It is a rare night. Like a super moon night. Both kids are at sleepovers. I am alone. My house is silent. No wait, not silent. It hums. I ate my sushi. Drank two of my favorite beers--Brother Thelonious. I'm reading. And writing. And reading my own writing. I settle into a long pillowy sigh. A nice warm bubble is forming around me.
Finally after a long season of travel soccer; monumental effort to haul ass home, texting the kids reminders from the train to get their stuff together, here I come, we have 10 minutes to get 20 minutes away; then sitting in the car with the engine running, feeling like an All Time A Number One Asshole, slowly destroying the environment; or the car is not running so it is eerily still with just the white blaze of my laptop as I overwork, my body cramping and petrifying with so much sitting, all day long sitting; either way there's the inevitable run to Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts and then the shameful, fuck-it paper remnants of unclean, ungreen, unslow food on the car floor; this has been our lives Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings for three months. Not to mention the neglected dog at home alone. All day. And evenings.
So tonight is mine. The dog benefits from my buzz with lots of belly rubs and coddling. This is great! I'm doing it! I'm in the moment! I'm inspired!
I'm tired.
I was just about to convince myself that it's OK to watch a movie or even get in bed at 8:30 when I get a text from my brother. He's having a super moon night, too. He's been painting since 1:00 in the afternoon.
Last week my brother, mother, and I went on one of our regular art/dinner outings. My brother has recently anointed these nights as ADE (Art Drink Eat). We went to Intuit (The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art) in Chicago where we saw post black folk art of America. The art pieces were earthy, intimate, and evocative of closeted secrets as well as some shouting from a street corner. The art brought a second life to the craziest shit--chewing gum, corrugated tin roofs, shoe strings, burlap, pop sickle sticks, dresses, buttons, shoes, suitcase parts, hair, calendars, watches, ... but yeah, the chewing gum sculptures. Brilliant intimacy.
But even more clutching were the stories. The stories on the plaques next to the artwork were to me the real artwork. Every single artist was using art to heal, to deal, to manage a world of the most downside up, uglygorgeous, topsy turviness.
It reminded me of my dad and stepmother's bird houses. And so tonight while my brother paints and I write, I remember this story. I want to write it on a plaque and put it next to my dad and stepmother's artwork--their lives.
November 2014
My dad and stepmother live in a topsy turvy log cabin on top of a mountain in Sphinx Park CO. They used to be filmmakers in Chicago. My dad made a children's educational movie called Topsy Turvy. It was about a house that cleaned itself when the owners left for the day. And made the beds and sandwiches. And had wallpaper with designs that came to life to dance and somersault.
No dancing wallpaper in the Colorado cabin. No walls, at least not flat walls, suited to wallpaper. The walls are big fat blond logs, smooth on the inside of the cabin, rough and scratchy on the outside. Though it's not easy to see the smooth logs since every inch of logs is covered with photos of me, my brother, his wife, our 4 kids. Plus moose this and reindeer that, little wooden plaques that say things like "We don't skinny dip, we chunky dunk" and "I childproofed my house but they still get in," old dolls with calico dresses, saddles, embroidered trout pillows, salt and pepper shakers like pigs, santa, covered wagons, and lifesized cardboard Marilyn Monroe and John Wayne.
My kids and I sleep in the bunk house, which my dad built as a shed to store stuff as they moved in. Once he had finished making the one room cabin livable--with bathroom, separate bedroom, separate kitchen, he went to work making the shed into the bunk house. It has a toilet and sink, sometimes with running water though not right now. It has electricity so there's nice warm lighting from lamps, a fridge though it's not plugged in now, and a space heater...though we don't need it even in November. Instead we use this 40 pound sleeping bag comforter thing that is soft plaid flannel on the bottom and heavy canvas on the top. I love that thing. One year up here on a sunny winter day, I sawed wood all day in the sun and drank beer and just couldn't stop. It was so satisfying. But then I got sick--a cold. I took some Nyquil and got under that blanket for three days. I hibernated in that cocoon. It was like a portal to elsewhere. When I came out, I was no longer sick. I had missed three days in this world. I thought I should maybe check in to rehab because of the Nyquil.
The bunk house does not have a foundation. And is not level. It's built into the side of a mountain made of slipping gravelly pebbles. The first night you don't feel it too much. The second night, you wake up and the 40 pound blanket and all the other blankets are at the bottom of the bed. Your head is a quarter of the way down the bed, away from the pillows. The third night, you roll over and lie on your belly and feel yourself slipping toward the southwest corner of the cabin. When you stand up, you pitch forward toward the door. You have to lean west to right yourself in the little one room bunk house. I think it gets worse the longer a big woman like me is living in it. My theory is that the shale shifts and slips as we are in there moving around. I wonder if I stayed for a whole summer what angle that cabin would be at by the end. Would I need a rope to pull myself from the door to the opposite wall? Three days here now and I see the curtain on the far wall is hanging forward, as if pushing off from the splintered wooden windowsill.
We're here for Thanksgiving. This year we're not drinking. My dad has quit. After a good 40 years of drinking ranging from casual to heavy to scary, he has quit. He wouldn't go to AA--too religious he said. He wouldn't go to a counselor--didn't need to he said. He quit and that was it. No side effects, no detox pain, no shakes, shivers, or slipping. He was solid. Very unlike his bunk house. As for me, no booze all week has a surprisingly good feeling. I feel calm, physically capable, not tired or cranky, and aside from the day after Thanksgiving when I wore pants that were too tight to a restaurant lunch and antique shopping, I don't feel too fat. I ski. I hike. I feel good skiing and hiking. The most strenuous part of the trip is trying to stay on the bed as we sleep the night away in the bunk house.
In addition to feeling good physically during this booze free week, I have senses that are alive and functioning, not numbed by alcohol. I take pleasure in noticing all the details, which on previous trips were not enjoyable details but rather annoying clutter. I relish in each detail, seeing it as a piece of the artful mosiac my parents have created up on this mountain.
The little trailer birdhouse hanging from the tree, the giant rooster made of recycled metal, the stumps with the grandkids' names carved in them around the fire pit (the fire pit my stepmother started by sitting out there in her plastic lawn chair with her oxygen tank and a small spade, bending over and digging each loving spoonful of dry gravel out little by little; then she and my dad drove their rickety 1991 Jeep Cherokee down the mountain to gather ostriche egg sized stones that someone had cleared from the river bank and set alongside the road as giveaways; they lined the hole and then put mortar between the rocks to make that adorable fire pit), the old white plastic rocking horse, the beaten down saddles rotting away on the fence posts, the birdhouses teetering over the edge of their makeshift balcony--a tier of planks that hangs off their house precarious as hell, bits of flags, bones, and sticks stuck here there and everywhere.
You could sit there for hours and still not see everything. In previous, drunken visits, I would start to hate it--get sick like on a carnival ride. But now sitting here stone sober it is like a nice kaleidoscope. A splash of colorful quilt ... and the best part, you are in the midst of green green green pines all around. If your eyes need a break from the mosiac, just look up and around to see blue sky, white clouds, and green pines. At night it's pitch black with stars and streaks of white. A perfect background for all these details. So glad to see it so well for once. And not just see it but feel it.
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