Three Cities, Three Lessons

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Tucson, Arizona

My hosts, Suzi & Harry, have been married for 30 years, not all them easy. They fought, seethed, loved, and came back together many times over. They have three unusually bright children. The youngest of them is an artist, and so tuned into the feelings that surround him that he’s empathic. Although we connect only briefly, I find myself worrying about him. The state of over-awareness is a cursed blessing, where nothing is forgotten, nothing rolls off the back, and no emotional expression is taken for granted. There’s no segregation of the mind—no ordered categories or neatly labeled analyses—instead, there is a melting pot in which the most dominant feeling flavors the rest.

I gave a workshop on blogging at Bookman’s while I was in Tucson. It was odd for me, because I tend to think of myself as an introvert on an extroverted journey. I was nervous about talking to a room full of people, but it went pretty well, which makes me wonder if my view is true at all. Maybe my decades-long aversion to being “out there” was not solely due to nature, but to circumstances and the press of time.  Perhaps when you spend 8-10 hours a day doing something that’s not in your nature – surrounded by people who have different priorities – then whatever time is left becomes extraordinarily precious, even sacred, and there’s a fear that inviting other people into that space will somehow ruin your sense of peace.

It’s a fine philosophy, but I never did feel peaceful in Minnesota. Between the infamously cold weather and “Minnesota Nice” culture – a polite reserve that looks askance on anything that is too effusive or different – I felt oppressed and shrunken. Even when I was at my quiet best, people were constantly asking me if I was from New York or the South. My passion – for ideas, stories, and people – seemed to be too loud for those raised to be polite and circumspect. My experience might have been different had I lived in a more diverse area, like Uptown or South Minneapolis, but instead, I landed in quaint suburbs. I’m determined to never trade my spirit for quiet surroundings again.

For this leg of the journey, GM has lent me a bright yellow Camaro. It’s a car that’s meant to be conspicuous. I pull into parking lots and people start talking to me. I tell them about the car and my journey. A couple of people ask how they can get a job like mine. When I tell them they’d have to quit theirs, leave everything behind, and rely on donations, they stare back at me like I’m a little crazy. It makes me laugh, because it’s the one thing I don’t feel. I have never felt as balanced or as calm as I do now. There’s something soothing about traveling place to place, and meeting with people who have hung welcome signs, that makes me feel at home.

That doesn’t mean there are no problems, only that the problems don’t loom large. It’s been an adjustment trying to write in spaces that aren’t mine. Outside of giving up my much-loved pets, which left me bawling for three days straight, parting with the rituals I’ve had for over twenty years has been the most difficult transition. I’m used to writing in a quiet place with no distractions — where I can get up, pour coffee, walk around, blast music, and take a shower between paragraphs. Now I’m learning to write from any place I can – outdoors, in coffee shops, in kitchens that aren’t my own – with people around, children underfoot, and televisions blaring. My writing has suffered somewhat in the transition, my focus hasn’t as stable as I’d like it to be, but I can feel it starting to come back. I’d like to hang a sign on my blog that says “please be patient – writer is shifting.”

San Diego

In San Diego, two women walked on treadmills behind the glass window of a gym. Outside, two homeless men lingered, dressed in too many layers of ragged clothes for the 85-degree weather. One of them had a shopping cart covered with a dirty tarp, battened down by bungee cords and rope. Sirens blared in the close distance.

I made my way to a corner coffee shop, thinking about my first car – a 1968 Rambler I bought in a parking lot from a guy named Jose. It had a broken back window, holes in the floor, and wooden floor pedals. At 3:00 in the morning, when I handed over my $250 it looked beige – I woke up to discover that it was actually Mary Kay pink. At 16, I fought with that car nearly every day. When I wasn’t pushing it down hills to jump start it, it was breaking down on highways and in intersections. It guzzled oil and gasoline, it smoked and steamed, and it was hideously ugly.

Stories like the one about my first car often take on a sentimental tone for reasons I’ve never really understood. Every time that car needed a tow or a repair, I went weeks without eating. There’s nothing romantic about being poor. Despite all the songs, poems, stories and clichés that surround the state of poverty, being poor is no more “character building” – and probably much less so – than the state of being warm, fed, and nurtured.

Those who don’t understand this should consider letting their next infected tooth go untreated. When their pain is nearly unbearable and their face is grossly swollen, they will begin to understand the consequences of poverty. I’d be surprised if they still found it romantic or character-building.

Redondo Beach

I’m staying with a couple that is in the process of separating. They have four year-old twins. They’re trying to do all the right things, but feelings keep getting in the way, and there are a lot of feelings after 14 years of living together, even when the last several years were spent as virtual roommates instead of as lovers. In the meantime, one of the partners has fallen in love with someone else, and the resulting passion has left her, at turns, feeling high, confused, invigorated, joyful, and frustrated. The other partner is left to deal with long-avoided truths and a broken heart.

I’m sitting on the front porch as they negotiate downstairs. The children are sleeping. I stare out at a playhouse and a jungle gym and hope that their negotiations result in a peaceful resolution. I realize, too, that my love of peace is one of the reasons I am single. It’s not necessarily a good quality, so in the past year, I’ve been halting my feelings at some imagined gate and examining them before I let them proceed – like  a border patrol agent trying to prevent an influx of contraband.

I used to think that feelings were the highest form of truth, and maybe they are on some primitive level, but they’ve often gotten in the way of my own well-being. I’ve fallen in love with people who weren’t in love with me, and I’ve abruptly ended otherwise good relationships when I felt hurt in some way. Instead of building tolerance for arguments and differences over the years, I developed the bad habit of running away. I’ve become afraid of conflict – afraid that any wrench thrown into my carefully constructed peace – will be catastrophic. Which is kind of funny because, really, that kind of peace is neither real or lasting.