First, a quick repeat of the intro to the previous posts in this series, ICYMI:
I’ve been off Substack for just over a year now, because I’ve had bigger fish to fry. By fish, I mean essays, and it’s not so much frying as lots of stirring and mixing and baking and defrosting and baking again and baking again and slicing and dicing and simmering. One of those essays is becoming a fully fledged book, and I just arrived a few days ago at a one-week writing residency, where I’m immersing myself in working on it. I’m keeping a daily journal as a kind of warm-up practice, and I figured, why not share it?
Here are the diaries from days 0-1, day 2, day 3, day 4, and day 5. Here comes day 6 — the last!
DAY 6.
I get a good, deep, juicy sleep, until — some dog starts barking at 4am, a constant “ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff” that goes on long enough to defy reason. “Ruff, ruff, ruff.” I think this dude’s just barking for kicks. “Ruff, ruff. Ruff.” It’s definitely not the farm dog who protects the sheep, nor is it the neighbor’s playful adventurer who trails me up and down the road every day, in pursuit of scratches. This dog’s voice is different. And it is going to drive me bananas. Does anybody else hear this? Hello? Can somebody do something? Anyone? Alright then. Glad the dog’s having fun. I fold a pillow around my head, trying to cover my ears.
I’m so grumpy when I topple out of bed around 8:30. My hormones aren’t helping — day by day, I’m headed farther and farther into the territory of sour moods and sticky blood sugars. I step out onto the back deck and try to let the sounds of soft green leaves and warbling bugs iron the frown out of my face. They do help. They’re as sweet as they always are — predictably gentle.
I pull a word card. “Play.” I chuckle at it. Today was supposed to be a big, final work day, a get-things-done-before-I-go day, a day of proud accomplishments. Then I hear a rustling, a scattering of dry brush in the woods, and just barely spot a creature leaping off. Deer! It’s the bushy white tail, the tiny white antlers that give the baby buck away against what’s otherwise a mass of muddy brown camouflage. Off it bounces.
Okay, maybe I do need a little reprieve. Maybe I’ve been pushing a tad too hard. Maybe it’s okay to let myself get out of here, and leave my writing behind for just a few hours. Off I go, then!
I decide to join the fellow resident and writer-in-residence on a visit to town for the farmers market. The writer-in-residence has a car, and she’s offered to drive us. I realize, I can even make this a practical, kill-two-birds-with-one-stone sort of thing, so I don’t wind up worrying it’s a bad choice. I book myself a rental car that I can pick up around 3pm (after the farmers market and a few hours I’ll spend writing at a coffee shop, which should be a nice change of pace). That way, I can drive myself back to town tomorrow after my 12pm checkout, and store my suitcase in the trunk while I explore around a bit, then drop the car off before my 6pm flight home. The Ubers should be easy enough.
We get in the car at 11 and we’re starting to drive off, and I immediately realize — thank god — that I’ve forgotten my wallet. “Ahhh, sorry!” I say. “I haven’t needed it all week. I forget how to be in the world!” The writer-in-residence’s car can’t do the steep hill up and the gravel path down to my cabin, so it waits at the corner, engine idling, while I sprint — at least, I sprint half the way — to get my wallet from where it’s tucked in my suitcase, and jog back down. I am now wiping sweat from my forehead and fanning my armpits as I settle into the backseat. But we’re on our way.
It’s nice, our easeful chit-chat after a week of so much silence. But no one seems to want performative small talk, so it’s just fragments of conversation, and then we switch to music and staring out the window. You can tell we’re all writers. This is the best.
It stops being relaxing when we get to town, and there is absolutely, positively, zero parking. We circle around and around, trying a garage with a sign that says it’s full because we figure we’ll get lucky. It’s game day, the writer-in-residence explains, which is evidently a thing — like, a very, very big thing. Nearly everyone strolling around, and there are so many people, is absolutely bathed in orange. Orange t-shirts, orange pants, orange hats. A bunch of folks are wearing these orange and white checkered overalls that I joke would be totally normal street attire in Brooklyn. I’d wear them, honestly.
We get trapped in the parking lot for…so many minutes, behind so many cars also desperate for spots. We make it to the rooftop level and wait, and wait, and wait for this one guy to finish loading up his truck and leave, but he’s not leaving, so then we wait, and wait, and wait behind this couple that has just gotten into their sedan, but it seems they’re just sitting there? Somebody else is just sitting in his driver’s seat in his precious parking spot, looking at his phone, as the line of hopeful cars gets longer and longer. After at least half an hour, we have to give up and wind our way out of there.
We left the house just after 11am, and it’s now 12:15. The writer-in-residence generously offers to drop us off by the farmers market entrance, so we can “at least see it before it ends.” She swears she’ll be fine, that she knows a few more areas to check — she’s determined now. The two of us thank her, thank her so much, and crawl out of the car, telling her to keep us updated, and then we split from each other. I wander into the market, dazed.
You should know that I’m a farmers market connoisseur. Most of my happiest places are farmers markets. This one is nice. I’m not shocked and wowed, but it’s very nice. The fruits and vegetables are lovely, though I try not to look too close, because it pains me not to be able to purchase and cook any. There are several stands of pretty handmolded pottery. There’s this guy selling signs made of polished wood with inlaid metal, mostly images of trees and mountains and stuff. But there’s one he has propped up at the front, with a little childlike elephant on it, and my very own name below: Leah.
I get the feeling I’ve gotten so many times on this week-long trip: that I am being pursued by something more magical and magnificent than me. And that all I must do is keep going.
After wandering up and down the aisles for a bit, I plop myself on a bench to eat something, finally. You know I’ve brought a tupperware with me — cold beans and cold tofu scramble with salsa. Gotta finish the leftovers from the fridge. Cannot. Waste. Salsa. Next to me, a young, straight-presenting couple are bouncing twin babies on their hips. He’s got one, she’s got the other. Everyone’s in orange. They seem to have befriended this trio of women who are cooing and awwing and oohing at the babies. “I’m sure we’ll have a gun in his hand nice and early,” says the dad, bobbing his tiny son’s tiny fingers in the air. “Gotta start teaching him the ways.” Everybody laughs. I try to keep my focus on my fork.
After, I wander through a small bookstore that I find fine but unimpressive — I’m as particular about bookstores as I am about farmers markets — and then through what’s described as a “general store” and sells, well, everything: candy, dog toys, piggy banks, hiking boots, jarred jams, oven mitts, stuffed animals, wine glasses, pocket knives, pajamas, Christmas ornaments, games, puzzles, soap, pillows, books, hot sauce, magnets, mugs, kitchen towels, wind chimes — I’m sorry, should I stop? I play a game of counting how many bear-themed items I can find in here, but then there are so many, I give up.
Back on the street, I bump into the other two writers, who have bumped into each other and are now heading home. I wave. I’m heading to a coffeeshop, where I order myself an iced Americano and seat myself outside. It’s 1:30, which means I’m a bit behind my imagined schedule, and it’s past time to write. Instead, I get entirely wrapped up in trying to decide if I need to reschedule my flight for tomorrow. There’s a hurricane headed towards New York, and the airline keeps sending emails inviting me to “select an alternative flight at no charge.” Should I stay an extra night in an Airbnb and fly back Monday? Is this the wisest choice, or am I being overly cautious? Here is where I start to realize how powerful PMS can really be. My brain’s a tangle. I debate the decision for 23 minutes on the phone with my partner and end the call by saying, “Why are you so mad at me?” (Five minutes later, I text her and apologize for being a doofus.) I finally decide I’ll just change the flight and gift myself another night and day of writing, but then it’s too late, and all the seats are gone on the alternative options, and so…I guess I’ll just hope for the best. What a rollercoaster.
Am I having fun? No, not really. Am I playing, though? What I fear I’m doing is allowing myself to waste more and more time, not writing. I’m trying to consider it play, though. Or, maybe it’s that life is playing with me. I’m not in charge today, really. But I never am. The reason we write is to try to reclaim our own stories and to decide how they move and where they land, but that’s precisely because we know we generally don’t have control of what happens at all. We control only how we tell it.
It’s 2:30, so it’s about time to go get my rental car. First, I stroll through a natural wine shop and pick myself a special bottle of Lambrusco as a treat. I imagine sipping a glass of sparkling red wine on my little porch at sunset, and I already feel better. Never underestimate the power of buying yourself a little treat, as the meme says, right? (Welcome back to capitalism, I say to myself, after mostly evading it for days.)
I start to call an Uber — amazing, just $6, I’ll take it — but then I realize I need to pee, so I walk back to the porta-pottie that was by the farmers market. It is, by this point, absolutely disgusting, but this is to be expected. Okay, now let me call an Uber. The price has leapt from $6 to $26. I check the clock. It’s 3:10pm. The big game just started, and enough people are probably running late and desperate enough to get there that they’ll pay whatever it takes. Shit. Shit. Shit.
I don’t have a choice. I bite my tongue and confirm I want my 26-dollar, 12-minute ride to my rental car. It’s not from a standard rental company, because not a single one of those was going to be open for drop-off tomorrow, which is Sunday, which is church day. It’s from Turo, which is like Airbnb but for cars. Basically, I am renting this car from just some dude. I get the key from the mailbox on his porch, as he instructed me to, and then walk circles around and around the Volvo to snap all the pre-trip photographs the app requests. Then I’m in. And all I want to do is find somewhere to run nearby that is different, like one of the many lovely-sounding parks in the area, and then get the hell home and write.
I start crawling the car up the street, carefully, and immediately notice a warning light come on the dashboard. The tire pressure is low. I text the “some guy” with a photo. “Oh no!” he says. “Strange. Must be the weather.” What weather? “If you need to fill it up with air, I’m happy to reimburse you.”
I mean, do I need to? I do need to not die on the highway, or split the car in two. It’s free to get your tires filled, and I know this already. There’s no way he can reimburse me for my energy and my time, which are the true costs.
At this point in a day absolutely littered with slow-downs and snafus, I really just have to laugh.
I’m nice back. I take the Volvo to a repair shop, where the mechanics say a couple tires were especially low, but they’re all filled with fresh air and I should be good to go now. I drive to a park, where my body is so, so, so tired that I truly only feel like running a couple of slow miles, which is a shame, because the park is lovely. My borrowed tires may be puffed back up, but I’m deflated. I just can’t be energized to care about absolutely anything anymore today except putting my words on paper.
I make it home and beeline towards my cabin, on a mission. I pull cards again, for recovery. This time, I get “healing” from the purple velvet bag of words. Then, I pull from my herbalism-inspired deck and get California Poppy. The first line in the guidebook says, “California Poppy is here to play.” What? Here at 5:21pm, as a flimsy, flat-tired version of myself, after a day I worry I have entirely blown off, I draw the exact same theme as I did at 8:40am. “If you are starting something new, California Poppy can help you enter the childlike state of innocence, trust, and openness,” says the book. “If you are struggling with ever-shifting desires, always seeking something better, hooked on highs and lows, addictive patterns, anger and restlessness, find California Poppy and invite them in.”
Heard.
For the second time that is also the last, I sit on the camping chair on the deck to work, opening the bug screen gently so as not to disturb my cricket. I write, with a glass of my sparkling red wine in a mason jar next to me. I don’t edit, I don’t plan, I don’t think — I actively create, just pummeling the keys of my laptop with delightfully experimental energy. Strange. This feels easy. I’m on a roll.
When a few too many mosquitoes are EEEEEEEEEEEEEEing in my ears and I’m tired of swatting, I stand to switch locations. Turning, I see that the cricket is gone. Is it playing hide and seek? Are the mosquitoes just inviting me for laser tag?
I walk back to the house, because I have to charge my laptop. While it’s plugged in, I sit on the front porch, relishing the 6pm light that’s shimmering against a spider web. I text my partner and tell her I’m finally writing in the way I’d wanted to this whole time. I’m feeling more creatively vibrant than ever.
This is the first (and last and only) night I don’t do pasta for dinner. Instead, I defrost the mushroom soup I made and immediately froze on the very first night I got here. I made it because the Kroger mushrooms were rotting and needed to be cooked immediately, and because the cooking helped settle my system. Until now, I haven’t craved it.
I carry my dutch oven of soup back to the cabin before it gets too dark, and leave it perched on the wood stove to stay warm, writing until I hit a wall and absolutely cannot write anymore. I eat the soup. It is delicious. It is right on time.
I eat so much of it that my belly hurts, and so I decide to dance it off. Here is how I want to remember the end of this residency: I am alone in my tiny cabin, with the windows open to the cricket symphonies and the string lights and candles for a warm twinkle. I am blasting the exact same song I played the very first night of this trip. I am swirling around, mimicking an imaginary microphone at my mouth. “YOU MAKE ME COMPLETE YET SOMEHOW,” I yell, “MAKE ME FEEL I’M FALLING TO PIECES.” I spin on sock-toes. “Get out your head come feel ni-ice, get out your head and you’ll see I’m ri-ii-ii-ight.”
Outside, the moon that was mere sliver at the start of the week has swelled to a bloated half. So much change grows like this — quietly, just slow and fast enough so you see it’s happened without seeing it happening. Suddenly, you are different. You have made something of yourself. Something bigger and brighter and fuller.