I must have slept for twelve hours in the spare room of Erman and Chris's. Their tattoo'd nuptial bliss echoed through the walls as I awoke to the sound of the baby cooing downstairs while lawnmowers whirred in the distance. The bookshelves here are lined with pushy gurus like Osha and Thoreau
demanding of me that I not snarkily palter love and nature. Love and Nature. That's why they moved. Isn't that the natural stream of events that should happen in a human's life? They met, they fell in love, they broke a condom, they went to city hall, they threw a party and moved to the country. Anything else seems abnormal.
I moved 96 frames per second - conscious of everything and yet aware of nothing but the rattle in my own brain. Maybe if I moved slow enough the deus ex machina would occur and the plot of my life finally would be resolved.
My feet felt strange as they palmed the unvarnished repurposed wood that constitutes their floors. I creaked down the stairs and suddenly began to feel like one large unfertilized egg in the coop. The one thats going to be cracked up and thrown away. Every step I made felt like a noisy invasion into little baby Jonas's kingdom. And so in even slower motion I ambled to the coffee maker. I relished every tiny cottony moment. My sense of smell heightened and comforted me as if I was now appropriately armed in the wilderness that is someone else's life. My skin prickled when the air touched it. Morning TV of the housewife variety resounded through the living room; and scratched my soul. My nerves started to burn. I looked at the dog and made a run for the yard.
Oh me. I had these visions of what I would accomplish up here for the week. I would meditate and practice yoga EVERYDAY! I would lose five lbs from all the hiking and country produce. I would write 50 pages: 13.5 a day averaged out of some formula I had constructed. I would come home feeling- not only refreshed but cleansed of guilt. But sloth and pleasure took over. As soon as I arrived here we had a feast in a little red caboose. Deanna, a sultry whirling dervish of a Chef was experimenting opening up her own restaurant and so we gorged on stuffed pork rollatini in blueberry sauce and stuffed homemade manicotti. There were meatballs, bruschetta, crostini and wine- lots and lots of it. The next morning I dragged my poor post pregnancy friend on a hike- we made it one half up the hill before my conscience led us back down. There would be no detox or writing retreat. I would have to let go and just breath in the smells of the trees and sigh in the silent night. The night air that was filled with bears. At night I would move quickly and overly alert as I am scared shitless of bears and am sure my finality will be at the hand of a vicious mauling. At one point I ran into the house after hearing a twig snap and banged into a small ripped copy of Macbeth.
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
That morning we set out to the creek and found a large watering hole where one's courage could be tested upon at various levels depending on what cliff you decided to gorge jump. I kept wondering where all my moxie had gone?
At one time I had been typecast as the dangerous child. This by a doctor and a survivor. Fear of death was the inception of my mother and the shake to my father's office shingle.
Poor Hamlet - I hated him and yet I understood him. It would be so much easier to let others lead you in your journey under the false hope of love. I got his problem. Somewhere in his development he to went from a fearless child to the man standing at the edge of cliff too scared to jump in and too afraid of what the others might think if he stayed still. Death is still. I wanted to jump. My heart raced a million miles an hour. Hadn't I dived off giant cliffs in Ithaca? My body round and bloated with self loathing and yet my desire to live fully reached further. But now its different. I no longer believed the odds were in my favor.
The rednecks piled high onto the far side of the watering hole. Chris laid the baby on a blanket and asked me to watch as she jumped happily into the mountain drink. Mike, a portly painter from Michigan, at first, tried to kindly coax me off the edge. He proposed various logical exits swearing the underside of the cliff's edge couldn't physically come near my head and the water was way too deep to hurt my self. When his safety surveillance of the scene didn't work he jumped off several times to prove his case. But he was 6.2 and about 280 lbs. His plunge echoed through the canals and became endless foder for the hicks to praise and laugh at. They were sunburned. They guzzled their 20 ounce bud cans in one long swig and then took running jumps off of the bridge across the hole. As they climbed passed me they would coax me. "come on- you'll hate your self if you don't." My self loathing kicked into high speed mode. My knees shook. This cliff jump was every thing I had never done in my life; it was the script I never wrote for my graduate festival, the trip I never took to Thailand! It was every lover, friend, job and opportunity that I never rose to the occasion for or simply didn't try hard enough. ENOUGH. I'm almost 37, I thought, NOW GO AND JUMP OFF A CLIFF. Mike said he was going to try a dive. I asked him sweetly to please to another gorge jump for me. He said he would only forestal his olympic diving practice if I agreed to jump once. I shook on it. Immediately I began to back off from my promise. I said I couldn't do it. Chris and Mike shook their wet mountain dirty heads disapprovingly JUMP! Who am now, if I can't stand by my word. Every local standing around the perimeter began to chant: " DO IT, DO IT.DO IT, DO IT, DO IT, DO IT, DO IT.
I closed my eyes. I jumped. Nothing happened. I was alive. The Budweiser guys cheered. It wasn't even that far. I jumped three more times and then packed up and marched behind Chris who stealthily mined the slippery rocks, with a baby strapped to her body and mind to do so much more.
We drank around the fire that night as we talked about local native American history and how to hold a shotgun if you in harm's way. Turns out- you just shoot straight from the hip.
