By Jenny Forrester
Sitting, now, writing this—wind gusts over 60 mph, snow flurries, here, in the Rockies; the snow won’t stick—it’s springtime…
I drove there, writing in my mind, listening to music, podcasts, audiobooks…from Colorado through Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New York. I have thoughts about Salman Rushdie’s Knife… I knew the roads through to Illinois—the end of the memory road when my mother would pile my brother and I and sometimes, the cats, into the van.
In the Catskills, in Wayward Utopia, I stayed above the garage, surrounded by drums. Guitars. A Keyboard. Magical brooms. A feather I used for protection so I could sleep. Massive windows; views of trees, ponds, and two chickens. Magical space to write. If you get the chance…
I wrote inspired by Ariel Gore’s prompts, by Alyssa Graybeal’s artistry and succinctness-making comics for writers workshop, by Christa Orth. I’m inspired to finish and maybe take yet another stab at a Kickstarter project. Inspired by the vicariousness of Chakra work by Avis Barlow, I wrote all the openings into things. I wrote the quilted experience of memory, inspired by Ariel’s quilt-square piecing and ordering writing technique and by China Marten’s literal quilt square practice. I wrote, too, inspired by the work of the talent and dedication-infused participants; we wrote contextualizing poetics, aliveness, unhinged—chaos poetics—viscera, and imaged experiential revolutions. We chose our own adventures and forms. We were wayward. As always. I noticed a weaving of traumas shot through with privilege and by projections of privilege’s often nonsensical and strange, as in, assumed and politicized definitions onto natural—and culturally—given human rights. Words morphed by power into power, transformed, hiding—and hidden—underneath things. Inspiration gathered around ideas/ideals contained in binary-ness, fluidity, and in-between, nowhere and everywhere. I wrote underneath my full-spectrum mind’s mind.
I feel like we all wrote a lot. A whole lot. Felt love. Everyone kept saying it.
I wrote love—romantic and otherwise—about the people back home or from memory or into a future.
Here’s a thing I know. You know when you’re loved. You can trust that.
I drove away into new-to-me territory—an eastern U.S. loop. Pennsylvania again, Maryland, West Virginia, and kept going—Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma. I thought I knew trees until I got to West Virginia. I thought Minnesota’s humidity was thick until I got to Maryland. And there was a scent. Honeysuckle. Jasmine. Something else, too. Erotic. I wrote romance in my romance mind’s mind.
Place names: Indigenous tribes and territory names. The influence of colonizing countries scattered throughout. Took mental notes for later. An Amish man drove his horse-drawn Dachweggeli over the freeway as I passed. I waved and smiled. An uncountable number of animals lay in the road, on the shoulder, the median, many of the millions of daily animal deaths due to roads and fences. Dark blood splatters I wish everyone would notice and talk about. Soft-bodied bodies. Bloated and not-yet. Saw armadillos for the first time—all dead.
The locals I talked to where they were local would say, “I’ve never been there,” when I asked about the very nearby local place I planned to see. I remember locals where I was local who’d never been to the national park very nearby, almost always because of financial lack, but sometimes because of a spiritual or emotional or social understanding kind of lack. There are many kinds of poverty. Many kinds of classist assumptions. Many lacks in understanding. I remember knowing a lot of Coloradans who’d never been skiing. I still do. Not everyone loves it, not everyone can, not everyone wants to, and it’s not always who you think in these categories. There are people who live in their cars to enjoy their strong, ski-capable bodies. They live on borrowed everything to live the Colorado Pow Pow Life. “Dirt Bags…”* The dream never lasts that I know of…like how road trips don’t last. That I know of…
When I passed by Booneville, Arkansas, I thought of stopping. The last time I’d texted my father, he’d said to visit but then he changed his mind, texted me back, “No, please don’t come.” You know when you’re not loved. I passed on through Arkansas. It’s pretty. I’d visit again. I’m inspired not to blame Arkansas… Not even Booneville where I’ve never been; not a collective of any kind. My writing utopia comprises personally idealistic high standards, as in, I want to articulate what’s timeless, what’s the essence, what’s powerful and malleable. What’s underneath America?
I’m writing—still, wind gusting, the peaks whited out—with local mind and global mind, grateful for the wayward mind in both.
*Dirtbag {via Urban Dictionary}: A person who is committed to a given (usually extreme) lifestyle to the point of abandoning employment and other societal norms in order to pursue said lifestyle.
Jenny Forrester is the author of Narrow River, Wide Sky: A Memoir and Soft-Hearted Stories: Seeking Saviors, Cowboy Stylists, and Other Fallacies of Authoritarianism. She’s the editor of Mountain Bluebird Magazine. jennyforrester.com
