It’s too cold for this late in March. Traces of snow from last night’s dusting line the grass where the trees cast their shadows. The gravel drive, pocked with puddles caught in early spring’s freeze-thaw see-saw indecision, muddies my shoes and slips underfoot. Even the sun and clouds play coyly as they dance with trepidation. Nothing seems to know its place or quite how to behave in these liminal spaces.
I’ve put on a playlist that tends to make me wistful and poured a glass of wine to sip while making dinner (and a little after). The chili simmers, I listen to the songs, write, and pause a lot. Next to me sits a small plate of Manchego cheese and the bistro glass half full with a nice Melbec. The dog sniffs in my direction every time I take a bite…. mooch.
Lacking substance and maybe at a loss for direction, I have details: the sky, the dog, the cheese. I’d say I’ve struggled to write, but that’s not anything new. No… today I’m caught in the myth of the writer as a tortured soul, a chronicler of absences, the wandering tongue poking the sore tooth of memory – it goes there almost reflexively.
Earlier today I was thinking of a wedding scene I witnessed down in the heat of Mississippi. My girlfriend and I were drinking beers in the afternoon sun on the crooked wooden porch of a shack we had rented. In front of us, under a rusted Texaco sign on one side and an illuminated oval sign with the word American on it on the other (the type of sign for a gas station or maybe a feed shop from the fifties) a couple stood on a flatbed trailer as an officiant performed an intimate ceremony with only us as witnesses.
I miss Memphis. I miss the sunsets over the Mississippi. I miss the music and the cotton fields and the small ramshackle towns of the surrounding hill country. Very few of the songs on the playlist remind me of my time down there. Instead, they remind me of Philly, my nights driving along I-95, a few breakups and even fewer reunions. On Friday night I was talking to a guy at the bar about my favorite beer bars back in the Philly area – Isaac Newton’s and Bishop’s Collar. Both bars pay attention to their patrons and have really good beer selections. I miss the company I kept, the places where I waited out time, the arrivals. Some of the songs reminded me of those people. One of the songs, “I’ve Been Dazed,” reminded me of the night I had to put my cat, Nick down. I miss him too.
If all of these things sound morose or depressing, they’re not – at least not entirely. I miss these people and places and pets with a writer’s heart. I miss them the way I miss adventure and travel and good company and the many strangers I’ve met along the way. So many of the things I do on a day-to-day basis seem to remind me of something else…. which, when I think about it, makes a certain type of sense. What isn’t rooted in memory seems to be rooted in metaphor or simile – everything is representation. Making breakfast is mundane, but there have been times in life when it wasn’t. Having a glass of wine is commonplace, but I can remember sitting in a woman’s kitchen watching her tilt her glass and roll it along the rim of it’s base. Every poem that’s relatable is so because it stirs up something else… because it somehow resembles a slice of my experience.
On quiet days, like today, I begin to think about this notion of experience and being in the moment and those events that become our memories. So much of life seems forgettable… and I’m beginning to suspect that when I’m not in the process of making a new highlight reel or rushing towards some exciting version of tomorrow, I tend to compare everything against the old highlights and trips, people and places. This is it’s own type of liminal space – caught in an uncertain now… not sure sure what the weather will bring, or if the muddy drive will ever dry to solid ground, or how to properly see the sky in a whole new way.