Before and After

It's a Wednesday afternoon off, and dark clouds drift East across my window. The line is above me now, the line of white and gray, and I'm anticipating the thunder. What are these clouds? I've been reading The Cloudspotter's Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, but I haven't made it past Cumulus (because I'm also reading four other books). Cumulonimbus is Chapter 2, and they're the thunderstorm clouds. Did you know that "when it's mature, this cloud can be considerably taller than Mount Everest"? Not sure if that's what rolling in, but I would be happy if they were. You know how I love storms.

Otherwise, I'm at my desk with music (again! glorious!) and writing critiques. I'm proud to report that I have completely committed to working out every weekday morning and have done so consistently for nine weekdays now. My body is changing! It feels good. It would feel better if I would lay off the pastries from Starbucks. My diet is still suffering, so I need to work on my relationship with food. I'm so tempted to buy Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth because I told Erin to order two for the bookstore so that I could. (But new books are hardcovers and lots and lots of dollars, even with my discount.) I search for books to help me solve my problems. I write to help me solve my problems. Right now I'm working, mostly, on loneliness and making human connections. For this I'm reading Us by Lisa Oz. For this I'm also doing yoga. For this I'm also doing too much crying.

There has been an official shift here.

I am one of them now, or so my license plate (and driver's license) declare. I can no longer use my other-stateliness as an excuse for driving slow and switching lanes suddenly. I must admit, I haven't quite embraced this new residency, if only because I haven't had time to really consider what it means to live here and have relationships here.

With Saturday off (the first day in two weeks), I finally made it to the Spartanburg Farmers Market at the old train depot that morning. I come from a history of towns with overflowing Saturday markets: Hutchinson, Lawrence, City Market in Kansas City (unfortunately, I never made it to the Manhattan Farmers Market). Thus, I had high expectations, and, honestly, they weren't met. The people were lovely, both the shoppers and stand workers, but there were only about ten tables, some with only a dozen pieces of fruit on the table and others with bushels of peaches that intimidated me (because I would eat about two before they went bad). But instead of walking back to my car empty-handed, I spent ten minutes selecting three fresh zinnias for $1 and came home pleased with these:

The Farmers Market was my warm-up to my first hike. Corinne, Katherine, and I drove up Highways 11 and 276 to Caesars Head State Park. Starting out around 1pm, we hiked the Raven Falls Trail to the Gum Gap Trail and then down to a suspension bridge over Raven Creek Falls: beautiful, the sound of water and the dropping off. The hike was "easy to moderate" but rough at times, particularly on the way back, for its constant inclines. The trees and creek and friends and heat made for a wonderful first hike. On the suspension bridge, we were over the falls, which means we couldn't actually see the waterfall (which you'll see in the photos below), so I want to go back soon to hike down another trail to see the actual falls. I just wish there was more time because I want to see everything, and it's hard to see everything when you can get out to explore only one day every two weeks.

By the way, none of us were scared or freaked out by the bridge at all, even though it swayed. Fearless girls, we are.

Well, the clouds aren't so congestively dark as they were twenty minutes ago. It's a slow unfolding.

By the way, my first article appeared in the Spartanburg Herald-Journal on Sunday. It feels good to be in print again.

You know what else feels good? The possibility that Jedsen may come visit next week. I'm trying not to get too excited just in case it doesn't happen. But, really, the thought makes me too happy to say.

Dark to dark

What do you know? I'm writing this in my office, the least used room of the last month. All of my books are in here, and the desk, and the speakers, and the printer, and, supposedly, my laptop. But mostly I've been using the laptop in the living room--well, dining room--at the table in the bay window. But then I felt guilty for not using the office as it was designed. So here I am. It feels good tonight, tv off. Music on shuffle. Lamplight with darkening Spartanburg out the window, ambulances flashing west and north regularly, two red lights pulsing on the BB&T building, the Methodist church steeple and columns glowing white. Otherwise, it's quiet.

I've been up since 4:45. And it's Saturday. Weirdly, I was excited to get up and go to work at Starbucks at dawn (6:00 am) for the first time. I agreed to cover this eight-hour shift, even though I had been excited about my first full weekend off with two jobs. I also agreed to cover tomorrow's 5:30 am - 2:00 pm shift for the thrill and, yes, for the money. Mostly, to be honest, for the money.

I showered in the dark this morning, with only the lights from Church and Henry Streets lighting the room. It was the best shower I've had in months. I can't explain why, but I do everything possible to never turn on lights here. Who needs to when the city provides enough glow? So I got clean in the dark and only turned on the light, reluctantly, to apply makeup. I got into my car around 5:45, and the sky was just beginning to lighten, to show sparse clouds. I had been thinking, while I was in the shower, when the last time was that I witnessed the turn from darkness, and I couldn't remember. Have I ever seen the sky shift? I don't remember, and I missed the moment this morning. But I enjoyed the shades of sunrise while I swept the Starbucks parking lot of cigarette butts and dug out the grossest trash can I've ever witnessed. Please tell your friends not to use the Starbucks drive-thru trash can as their personal garbage receptacle at night. Small, sensitive girls like me will have to empty it and touch your half-eaten Boots and Sonnies' shakes. And then small, sensitive girls like me will have to haul that leaking, stinking bag to the dumpster and throw it over my head, spattering, to get it in. Small, sensitive girls like me don't like this job.

One positive thing is I'm usually (am beginning to be) a closer, which means I work until 11 or 11:30 and clean a lot inside (like dishes, floors), and tomorrow I won't be the "third person" in charge of parking lots and seven-foot umbrellas but an official "opener." I will be rising at 4:15 tomorrow. Logically, I should be in bed right now. But because I'm writing and thinking about an article I'll be writing about Elizabeth Berg this week, I'm here, writing. And clinching my jaws, which I do when I'm stressed. I'm stressed because I have lingering responsibilities from Lawrence that I have to finish. And I have books I want to be reading. And...oh, boy. I'll stop there. They're petty stresses. They're only because I have put them off and, secondly, because I nap or rest too much these days.

But I'm expecting a productivity spark to kick in soon. I went to the gym at 7am on Friday, as promised. And it was good. Real good. It's probably the best possible gym that could have been put in my backyard. I mean, Scott, the trainer, goes around the machines with you. People talk to you. People care about who you are, where you came from, and why you're there. I think this will be good not only for my body but also my heart (the metaphorical one). The one that's lonely wants a family, someone to talk to.

Now, just in case I have to work bar tomorrow, could someone please memorize all of the drink recipes for me and implant them in my mind? Thanks, because the numbers keep escaping me, and numbers are nearly everything in drink-making. Since I have little faith in that, I'm going to work on expanding my Word doc cheat sheet. 2 shots in a tall Caffe Americano, 1 shot in a tall Caffe Latte, hot water to the eyes in a chai...

Have to

I purchased a gym membership today. Purchased. Which means I actually have to use it. Since the privilege to use a gym is not buried in student fees this year (because I no longer have student fees), I can't ignore it. I am a gym member, and I must go. To Nautilus Fitness Center.

I've been talking about getting healthy for years, particularly the last three years of grad school. I've made proclamations of "tomorrow" I'll breathe better, eat better, move. It's been exhausting. And exhaustion and frustration and loneliness and gross-feelingness have led me here, to this big moment of paying to get healthy. Because I know if I don't use it I will be throwing away money and a better physical, emotional, and mental life.

Here ye, Internet. I will become the Tiny Toner that Jedsen proclaimed me to become some three years ago. Tiny Toner I be.

I go to the mountains on my days off

In the last three weeks that I've been working two jobs, I've had a total of two days off: two Sundays in a row. I would have had this coming WHOLE weekend off (glorious!), but I agreed to cover early morning, eight hour shifts for someone both Saturday and Sunday because, well, I need the money more than I need two whole days to drive around.

But those two days that I've had, I've gone to the mountains. Now that sounds glorious to me. That I can just go to the mountains, which are 30 minutes away, on my day off. Glorious, I say.

I told you (and showed you) my first trip up Highway 176. Well, last Sunday I went back to Pearson's Falls that I hadn't stayed and paid for the week before. Oh, and I drove up a mountain on the way. I'm sleepy and can't go into it all right now--and I'm hoping to actually write about it on paper first. But, here are some more pictures of day-off mountain life. This is Pearson's Falls:

Meanwhile, here's the actual "city view"' from my apartment. This is the view to the South: the main post office and the roof of the printing business next door.

Then this is facing east, toward Church St, and I've already shown you this Methodist church before. The street running along toward it is Henry. Then there's the gas station where I've never gotten gas yet.

The next is the view just north of the gas station. You can see the BB&T skyscraper (which I gaze at from bed before I fall asleep), and in front of that the Carolina Alliance Bank, and to the left of that (the long white building) is the amazing public library, and in the left bottom corner of it is Nautilus Fitness Center (of which I will be a member in a few days, or tomorrow), and then the left side of the photo gets into Downtown.

This is the view of Downtown, to my north. That parking lot that takes up the bottom is not mine; mine is in the very bottom left of the picture.

And this is what it's like to drive down my favorite stretch of W.O. Ezell Blvd (basically West Main St.) by Powell Mill Rd. The trees! The kudzu! And the trees in the median! That's the thing about Spartanburg: the medians are lovely with trees and flowers and bushes. Yes, I took this while driving.

Mountain View

This is weekend number two alone. It hit hard last weekend, and this weekend, particularly since it's July 4th, has been even harder.

Here's my new alter-identity. I can make most drinks you might order now. And if I can find the right buttons on the register, I can ring you up, too. I'm not used to this identity yet, and I don't know that I will ever be. It's quite the contrast to my Hub City Writers Project job, which I adore, and so I'm calling it a learning experience, a getting-to-know-the-people experience.

I worked at Starbucks yesterday until 2 and then had the rest of the day off, looking onto today, which has been my first day off in two weeks. I was so exhausted yesterday (and sickly, with a pounding head and upset stomach), collectively exhausted from the last two to three months of little sleep, a lot of change, and varying stresses, that I laid on the futon nearly consistently from 2:30 on. In that time, I finished Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, took a two-hour nap, watched a few tv shows, rested some more, and read the first third of Staying Put by Scott Russell Sanders. (This will be the summer of reading and writing--or, the start of a lifetime of voracious reading and writing--things I didn't have time for, truly, when I was in school.) At the end of the night, still not feeling very well, I opened the north side window of my bay window and sat at my dining table to wait for Spartanburg's fireworks show in the Northeast sky, stemming from Barnett Park just five or six blocks away. Once it got started and I had the perfect view that I predicted I would have, I went out on my fire escape and watched the fifteen minute show. So, the photo below is from my fire escape, with my bay window on the left and, of course, the show in the distance. The one pesky thing was that light on the parking lot next door that, ironically, went out about five second after the fireworks ended.

This morning, it was Breakfast at Wimbledon: one of my favorite mornings of the year. And Nadal triumphed. And I was glad. And then I got restless. After two weeks of working every day, I had a deep desire to go North, to the mountains. I studied a map online, trying to decide which road to take how far, and settled on 176W toward Tryon, NC.

Through Inman and Campobello and Landen, I made it to Tryon and kept going. Tryon is where it got gorgeous. A sweet little town and then the highway narrowed and went up, curved, flanked by giant trees and kudzu. It climbed, and I climbed, and I cheered. And I was once again affirmed how nature is my comfort, my spiritual foundation, my solace. There's something about ascending. And if I had more energy right now I would keep going with this. But let me just tell you that I kept driving, unwilling to stop or turn around, all the way to Hendersonville, where the highway widened into the town and commercial districts once again. I ate a late lunch at Subway, with a German Chocolate Cake Frozen Yogurt Waffle Cone for my holiday desert, and then I headed back the way I came, eager to stop at a few spots that I had noticed along the way. One was a walking bridge to the side of the highway bride, which, it turns out, overlooked a rocky stream:

Gorgeous. The sound of water. Peace beside a highway. But I wasn't alone (a family down the bridge), and so I didn't linger.

Just outside Tryon, I turned off on the road that lead to Pearson's Falls because I couldn't resist a waterfall--or any water at all--but when I turned onto the road to the falls I saw a gate and a sign that said $5. I panicked. And I said I would just have to turn around. And so I did, and regretted it, but told myself that I live just 30 minutes from it and could come back--tomorrow even, or later this week. I couldn't do everything in one day.

Now I'm exhausted again, probably from driving away from the mountains, which I've decided is the saddest thing in the world. That, and the Gulf Oil Spill and the slaughtered elephants I just saw on 60 Minutes. Damn disasters caused by people.

So now, pleased with my Fourth of July afternoon of driving around America's Blue Ridge Mountains and appreciating them and my freedom to decide to just up and drive to another state, I'm home and plan on working on submissions tonight. And tomorrow, I hope. And catching up on other writings that I have to do.

For now I'll watch the sunset reflect off the buildings in Downtown Spartanburg and hope for more sleep tonight.