'May we always fail with the best of intentions, with our hearts always pure and our souls only human.'
I fell in love and things got quieter. Slowly, at first, and now the short days are nearly silent. A frost muffles the traffic in the distance. The phone rings once every night. I answer to catch the three second intro of a collect call from jail: just a friend that misses me, the only one I hear from.
We slept in our cars for weeks while I signed up for school and found a job out of town on the weekends. The nights were still warm then; we slept with the car doors open and our feet sticking out into the open air. We stayed in a B&B for a short while, with a double shower and mirrors on the ceiling above the bed. We spent sweet nights silent with the water running over us, the heavy oak-paneled door shutting out the light, feeling our way towards each other in slow motion. When we couldn't afford it anymore, we moved down the street to a tent on the hot dry cliffs above the river. Everything was covered in a warm red dust. We adored it there, so we thought we'd move into the abandoned house next door. A week of hard labor went wasted when the real world came to kick us out... but we got away with our coffee mugs, two cheap kitschy plaques stolen from the kitchen walls, and a few bunches of sun-ripened grapes off the overgrown vines in our front yard.
For another two weeks we wasted our time in a cheap, dirty motel, until we dropped acid and went for a walk in an early rain. It was dreary, but not cold, as we hiked aimlessly past the jail and through a church parking lot, into a field where the hard rains that morning had slumped the tall, sun-dried grasses into the damp earth. I pulled a luminous, red, falcate leaf from the lone, near-bare tree, and stuck it in his hat like a feather. As we walked back in the dimming light, and another sudden storm took over, my Tamagotchi started wailing, and we stopped under a streetlight behind the jail in the downpour to see a lady Tamagotchi walk on screen. The screen flashed for a moment, and then asked the simple question, "Love? Yes or No?"
Back in the room, we pulled out the blank poster-board, markers, and metallic alien stickers we'd bought at the dollar store the night before, and drew out a map of our plans, everything we could think of that we'd like to do, ever. And so we decided to move together to the town where my job is, just 100 miles away.
Another month in a motel with the dogs. Then fate had us run into the family from whom we'd thought of buying a motor home a few months before. So we did, and we put everything into it. And she caught on fire two blocks away. A fire extinguisher, a new battery, and a midnight patch-job with electrical tape and scrap wire got her 30 miles into town, but getting towed for expired tags cost us what would have paid for repairs to get back to that town not so far away where I drive everyday for work, at least until the end of this week.
Meanwhile, the weather drops to freezing. Friends drop away and lose interest. I sleep nine hours every night. The excitement fades away with the sun. Our days are slow and perfunctory. Suddenly, I can sit still enough to read for a while. We cycle into the contemplative cold days, the long nights until Spring comes again.
The view from my backyard, just for a moment.
A slant of golden light through the trees- hiking Castle Craggs for my birthday.
Descending the peak as the sun is nearly set.
Buttercup, who survived the fireswamp.
Piecing together bits of wire.
Two-person headlamp party on Christmas Eve.
Lyrics above from a different song by this band:
Chickenlittle
XOXO Vidalia
I fell in love and things got quieter. Slowly, at first, and now the short days are nearly silent. A frost muffles the traffic in the distance. The phone rings once every night. I answer to catch the three second intro of a collect call from jail: just a friend that misses me, the only one I hear from.
We slept in our cars for weeks while I signed up for school and found a job out of town on the weekends. The nights were still warm then; we slept with the car doors open and our feet sticking out into the open air. We stayed in a B&B for a short while, with a double shower and mirrors on the ceiling above the bed. We spent sweet nights silent with the water running over us, the heavy oak-paneled door shutting out the light, feeling our way towards each other in slow motion. When we couldn't afford it anymore, we moved down the street to a tent on the hot dry cliffs above the river. Everything was covered in a warm red dust. We adored it there, so we thought we'd move into the abandoned house next door. A week of hard labor went wasted when the real world came to kick us out... but we got away with our coffee mugs, two cheap kitschy plaques stolen from the kitchen walls, and a few bunches of sun-ripened grapes off the overgrown vines in our front yard.
For another two weeks we wasted our time in a cheap, dirty motel, until we dropped acid and went for a walk in an early rain. It was dreary, but not cold, as we hiked aimlessly past the jail and through a church parking lot, into a field where the hard rains that morning had slumped the tall, sun-dried grasses into the damp earth. I pulled a luminous, red, falcate leaf from the lone, near-bare tree, and stuck it in his hat like a feather. As we walked back in the dimming light, and another sudden storm took over, my Tamagotchi started wailing, and we stopped under a streetlight behind the jail in the downpour to see a lady Tamagotchi walk on screen. The screen flashed for a moment, and then asked the simple question, "Love? Yes or No?"
Back in the room, we pulled out the blank poster-board, markers, and metallic alien stickers we'd bought at the dollar store the night before, and drew out a map of our plans, everything we could think of that we'd like to do, ever. And so we decided to move together to the town where my job is, just 100 miles away.
Another month in a motel with the dogs. Then fate had us run into the family from whom we'd thought of buying a motor home a few months before. So we did, and we put everything into it. And she caught on fire two blocks away. A fire extinguisher, a new battery, and a midnight patch-job with electrical tape and scrap wire got her 30 miles into town, but getting towed for expired tags cost us what would have paid for repairs to get back to that town not so far away where I drive everyday for work, at least until the end of this week.
Meanwhile, the weather drops to freezing. Friends drop away and lose interest. I sleep nine hours every night. The excitement fades away with the sun. Our days are slow and perfunctory. Suddenly, I can sit still enough to read for a while. We cycle into the contemplative cold days, the long nights until Spring comes again.
The view from my backyard, just for a moment.
A slant of golden light through the trees- hiking Castle Craggs for my birthday.
Descending the peak as the sun is nearly set.
Buttercup, who survived the fireswamp.
Piecing together bits of wire.
Two-person headlamp party on Christmas Eve.
Lyrics above from a different song by this band:
Chickenlittle
XOXO Vidalia
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
benzi:
This made me feel at peace somehow. Xo
nessy:
I've spent the past twenty minutes reading some of your old entries-- I love the way you write! I'm going to spend more time reading your older posts . They are all so beautifully written.