“This is a numbing gel.” The dentist swabbed my upper left gum with a clear jelly that smelled like Ron Jon surf shop – that sweet, pineapple coconut scent of Sexwax, or of tropical Life Savers.
“Close your mouth on that to hold it in place,” the dentist said, then walked out of the room. I closed my lips and my eyes and pictured Cocoa Beach. Sapphire waves curling onto tan Atlantic sands, surfers with hemp anklets, the smell of coconut oil.
After shooting me up with the real anesthesia, the dentist settled behind me with an inspection mirror in his left hand and the dreaded drill in his right. I lay back in the chair with my eyes closed, trying to hold on to Cocoa Beach. The left side of my mouth was numb, and my cheek felt fat, and I sensed pressure on my molar as the dentist pushed against it with a whirring metal bit.
I tried to ignore the whine of the drill scraping back and forth, shaving tooth with every pass. Tried to push away thoughts of hard white flake spraying out of my mouth, or collecting on my numb tongue, where I couldn’t feel it fall. I listened to the uwheee-uwhee-UHWEEEE of the drill, felt the pressure of the bit gouging deeper, braced myself for the jolt of pain that would race from the center of my tooth to the base of my spine when sharp, spinning metal hit a nerve that hadn’t been numbed.
I tried to think about sand dunes, and sea oats, but found myself thinking about what this would be like, back in the old days, without anesthesia. Lying back in a chair, with a dentist grinning over me, my eyes bulging as the drill shredded nerve endings. Uwhee-uwhee-UHWEEEEEE!!! I tore my mind away from that, only to have it land on an image of a leg being sawed off. Where all the poor amputee had for pain was a leather belt to clamp his teeth on. His eyes bulged in agony before he finally passed out.
I switched back to my numbed tooth instead of unanesthetized amputation as the drill droned on. Uwheee-uwheee-uwheee. I felt nothing. No jolt of pain. Hardly even pressure. My mind wandered to safer shores – to a blog post I’m working on, to a story I heard on NPR, to the powerful link between our senses and memories.
Now, the left side of my face feels like it’s drooping, and there may be spittle dribbling down my lip. But thank God for anesthesia. Because tomorrow I’ll be in another chair. A plastic surgeon will lean over me, a silver scalpel in his hand, and slice skin cancer from my face. And thanks to that anesthesia, my brow may droop, and I won’t feel my forehead, but at least my eyes won’t bulge in agony before I finally pass out.
Hopefully.
The last time I had skin cancer removed, I got a free facelift. Maybe this time I’ll get an eyebrow job. Or a great scar I can say I got in a knife fight.
This morning, after the kids left for school, and my husband left for work, and I cleared the knives, and the toaster, and the spice rack off the counter so that I could scrub down the kitchen, I had a sudden urge to listen to Blondie.
From out of nowhere, I've got a hankering to listen to Blondie.
I rarely listen to music while I clean. Maybe because I’m moving around the house too much and we don’t have a good setup for making music audible from every room. But today I thought I’d be a little wild, tear down the walls of my rigid routine, and blare music from my childhood while I degreased the stove. I seeded a new Pandora station with Blondie, pulled on my purple rubber gloves, and ended up on the beach at Tybee Island, on the living room floor watching MTV, in the basement for Breakfast Club marathons, at the skating rink, and in Athens, Georgia, for every college football season of my childhood.
The Tide is High by Blondie: I am seven, and the sun iss hot on the tops of my shoulders. A fine grit sticks to the back of my little girl legs as I sit at the edge of a tide pool and make drip castles from wet sand. I smell suntan oil – the coconut kind that comes out of those brown Hawaiian Tropic bottles – and salt water and warmth and beer. I listen to the pssfft of pull tabs being pulled off aluminum cans, the swishing of waves at the ocean’s edge, the muffled murmur of my parents talking and laughing with friends while they lie oiled in the sun on those tri fold lounge chairs with the plastic strips that leave stripes on the backs of your legs if you don’t put a towel down first. The grown ups open more beers – pssfft – and then push those curled, sharp metal tabs into the cans so they won’t cut anyone’s feet. Blondie comes on the 95.5 FM and is broadcast across the tan sands of Tybee from the radio sitting on the beach between my parents’ chairs.
Take on Me by A-Ha: I am in lying on my belly in our living room. The living room in the house we lived in when MTV launched. The living room with the fireplace and the carpet and the wood paneled walls where I spent pre-teen summers glued to MTV, watching this video, with the pencil sketch comic that comes to life, pulling a live action woman into it from the diner booth she sits in when she reads the comic. Twenty-five years later, it is impossible for me to hear this song without seeing the animated sketches in my mind, from that summer when I was 12, when our adolescent minds were blown open by the radical merging of music and video.
Don’t You (Forget About Me) by Simple Minds: I am 13, and I am with the girlfriends I grew up with. The girlfriends that I came of age with, who rode around Savannah together in a robin’s egg blue convertible VW beetle, who smoked cigarettes and drank coffee, who laughed and experimented and wrote and painted and danced and acted. Who penned letters to each other with every heartbreak, every melodrama, every milestone. Who are married and have children now. Who I still get together with once a year for an annual Girls’ Weekend. With whom, at the very beginning of all that growing up, I spent endless slumber parties watching The Breakfast Club, memorizing every word, giggling over how cute Judd Nelson is, singing this song at the top of our lungs.
You Dropped a Bomb on Me by The Gap Band: Strobe lights flashing. Disco ball spinning. Shooting the duck on roller skates, racing as fast as we we can around the oval, adrenaline rushing with the speed as we pick one skate up and cross it in front of the other around the turns. At the snack bar, rolling our skates back and forth while we buy Charleston Chews. Standing against the carpeted wall chewing our candy while we watch cute boys skate backwards fast, hoping one of them will ask us to couple skate the next time Careless Whisper comes on.
We Will Rock You by Queen: Athens, Georgia. September. I am five, and six, and seven, eight, and nine. We leave Grandaddy and Nannie’s house in Eatonton, Georgia, and my Dad honks the “Glory Glory” fight song horn as we drive away. Grandaddy and Nannie wave from the top of the hill. We pick up fried chicken for tailgating as we enter Athens, and once we park, and disembark from the car, we become droplets in a red and black sea of shirts and hats and pants and earrings and cars and trucks. I smell burgers, and beer, cigarette smoke, and perfume. I hear the familiar pssfftt of pull tabs, Southern drawls, laughter and “Go Dawgs!” I hear Queen blaring from a car in the parking lot. Maybe it’s ours. And again, in the stadium, we hear it. At the beginning of the game, or maybe after a touchdown, or maybe just in my memory, we stamp our feet and pump our fists and sing “We Will Rock You” at the top of our lungs.
It’s funny how music and memory can be so tightly woven. Thanks Blondie. This was the funnest (and most memorable) cleaning day I’ve had yet.
I set up a Guestbook for my blog. Stop by and say hi! I love to know where you’re from, what you like to read and write, what brought you here, whether you have a favorite Butterfly Mind entry. Thanks!
Portraiture is possibly my favorite form of photography. Faces show character in every laugh line, every weathered wrinkle, in tan lines left by always-worn sunglasses, in the trickle of sweat through trail dust. In the scraggly beards of men who have walked the woods for weeks.
On our drive through Catawba valley, my husband said, “It’s getting close to peak thru-hiker season.” We were headed to Sawtooth Ridge, a portion of the Appalachian Trail between McAfee Knob and Dragon’s Tooth, near our home in Blacksburg, Virginia.
“It is?” I asked, my wheels turning. I had just checked my email and seen that the theme of this week’s WordPress photo challenge was culture, and I thought, oooh, maybe I can cover A.T. culture. Shoot portraits of rugged hikers.
“Yeah, if they left Springer Mountain [Georgia] on March 1, they’d start getting here near the end of April and in May.”
A local friend of ours said she gives away her chocolate snacks when she encounters thru-hikers on the trail. I thought of when my husband was thru-hiking, back when we were boyfriend and girlfriend, and how he would put an entire stick of butter in his ramen noodles at night. “I wish I would have brought more food,” I said.
In the McAfee Knob parking lot, I fingered my camera as large groups of hikers clustered around car trunks and tailgates, stuffing water bottles in daypacks, eating pre-hike sandwiches from Subway, mixing formula in bottles for the baby a dad would carry on his back. I wasn’t brave enough to ask to take their pictures. On the trail, I told myself. I’ll ask hikers on the trail.
We headed south while the crowds headed north towards McAfee Knob. For twenty minutes, we saw no-one. No day hikers. No thru-hikers. The only evidence of humans we found, besides the trail, was a “Home Sweet Home” sign nailed above a squirrel hole. “Kids! Look at this!” I crouched down and snapped shots.
“Do you think a squirrel made that?” Our son asked.
“Or maybe fairies?” said our daughter.
I wondered about whoever had made this miniature sign, who had brought a screwdriver onto the trail to attach it to this little spot. A local day hiker? A Virginia Tech student? Whoever it was, they made me smile with this little surprise in the woods.
We rounded a bend and met a young man and his dog headed north on the trail. The man carried a full pack, with a pair of dusty gray Crocs tied on the side. His hands were red and raw as he gave his dog a treat for sitting obediently as our kids approached.
“Hey, how’s it going?” we said.
Hiker and his dog on the Appalachian Trail
“Good, good. I just picked this guy up in Pearisburg,” and he pointed at his dog. “I’m trying to train him.” The black and white mottled dog carried his own saddlebag pack and was calm and sweet as he sniffed my hand. His nose was speckled pink and black. The man gave him another treat.
“Well, y’all have a good day!” And he continued north as we continued south. I’m not sure if he was hiking from Georgia to Maine, or if he was just out for a weekend backpacking trip. I did not ask his story, and I did not take his picture, except from the back.
The next hikers we encountered were obviously thru-hikers. We sat on fallen trees in a clearing, munching trail mix and baby carrots, when two women powered through the glade. They carried full packs, wore quick-dry nylon hiking pants in olive green and pewter grey, and their strides were long and purposeful. I wondered where they were from, when they had started, how many miles they were doing that day. Had they mailed boxes to themselves, filled with fresh food supplies, and cash, and lightweight spring clothing? Were they in a hurry to get to a post office and bury their faces in fresh tee-shirts? Clean socks? They said a quick “Hello,” which we returned, and then they were gone. I did not photograph them, or ask them their story. “The next one,” I told myself. “I’ll talk to the next one.”
On our way back to the car, we passed a scruffy young man smoking a cigarette on a slab of rock on the side of the trail. He sat atop a bulging backpack, stuffed full like a giant army-green sausage . He was backpacking, not day hiking. Carrying cigarettes and wearing New Balance sneakers, I didn’t think he was a thru-hiker, but he could have been. I’m sure he had a story. He was lounging, I could have easily asked. But he wore headphones, and I didn’t want to intrude, so I hiked by with a nod and a smile.
By the time we arrived at our car, where five dusty, bearded twenty-something men lay draped over their backpacks, or sat on them as chairs, or propped their backs up against them in the white gravel parking lot, I knew that I would not talk to these hikers, nor photograph their faces. I am fascinated by journalists – by their grit, by their ability to shove in and get the story, by their speed in turning stories out – but I realized on the trail that that is not the stuff I’m made of.
Instead of shooting photographs of “the next one,” or of those prone hikers reclining not 20 yards from our car, I knew I’d bring their images home in my mind, and l’d write their portraits with words. I’d hole up at home, in retreat like many hikers seek, contemplating solitude, and the Appalachian Trail, and a culture that includes those who would nail a tiny sign over a tiny hole, in the wilderness, for smiles they’ll never see, but that they’ll know, quietly.
White daisy-like wildflowers on the Appalachian Trail, VA
Appalachian trail, Sawtooth Ridge near Blacksburg, VA
Pink mountain azaleas in bloom on Appalachian Trail in April, Sawtooth Ridge, VA
Tiny green succlents on Appalachian Trail in spring, Sawtooth Ridge, VA near Blacksburg
View from rock outcrop on Sawtooth Ridge hike near McAfee knob, VA on Appalachian Trail in April
Pink mountain azalea buds on Sawtooth Ridge on Appalachian Trail, VA
Tiny blue feather on Appalachian Trail in April, Sawtooth Ridge, VA
Fern unfurling in spring on Appalachian Trail, Sawtooth Ridge, VA
Lichen covered log and white wildflowers on Appalachian Trail in April, Sawtooth Ridge, VA
last night
when I tucked you in under your pink quilt
with the green frogs on it,
I crawled into bed behind you and
we spooned.
I scratched your smooth back
while I sang
Scarborough Fair – Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme –
and stroked your round cheek
with the back of my hand
after the final refrain.
Then we felt each other’s muscles
and giggled.
Paper-thin ice
juts from the curb.
Delicate,
like sheets of sugar glass,
it glistens in the sun.
Sodden white clumps drop
from trees – splash!
into slushy puddles
in the yard.
Slick branches drip. Drip. Drip.
Snowmelt trickles down roofs.
Street gutters gurgle and gush.
The neighborhood burbles merrily
like a clear mountain stream.
I wrote this on March 1, 2012 in Minnesota, and originally named it “March 1.” This year in Minnesota, “May 1” may be a more appropriate title.
Instead of staring into a cold glow of pixelated light this morning, I kept the computer shuttered away in its desk and sat by the window, where blackness transitioned to grey, and grey blushed warm and pink as dawn approached. I turned on a lamp, pulled Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones from the shelf, and folded my legs underneath me on the couch to write, pen in hand, ink on paper, in a marbled composition book.
I went to bed last night not knowing what I’d write about today, and I woke up in the same state of emptyheadedness. I didn’t know much, but I did know that staring at the same computer screen I stare at every morning at 6am wasn’t going to inspire me. I needed to change things up, to disrupt my routine. To jibe.
While I waited for my coffee, I flipped the pages of Goldberg’s book till I found an exercise that looked easy. Page 87. Lots of empty space with two lists of words. One list nouns. One list verbs. Sweet! I like lists.
The exercise, entitled “The Action of a Sentence,” instructs you to fold a piece of paper in half. I did this in my composition book. On the left side, write a list of ten nouns. I wrote:
On the right, write a list of ten verbs. Goldberg actually instructs you to “Think of an occupation; for example a carpenter, a doctor, a flight attendant,” and then write verbs that accompany that occupation. I missed that part though (remember, no coffee yet?) and just wrote some verbs:
jostle
drape
billow
slice
sizzle
nick
stitch
thrust
peel
jibe
Then? Put your nouns and verbs together in sentences, and voilà! You are writing.
A stiff wind peeled fresh dogwood petals from their branches.
With velvet ink, she stitched sentences onto paper.
The cold martini billowed warmth into her belly.
The candelabra draped the room in light, and in shadows.
Chartreuse shoots sliced the black earth, stretched toward the light, and unfurled triumphant cotyledons.
A butterfly jibed, frantic to find shelter as the storm gathered strength.
She thrust the Dutch oven into the coals, angry that he had swindled her. Furious that she had misjudged.
Sunlight sizzled on a sapphire sea.
Her goggles were jostled in the maelstrom of elbows and feet, already leaking two minutes into the open water swim.
Staring out the window, he nicked his knee, tap, tap, tapping it with a sharp, dried fingernail clipping.
This 72 inch geographic relocation, from sitting at the computer to sitting by the window, and the changes that resulted from it – natural light and an incandescent lamp; a paperback (not electronic) writing book, opened to page 87, tented on the couch; my hand moving across paper; lists of nouns and verbs, and the physical action of stitching them together to sew sentences – has electrified me. Has shuffled my synapses.
I feel a high level of productivity coming on.
Goldberg sees writing as a practice that helps writers comprehend the value of their lives. The advice in her book, provided in short, easy-to-read chapters with titles that reflect the author’s witty approach (“Writing Is Not a McDonald’s Hamburger,” “Man Eats Car,” “Be an Animal”), will inspire anyone who writes—or who longs to. (from Natalie Goldberg’s website)
Butterfly Mind 