8:57 a.m. - 2005-08-05
More Mountain Rant
So I sat on the mountaintop, trying my best to fiddle. Watching the light subtly moving over Lily Rock failed to inspire. The stillness only encouraged the chorus of internal taunts as I paced the redwood deck, pursued by private furies. I now had the time to create, the permission to create, even the lofty view of creation designed to jog primevil memories out of rarified air. Still, the blank page mocked my barrenness, there in the designated writing room with eyelet curtains. Just outside the window, the wide world turned. Lilacs in snow. Racoons in the treehouse. Bats frenetically spinning in the dusk. My hallow core grew all the more. Ron was content. Hiking Devil's Slide in rumbled cargo shorts. Clear-eyed and grinning. Puff. Puff. Clutching his canvas canteen while, back in his idyllic retreat, I rifled through his personal notes for reasons to leave. He was sleeping unawares with the enemy, there under shooting stars and June bugs. The hillside vantage only served to underscore my empty heart. I was entirely too alone with the no one at all that was me. I awoke with an aching loneliness. I went to sleep avoiding Ron's arms. During the long days, I fumed and writhed on the porch while Ron reverently caressed his baby grand. A daily ritual was the trip to the post office, where insulated residents congregated to pick up any messages from the outside world. In straw hats and braids, they nodded at one another. "We are so lucky to be living here! Smell that fresh air! Check out that blue sky!" And I would churn inside. Smiling politely, tentatively. I never stopped being an outsider, no doubt by my own design. I made it a point to wear my leather motorcycle jacket, the trendy one I had bought back on Melrose. My stance remained that of a flatlander. I missed the sea. My mermaids languished on the dry surfaces of Ron's southwestern palace. I felt unspeakably estranged. From Ron. From myself. From God, although it was said that Lily Rock pierced the tip of heaven itself. I tried to balance on the steep point of this woodsy artist colony. Always the stranger in town. Suspicious of the flowing chintz skirts, the scent of zucchini bread and oil on canvas. I stormed the gates of my own psyche. Demanding answers. Attempting to shake loose the stubborn arrogance of my pain. Haughtily, I insinuated myself into Ron's gentle circle of friends, challenging their every perception, their very claim on art. Squatting on the floor, I managed to look down upon their tranquil souls. Wanting desperately to belong while rejecting every hand, I was the rebel in search of a cause. Perpretrating emotional violence within and without. Out of control and trying to control. Adamant that others guide their crayons safely within the lines so that my whole life would not have been a cowardly lie. I was the dwarfed orange coy released into the open channel, continuing to swim the circumference of her tiny bowl. The habit of smallness. Loyalty to some childhood pact. Unspoken. Untried. The awareness that shoved me imperceptibly from the comfort of discomfort. The blessed pea under the mattress. Irksome and divine.
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