{"id":69045,"date":"2013-08-03T14:00:58","date_gmt":"2013-08-03T18:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=69045"},"modified":"2013-08-02T16:59:11","modified_gmt":"2013-08-02T20:59:11","slug":"foggy-mountain-breakdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/polyamory\/foggy-mountain-breakdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Foggy Mountain Breakdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

After a couple summers spent chasing blues and roots music<\/a>, I can tell the towns where they\u2019ve still got some hope from the ones where everything is gone. In the downtowns formed by the cross of the essential streets called Main or Market or Court, there\u2019s the old courthouse or city hall, restored or shuttered; the green is adorned with banners or a fountain, or it\u2019s a bald patch and a few baking benches; there\u2019s a strip of shops with fetching vintage wear, cute home goods, some struggling galleries, the smell of craft beer and good bread and fair trade coffee from open doorways. Or there are bare old shop windows and a social service agency.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Poly Paradise at Burning Man. Photo by Eric.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But go as little as a block from the center and the gloves and hat are off. You see the bones: the bail bondsmen\u2019s shops, the jail, the liquor and lottery windows. And the bus station. <\/p>\n

I was not going to cry anymore, because a woman with scratched legs and unkempt hair standing next to a tough looking man in that part of town can manage to slink by if she\u2019s well behaved. If she\u2019s crying, the cops might take a second look, and I didn\u2019t want to have to explain anything to anybody.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo drama. There will be no drama,\u201d I had told Chris before we got his overstuffed bags out of the car. He gave me his cigarette to hold and went inside the station to get his ticket processed. I stood outside and took a hit, and another, and another, too fast, filling my already aching head with smoke and chemicals. <\/p>\n

A group of corner men had colonized a tiny, bricked-in patch of shade near where I waited, sitting and drinking discreetly by the dead bushes. They were talking about women and jobs. I tried to eavesdrop, because I could maybe learn something, but my ears were ringing too loud to hear anything much. <\/p>\n


\nA younger man rode up on a banana-seat bike and received their greetings. \u201cI\u2019m keeping it on the road,\u201d he told them, offering fist bumps all around. \u201cKeeping it on the road.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris emerged, silently fuming from the half-dozen petty grievances the ticket counter clerks had managed to impose in as many minutes. He took his cigarette and put his hands on my shoulders. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be OK,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it was not OK. I\u2019d either ruined everything, or I wanted to. <\/p>\n

We\u2019d been careening through the mountains for a week, camping at a burn in a mountain rain forest where the rain was so steady and hard I could shower in it, hiking, listening to the spirits of the land — and for me, they were not friendly spirits at all, Bullwinkle. Every time we got into the car and he drove, I would have a panic attack, convinced that he was more interested in speeding than keeping me safe, seeing nutjobs and drowsy truckers heading over the line and straight at me. <\/p>\n

What I see on the roads is reality; it\u2019s the true behavior no one who drives regularly can deal with, so they re-shape it and deny it. Other people think nothing of driving next to a truck for miles. I remember when I used to hitchhike long distances, sitting in the cab of the truck talking to the co-pilot and laughing and then seeing the car in the lane next to us getting closer and closer and calling to the driver, who had nodded off. He sheared off the side of the car before he got the truck under control, and then he pulled over and I jumped from the cab without a word and ran down the shoulder as fast as I could. <\/p>\n

Bad enough that he\u2019d been in an accident; picking up a hitcher would mean firing and maybe a lost license. No one had been hurt, I could see that, but this was just one of so many times it was proven to me how fast it could happen.<\/p>\n

I saw it about to happen over and over. I couldn\u2019t take a full breath for hours between the crying and the panic. I was trapped — between my body and mind and my own insane reactions and my conviction that there really was something to fear.<\/p>\n

After nearly a year of believing I had made it through menopause, I was having what I hoped was the last period of my life. For the whole week it played on me a repertoire of recurring blood flow, both dull and stabbing pain through my body, throbbing headaches, ugly facial blemishes, and intense waves of desire for immediate sex followed by the sense that I\u2019d belt anyone who even breathed too close to me. <\/p>\n

I was not the cool girl, I was not the fun girl, I was not the sexy girl. I felt I could talk to no one, I felt invisible, I couldn\u2019t catch my breath, I couldn\u2019t stop crying. I was probably dying, bleeding to death, and that would be a mercy. All the beauty of the natural setting was being stomped into mud and bits of sequins and feathers. I kept seeing crumpled beer cans — at a burn! Trash at a burn?!? Where the ethic is Leave No Trace?<\/p>\n

Someone I thought was a friend passed by me twice without even saying hello. I assumed it was because I was an irredeemably toxic person and probably had invisible demons flying around my shoulders. A sculpture I loved was burned as the temple on the last night — and that\u2019s the point of a burn, that art is temporary — but it hurt. <\/p>\n

I was writing poems again, but what did it matter? No one would ever want to hear them or publish them. I forced myself to go to an open poetry reading being held at one camp, and a boy there was reading Whitman aloud, and I felt ashamed of my poems. They were sharp and weedy little things, like that dried, broken off stalk of grass that cuts your legs as you walk through the meadow. The meadow looks like a soft and rolling golden carpet from a distance, but when you get close, it\u2019s all these spikes that can rip your skin open. <\/p>\n

It was like that.<\/p>\n

By the last night we were both seeing faces in the mountains and words in the woods, and I was convinced I was under psychic attack. Despite my efforts to keep us fed with things that wouldn\u2019t trigger our allergies and reactions, we still both felt ill. At one point I wailed: \u201cWhy does every vacation I take have to turn into The Sheltering Sky<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n

I still had a little bit of a sense of humor. It\u2019s always the last to go.<\/p>\n

Chris and I used to long for whole nights to sleep next to each other, and we were sleeping at different times and far apart. He simply could no longer love me, it was obvious to me, but for some reason he just wouldn\u2019t admit it. The dishonesty infuriated me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love you,\u201d Chris said, holding me, outside the bus station, as the corner guys looked on. \u201cYou\u2019re everything to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

You want to make a clean getaway, I thought. You want to keep me hanging on so you\u2019ll still have a home girl when you get back from the desert and the weather\u2019s getting cold. <\/em><\/p>\n

He had that voice I recognized, the tone that a man gets when he\u2019ll tell a woman any damn thing just to calm her ass down, like he\u2019s talking to a horse. There was no room for honesty, for my outrage, for my insulted intelligence in that afternoon heat. I ran my hands over his back, so hard and strong, and breathed in his smell and let his voice rumble and purr in my ear. Sometimes I think his voice and his smell are the only reasons I don\u2019t call it all off.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t trust you, I don\u2019t trust you. Why can\u2019t you tell me the truth? You don\u2019t love me. I can\u2019t be loved.<\/em> <\/p>\n

And with the bus leaving in two minutes, I couldn\u2019t say an honest word myself. I couldn\u2019t lock him into a six-hour ride with my last words accusatory, vicious to him or to myself. But I was angry. Damn, I was angry.<\/p>\n

Keep it on the road, I thought, and pretended myself into a smile and a goodbye. Just keep it on the road.<\/em><\/p>\n

I walked back and got into the car and turned on the air conditioner. I took off my sunglasses and checked the rear view mirror. My eyes were red and swollen from crying and the tears had made white streaks in the tinted sunscreen, which had turned orangey in the heat. I look like fucking John Boehner<\/em>, I thought, and that actually made me laugh. I dug in my backpack for my wet naps and sunscreen and cleaned my hands and re-applied. Better all orange than tiger striped.<\/p>\n

The car was packed so tight with ready-to-spill-over bags and boxes that I could hardly move. I managed to find the pretty gift bag of little presents I\u2019d gathered for my daughter, Tobi. Then I plugged in the magic phone and started searching. First a post office, so I could send Tobi\u2019s care package to her camp. Then a place for Isaac to eat — he\u2019d been on the bus since 8 a.m. and was texting me that he was starving. A chicken and waffles place looked good for him — I\u2019d walk by and check it out to be sure. With his cast-iron stomach and boot-camp fitness level, he can eat anything. <\/p>\n

A clean place to pee — that was going to get critical soon. My weariness amazes me, my weariness amazes me<\/em>… the fragment of song stuck over and over in my head. There is not much worse than having Bob Dylan singing in your head when you are feeling sick and heartbroken. I remember once reading about a good revenge spell: curse them with an earworm of Bob Dylan singing “The Farmer in the Dell.” Think about it. Wouldn\u2019t it get you ready to jump off a bridge in a matter of hours?<\/p>\n

I mailed the package and saw that the chicken and waffles restaurant would indeed be a good place for Isaac to eat. And on the map in the magic phone showed me an art museum was only a few blocks away. That would be a clean and free place to pee. <\/p>\n

Inside the museum, the entire three-story foyer was roped off and a crane and men in hard hats worked in the foyer. They were piling huge blocks painted with hearts and arrows and more, placing them like a giant playing with blocks, to make the totem the artist devised. What a lot of trouble so many people were going through to get the huge piece to look precisely right.<\/p>\n

I went to the ladies room and cleaned up, and then I went to the galleries upstairs, walking into a four-artist show called \u201cAlter Egos and the Magical Other.\u201d <\/p>\n

For the last two decades, the gallery notes on the wall read<\/em>, a number of leading-edge artists have pursued figurative work as a way to explore alter egos — ambiguous imaginary selves that express alternate personalities, drives, fears and desires. Often placed in surreal or magical narratives, these “others” are rendered in hybrid styles that in part are informed by the figural traditions of folk artists, a strategy that uses the authentic or “real” to heighten the fantastic scenarios.<\/em><\/p>\n

This must be the place, I thought. The works were creepy, disturbing, bizarre. Because that\u2019s what art does sometimes. <\/p>\n

Female Doppelgangers have populated Amy Cutler’s<\/strong> (b.1974, Poughkeepsie, NY; based in Brooklyn) gouache drawings and prints for over a decade, where brown-haired multiples toil at mundane, sometimes odd, manual activities. Cutler creates unique myths that circle around the oppression of women, and the desire to replicate one’s self in the face of an overwhelming \u201cto-do list.\u201d Influenced by fairy tales, personal memories, Medieval history, and Indian miniatures, her scenes also echo the work of outsider artist Henry Darger and the dark undertones of Brothers Grimm.<\/em><\/p>\n

That is my reality — and that\u2019s why I\u2019ll never be the cool girl for long. I sat and thought and wrote for a little while, the museum was a few minutes from closing when I got a text from Issac. His bus had arrived. We were headed to a music festival south of here to camp for a few days. We met up after he had crossed the magic invisible line that separates the part of town they want to hide from the part they show off. I saw him from a ways off; his walk is distinctive, always full of energy even when he\u2019s weighed down by a backpack. <\/p>\n

I was so happy to see him and he looked happy to see me, too. We hugged and kissed under a mural outside the museum. \u201cThis is a pretty nice town,\u201d he said, looking around. \u201cI\u2019m starving.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I might have broken up with Chris,\u201d I said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to say a lot but it was like being trapped in a car with my father.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isaac knows that Chris is much like my father — but without the bad parts. Except, it appears, the driving.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s not like your father, though,\u201d Isaac said. \u201cI know he really loves you. So don\u2019t be too hasty. You know, maybe you two just don\u2019t travel well together,\u201d Isaac said. \u201cSo don\u2019t travel. There are lots of other things you can do together.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that kind of thing is the reason I will always stick around. <\/p>\n

After dinner, Isaac took out his phone. \u201cAre you looking for a place to get good coffee?\u201d I asked. He pointed a finger at me. \u201cSee, we travel well together.\u201d<\/p>\n

We went to the music festival, where I saw two shows with an artist I thought would be too accessible, too NPR, and who surprised me with how complex he was. Chris and I are still OK. We\u2019ll be together for the first time since the bus station in just a few hours. I\u2019m ready to jump to the conclusion that he doesn\u2019t love me and things will never be the same at any given moment. I simply tell him \u201cthat makes me feel like you want to avoid me,\u201d and he reassures me kindly, and we keep going. Maybe he\u2019s lying. Maybe I am. Maybe we\u2019ll turn this into something new. I\u2019m just going to try to keep it on the road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila After a couple summers spent chasing blues and roots music, I can tell the towns where they\u2019ve still got some hope from the ones where everything is gone. In the downtowns formed by the cross of the essential streets called Main or Market or Court, there\u2019s the old courthouse or city hall, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69045"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69045\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}