Today—October 3, 2010. I write. On this here laptop. In my little apartment. In Appalachia amidst small town Beckley, West Virginia.
I once read or overheard or totally imagined the phrase that the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself. Thank God the heart knows no bounds, nor the conflicts to which it can become entangled. Thereby saying, I have strong and earnest wants not to write, but like the poor little stray cat outside my door that beckons my heart to rescue him from the cold, I write to rescue--to salvage my memory to some avail. Yet, funny how it all orchestrates—I don’t really ever rescue the cat, but the cat frees me and I never write to rescue my fleeting thoughts, but my thoughts, once written, somehow let loose the mind to color outside the lines. So, without hesitancy, I take heed in my attempt to color wildly.
Well, dear ole Appalachia done gone stolen my dear little pumpkin heart. I must say, I’ve excelled quite a bit more than I had anticipated in learning the language here. Here are a few learned translations so far:
“She done went and got the sugar”: She is diabetic.
“Now hunee do right for me now with dat der pee-la.”: Fix my pillow now before I bitch slap you, fool.
“Oh lawd have merr-seeee, I can’t stand it”: It’s time for you to hurry up and fetch my pain medication.
“She done had one of her kids out”: One of her kidneys failed and was removed.
There were a few more but I fail to recollect them currently. Each person I have encountered has somehow enlivened me with his/her streams of character that come rolling out, each in a manner worthy of remembrance. Just the other day I had a patient who had come in with a couple of fractured ribs and possible fractured femur. Upon extracting from her what had brought about her current condition, this is how the frail, small-framed, old woman with fiery, lit eyes responded, “ I tail you what, I ne’er believed such a thang in my whole damn life, I was looking for one of those thar clippings that you hang on your dawr to scare dem kids at Halloween, and I was’a passin the end of da aisle der with my buggy, and some hurryin ladee was speedin in her buggy and damn ran straight into my side—oh lawd, dat der buggy hurt me almost to death.” After letting the words from her mouth be absorbed in my temporal lobe to process this incident, all I could do was envision this occurrence taking place in the ever infamous Wal-mart. And goodness, I so highly respect these individuals for their raw honesty, well, more like their hostile honesty. But if they think something, you bet yourself damn straight you will hear it. These are their lives, the way that they live and be and thrive, and to be a part of their experience and seek life together with these wise elders of Appalachia bids me no higher privilege.
And the nurses I collaborate with are extraordinary. They all have their crazy entwined family dynamics and dysfunctional familiarities that I feel such a warm spirit of humanness and welcomed with all my funky facets and impromptu caprices. One of the nurses informed me of having an anxiety attack on my behalf—since I came here to West Virginia not knowing anyone and was okay with that. No one verbalized their thoughts, but I could see in their faces how only a pure pagan would leave her family to encounter a world of unknown. Also, many were enthralled with my eating habits after introducing them to “quinoa” and sharing it with everyone.”Whoaaaa…” they said with a new sparkle in their eyes. You would have thought they had just discovered a rare diamond of sorts. Often, they tend to categorize me as one of those “earthy girls” since one time, after asking me what my favorite pastime was, I quickly exclaimed, “Oh I love to skip through the forest and meet with the wind!” They didn’t chuckle, they down right heaved and hoed at my forest fanciness. They thought it was hilariously odd, while I took a tender delight in knowing that the forest had become a common home to my heart.
And people from the hippie town nearby retorted and exclaimed in horror how Beckley is a soul-sucking hellhole, but how can anyone discard a community of people? Just due to their differences? There is rich life amidst this community. Discarding a community is like discarding a three-legged dog to the streetside--purely heartless in every regard. Every bit of me wants to sit down those damn prideful hippies and maybe we could watch Pocahontas together. As it is, it is an ever-reoccurring theme. When will we learn? I love the cycle of life, but I hate the accepted, apathetic ignorant-surged opinions that continue to further our separations as humans.
Often friends and family call to inquire of my current condition, ensure that I am happy here, and then creep up the bravery to ask the haunting and opposed but forced question of whether I am lonesome or not. I tell them I don’t know--that if what I feel often is lonesomeness, I don’t think it is wrong or bad or terrible feeling. It just comes and goes as a cloud floats by—some fluffy and bright, and some heavy, tormenting with exalting rains, but lovely in its passing. Why yes, God sure does get the uncanny view in seeing us process and progress. I can only imagine that it must be some kind of sight. But more often than not, I tell them when I am not in the hospital, I am out exploring. Ever since the dream encounters I had while in Oregon, I have held an insatiable drive and want and blood-firing fuel raging to explore the unknown. Here exist the rolling hills, the trees, the rivers, the leaves, the hanging rocks, all waiting to be fully known by every embodied soul alive. Out in Oregon I didn’t understand my craving for the howling wind, for the tuning melodies of the western tanager, for the chorus of dancers in the blades of grass, and the strange, glistening peculiarity of design in each sprawling flower petal.
But, for once, I had come to a most generous revelation of my surrounding kin. Here, with everything that took forth breath and my tunnel of spiraling imagination I went back to when I was just six years old. We had just bought 50 acres in West Georgia and my father was gleaming, highed, awed, and heightened in his purest adoration for the Earth as he called me over, hurriedly. “Beth, beth, come see this!” With calloused and wrinkled hands he grabbed my arms and sat them close to his. Leaning and kneeling on my bare knees, I watched as my father earnestly dug with the nails of his hands and the fortitude of his forearms into the sun-beamed ground. His excitement was contagious. I could hardly await the discovery. Finally he scooped out some large quantity and sat back as fragments of soil, clay, pure particles of mystery churned between his fingertips and dripped back onto the ground. He grabbed my wrist, squinted his eyes and spoke softly, “Beth, I want you to feel this dirt. Really feel the dirt; feel the dirt, be the dirt.” Like any adventure-seeking, wild-eyed six year-old, I yearned to be engrossed in the splendor of such an ordinary artifact. And to be the dirt, whatever that meant in the grown up figurative language, I so greatly wanted to absorb the dirt’s being.
Though the dirt didn’t provide the life, it was a mighty force and factor in life’s activation. Life pulsated itself from dirt and the cycle would one day return itself to it. But undoubtedly I was instilled with this all-encompassing reverence for dirt, a sustainable producer to life, at my small age. This reverence was what awakened out in Oregon--- an expansive heartache for my family—my family that came from dirt and all the creatures that expanded the heavens and earth—and all inexplicably deserving of veneration and care. The woodpecker, the rhonedendron, the madrones, the zinnas, the butternut squash, the silly trout, the human beings. Something mighty has burst through into us. And somehow we are all in it together. Finally, I had recognized other members of my family, each with a language of their own and a character of their own--each to know, to delight in, embrace and seek out amidst our days together.
I want to sing the hymns of the birds, dance with the rhythms of the tree branches, light up with the lightning bugs, churp back with the crickets. I want to communicate as an embodied soul, who can’t help but leap for pure joy at the very recognition of my own kin.
