Lost Highway
New cold does things to me. Portland was cold when I left and seeing the leaves churned things up in me. I wake in the middle of the night with blankets wrapped around me and cold night air blowing in from the window and I think that this is how it feels in Ohio. If I were in Ohio I would get up in the morning and find my slippers and go downstairs and make toast with peanut butter and I’d huddle next to the toaster with my blanket on my shoulders and hands over the glowing grills. I’d sit on the broken couch and look out the stained glass windows at the falling leaves and maybe the few students walking to class, crunching by. I’d look at the stains on the carpet and at the TV we never watch and the beanbag chair in the corner. The wind would make the house creak. I’d feel the cold slipping down through the thin glass of the windows. I’d bundle myself aggressively against it and glare at the gray sky.
Instead I’m here. It gets cool at night and that sets my mind off but when I wake up I eat some fruit and shower and when I go out it’s already hot. I still look at the palms with wonder. The pool is full of leaves and is green from disuse. Last night I went out with some people I can happily call my friends and we drank and ate and had a great time. We talked our pasts and I got asked about my accent. I begged one of the girls to come to poetry workshop and be scared with me. Talked whiskey and beer with the other guy there, who is a match for myself, in some ways. We both like to drink, we both have signature hats. We were both up for the first fiction workshop slot. I’m excited to be with these folks.
We all agree that Riverside is a hole. The bar closed at midnight on a Friday. Places like this truly exist. I thought that somehow only an outsider could feel that way. How do you live in a town with no soul? How do you stay and work in it? How can you thrive.
I find myself yearning for a long drive. I want to see Nebraska again. I want to go to Lincoln, to Valparaiso. I see myself living in Lincoln like I saw my character living there, above a bar, looking out of a window at the brick streets below. I want green, and corn, and I want cold that I have to fight. I want to wear my leather jacket. I want gray skies passing overhead and I want that passing beneath me, too. I want to wander. I want to load a box of books in my car and give the rest away and drive. Cut the few strings I have left. See what work there is in Vega, Texas and maybe pass through Austin, see what that place is like. Head to Murfreesboro, head to Picher, to Centralia, head to the Badlands of South Dakota.
I’m not ready to put down roots. Two years here isn’t gonna change that. It’s gonna make it worse. But I’m prepared for that, and I’m more than okay with it. I’ll take what I can from this. It’s how I’ve always lived, and it’s worked out so far.
This afternoon I found a draft I’d saved about a month ago, a drunken take on Hemingway’s inner dialogues, ala The Garden of Eden and Islands in the Stream. It’s funny, but it’s how I sound when I’m sad. I guess I go to him for strength: Do not do this now. Things have been better than you thought they would be. Much better. Do not lose it now. You didn’t before when things were harder and even then they weren’t that bad, so why lose it now? Everything has shielded you, from sleep to drink to everything. Why sit here, crumpling your handkerchief?
Funny stuff. But true. A little glimpse into my whiskey-soaked brain.
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Home has a way of sneaking in and exploiting every crack we try to disguise from the world. Even in a place you love. If it isn’t home. I’ve been searching for Macintosh apples. Can’t find them anywhere. You hear tell of them like the holy grail. A friend of a friend saw them at this one market but they are sold out now. I don’t like any other kind of apple. I can acknowledge that other apples are sweet or bitter or whatever but an apple isn’t an apple unless it’s a Macintosh. These apples are walking down Robie street with coloured leaves under my feet and apple picking with my mom crunching into them straight from the tree and the one thing I grab from the fridge on my way to class. They are overflowing in the supermarkets. They are home in every bite. What I would give for one apple.
Sad Eric isn’t to be laughed at. Whiskey-soaked and searching for something to hang onto.
All this to say I hope you find something soon. Even if it’s just an apple to eat on your way to campus. Especially if it’s a Macintosh.
Isn’t it funny the things you want to detest become the things of our fondest memories? It is chilly and gray this morning, a slight coat of dew and the street is silent. I just stood up to look at the neighbors house, I see it in the future tense not as it stands now. It feels like I live in the future with you and the present with your sister and I wish nightly I could reconcile the two….
Love,
Momma
fall has never been more welcomed by me than it has been this year. usually i hate it, as it only means the winter is coming. but it’s the great equalizer, at least in the mornings. that cold air pouring in through your window as you wake up can make you believe you’re anywhere you’d rather be.
You sound like a soul with a great deal of wanderlust. I don’t know why, but I think you should fulfill that when you finish in Riverside. And I don’t know why, but I think great things will result from it if you do.
You’d think with all my years here, I’d find a bar that stays open til at least 2. Part of me wonders if the reason I’m always in Los Angeles on the weekends is because of my attachment to my family or if it’s because–well, did you notice how at the Getaway, there are no windows? All the light is artificial and stems from neon signs telling us to drink and drink more. There’s a strange suffocation there. Maybe I run to my family to replace that soullessness you mentioned.
It’s worrisome now that I’m able to look at it.
Sidenote: I will be on campus on Wednesday to beg Buckley for a letter of rec. I might even sit in on his workshop if he’ll let me.
Lindsay: I looked for a macintosh for you at the supermarket yesterday. None to be had.
Momma: It’s very strange. But maybe not entirely unexpected, if I’d given some thought to it.
Courtney: I have an odd relationship with autumn. It just makes me feel weird, plain and simple. I feel strange clear through the season. And being thrust in and out of it was strange in its own right.
Kristan: I fully intend to. I can’t imagine settling down for very long right now. I imagine you wouldn’t call it settling down at all.
Noel: It’s a very open place, though, I think. Well-lit even if by unnatural light. It’s a very different atmosphere from other bars I’m used to. Hopefully I’ll see you in class, that’d be nice.