Ame Gilbert
Why even go on retreat after a year of lock-down with no work, no place to go. I was working on my manuscript anyway, getting by. I don’t think I could really see past the toll a year of fear, loss, death, environmental hellfire, murders and shootings, and insurrection takes.
It’s a helluva drive after having hardly driven (only once or twice over the Bklyn Bridge to gawk and cry at the blacked-out Great White Way and the silence of Chinatown—where else had there been to go?)
I white knuckled the steering wheel—had to talk myself into breathing as folks sped past at 90mph. Had to deep breath away my southern fears: Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham—they and everyone by default becoming a monolithic Orange threat—had to get over to the slow lane and force myself to laugh at my own lefty knee-jerk Northern redneckism.
A trip to the flea market—guns, junk, but also strawberries, early peaches—sold by a Black farmer! Sweet sweet dirt cheap shrimp. Boiled peanuts. A trip to town to sit outside for fiddle, banjo, twang. Few wear masks—is this ok? Here I am in a tiny town in a tiny bar more social than anytime this past year, learning again how to breathe.
Bless my heart, I pop into the health food store for local honey and a barista-made double decaf cortado over ice, then into Ingles to replenish the kombucha I dragged from Brooklyn not trusting I’d find it past the Mason-Dixon Line (I’m not such a jerk really—I just liked how that sounded—it’s not just North/South prejudice needs wrangling—urban/rural too). A stop at the PO—it’s tax day—I am late, the door is locked but the postmistress pokes her head out and takes my envelopes anyway. We joke about the IRS. Over to Hagood Mill for obligatory stoneground grits. One of the women who works there also sells her handmade jewelry—she buys vintage beads and whatnot from the flea market and combines them with tiny delicate bones she gathers from road kill. Get this!!—she keeps a colony of flesh-eating beetles in a retro fitted chest freezer she keeps in a shed. The beetles clean the bones! The stuff is beautiful! Buy it!
I walk to the waterfall for mid afternoon sound baths. At dusk, the frogs start singing. We are out of the Brood X zone but there are beetles (?) the size of quarters that knock against the screens—thwack, thwack, another rhythm. One night the high drama of a thunderstorm. One day we pick honeysuckle blossoms and make syrup which we eat the next day poured over toasted iron skillet cornbread. I pick over-wintered greens for supper.
All the “Rensings” I meet, as Ellen calls them, are collectively wonderful. Out, left, outspoken, eclectic. No one is the ‘scary southern film loop’ I’d played in my head driving down. But everyone is southern hospitality. Warmth.
And writing? Yes! I’m taking the time to re-read the manuscript looking for holes to fill, looking where to add layer of richness. Mornings I handwrite on the screened in porch. Afternoons I am at the computer, at the desk. From either view there are treetops filled with birds that catch my eyes between words. Of course momentum builds inversely with days left—if only, if only it were another week, or two.
As the sun sets I toss my shrimp into rice congee I’d let simmer all afternoon and drizzle it with the chili crisp I’d tucked in my suitcase. The cupboard had a surprise bottle of Shaoxing cooking wine, so a splash of that too. And for dessert, Maggie, the sweetheart other resident has brought me a tin of the peanut butter chocolate chip coconut sugar balls she made in excess during some break from her writing.
It is not till I am home several days do I realize how deep was my sleep. And today, sitting at my computer I realize how undistracted (is that called focused?) I was. Hacking away today I hear the workmen upstairs and must go check on their work, and the hardware store because I need new window screens, and the newsletter I’m late to put out.
A retreat indeed, maybe especially after lock-down. Especially the reminder that there are wonderful art loving, earth loving, people loving people all over, still. How precious to have received the gift of time, space, quiet, support, honeysuckle syrup.
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