Long Night of Solace

I think I'm going to put the blog formally on hiatus. I've reached a comfortable nadir in my life, edging between depression and spurts of creativity. These things always sound better in my head and I often write in secret. Very early before everyone wakes up, usually, albeit now I just want to sleep.

I'll read poetry and no longer feel I want to write something so cutting. Instead I feel tiny and envious and angry. Over something that someone, on a good day, maybe got paid 200 dollars for and sits published in a dusty book in the back o beyond of your local library. 

I won't delete it. And, I think I'll pop back when I feel I have something to say to put to digital paper. 

Don't worry about me. I know I live a life of extraordinary privilege. Even when I'm bluesy and do not look forward to going to the office (which is every day, am I right), I am fortunate to have what I have. It's late stage capitalism. I think we all have the right to be bluesy, just different degrees of it.

If you read this and enjoyed it, then thank you! 

If you read this and didn't, then thank you for reading. Maybe you stumbled on it and felt what is this boring little spiraling thing.

See everyone later!

Snow Day # 8

Sandy went first, everyone begrudgingly saying they would give this a try. She knew the opening verses of The Illiad and The Odyssey by heart, something she said made her a natural to go first.

She sat cross legged on a pile of yoga mats she had unrolled onto the open floor of the tower office. "Please don't tell Meg I moved her mats without asking. I'll wipe them down and everything once we are done." Everyone knew what this meant. The gym teacher had an uncanny ability to know the inventory of every ball and roller scooter and jump rope in the school. Growing up she had worked at her parents video store in a small VT town and knew everyone's phone numbers by heart.

Sandy got some polite smiles and acknowledgements. John Johnson, on a brief break from keeping the boiler running, feigned zipping his lips and tossing the key.

Sandy looked at the group and the Yellow lights of the ceiling flickered against her glasses. "OK, so here is what I got...

I grew up in a town called Nelsonville, OH which was in between Logan and Athens, where Ohio University is. It's the part of the state where you are far away from any of the major cities and it's not defined by any river or lake or farm field but by hills. There is not much to do in Nelsonville from October to May. During the summer, it's great. Hocking Hills and hiking and outdoorsy stuff. There are rental cabins everywhere and even my parents dabbled in it until my younger brother was born and it was a lot to keep two households and two kids and full time jobs. My dad worked grounds at Hocking College and my mom worked at Peoples Community Credit union. Nothing high powered but it was a lot especially in high season.

These cabins are very popular on AirBNB and VRBO. All those vacation apps. So, it's easy to find them but you also can spot them since the cars change every couple of days. Some different car in the driveway every weekend. Things like that.

So, when we were bored in high school, which was often, we cruised the cabins and tried to see if we could sneak back to use their hot tubs. Not all of them had them but most did. They were usually well hidden from the road but you got the lay of the land pretty quick.


We would idle on the road and have someone sneak back. We would call sometimes and ask "Oh are you booked?" Or message on the apps using phony accounts. We did our due diligence to see if we were ok beacuse we did not want someone shooting us or anything like that.

Just the aching Nissan Sentra of my neighbor, Christy, and four of us jammed into it. We were all in swim suits and one guy, Jason, insisted on always being shirtless. We are driving down Sr691 to take a turn onto Blue Ash road or Opossum Hollow looking like it's Santa Monica. And it's March because it's spring break. My senior year.”


“When did you graduate high school again?” Alexis asked.

“2015. I did take a year between it and college to work for and save money to pay for tuition. Anyway, we find a place. The Arrowhead. It's this log cabin in all blonde wood and big floor to ceiling glass windows. It faces an actual triangle shaped and inside it has at least three mounted deer heads”

Sandy leaned forward clutching a bunched up hoodie in her hands and then sliding it through her fingers.

“The Arrowhead was the place to hot tub jump. It was off the main road down a dipping driveway that cuts through a mess of tangled trees. It's like driving into a mess of wires. We didn't even drive. We parked on the road and then ran down the driveway. If not we would be trapped.”

Zoey crossed her arms. The tower windows let all the cold in. They were single pane and striping long dry rotted away. She imagined Sandy freezing running down this driveway in beach get ups. whether it was the actual temp or something psychosomatic, she felt it at the center of her chest and creeping across her skin.

“This day, it's perfect. It's cold but not like today. No snow and plenty of sun. Arrowhead a dead give away. If it was Tuesday and there were no garbage cans on the main road then it was a good chance it was empty. Jason goes and check and he does this in just board shorts and sneakers. We wait in the car blasting heat and smoking cigarettes out the wide open windows. It feels like hours but we see his long arms wave us from bottom of the dip. The coast is clear." Sandy stops and flits her eyes almost as if she were digging for the memory.

Zoey still kept her arms against herself. Why was she so cold? "Wait, wouldn't the hot tub be freezing? Do people leave them running? My aunt had one growing up and it took forever to warm up." 

"Oh, they were often. Some folks left the idling and that was nice. It was more about saying you did it. Again, we were very bored and cell service, still today, is awful in that part of Athens County. We just wanted to say we did it and maybe snap some pics to share. Like, we got into the Arrowhead!"

Zoey nodded and also brought her legs against herself.

"Ok, so to the good part! Jason did jack the hot tub up. This one was in economy mode." She looked at Zoey and smiled "Lucky us." She then threw her eyes to the whole group. "So we jumped in. I dropped my head under the water, on a dare since it was still lukewarm, and when I came up, I could see someone in the cabin."

Alexis interrupted "Oh please don't tell me they shot at you."

"Yeah, serpentine bob and weave, Sandy" Carlos said trying to get a laugh

"No. My entire body froze. Imagine dropping a log into a pond and how it bobs up and down until it just floats? That was me. Except this person was more a figure. All black except for this tan and brown floral dress. It, she, did not seem to have hair or eyes. It just stood there."

No one said anything, the silence suggesting to keep going

"I grab Christy and say 'Someone is in the house!' Everyone loses their mind panicking until there is no one in the plate glass window on the upper deck. Instead, the figure, the woman, is now maybe 10 feet away from us, behind the sliding glass doors to the deck. She bangs on the glass and everyone is locked onto her. At this distance we can see her face. Its ancient and injured and her lips curled back to reveal a mouth full of nothing but canine teeth. She rocks back and forth, palming the glass with increasing aggression. When she hits the glass, scabs of skin fall off her arms. She starts to gnash her teeth and her mouth is black framed by the gleaming teeth. That all seems unhurt and powerful on her, against the broken burnt skin of her body.

Sandy pauses again and drinks from a tumbler holding a mango hard seltzer. Before all this Carlos had come back from the bodega in a walk that took an hour to go a few blocks. 

"We all pour over each other trying to get out of the tub. There is no decorum and consideration. We don't care about the cover. Don't care that we left towels there. It is just grab your phone and scream down the driveway. Like, I'm in a two piece and have one flip flop on. When we dive into Christy's car, I have mud all over my legs and gravel that flew up from the driveway and into my hair.

"Did she chase you?" John had been silent through all of this.

"No. Or, I didn't notice. Christy blasted down the road with the side doors still open and we never went back to the Arrowhead."

***Writer's Note: It likely does not seem like it, but, for this bit of  fiction, I did sketch out a rough set of ideas. This last bit is where it ends. The combination of being forty, everyday responsibilities (the adulting as the kids say), and easy distractions of short form content and video games also work against me in trying to do anymore. In addition these are the "shitty first draft" versions of everything and ones written in isolation. Don't count it out, but likely will be much more infrequent and likely less serialized. ***

Grief

Asked to describe grief, Ill use an analogy
A tennis ball in a Mason jar
Don't ask me how it got there.

Its tight against the sides and a statement yellow

The ball does not get smaller,  but, over time

The space around the jar gets bigger.

There is more time and air and distance between the now

And the past, the tennis ball. The grief

If given more time and attention

Ill still use an analogy. 

Palimpsests on the page that once were in high relief

And slowly sink back to the college ruled loose leaf

Its also the creases of the folds that are sharper and bite

This makes everything salient and spiraling

Tactile and physical, my grief is a note written years ago

In neat block letters with crystal bank ledger pens

It doesn't matter what it says. Instead, how it feels

Types on the phone and in one's feelings. a dangerous combination

While I often send someone an errant text or meme saying "This made me think of you!" it's something I've rarely experienced. 

When I'm deep in self pity it must be because why would anyone care to send something. Right? 

When I'm a bit grounded it's beacuse they are busy or, let's be sincerely practical and honest, have actual engaged conversations with others. We just went to high school together or worked together five years ago. Didn't go to war together or something like that.

It could also just be life and people ilare too paralyzed by being there for everyone but themselves. Why bother engaging? Sometimes at work I'll responded with a quip or meme in Teams chat and get no responses. No heart of LOL emojis. Why bother engaging? They know I saw it and likewise they also took a glance.

Writing fiction is exhausting. Even crummy ones like what has been on the blog. I can't help but feel like a memory thief putting situations on the page that I want to make my own but are just clippings of lived experiences. Other people's experiences. My greatest fear is not that someone will read it and say this sucks. Instead that they will read it and say "Oh this is like when we went on thay trip to Alaska" or "Is this character supposed to be so and so?"

In college I would do short story readings in public. Horrible open mic nights on random Wednesdays or sad brown Friday nights. I could read to groups of strangers but never a friend, significant other or family.  They would know and surgically extract. "You are less like an onion and more of an orange," said a coworker to me once as we discussed annual reviews. "It's a hard exterior but just being real sweet and honest inside. It's a good thing, really. I think you care more than what you want people to think." 

I'm writing this as an excuse to not finish my story. I want to sound wise but feels like there is not much more to say. I've peaked. I want to say it was 2009 and 2013 and 2018 that were the highlights. A roller coaster now building energy to help someone else go.

Snow Day #7

 Zoey saw the chat come to life on her phone. "World's Worst Sleepover". Her stomach sank to a the same weird spot reserved for expected bad news. Not a spot of pessimism but the same feeling she had her junior year of undergrad when she spent a summer taking her aging childhood dog, Brownie, to the vet. It was a series of dwindling returns that just announced his eventual passing, which happened after she had returned to school. That semester she took a Latin American Literature class and they read Chronicle of a Death Foretold, a story she can't remember but whose title stuck with her. Chronicle of a day wasted evening made furiously awkward. 

She hoped the snow would miraculously stop. Or, at least, relent. Enough for her to creep home after hanging in her room. She had changed, which maybe was her way of silently acknowledging the reality, but, in the moment, it felt natural. Like taking off your coat when sitting down at a desk. 

Outside it was the Arctic. Her classroom could see the tops of two red maple trees planted her first year on even dreary Cleveland days. Today, it was just blanks. Not sterile or calm. It was the snow that felt menacing. The snow that absorbs all the light around it until its more a slate gray. Snow that pours when you are already boarded for your flight. Snow that falls like powder but acts like concrete.

"You should stay. This storm will kill you!" Her mother texted her that when Zoey first mentioned "Waiting it out for a bit" at the school. Her mother then followed with snowflake, snowman and stop sign emoji. 

If she had to stay then Zoey wanted to hunker in her room. Treat it like the active shooter situations that the guys in black polos, tucked into their jeans, trained her every return to school year. She would lock the door and then pile chairs and furniture by the door. She would drag the vintage two drawer file cabinet to the door ("Sorry, not sorry about the marks on the floor, John Johnson!) and let its steel core heart keep everyone out. She would be ready to fight except without the ersatz weaponry the trainers asked her to master ("Hit them with a Chromebook. The old ones are heavier!" was a dark joke at March Meadow. A sort of cultural meme that no one could remember the origins of) but excuses.

Sandy would come knocking at her door asking to gather in the Tower and tell stories and Zoey would be ready with excuses. 

She had decided against being tired or not feeling well. If that were true then why would she want to be in her room. There were actual cots and couches in the building. if you turned a school upside down and shook it, you would get a lot from the miniature world within it but one thing for sure would be a pharmacies worth of varying medications. Beyond anything that needs to be injected, you could find it in a school. Plus, saying not feeling well reminder her of putting off advances of a horny boyfriend. It felt too much like "I'm not in the mood"

She could pretend to be busy. Zoey was a Pinterest teacher in her first years at March Meadow, when she had homerooms. Every year had a different theme. Under the sea. The universe. Local history. That was the biggest lift but luckily Lebron James was part of local history so that was a layup. However, in latter years, and when she moved to reading intervention, she became a "piles" teacher. Not messy but a "working" space with miscellaneous mugs filled with mismatched markers, pens, and pencils. She had hundreds of books spread across varying shelves, most inherited, but some newer, (Ikea pieces bought with her own money), holding them in a controlled chaos. She knew where everything was but maybe she could say she was organizing. Never waste a crisis. She would be too busy if deciding to organize alphabetically by author or title. Maybe by series. Whichever would take the longest.

What she couldn't do is ghost them. Just pretend like she is not home the same you do when a Jehovah's Witness knocks on the door. People would think she is dead on the floor of her room or dead within a half mile of the school, having tried to get home. Or, people would think she is mad at them, which would then make them mad at her and spiral the collective anxiety into its own superstorm. She imagined if it was Carlos at the door. He had a doomed crush on her that made her feel guilty she didn't reciprocate but then made her angry that she thought that way. He would be (he is actually) OK, but would not want to just ignore him. She would be more comfortable if it was Sandy herself. Or John. Alexis could get her to do it pulling the "rank" card even in this liminal time and space. 

The chat buzzed. She ignored it but saw another text from her mom "Please stay at the school! They told me not to come to the clinic for my shift. That has never happened in 15 years. Stay!"

Snow Day #6

 Carlos wished he had his own room. He never said this out loud because it sounded painfully adolescent. His official title was simply Teacher (Assistant) with the parentheses affirming his nomadic lifestyle. If there wasn't a class to cover he bumped around trying to keep busy offering to make copies or watch classes while people ran to the bathroom. It felt like a counselor at a Boys and Girls Club save he had to remember and pivot between varying topics. Pre-algebra and then pivoting to remembering when he read Island of Blue Dolphins in sixth grade. Something he could not believe until asked to explain what an abalone was. 

He had covered a class that day but it felt weird to linger in other's space. He grabbed his stuff and then went nomadic. Doing so had the same awkwardness of being the first to wake up during a sleepover. 

He had run into Sandy who pitched the ghost story idea seemingly joking but then outside it looked ominous with snow coming over the yew hedges and creeping on the bottom window sills. He saw this from every angle as he finally settled on a space to check on the status of the roads. March Meadow did not have a traditional teacher's lounge but instead a large empty classroom on the top floor. It was the only thing on the fourth floor save a dilapidated roof access. Everyone called it "The Tower" and it felt tacked on. It certainly felt cloistered but also the energy of a sad rental's attic storage. There was the large laminator, Ellison set, paper cutters, coffee machines and water coolers but also defunct window box ACs and boxes of donated books no one wanted. 

Carlos opened his laptop and cruised through the news and social media. Snowpocalypse was trending in addition to "itssnowing" and "snowday" and "whydoIlivehere" It seemed to envelope all of the Great Lakes and shocking not just for size but also it speed and suddenness. Regular apocalypse was also trending.

Carlos heard the Slack knock and opened a message from Zoey "Are we really stuck here. Its me, you, Alexis, Sandy, and Johnson? I think it would be better to walk home except I would die. lol"

"Are we even allowed to stay?" The school had an odd lease from the West Side Neighborhood Community Development Corporation, the entity that bought the building in a brief period of the 90s when the city district closed it. They then leased it to the charter network bringing in a technical March Meadow 2.0. The deal had it so the building had to empty by 7pm save for a limit of 3 cleaners who could be there anytime. Evening events like a board meeting where their own logistical animals

"Alexis told me the CDC said its ok for now. For safety. We may freeze. Don't know if Johnson will stay to keep the boiler going."

"Free overtime. He can stream Road House and Point Break. haha"

Carlos heard steps from the stairwell to the Tower. It was Alexis who waved and then took a few seconds to catch her breath. "I absolutely hate those stairs. This is why I have all the staff meetings in Molly's room on first floor." She collected herself. "Ok, so JJ is going to stay overnight and keep boiler running. If people want to stay overnight they can. I know that is about as exciting and getting kicked in the balls but want people to be safe."

"It is really that bad?"

Alexis shrugged. "It looks like the North Pole out there. I know they shut down a part of 71 so I am going to get home three days from now I leave now. My mom is with the kids at home. Avon Lake didn't go in today" She rolled her eyes "We are a crack team over here at reading the weather."

The Tower had a large arched window that looked out north. On a clear day you could see the Cleveland city skyline. Now it was all cloudy gray like TV static made physical. Alexis started typing on her phone. "I am going to make a chat just for us poor souls stuck here. Rose told me the bodega is still open so maybe we can make something of it. Should still be good to walk. I think"

Carlos closed his laptop and immediately thought of logistics. Would it even make sense to sleep. And where? Did he have anything in his car he could change into? He felt very exposed in khakis and the scuffed brown shoes he called his "dress pair."

"You should name the chat World's Worst Sleepover."

Alexis laughed and nodded her head. "Oh you got it. I know Sandy is going to propose this whole ghost story thing. God bless her"

A Long Yet Not Fully Comprehensive List of Places I've Slept

The universe left me free of the burdens any fine motor skills or any applicable skill to leave me with the gift, actually the superpower, of being able to sleep anywhere. Maybe not comfortable sleep but let me lay down and I got it from there. I can even sleep sitting up in cars and buses and planes.*

I could prove it to you if not for the separation of the screens and time. If you are reading this and I am not dead** then I could do it. Concrete floors? The after party of your friend's 30th birthday? In the bathroom of a Long John Slivers? No problem! SLEEP!

That all said, I do try to sleep on things meant for it. Not looking to challenge myself. Just content in my ability. 

Most notable was my childhood water bed. I had it from say the 5th grade all through senior year of high school. It was a hand me down*** from our next door neighbors. It came in pieces slipped over the concrete fence that separate our homes and then through the metal bars over my windows. Imagine smuggling furniture through the DMZ piece by piece. The mattress (I think the appropriate term is bladder) came empty and then took hours to fill from the garden hose slung around the hose from the outside slop sink. I don't recall ever filling it back up from the initial go but we had to at some point. I do recall every few months draining a bottle of neon green water conditioner that we got from the slim "water bed section" (Really a shelf) of the local Kmart. From there we got a bed sheet and duvet cover spread that had neon tropical fish in a water color motif. I kept that for years until my mother deemed it good enough for the dog and changed it to a simpler red sheet set to contrast with the aquamarine accent wall she painted. 

I loved that bed. It surprised people like some untamed stallion. My room was relatively small and had no place to sit save for the bed and people who didn't know would tumble into the center. My dogs growing up adapted but always looked like moon landers settling in. My mother made sure to keep their nails filed for fear they would pop the bladder albeit the bed was rarely ever naked. Even when stripped it had a pill covered white girdle looking thing that snapped into each corner.

Even through sheets it cooled in heat and warmed at night even when I ran my window AC. As I got older I found it rebellious to not sleep with the AC at night, even in the tropical heat, and I would stare at the ceiling fan and blinking idle settings of my CD-Stereo**** and drift on the water bed and imagine I am in some noir scenario. 

In college I brought home a girlfriend to show her around the island and meet the family. I was thrilled to be able to sleep with her on the water bed. 

"We are going to fuck on the water bed like something out of 70s crime thriller. My neo noir moment!"

However, my mother had gotten rid of it in the brief time between high graduation and this visit and my girlfriend, ever polite, was in no mood for anything in my childhood bedroom.*****

In college, I slept on the school issued extra long dorm mattress. That was fine except I fell for the rumor I heard that it was "impossible" to find sheets that fit it unless you ordered them through the college book store. So, I did, paying probably double what you did at any other store for hunter green sheets the bled color even when dry. They painted the beige painted brick a mossy green glow. 

The first ever mattress I had I did not buy. I stole it. In college, I worked for the Physical Plant and had access to the coveted MR37 key which could open ANY door on campus. ANY DOOR. People were lucky that I had honor and also crippling anxiety because this was any lab, classroom, or dorm room. I used it to break into the storage room basement of Clark Hall, where the college kept all things decrepit. If you ever had the gym teacher ask you to go get something from their supply closet in elementary school, that is what the room looked like. It was a space where moving anything had to come with "Oh fuck! WATCH OUT" as 40 year old campus phone books and stacked chairs tumbled over you. It also had dozens of full size mattresses from before the reign of the extra long dorm room mattresses. I took one with a friend of mine helping loading it into the U-Haul outside and to my first apartment. The thing had to be thirty years old and most of its weight had to be in dead skin cells and sweat. No bed bugs. They would have surely starved in the basement for that long.

I once slept outside. In Dewitt Park, Ithaca, NY. We saw the film Invisible Children which was tearing through well meaning liberal college towns and the film makers encouraged to spread awareness by sleeping outside. About 100 of us did albeit no one in my group actually slept, except for me, tucked next to the granite of the city's WW2 memorial.

The first ever mattress I owned I bought with my wife from the Macy's in University Heights, OH. This was next to a Target spread across two floors and which had a shopping cart trolley. I forced us to go after we paid for the mattress confused why it would take a week for it to ship to our place. They had a bunch right there on the department store floor!

Now, I sleep on a couch isolated by age and snoring. Fox Mulder, from The X-Files, slept on his couch to the point it became a joke on the show that he did not have a bed. I sleep like a goblin. My head is on the armrest and instead I clutch pillows against my chest. I will slip my feet into the well worn spaces between the cushions and try to curl as deep as the cushions will allow. I am often surrounded by cats that will nest between my legs and leave stinging bruises when the bolt from any noise or movement. 

I have a dream where the couch drifts into the maw of space and it is just me and anything still on it. It is like that book Life of Pi except it is a couch and the tiger is an overweight all black void cat. Ill have to live on the petrified snacks found in the cushions and idle away the time  stretching in and out hair bands. There is a highlighter and a click pen buried in the couch and I will work trying to make them dance across my knuckles while I float in the couch bubble. For sure, I could sleep the time away. 

*This was a skill that someone at a bar once told me indicated that I must have been in the service. I can imagine it being quite practical in the military where "hurry up and wait" rules the day. But, no, I developed it in the civilian world. 

**Death being the ultimate sleep I would think

***Used water bed sounds quite "un-right" However, rather have that then a second hand mattress, which, no surprise is something I have slept on. I mention it in the main body of this essay. Do you read these as they come up? Or all at once at the end? Mary Roach does that with her books and I tend to read at the end. It hurts my eyes to bounce around so much. 

****The big silver Aiwa one with the detachable side speakers that I swear was standard issue in the 90s even for families all the way down in Puerto Rico

*****This was also the catalyst of a very quick to start yet slow to end breakup. My girlfriend, earily prescient, told me bawling as we walked over the pedestrian bridge over Rio Piedras to go drink at a bar (Drinking age is 18 in PR) that she could never imagine ever seeing my family again, much less being part of it. I do not blame her.