Learning to Smoke

I’ve never liked talking on the phone, something I procrastinate doing even when calling my own children . . . it seems so awkward holding a device to the ear while talking to someone of whom you can’t even see the face . . .

Cindy would call me every night when we were young teens, 13 or 14, and I dreaded that phone call.  It would go on for an hour or more – I hardly had anything to say because I didn’t want my parents to hear me – and my mother was always in the kitchen and my father was always in the adjoining room watching TV.   Betwixt the two, everything I said could be heard.  Cindy was “boy crazy,” as my parents said, everyone said it – she was in love with Randy Rice at the time, the Methodist preacher’s son, and she would talk on and on about when they’d be married and how cute their children would be, the names she’d give them, names that went well with Rice, and the sound of her new name which would be Cindy Rice, how does that sound, say it, she’d say – so I had to say Cindy Rice into the phone over and over till she was satisfied with the sound – and of course my parents heard it too – always plagued with teenage embarrassment because of things like that.

 Cindy had a private phone line in her bedroom. Cindy could have anything she wanted just by asking – her own horse, colored pantyhose and eyeshadow, clothes from Asheville which was 100 miles away, parties at her house that included boys and the dreaded spin-the-bottle game, and membership in an Occult book club.

 I was the beneficiary of most of those books from her book club because Cindy didn’t read much and she always asked me to choose the books from her monthly selection list. That was my introduction to palmistry, astrology, yoga, meditation, and all sorts of things that were just coming to the forefront (but certainly not to the mainstream) in the early 1970’s. Maybe that’s when I began to love new books, that wonderful woody-ink smell . . .

One day after school Cindy decided to bring her horse into her bedroom to keep us company while we read each other’s futures through palmistry and astrology from the books she had acquired. The horse was well behaved and just stood there – like an elephant in the room, you could say. Cindy’s mother, a former debutante from Asheville, and perhaps the only lady who still wore hats to the grocery store, came home, walked past Cindy’s bedroom, and calmly said – just as calmly as if she had announced there was ice cream in the freezer for us to eat if we wanted it, she said, “Oh my . . . Ceen-thee-ya (Cynthia) . . . whot is that hoss doing in yor bedroom . . . “ and she didn’t even wait for an answer but rather went to her own bedroom and closed the door (softly).

Cindy’s father died suddenly when he was in his early 40’s, and I always assumed it was a heart attack but I’m not sure I ever knew – it was sudden – and it was a tragedy for the whole town because he was the bank president of the only bank in town, and every loan or financial deal among the populace was in direct relationship to this man. Everyone cried at the funeral, but not Cindy – she acted as though nothing had happened, and continued to talk about boys and that sort of thing after the funeral. I was embarrassed as I stood next to her and she rambled on about boys while my parents kept telling me it was time to go home.

A month or so later, Cindy was hospitalized for “water on the lungs” – and no one really knew why she had that condition, it just came out of nowhere – suddenly – and it sent her to the hospital. This was long before the days of Louise Hay’s metaphysical books linking the spiritual realm to bodily ailments – but even then, only a teenager, it made sense to me that the water on Cindy’s lungs had come from all those shored up tears that she never let loose at her father’s funeral. My mother agreed with me.

Soon after, the horse was sold, the house too, and the occult books were given to me for keeps – Cindy and her mother moved to Asheville. They lived in a small apartment where Cindy's room was no bigger than a large elephant. I visited her one summer and stayed for two weeks, the last time I would ever see her – two weeks spent around the complex's swimming pool learning how to smoke.

We chose "Eve" cigarettes, for they were long-stemmed and had a beautiful pattern of the Garden of Eden around the neck. We both loved the smell of menthol, so fresh and eye-opening. Cindy (we were 15 by now) would take her mother's car keys while she napped and drive us to buy Eve cigarettes – what angel watched over us those summer afternoons?

Cindy was already quite proficient at smoking when I arrived for the visit, impressing me with such phrases as, "I need a cigarette." Cindy reclined in the pool chaise with her legs crossed at the ankles, adroitly inhaling and exhaling the smoke as she talked. She looked so adult and statuesque while smoking, although she was really a round sort of person. Everything about her was round – her face, her giggles, the smoke that came from her mouth, her handwriting, even the sound of her name – but the contrasting shape of the cigarette in her hand somehow balanced her out, made her grow longer.  It suited her, as genteel women are wont to say when being nice.

 I, on the other hand, was the kind of teenager with many sharp protrusions of bone that shot up from where one hardly knew there ought to be a bone – and this cigarette in my hand felt to me like one more unwieldy offshoot that ought to be severed. I never mastered the elegant hold of the cigarette between my fingers.

 I also never mastered the inhalation – that wonderful, promising smell of menthol. The smoke would get to the middle of my throat and then be huffed out – some internal force made it do that – and the smell of chlorine from the pool would waft over to me just at that instant . . . mixing with the menthol it made me feel that I was drowning. I never admitted my fear of inhalation and drowning to Cindy; I felt like a fake – it didn’t suit me.

 I am not against smoking at all, never have been, and I would never advocate more bans on smoking . . . no more laws, please!  In fact, I think I am far more tolerant of smoking than most smokers . . . but I am not a smoker . . .

 . . . for I will forever in my mind link pool chlorine, drowning sensations, long boring conversations, nausea, sudden deaths, and the memory of Cindy’s water on the lungs – to the smell of cigarette smoke. It was a waste of time – listening to Cindy talk about all the cute boys in Asheville, struggling to see her face through billows of dirty smoke that were destined to cloud and divide our future.

Eve cigarette photo credit:
www.unionroom.com/.../2009/05/eve_cigarettes.jpg

The Power of One Good Meal

Holy Thursday –  This is the evening when, as children, we would go to church and watch the men of the parish reenact the “washing of the feet" ceremony which takes place at the Last Supper.  Father TJ, in the week leading up to Holy Thursday, would entreat all the able-bodied men, who rarely amounted to a full dozen even when they all gathered at once, to show up for Thursday evening mass – and they would dutifully sit at the front of the church while certain passages regarding the Last Supper were read – and they would remove their shoes and socks as instructed, while Father TJ and a young assistant with a towel and basin would go down the line in a mock representation of the washing of the feet – pouring real water over each man’s feet into a basin held beneath.  While Father TJ poured, he would repeat some passage about washing the feet – or maybe he said, “do this in memory of me” – I don’t remember.

 There would always be some smiles from the men whose feet may have been tickled by the cool water – or by the silliness of it – or maybe by the self-acknowledged “crustiness” of their own feet – you asked me to be here, don’t forget . . . they may have been thinking this while Father TJ was thinking or doubting the same thing, for sometimes he would smile too.  We young girls and our mothers in the pews could never know the exact reason why each man smiled – though we could often guess rightly by the “otherways” appearance of some of the old men – or we would learn the reason later from my twin brothers, teenagers at the time, when they exclaimed the horror of some of those men’s feet – whew!   That's the kind of thing they would have said.  I think Father TJ would often remark a similar thing the next day, or another day, when he was invited to our house for dinner, remark with his keen Irish-eye-laugh – whew!

 But the ritual went on the next year, nevertheless – important – no matter how awkward or silly or disgusting it may have been.

 Just the other day I was thinking about my favorite movies, trying to make a list of them in my mind, suddenly realizing that my top three favorites were similar in that they all climaxed with a “last meal” kind of scene – not just any last meal but a symbolic meal that has taken a lifetime of preparation to accomplish (we feel this somehow).  In each of these movies, “Babette’s Feast,” “August Lunch,” and “Of Gods and Men,” there are tears in the eyes of those people sitting at the table as they sip the wine and eat the food and join in their common humanity – and the scene is filled with love, absolute love, forgiveness, understanding, and togetherness.  It is a Last Supper scene, I came to realize while I was walking and thinking about my favorite movies – and that must be a universal theme or archetype that humans recognize in their hearts and spirits, something Joseph Campbell has probably written a book or chapter about, I concluded.

 In the Danish film “Babette's Feast,” all the stodgy men and women of the village church finally forsake their rigidity for the “sinfulness” of enjoying a feast together – and their lives are resurrected, converted to actual living, because after that meal these old people dance in a circle as though they were being initiated into the circle of life – and all from the miracle of good food and wine taken together.  In “August Lunch,” my next favorite movie, an Italian comedy, old stodgy life is unexpectedly pushed out of its daily routine.  After numerous attempts to return to this routine, which just makes everthing worse, our hero finally succumbs to what becomes a "final meal" that converts everyone at the table – and the movie ends with dancing, love, and togetherness.

 The third movie, which I saw just one week ago, “Of Gods and Men,” is based on the true story of the final days of a group of Benedictine monks in Algeria who are destined to be murdered by terrorists – they know the danger, though they don’t know the fact of it, yet something in them does know – for they come together that last night and enjoy a simple meal of soup and bread and wine. The aged, good men sit around the table and sip the wine which they have obviously not sampled in decades – and this first taste solicits tears from their eyes. They listen to a tape of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. There are wordless close-ups of the old men's faces – moist eyes full of compassion, old dry skin and uneven beards that somehow seem beautiful, the smiles of forgiveness they give each other . . . it seems there are angels dancing on the table to the choreography of Swan Lake – in my imagination anyway.

The “last supper” scene of this movie – it took a lifetime of sacrifice for those monks to get to that place where they could experience absolute joy in being alive.  I know it’s a movie, a reenactment, maybe not exactly how it happened – but there is great catharsis and significance in watching such things nevertheless.

"Marion, Virginia"

Frequently when I’ve read bits of the biographies of famous authors of the early 1900’s – Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Salinger – I’ve learned in some brief passage that Sherwood Anderson was a great encouragement to them, a real impetus for their success. In fact, he helped Faulkner and Hemingway to publish their first books; and he encouraged Hemingway to spend time in Paris to hone his skills. The above writers would go on to claim a much bigger slice of fame than Anderson ever would.  But really,  Anderson remains my favorite of them all.

Sherwood Anderson is known primarily for his classic on small town life, Winesburg, Ohio – one of my personal “Top 10 Favorite Books” of all time which I discovered in a college English class in the 1970’s. The book received decent acclaim at the time it was written, 1919, but I think Anderson was not very good at pulling off his own bit of fame – he had a tendency for nervous exhaustion and a revolving need to escape the madding crowd.  Born in a small town in Ohio, he happily retired to another small town in the Shenandoah Valley called Marion, Virginia.  There, he would buy the town newspaper and become its editor and perpetual guest columnist, fictitiously calling himself Buck Fever – but spending most of his time with the locals at the town drugstore on Main Street.  Who knows, he might have written a book called Marion, Virginia if he hadn’t died from a ridiculous accident at age 65.  I like to think such a book was in the making when he died.  He rests in Round Hill Cemetery, up a gullied road at the top of a remote hill overlooking town.  The inscription on his grave marker reads, “Life not death is the great adventure.”   I had to go there . . .

I ceremoniously packed my original copy of Winesburg, Ohio which I still treasured from my college days.  I wanted to read aloud one particular paragraph which made me think, way back then, that someone – Sherwood Anderson, that is – understood what sort of person I was.  Perhaps by doing so I could summon up from the earth or the air some of the encouragement he so freely gave to others . . . or at least thank him for what he’d already given me.

 There is little hullabaloo about Anderson’s life and writing in Marion, VA.  I should praise the town for making no discernable attempt to capitalize or profit from this American author – though it does seem sort of negligent and un-American. Marion, VA prefers to be known as the birthplace of Mountain Dew.

The young man at the town’s gas station said to look for a grave marker shaped like a ship’s sail.  “You can go up there on a cold night and put your hand on the grave marker and it will be just as warm as the afternoon sun.” – And that’s because it absorbs the sunlight all day long, he explained.  I had hoped for a more mystical explanation . . . but . . . that might be the kind of thing that Anderson would have used in one of his chapters on small town life, in the book I imagine he would have written, Marion, Virginia – young people in the cemetery at night, putting their hands on a grave marker and discovering the warmth.  I think he would have contrived for this young man and his girlfriend to go up there – they would have been cold of course; one of them would have noticed how warm the concrete was to sit on – and they would have sat together in the crook of the ship’s sail just as I did when I finally found the grave marker and sat down to think about all this.

Anderson the writer would have made symbols out of the contrasts of warmth and coldness, night and day, the living and the dead – opposition, juxtaposition, and confusion.  Sherwood Anderson generally writes from the perspective of the sensitive, easily injured, young man.  Somehow the girl would have hurt the young man by a few unthinking words or an imperceptible action – but only the young man and the reader would know it.  The setting would never leave the cemetery or that night – everything significant would take place in the young man’s mind, represented by those symbols of cold and darkness and death.  Anderson’s expertise probably comes from living in small towns where a trek up the cemetery hill with a girlfriend really is all that happens on a Friday night.

Anderson's writing is like poetry that’s been taken out of its formation and told to line up like a paragraph, that’s how pretty the lines are, so rhythmic. I remember one of my favorite sections from Winesburg, Ohio, called “Hands” – Anderson writes, “The story of Wings Biddlebaum is the story of hands . . . like unto the beating of wings of an imprisoned bird . . . striving to put into words the ideas that had been accumulated by his mind during long years of silence . . . “  This whole chapter is about the way this man gestures restlessly as he talks, is amazed by his own hands, wants them to be inexpressive like the hands of other men, and tries to hide them in his pockets or behind his back.  That’s the whole story – the way the hands gesture and hide – and I’ve never forgotten it.

Other writers claimed a greater slice of fame, but Anderson was good at slicing life just that thin.

Writing on the Wall

One of the many five-star reviewers of a Faulkner book on Amazon entitled his review, “Faulkner Being Faulkner,” and went on to say, “You don’t read Faulkner as much as you work your way through Faulkner.” – And that primer was the first clarity I had been given as to why I’ve never been able to finish a Faulkner book. If I were to take all the books off my shelves and organize them into piles by author, my Faulkner pile might be the tallest of them all. I’ve started many, but I’ve never finished any. Upon reading other reviewers, I find I am not alone.

I know I’ve started As I Lay Dying at least twice, and made it about halfway through each time, because my bookmarks are still in the book. It’s a small book, less than 200 pages, one he wrote in only six weeks; it should be possible to finish the book by willpower alone if not pleasure – but each time I put it down it is hard to pick up again. Like magnets set the wrong way, the book repels me when I reach for it.

Maybe I’m just not to be a Faulkner reader. But that doesn’t keep me from visiting any author’s home even if it’s about 1,000 miles from my own . . . Rowan Oak – that is the name Faulkner gave to his stately, white-columned home in Oxford, Mississippi. He named it after the rowan tree, a symbol of security and peace.

His book, which I arrived home motivated to read, is called A Fable, one for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1954. It chronicles a sort of mutiny among World War I soldiers living in the trenches during the seven days of Holy Week. Being a thematic kind of reader, I thought it might be fun to read the book, knock it out so to say, before Easter time in late April this year. But what really impressed me was the way he sketched out the idea for the novel on the walls of his study – in storyboard technique – beginning with Monday, outlining all that would happen on that day, and continuing around the room till he reached the end of the week which he called Tomorrow – and having to write that on the backside of the door because he’d already run out of wall space for that seventh day.

I was alone in that room, Faulkner’s writing room – the unassuming desk, the typewriter his mother gave him and which he used his entire life, the Adirondack chair where he sat . . . I looked around to the writing on the walls, too overwhelmed just then to read all the scrawly, scratchy handwriting under each day of the week, but rather clicking pictures so I could read it later – preferring my time to be used for absorbing the place.

I stood transfixed in the center of that universe where a writer’s work had its genesis – like standing in the chaos of a swirling world before earth and sun and sky had been formed – but this time, in the mind of a man most likely kept hostage by the Tennessee sippin’ whiskey he loved so well to boost his enthusiasm for a project. There I stood, only the man and his graphite and grease pencils no longer there – the energy still was. Empty whiskey bottles stood in a glass case out in the hallway, relics of the day.

I’ll bet there was noise going on the day he came up with that idea – an “other language” kind of mumbling that came from that room as the words formed out of darkness and into the light of day. There were loud scratching sounds as he wrote on the walls . . . and his patient wife Estelle went about her chores, probably delivering freshly laundered clothes to a back bedroom . . . what now?. . . she must have thought wildly, always at loose ends with herself as another bottle of whiskey fell to the floor. I’m making all this up of course. I don’t know how it happened that day. I do know her own bedroom is full of books on spiritual matters.  An easel is propped near her bed and the walls are lined with the still lifes she painted . . .

Faulkner hated air conditioning, it is said – and that is noteworthy given the Mississippi summers. That’s one thing I remember clearly about As I Lay Dying – the oppressive heat he describes as the old woman watches her coffin being built outside the bedroom window. I know he experienced that kind of heat, knew it well. Nothing at Rowan Oak explains why he hated air conditioning, but I surmise it was the sound – that droning, grating sound that interferes with what the muses have to say. I could understand his sentiments as I walked through the yard space of Rowan Oak – an embracing kind of breeze that wound through plentiful oak trees hosting birds that had nested there for generations before and after Faulkner's death, their songs unabated. The peacefulness of Rowan Oak, like so many things about Faulkner, is of an “other world” quality.

Nevertheless, his wife installed air conditioning the day after Faulkner died – not buried yet – and he would rest in state in the parlor with the AC burring and humming and churning non-stop on those July Mississippi days. The drone of the AC would eventually drive his spirit away – but it was the thing Estelle felt compelled to do for the benefit of the living on that first day of the ten remaining years she would have without him.

 The feeling of that room – the days of the week written on the walls – that is what made me want to give the man one more chance at reading him – much as Estelle must have given him one more chance at living with him each time he came off a binge and produced a thing of beauty – one day at a time.

Going to Graceland!

High Pony

Twice this week I’ve been stationed at a red light behind young women drivers with thick, long hair who required more time than one red light could give them in order to gather up all the hair atop their heads for a handsome ponytail . . .

Doing so, but not happy with the results, they would pull the band out of their hair in one damaging yank, start all over – gathering up, swooping, pushing it higher, tightening, smoothing the top of the head, the sides, cinching . . . the first time I viewed this, when I was in a hurry, I beeped the horn softly when the light had turned green – and she shot me a look in the rear view mirror that made me feel intrusive and overbearing and “way too old.” The second time, only a day or two later, and no one in back of me, I decided to let the pony show go . . .

The high pony is a hairstyle that has traversed generations. Little did those young women in their cars realize that I too, long ago, groomed one high pony – or two, if we’re talking pigtails, which are not so in fashion anymore. 

When I became a mother and lost my high pony, I began to style it for my daughters instead. They would come running down the stairs just as the school bus could be heard making its first stop in the neighborhood – “My pony! My high pony!” they would yell. Under pressure, I’d swoop a mane upward, gather it in one hand while cajoling it higher and smoother with the brush in another hand, upward, upward she goes – higher . . . higher – till approval was met and the band twisted on. That is the hard part – twisting – for there is always some slippage while putting on the band, and ridges seem to appear out of nowhere once the band is in place. Ridges on the top or sides of the head, or even underneath the pony itself, are sloppy and unacceptable.  I’ve been criticized for low ponies, loose ponies, ridged ponies, off-center ponies, and ponies that couldn't hold till lunchtime.

The perfect high pony is combed smooth and tight on all areas of the head, propped high and snug at the crown of the head – and forced at its base to hike up teasingly just like the tail of a Lipizzaner Stallion.  The length is left to cascade for as far as it can go. Better yet, it should curl at the end to make a hook.

There is importance in getting the pony to swish back and forth like a metronome while walking – maybe to hypnotize young men, I don’t know – for there is nothing duller than a straight held pony that won’t move. The first footsteps are crucial – the girl must tilt her body slightly but not noticeably, left to right, left to right – back and forth five or six times – to get the pony to work like a pendulum. After that, momentum takes hold and she can walk regular – the pony takes care of itself.

The girls on our local high school track team have mastered the skill of the swishing high pony – they run down our street after school in great herds – and all ponies, excepting one or two stragglers, are a-swishing in tandem.

Monday morning I looked at the newspaper to see the photos of all those movie stars who had won an Oscar or been voted “the best” at some spectacle of appearance. Reese Witherspoon was voted “Best Tressed,” and the caption beneath her profile read: “Her glamorous high ponytail stood out in a sea of up-dos, bouncy waves and bed heads.”   

Barbie photo credit: www.astrocrack.com/.../2009/02/barbie209.jpg 

Being Ten

In the foggy throes of early morning writing, I tire of my conscious mind-editor telling me to say things a certain way for clarification – clarification, clarification – that’s all she says; and I might may as well call her name her Clara F. Cajun from now on.  Fearfully, I’ve noticed lately of late that Clara the Editor is faster than my morning pencil can write – she’ll edit out a way of saying things before I, the pencil-handler, can get to that spot on the page, making it look like appear as though her words came first and were meant all along to be mine. Once I arrive with my pencil, I have to mark out her fancy, proper way of saying things – and say it my way. Who to trust?
                                                            *                *                *
. . . A ten-year-old child standing in line outside the cafeteria for school lunch – my first day of school in this tiny Western North Carolina town in 1966 – I, from Noo . . . Yowark, as everyone in North Carolina called my home state – and their cruel entertainment from listening to me speak – mocking me in order to solicit waves of laughter from each other . . . taking turns, one and then the other, taking turns running out of line to approach me and ask the leading question, “How old are you?”


School House Steps

 Not understanding at first what they were getting at, and suddenly fearful that fifth graders in the South were not 10 years old as I expected, but rather 9 or 11 (and that would have been a cruel tragedy that my mom hadn’t told me about before we moved there) – and so answering truthfully, having no other ploy at my disposal – truthfully – I always said, “Ten” – and that answer is what brought waves of giggles that swelled into roars of laughter as each scout returned to her spot in line, to the embracing circle of her group – over and over again. I didn’t realize until I heard one of them shout, “She talks proper!” – and then another one, “She’s fancy!” – that it was not what I said, but the way I said ‘ten’, with its short e-vowel sound, that induced such howls of Southern laughter.

The way I said it was not the way they said it – which may as well have had a ‘y’ placed after the ‘t’, making the word look like ‘tyen’ if written on the page, and sounding like a near synonym for ‘tin’ if spoken. If I were to have peanut butter on the roof of my mouth, and charged with the task of getting it off using only my tongue in a backward-to-forward motion, then the sound to come out would be tyen . . . tyen . . . This same equation goes for the word, pen – pyen, pyen . . . which I was to use far more frequently when I stopped being ten.

And so, having endured howls of laughter before and after I understood and deciphered why the fifth-grade lunch line laughed at me – I still had no better answer to give them.  I was ten.

There was a pointy-faced girl named Martha, though everyone called her ‘More-thaa’, and she was the ringleader of this lunch line charade, for I saw her egging on others to take their turn in approaching me, prompting them with the words they should use once they got to me, “Ask her how old she is . . . ” 

One time I saw ‘More-thaa’ perform a pantomine of a movie star reclining on her chaise, holding one side of her head in apparent boredom while looking up to the sky, saying, “I’m t--------n.” – and in place of the vowel sound she gave it a prolonged breathlessness, not even a real vowel!  It was so unlike me – what she did. 

The View from School House Hill

Martha eventually became my best friend in the fifth grade – though not beyond because of a tendency for female backstabbing – who to trust? – and not before I was made to endure many more weeks of life-changing discovery in the differences between North-to-South pronunciations – but this, not nearly so painful and memorable as that accusation of being proper – “like she’s from England,” as I heard one person say.  Even more cruelly, “She’s trying to be fancy” – which implied I was trying to be above them in those mysterious, ever-changing, duplicitous North Carolina mountains, when really I just wanted to be ten . . .