerier.  Maybe it would help you get well.”  Ever since he was a kid, Derrick had thetrick of looking innocent.  Now he raisedhis eyebrows, gave a hopeful smile.

“I suppose I paid for all this nonsense?”   

“Joe, we asked you, remember?” Derrick said at last.  “After you broke your leg.  Remember?  We thought we should make it easier for you to get around in here.”  Jess nodded her head earnestly, and her glasses slipped down her nose.  They’d done this before, asking his permission for things when he was on pain medications or half asleep.

His leg was aching. He limped back into his room and slammed the door.

****

The leg was healing. He could hobble around indoors, sit on the front porch on a sunny day,which was a relief because Derrick insisted the house be shut up and quiet whilehe was recovering.  He was craving sunlight.  He still hadn’t made it down into theyard.  The uneven ground was tootreacherous yet, the doctor said.  Everyweek Derrick came out and made a show of bending over one of the front flowerbeds, pulling up a few green things, moving dirt around as if he knew what hewas doing, but things were starting to look bad.  He couldn’t imagine what the back yard lookedlike.  The rose garden should have beenpruned by now, the grapes.  Janet’stulips must have come and gone already. The doctor said he shouldn’t fret about stuff he couldn’t control, thathis blood pressure was high enough already. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.  The doctor ought to live with his family forawhile.  Shit-eating grins while theyslowly took over his house, like they were doing him a favor.  All his old things were gone, stored, they said, always managing tolook hurt that he didn’t like their changes. Jess had started a card-making business to “help bring in some money”and now the dining room looked like a paper factory had exploded in it.  She was too tired after all her card-makingto cook anymore, so it was up to Derrick now. Every night it was some frozen dinner in a plastic tray or a greasy bagfrom McDonald’s.  No wonder his pantswere getting tight.   Last week, they’dcelebrated with Chinese take-out after Jess had sold a card to herhairdresser.  A card.  He wondered if the Glenlivet was still in thegarage or if Derrick had found it yet. On her weekly calls, Carol told him he should be grateful, what if hehad been alone?  He settled back andhappily imagined that for awhile.

****

The doorbell rang.  Hewas in the kitchen, trying to find something to eat that didn’t come out of apackage, but no luck.  He could getaround a little better now.  Derrick andJess had gone to the movies. They claimed they needed a break.  Watching TV and sleeping in was hard work, heguessed.  Oh, and there was thecard-making, of course.  He laughed tohimself, hobbled his way to the front door, opened it.  A middle-aged man stood on the porch, blackhair trimmed neatly around the ears and neck, a flannel shirt. 

“Dan Park,” he said, holding out a hand.  “Sorry to bother you, but we bought the housebehind you last year?  We haven’t metyet.”

He balanced in the door, shook the offered hand. “JoeWebster.  You bought Tom’s oldhouse?  Where’d he go?”

“Alaska, I think.  Tolive with his son or something.  I thinkhe was going to fish.”

He nodded.  “That’s agood house.  I helped Tom put in a furnacea few years back.”   He shifted hisweight, steadied himself against the doorframe. “I’ve been laid up this lastyear.  Pneumonia.  Then I broke my damn leg looking for a bottleof whiskey.”

“That’s terrible.  Didyou find the whiskey?”  Dan laughed.  He decided right there he liked this newneighbor.

“Didn’t even get a swig of it.   I’mhoping it’ll still be there when I get back on my feet.”  He eased himself out the front door, offered Dana seat on a dusty porch chair.

“I came over because we were wanting to replace that oldfence between us,” Dan said.  “I wantedto make sure that was okay with you before we started.”  He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket,showed him the new design.   It was a cedar fence, six feet, with coppercaps on the posts.

“It’ll be an improvement over that chain link.  Must be twenty years since I put that in,” hesaid.

“There’s the maple that will have to be limbed up on yourside, since the new fence will be taller. I could do that for you.”  Danfolded the paper and slipped it back into his jacket pocket.

It was nice to sit out in the sunshine and talk to someonecapable for awhile.  It almost made himforget the ache in his leg. 

“Let’s go back there and take a look,” he said suddenly,feeling daring.  “I might have to use youfor support though.”

“Glad to.” Dan stood and offered his arm and they made theirslow way around the side of the house. It hadn’t rained for a couple of weeks, the ground was beginning to firmup.  

“Haven’t been out here since last year,” he said andstopped.

He saw the old television set first, flung on its side inthe grass.  Dan had started talking abouthis new lawnmower, how he could come over and mow the lawn for him, now that heknew he was laid up.  He didn’trespond.  The couch was up against thefence, sagging and torn.  Books werestrewn across the yard, spines broken, pages sodden.  The armchairs were leaning against the old TVcupboard in the center of the rose garden. Roses were snapped off, one wasuprooted.  Bags of garbage piled upagainst the house. The entire back yard was strewn with his belongings. 

“Mr. Webster? Are you okay?”

“How long has it been like this?” he asked hoarsely.  But he already knew.  Since the couch came, since the TV and itsplastic altar.  Carol probably didn’teven have a storage unit.

“No wonder you want a new fence,” he said.  Dan’s cheeks darkened a little and he coughedinto his hand. 

“Take me back inside,” he said, shaking. 

****

The police officer was kind on the phone, but there wasnothing she could do since he’d invited them in, since they’d been there solong.  She took down his complaint and hehung up.  Derrick and Jess came back,chattering about the movie they’d seen. He faked a headache and went to his room.  While the TV droned on in the living room, hemade a few more phone calls.

****

He waited.  From hisbedroom he could hear the sounds of construction going on behind him, Danbeginning the new fence.  He kept quietabout it, waited until they were distracted to peer through the blinds in thedining room, watch the slow progress. They went out more now that he was improving.  Afternoons at the movies, dinners out, theoccasional trip to the mall.  Heencouraged it, became loose with his gratitude. For Derrick’s birthday, he gave them a weekend away.

“A well-deserved break,” he said and they beamed.  They drove off on a Friday morning.  Derrick honked the horn twice as theyleft.  He waved goodbye from the livingroom window.

The locksmith arrived an hour later. That afternoon threeyoung men drove up in a beat-up van, pulling a utility trailer.  He showed them the house and the back yard,told them what to do.   He stood insideand watched them, the young men going back and forth, their quick muscles, theeasy grace of their effort.  When theywere finished he gave them each an extra 20 dollars and told them to have adrink on him.

He walked carefully to the backyard, saw the checkerboard offlattened yellow grass, the neglected roses, and he felt a little hollow, butalso relieved.  Dan’s new fence was partwayconstructed now.  He could see into hisbackyard, the neat flowerbeds, the patio furniture with its greenumbrella.  He went back inside the stillhouse and lay on his bed, satisfied.

Sunday morning he woke early.  It was a beautiful day, blue sky and picturebook clouds.  Outside he could already hearpeople coming and going, a low hum of voices. He made a cup of instant coffee and limped to the window.  

The TV was gone, as well as the brown couch.  People were milling around, looking through thebox of movies and video games.  Herecognized one of his neighbors hauling away a fake potted plant.  She caught his eye and he raised his coffeecup in greeting.  He watched a car driveup, an elderly woman examine the “FREE! Yes, all of it!” sign by the mailbox. By noon everything was gone but the bin of paper goods and a coupleboxes of clothes.  He’d kept those back,along with a box of personal items. No one had ever said he was an unreasonableman.

He called Carol, told her he’d changed the locks, listenedto her startled panic until she was done. Derrick and Jess returned just before dark, knocked on the door and rangthe bell until his head hurt.  He’d lefta note with their things on the porch. Dan thought he’d be better off not talking to them today.  Give them time to cool down, he said.   Thatwas fine with him.  When they’d finallyslunk off for the night he called Dan, invited him over. 

The emptiness of the house cheered him.  Beside his bedroom, the only furniture leftwas the dining room table, which they hadn’t bothered to replace.  When Dan arrived he offered him a seat, tookout two glasses.

“Found that bottle of Glenlivet,” he said.  He’d left the lights off and pulled the blinds open.  When Dan held up his glass to drink, the light from the streetlamp filtered softly through it, turned the liquid inside from amber to gold.  He was exhausted, and his leg was aching, but he hadn’t felt this good in a very long time.

***************

There’s a nice littlehouse down the road, yellow with white trim, a neatly fenced yard that used to containan old black lab.  Something happened onenight.  When we drove by in the morning,the contents of the house had appeared on the lawn.  Bookcases, chairs, boxes, Rubbermaidcontainers, a lamp, a dresser.  We drovepast for a week wondering what the people inside were dealing with:  a plumbing leak?  A hole in the roof?  Another week went by and it began torain.  The contents of the yard took on asodden and abandoned look.  Someone put outa couple of limp tarps, but it was all haphazard: the plastic tubs under thetarp, the rocking chair left unprotected.

That was three years ago.  One summer, someone carved a circle in the center of the detritus and set up some plastic Adirondack chairs, a little retreat, as it were, in the center of the chaos.  I’ve never seen an actual person in the chairs.  I’ve never seen an actual person outside at all.  But if you drive by in the evening, you can see inside the house.  There’s a big tv, the occasional silhouette of a head on a couch, the lights glimmering friendly, as if the rotting world on the lawn doesn’t exist at all.

That was the inspiration for this story, a possible answer to the question: why?!

lepidoptera

In her hand lay the remains of a moth.   She'd found it on the bedroom floor as she shuffled past in the baby blue slippers Devon had bought her last month.  It was in the doorway, orange and brown, one wing tilted, the other torn, its legs bent tightly into its abdomen.  Or was it thorax?  She'd look it up in the field guide: moth anatomy.

Retrieving it from the floor took some time.  She had to take off the slippers, give herself some traction.  Her bare feet, purple-veined and thick-nailed, gripped the floor as she bent over.  Time was, she could angle from the waist and reach the ground without a thought.  Now she had to hitch her nightgown above her knees and bend.  The small of her back cracked, she wavered an inch or two above her destination.  Bend the knees more.  Ridiculous.  One hand held the door frame defensively, the other scrabbled at the floor.  There.

She straightened, heard the bones in her back creak and pop, felt a wave of dizziness from the sudden departure of blood in her head.  She caught sight of herself in the long closet mirror.  White hair standing on end, her face a bluster, satin nightgown hitched above her knees - the legs, once smooth and muscled, sagged and spotted, a curdle of veins in a knot along her thigh - her breasts swinging, two long-necked squash beneath the peach fabric. 

"It will make you feel pretty," Devon had said when they went shopping for the nightgown.  Pretty.  What could the girl be thinking?  She straightened, let the nightgown descend, fumbled her feet into the slippers.  With her left hand she clawed at the recalcitrant hair; her right hand protected the moth.

She shuffled to the living room bookcase.  Field guides, middle shelf:  North American Butterflies and Moths.  She carried the guide to the couch, shook the stiff insect body from her palm onto the coffee table.  It landed softly, wings down.  "...three pairs of jointed legs on the thorax."  That was it then, thorax.  Forewings, she read.  Compound eyes, probiscus, antennae, abdomen, hindwings, legs.  Straightforward.  A no nonsense creature, this.  She pinched the tilted wing between her shaking fingers and lifted it from the table.  Death had flattened the features of the head, she couldn't tell the antennae from the probiscus, couldn't even distinguish the compound eyes.  Or perhaps it was her own eyes that had flattened, made detail impossible.  She blinked and a viscous fluid slid over her eyeball, blurring the moth even further.  She dabbled at her eyelid with her free hand.  The world had fewer edges now, but it wasn't softer.

She let the moth body fall into the palm of her hand again.  It was spotted, the wings papery and translucent on the tips as if it had been dead for a long time, enough time for the scales to unhinge and drop away.  She imagined the moth crawling beneath the bed unseen, crumpling in on itself, time eroding the once lovely body.  It had stormed last night, perhaps a gust of east wind through the window had dislodged the corpse, sent it skittering to the doorway.  She tilted the moth into her lap, opened her hands.  Time would erode her to translucence as well; it was not far now.  Her own skin would darken and shrink around the bones, tear away into dust.  She accepted this without fear.  When she was younger she had feared death for its potential pain.  She could die underwater, or trapped in a cave; there could be a mudslide, earth in her mouth and throat; a car crash, the piercing of metal.  But she no longer feared such things.  She would die, she was nearly certain, in the same bedroom as the moth.  In a year perhaps, in a month.

The phone rang.  Devon, no doubt, calling to make sure she was awake and ready for her appointment today.  She rolled her eyes.  The girl was too efficient, bustling around with her oversized behind, clicking her long, decorated nails on everything she touched. 

"You want to keep your hair up Nana, it will make you feel better,"  she'd said when she made the appointment for her, as if a girl of twenty-five could know what would make her feel better.  Well, she was young, and she cared.  Martha Drubky had rotted away in a nursing home with no one to annoy her at all.  At least she wouldn't go like that.   She scooted to the edge of the couch and hauled herself up.  The moth fluttered from her lap onto the bare floor.  The phone was on its third ring.  By the time she reached it, the machine came on.  Devon's chirpy recorded voice, telling herself to leave a message after the tone.

"I'm on my way over, Nana.  Hope you're up and around.  It's salon day!"

She sighed and shuffled back to the couch.  If she was forty again, she'd cancel the appointment, braid her hair, put on that yellow sundress she'd bought in Carmel and hike up Paulson's Butte, watch the butterflies flirt with the meadow flowers.  She'd done that once, skipped work, left a note for Don, spent the day under the sun alone.  Marvelous day.  She leaned her head back against the couch, felt the remembered sun on her skin.  She must have dozed.  When she woke, Devon was standing over her, face shining vaguely with sweat, lipsticked mouth frozen in a patient smile.  She was supposed to be dressed by now.  Devon tilted her arm to look at her watch.

"Ten minutes," she said.  "Let's get you dressed."

She nodded, offered her arm for the hauling up.  When they were upright, she remembered the moth.  It was there on the floor, wings frozen open, a wild tilt to the left, hovering almost at the shadow of the couch.  Devon's foot in its strapped sandal came down heavily, just missing it, the disturbed air pushing the moth under the edge.  It slid out of view.  She almost cheered.  She imagined it in the darkness, resting on its tissue wings.  Devon led her to the bedroom, began the indignity of suggesting the wrong clothes, watching her wobble her ruined body into pants, a knit shirt, the sensible shoes. Lepidoptera, she thought, the same Order as butterflies.  Life span: one week to eight or nine months.  She was of the nine month variety, she supposed.  Somewhere under the couch now, the little brown and orange moth lay with its eyes fixed on the horizon of the floor and the wall trim.  She imagined its wings flexing, the eyes focusing, the threadlike legs straightening and bending.  Any time now it could take off again, bank toward some softly suggested light, follow the cant of some unseen road.