Horse Fly Column, 4/08: “Nine-Year Itch”

Here you go with more from the Digital Potlatch. I wrote and published the following column for Horse Fly just a year ago this April. It was even posted to the blog at that time, but I’ve removed the old post for the sake of formatting purity. (There wasn’t any potlatch in that version of FarrFeed, and I want the categories to work properly.) Some of you have read this, in other words.

Well, read it again! Aged literature is always better, right? The subject here is a familiar one, namely, why does it take so long to launch a new life when you’re winging it in your 50s and 60s? Pretty scary! In Taos, reinventing yourself is something of a cottage industry and no doubt contributes to the high level of tension in this beautiful place. Locals who saw this column understood it perfectly.

Hmm. I also see that it relates to the previous post. Fascinating.

Nine-Year Itch

Geez, how long does it TAKE?!

Nine long years in the shadow of the mountain, and my hair’s been growing for maybe six or seven now. I was going to cut it a while back, but someone accused me of trying to look like a biker. I figured he was jealous, so I put away the scissors. Anyway, the flying jackhammers are back.

I don’t know what kind of woodpeckers they are, because I’ve mostly only heard them. Yesterday it sounded like they wanted to eat the chimney. That didn’t last long — how could it? — but then they flew to the bottom of the hill and attacked a telephone pole. Tiring of that, they ended up in the branches of a tall dead aspen, where they finally settled in. Whackety-whackety-brrrap-bap-bap. Brrrap. Whackety. Bap-bap. While this was going on, a herd of scruffy cattle mysteriously appeared in an old corral a little ways down the road, like they’d just dropped out of the sky. At least they had all their parts.

Nine long years in the shadow of the mountain. Every now and then, I think I may be used to this. Now I don’t think of what I don’t have more than a dozen times a month. There’s a tan on my face, even in the winter. I drop Spanish words in conversation with native speakers. I look like I flew out of a tree.

Never in a million years did I think it would go like this. Heck, I never thought anything. But coming here nine years ago, things were pretty brutal, or seemed to be. The shock of rolling through Questa after living in a place where farmers mowed the thick green grass right up to the cornstalks almost disemboweled me. Still can, too. Not long ago a friend described throwing open his old kitchen door in Missouri in the morning, in the fall, and breathing in the smell of wet red leaves. I nearly walked right out the door and stole a car.

A real winter like we’ve had can also make you vulnerable in this way, no matter where you’re from. Personally, I’ve never felt so physically and psychologically restrained. Some days I didn’t think we’d ever see the ground again, much less any sign of the tulips I dug up from the useless bed beside the house, where a giant elm is lifting the adobe wall, and planted just out back.

But around Easter my wife pulled back the straw and found them! It’s like a miracle. It loosens all the straps. Why, they may even bloom before the grasshoppers hatch, and I can just drop dead.

There’s more, too. Around the same time, a wandering cow in the night tripped over and snapped the cable from the satellite TV. Yes, that really happened. I know that’s what it was, because she fell against the house, and I opened the door to look in case there was a rockslide or someone’s truck had slipped evilly out of gear. By then she was in the sagebrush on the other side of the driveway, calmly munching on a patch of dry grass in the glare of my Wal-Mart spotlight. I put two and two together and closed the door. In the morning, I found the cable and the cow flops. The thing is, when I stood there later in the afternoon sun, jerry-rigging a fix with cheap Chinese coaxial cable parts and electrician’s tape, the world was right. It just was, like with the silly plants.

For years I fought against old memories. There had to be a better place, a different solution. The itch had always been to run away. That’s the way I felt when I was swatting deerflies with a sweaty towel in Maryland, but at least we were there first. Now it’s been nine years with a storage unit. The last time I yanked open the door, the first thing I saw was fresh rat crap on the floor.

I know how to fix this. (No, not gasoline.) This itch I’m scratching with a shovel, dammit, and you’re all invited to the barbecue.

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Related posts:

1. Horse Fly Column: “Child of God”
2. Horse Fly Column, 5/03
3. Horse Fly Column, 1/04: “Island”
4. Horse Fly Column, 5/05: “Yells-At-Nothing”
5. Horse Fly Column, 10/04: “Windshield”