A Momentary Pause

Living in a single location, living in a house, town, city, county, is like having a love affair. Some are good, others are bad, but like all affairs the fantastic and terrible memories last a lifetime. 

It's easy to characterize a period in our lives by the places we live, the people we love. We grow up there, we love, we hate, there's tears and laughter. Sentimentality is always a companion once we leave a certain place or person. Or we can become the "other" when we find those places that we can only inhabit for momentary weekends, sliding through the streets like secretive mistresses.

But it's the long term love affairs that mold us.

Sometimes we find a love/hate relationship. There's positive and negative things about all the places we inhabit. But the difference comes with absence. 

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

That is the test of love. I once met a lighting designer. Recently divorced, and happy about it, he looked like a lone outlaw. He was good at what he did and loved his job. He had been married five times. In casual conversation a question was asked, "How do you know if love is true? That love will last?" To which was replied, "When you miss all the little things that annoyed you."

Those nagging things, the stuff that makes you roll your eyes, that is the true test. If you leave and miss the little things that used to drive you crazy then you know that you honestly love that place and or person.

Personally, I can't speak to the person side, but as for places, like Calaveras County, like Los Angeles, they have the potential for a life long love affair, a potential for a million new beginnings, and a million new annoyances. C'est la vie.

Scene Four: Piss, or Get Out of the Kitchen

Our kitchen has a life of its own. For many years I have believed that all the bad energy has collected within its space. Things have a way of combusting on their own when placed on the kitchen counter. Metal forks have been left in the sink and upon reexamination they are found with their tines bent. All of this happens when no one is in the house, or when having just turned your back for a moment.

Besides the paranormal, the kitchen it quaint, unless, you find yourself backed into a corner. My family has a habit of congregating there.

  Yesterday, I found myself in this situation. Late in the evening, after I had come in from my jog, and after an unfortunate incident (involving me, breaking a large glass terrarium and scattering glass all over the foyer) I noticed that my mother had cut up a large watermelon for dessert.

I stood in the kitchen, ignoring the charismatic Holy Roller that screamed on the television in the other room, “YOU NEED TO ASK JEEEEEESUS, YOU NEED TO ASK HIM FOR FORGIVENESS, TO BE SAVED.”

  I picked up a piece of watermelon and began to eat it. I ate a good quarter of the melon, it was not a large melon to begin with, and then my father came into the kitchen.

  “Eat more watermelon.” He said.

“I just ate a quarter.”

“Eat more!”

  This conversation persisted for three minutes. I then gave up, preceded to eat more watermelon. Meanwhile, I had put two of the small frozen burritos in the microwave when I began my watermelon fiasco. The heating cycle was half way done when my father opened it up and preceded to manhandle my burritos.

I was almost done with my melon, and I watched as he flipped the burritos and rub them down with his hands. (I’m assuming that he was testing if they were warm)

  “Could you stop manhandling my burritos?”

He closed the microwave and started it again.

“I wasn’t!” His voice sounded shrill.

“You were, I clearly saw you rub them.”

  Then out of nowhere my mother piped in.

  “Larry, stop touching Jessica’s burritos.”

“I wasn’t”

There was a pause, and then the horror show began. My mother piped in again.

  “Jessie, you know where his hands have been, he’s always scratching his you know what.”

Dad laughed, “Actually my hands were in my butt!”

  At this point, I was pseudo-retching like a cat in the corner.

  “I think the watermelon is coming back up.”

  He assured me that he had not had his hands anywhere, but that can't erase a million childhood memories of watching the man scratch his balls more than a monkey in a zoo.

  The microwave buzzed and flashed the words FOOD READY.

  I then proceeded to watch my father open the microwave and steal my burritos.

  “Thanks!” he laughed as he wanders out of the kitchen and back to his bedroom with glee.

  This is why all business in our kitchen should be done at lightning speed, you never know when you will be harassed into eating half a watermelon or your burritos vandalized.

Scene Three: Change

In my mind the first week was always going to be the hardest to get through. It’s like waiting for test results, you sweat it out, and go through all the stages, fear, depression, anger, and ultimately acceptance. I don’t think I’ve gone all the way through that last one (yet). In many moments I have to regulate my thoughts, otherwise I end up feeling worse about leaving Los Angeles. It just rings true that you don’t know how good something is until it’s gone.

  So, what does a twenty-something do to drive away the blues? Beer. It’s true. The weekend was consumed with a building dread, a kind of worry that comes when you think that you’ll never leave the house.

That can always be remedied by a night out at the only place in Arnold where you feel like you can drink and not get hepatitis from the bar stool: Snowshoe Brewery.

 

            It was a relaxed atmosphere, and not really busy for a Friday night. My brother and I sat, ate dinner and drank two pitchers the their Apricot Wheat beer.  I remember the town as being small, but now it even looks smaller. The most excitement could be garnered from seeing how far you could get without hitting the gas pedal on your car, as you ride down Highway 4. I stared out the window, the Meadowmont Golf Course has installed a new 18 hole putting course.

 

            The small town life has never been the kind that brings excitement. It’s a good place to relax, enjoy nature. Saturday was filled with more wholesome fun. I drove the twenty minutes down the hill to Murphy’s the only thing that really has changed, is that the hotel purchased a new neon sign. It succinctly says the MURPHY’S HOTEL, COCKTAILS. Its topped off with a little martini glass with a green olive in the bottom.

 

            By the time I got home it was time to leave again. We drove out to the otherside of the county to meet up with some of my brother’s friends. It’s a funny thing coming from a small town, even more so from a county with nothing but small towns, you find yourself using the word county a lot, such as in: we had to go to the next county over.

 

            So we traveled to the other side of the county. We sat and drank beer until 3am. It’s not really any different than the weekends I spent in Los Angeles. The conversation deals with marriage and children, two things that I have nothing to say about. The beers are good and the company is great. There’s not much else that you could ask for.

 

            The big day came on Sunday. The day out to Wal-Mart. It’s a big day for all those that know what that means. When I was growing up and once Wal-Mart opened in the next county over it became a staple. A trip that had to be planned more effectively than a summer vacation, because after all, you only have a limited amount of time to get everything done. This usually involves at least four hours in Wal-Mart and another two in a grocery store.

We spent six hours there. Some things never change, no matter how many years you spend away from home.

Scene Two: Oddity in Nature

I have a great deal of memories involving nature, many take place right in my backyard. My parents house borders a National Forest land. This is not a park, very few people wander in unless they know how to get out. Parts of the land are used as private tree farms though the evidence of any human interaction in the forest is slim. It is often only comprised of years old forest service access roads and the occasional deer path. 

Today I wandered into the forest. It had been years since I visited my favorite path that I was so familiar with when I was young. When I was ten years old I took a bright pink plastic Barbie camera out on a hike with my sister. It would take me years to develop the photos, and in high school having to get rid of the camera the roll was finally rendered. The pictures that I kept were those that seemed the most familiar. Three prints of a quiet green landscape only marred by the evidence of fire on the soft bark.

In college I would do a writing exercise that would try to describe the pictures to the best of my ability and then turn that description into a short story. Here is how I described the only pictures I kept of my backyard forest two years ago:

"Here, in the cascading morning light resides a modern Avalon, it is an island of soft greenery.  The burnt incense of the forest stands, a flock of ebony cedar trees guard the virgin forest.  Their masses raped by fire and branches weeping, wind passes through their barren sticks, click-clack, the sound of bones being broken.  The forest waits to be entered, but the fire branded matrons makes eerie company."

Today, I spent two hours wandering out into the virgin forest. The sound to pine cones falling and the occasional lizard in the brush gave little comfort to the thought in the back of my head, that nagging sensation that never leaves me, "Something is watching me."

When I was young my mother used to try and stop me from hiking, trying to be protective, in a way her annoyance  at our hobby of hiking had to do with abandonment. We would rather be in the forest than in the house where the atmosphere is filled with negativity.

"You have to watch out for bears." She would yell as we ran out the door. "There are people and things in this world that can kill and hurt you, some poor girl just got raped and murdered last week."

To which I would reply before closing the door: "Yes mother, I'll sure be sure to watch out for those rapist bears."

A person can't live in fear. I know the pressure of fear, my childhood home was filled with an abundance of fears, and warnings all the terrible things in the wide open world.

I sat out in a clearing, listening to my tape recorder. My voice stale and distant, repeating words of a short story I had written. I let the device rewind and I began to log my thoughts as I only could in the quiet space of the woods:

"It's not uncommon to travel out into the forest and find awkward things within the ground, pieces of metal and machinery abandoned in the dirt. Sometimes its not man made but beauty in  the natural formations that make the landscape seem foreign." 

But as I sit there is one landmark that seems the most odd and unnatural, my own body. I sat on a fallen log, cut down and left behind in the midst of a large dirt circle. The land uprooted years before had not been touched and new leafy growth covered the tractor marks.

 Yet there are no trees in a large radius around me. 

And I realize that maybe I never was a piece of this setting, not meant to thrive in this kind of landscape. I can feel the eyes of a hundred different kinds of animals watching me, waiting for me to vacate the landscape. 

Still I am not the only oddity in nature, I have gone hiking everyday since my arrival and found others. Evidence of a human hand in a natural landscape. A sled and water pump. 

Even so I find that natural oddities abound, like a pine needle warped by the weather.

There are so many different oddities, awkward moments, and that is what makes each moment spent in nature special. 

And I realize that the land doesn't need me, it doesn't have any concern of me, but I am constantly inspired by its fierce beauty. And because of that I need it. Its image lives in me. 

Its menagerie of natural artifacts fills the imagination with endless possibility.

Scene One: I return from whence I came...

On June 1st I picked up the pieces of my life and moved them back to the town I was born and raised in. I have for long periods of time in my life held an apprehension to become closely reacquainted with anything that has to do with Calaveras County, besides a few friends I still talk to from high school I have bleed all the ideals and mentality from my system over the last four years in college.

It was a quick 6 hour drive up into the foothills, until the bends and dips forced me to a long slow crawl along the barely paved roads. Past the barrier of oak trees the road snakes out of the hills like a long black tongue.

Driving in the high sierra is like climbing by hand, I hold onto the steering wheel tightly, wringing it, using it like its the last safe and sturdy place to put my hands.

The roads narrows, each corner is hidden by trees as I ascend into Murphys California.
I cruise down Main Street, and round past The Gold Nugget, a honky-tonk hole in the wall bar. A crowd on the porch chain smokes as I pass. It's 3:30 in the afternoon.

It's not so bad to imagine a life without being born, its not hard to replace all those familiar places with pictures in magazines. This thought seems a little too unforgiving, so I push it out of my head.

Each mile passes with growing apprehension. The store fronts in our little town of Arnold seem dark, the economy has taken the warmth out of the windows in recent months. I wonder what would happen if all of it was erased, how would I explain to people where I came from if I could'nt find it on a map.

Yet, I always seem to be able to find my way home.

The house is quaint on the outside, but inside, that interior is like being consumed back into an airless womb.

I love my parents, adore my brother, but the past seems to be thickly coating the walls.

I have to ask myself, what does it really mean to come home, what is a home?

I watch my brother and father chain smoke, my father asks:
"How much money do you have left?"
"Enough." I say.
"Good I'm broke."

My mother watches television with great conviction.

My brother asks me:
Do you want to poke out my eyes?

Our sense of humor is unconventional.

It feels the same as it did when I left for college, some things minorly different but still the same.

Nonetheless life is moving. I know I will find things, keep things, rearrange my perspectives of my family. No transition can go without emotion.