'til now

Better or worse? I don’t know. Is it better to put words to emotional breakdown or to feel it? Does it matter? It’s going to happen anyways. So is the sunset, the I miss you’s, the long days at work, the sweet loving moments, the thanks, the goodbyes, the moving on’s. Nothing needs words to happen. Life is the tracks that go forever. Words are the trains that ride along.

But I attach memories to words, and without them, I live as a habit rather than an action. The same moments with words become more pronounced, less mundane, and generally, more interesting. When my writer rides away, I’m left waiting for an interesting thing to write about. Wondering when the time will present itself. But more often, interest comes from the words, not the actions. When my writer comes back around, she reminds me, “A good writer can make an old chair sound interesting.” 

A good writer doesn’t wait for inspiration, but rather writes inspiration into her surroundings. It’s all here, waiting to be played with. Everything from a crying phone conversation with dad, to a drifter’s comment in the brewery last Thursday: “You don’t like to be idle, do you?” So much material I lose when my writer’s train is off in other worlds away.

I wonder what she’s doing. I wonder what brings her back.

“You don’t like to be idle, do you?” Two beers in and my tipsy bones stood still long enough to stir my writer. She bought a ticket back to my brain and I hear her chugging closer. Write, write, write. Growing louder everyday. Today, I veered into a bookstore on my way home from a job interview. The books wanted to be read, but as I left, more books wanted to be written. Write, write, write. 

I can’t even finish a cigarette without puking these days. I rode the smoke up to some sense of acceptance and let go of the stick that brought me there. Now I smoke when I’m alone for long enough and I want to jump into the past. To remember my early adulthood realizations. To feel deep enough to drown.

“Simon...” I tentatively ask the closed door. Light glowed out from its edges-- promising, but no answer. I knocked. I hear a welcoming grumble from within and make my plea, “Hey I know this may be asking too much, but do you have a cigarette?” 

The door opens to reveal my stoned roommate and he says he has tobacco but no papers. I think for a second of my lost skill. Rolling is not at all like riding a bike-- my clumsy hands lost that muscle memory years ago. But then my face lights up remembering that I can size my cigarette however I want to, like back when I was recovering from being abroad and trying to let go of my vices. “I don’t really smoke anymore, so I can’t even finish a whole cigarette now.” I dumbly state after fiending for the thing I said I didn’t crave. 

“I think I have some papers,” I say and immediately wander to the living room and ruffle through ‘the drug bag,’ now loaded up with miscellaneous crap from our recent move. I know I saw tobacco here a few days ago, thinking only for a second of the fact that I actually have tobacco and don’t need Simon for anything. But I’m on a mission to find it, and I procure the blue plastic corner I seek, flip the packet open and fumble for a paper. Nada. 

“Never mind,” I call out from the living room before wandering back to his bedroom door and saying, “It’s ok, I’ll just go out to the van.” 

“You’re going to the store right now?” He asks half incredulously, half indifferently. 

“Nah, I’ve got some cigarettes in the van, I’m just being lazy.” Bullshit. I had just walked Penny around the block and hadn’t bothered to stop at the van. Plus, I still felt like the high school girl who had to let people know when she was doing something bad. Or, rather, I genuinely couldn’t finish a cigarette on my own and hoped by asking for one, I could share it. 

“I’m not kidding though, I can’t smoke the whole thing I said. Do you want half a cigarette?” 

Through friendly squinted eyes, he replies, “If you leave half on the porch, I’ll probably smoke it on my way to work tomorrow.” Clearly I was keeping him from netflix. 

“Ok cool,” I say, and then grab my raincoat, slip on my shoes, clip on Penny’s leash, switch on the porch light, and slide the car keys into my pocket. Into the rainy night again. I wonder gently if there is a lighter in the van. I can picture one, but its the one on my windowsill. Maybe I will just grab the cigarettes and then walk back to the house before smoking. Still pondering when and how to smoke, I unlock the van and open the glovebox to reveal my old Spirits. An almost full box I’ve been carting around the country for nearly 8 months. I rummage around the center console feeling CDs, phone chargers, and finally an oblong plastic mass. Aha! A white lighter. Lucky.

Without hesitation, I pull out a little white stick, put it between my lips and light up. A question of whether it will stay lit in the rain flashes across my mind, and then I smile thinking of all the hundreds of times I have smoked in more torrential downpours than this. I take a couple deep breaths, reflecting inward. I think of the prematurely wrinkled lady smoking in her underwear on her porch. I think of the fat couple smoking in front of a South Carolina McDonald’s. I think of the drug addicts, twitchy and smoking at the bus stop. The smoke I exhale catches in the hood of my rain coat and I smell defeat. How did I ever think smoking was attractive?

But as I settle into the meditative inhale, exhale, deep breaths, the quiet, rainy Montford street fades and I’m lounging in a hot tub in Los Angeles. Pretty Young Thing. I was such a Pretty Young Thing. Hair cascading past my prized ass, lit cigarette in one hand, while the other tugs at my bikini strings, impressing no one but myself. I’m delicate and playful with the smoky exhales transforming me into a mysterious allure. In North Carolina, my arm softens at my side trying to remember the composure of a smoker-- “think of it as the thing that has been missing from your hand.” 

Penny sniffs a spot under the car and I think of walking around the block another time, before ultimately deciding to just walk slowly back down the alley to home. Under the streetlamp I flashback to a dilapidated, familiar street in Cambodia. Skinny kids push each other on bikes through the potholes and I walk slowly towards the soup cart at the end of the street. Greasy hair coiled on top of my head and a cigarette between my fingers. I inhale all the humid, putrid smells of piled trash and laundry and cigarette smoke.

I exhale in North Carolina, dog leashed to my hips, and ask myself ‘Why do I remember that street?’ Of all places, I think. But then I inhale again and see myself sitting on the porch in southern Myanmar. The burmese cigarettes are weak, but perhaps that made them better suited to my sensitive system. Jeandre takes occasional drags of my cigarette and offers her wisdom: “Someone told me that all travelers smoke. If you aren’t a smoker before, you will become a smoker when you travel. And if you are a smoker already, you will smoke more.” I nodded in agreement. 

Back home. I exhale again into the rainy streets of Montford, and Penny leads me down the alley home. I think of the water tower overlook in Newbury Park, I think of Xylon smoking in the backyard of dad’s house, I think of Eamon lighting up in the final streaks of blue daylight at mom’s month-long rental in Thousand Oaks. An entire story of my young adulthood flimsily stitched together in smoke. Was I still a smoker when I met Caleb? No, by then I was smoking mostly weed. I weened off tobacco in my summer days working at the State Parks. On lunch breaks, I’d drive up to El Matador and roll up a little tobacco-- just enough to make me feel.

Steeping in my mind --obliteration. Present tense rotting  from my nonexistence. Sitting. Steeping. Slow and  Stop. 

Sitting. Steeping. Flow and Forgot. I forget I’m here, breathing, being I am nothing in my conscience Surroundings rusting Day decaying Infinite nothingness. No feelings.

When I’m enraptured by a project, a book, you When I’m immersed in my mortality When I’m contemplating flowers.

When I’m pushing towards my dreams When I’m screaming in the dark When I’m plunging into rushing streams

When I’m laughing in the moonlight When I’m smiling at nothing When I’m loving you.

I remember it laying on the backseat of my Jeep when I drove up to my Grandma's to spend the night during the rains. Caleb was going to the coast to hunt for mushrooms and I didn't want to sleep in a tent that drooled rain water all over me while I slept and I definitely didn't want to walk around in the dark in the woods in Coloma to go to the bathroom by myself while the mountain lion I've thought up in my head prowls about. Jumping from limb to limb above me. Waiting. Silent, still night.

No, I didn't want to do that so I packed my things while Caleb packed his and I pushed the Now Write! book out of the way so I could make room for Penny the cowardly dog. And then I drove to Grass Valley and hugged Grandpa and sat placidly at the spotlit kitchen table listening to Grandma flit about while the rain dribbled on the solid roof. I crawled into a warm, dry bed in a warm, dry house and cried dry tears that never came. So much love here. Almost home. Why am I here? What am I doing?

Now Write! I should. In the morning I wake up, I drink a glass of water, I walk the dog. I open the laptop and I open a word document and I close my eyes. I lean back, I rock forward, I look up. I stare at the blink blink blinking of the unmoving cursor on the blank page. And it makes me dizzy the blinking cursor on the blank page. So I close my eyes, I close the laptop, I open my mouth and sigh. "Thank you so much for letting me stay. I've got to be going, I'm working later."

"Nadia, you know you are welcome anytime. And Penny and Caleb, too!"

"Thanks, Grandma."

"You can stay as long as you like, as long as you wouldn't like to stay longer than a year. Then we'll talk about it." Grandpa joked, the same joke I'd heard almost a year before when heartbreak and determination washed me up on their steps.

I laughed uncomfortably, "I know," I said. But I was never good at taking outreached hands. I could do this on my own. It wasn't their fault that I decided to make my life more difficult. "I love you."

Oh hello, tears. I was looking for you last night. I wiped them quickly and drove off. Penny in the car, laptop in the car, Now Write! probably still in the car. Maybe it's still in the car. But since then, that car has gone to Hell and back. Literally. Caleb and Penny drove it to LA for Thanksgiving and packed, packed, packed it with all the crap we (he) couldn't part with. And then after a few days of feasts and family and storing things at (his) home, and driving to the desert to climb rocks and mind shrooms and eat leftovers and swallow booze, well then I hitched a ride south with my dad and caught up to my jeep and my love and my furry toddler. And we flipped the whole thing northward and flew against the migrating birds.

Back home with a car full of crap and people who were reluctant to go tent (fill in word for home here). But it will probably only take us like 2 weeks (fill in unrealistic but hopeful timeline here) to get the van livable, right? If only there weren't so many goddamn screwholes in it. Screwholes.

And then I meant to clean out the car, to find my deodorant and toothbrush and earbuds and Now Write! and all my good writing pens. But where do you put stuff when everywhere you've got is wet? The tent was a puddle and the van was a slightly smaller puddle and the storage unit was too far away to be useful. So I left it all in the car, the sleeping bag and roll-up sleeping pad and library books and clothes and basket of food and dirty laundry and dog food and dog treats and cheap christmas gifts I bought from my grandparent's craft fair at their church. And all Caleb's trash and phone cords and things and record player listed on ebay and I can't find anything I actually need anymore. But I've re-realized that I don't need things.