The Messy Part #1: Held by the mountain

The messy parts of how last week’s poem Held by the mountain unfolded.

I felt like writing something, so I got started.

Fragments of a memory: walking up a cobblestone slope, leaning against a subtle current in the multi-colored stones, underfoot and at eye level, tumbling gently as river rocks and carrying off downhill.

I paused in that moment and took a photo, over a year ago now.

It was sunny that day, but just as this memory came into focus, it merged with another rainy morning hike on the other side of the same mountain. Like they had something in common, so I followed the path. At this point, the poem read:

Walking up a mountain
Multi-colored cobblestone river current
Carved paths

I almost put “poem” in quotes to diminish what these few lines are, and even poke fun at myself by saying something like “Me, Poet!” and those urges are why I’m writing this Messy Parts series. Even within my head, there’s a detractor voice yelling “IMPOSTER! get him!” or wanting to diminish the work in its bud stage. Before it has a chance to twist, groan, and fight its way out into what it’s trying to tell me, or us, if anyone else resonates. I don’t think this is the World’s Best Poem, either. It just is. So here we are, at the beginning of something, willing to see where it goes.

Water is everywhere

Another memory fragment: Sintra can’t decide if it’s raining or misting. I feel water vapor on my cheeks, in my eyes, and in the little folds and curves of my ears. I hear it trickling down streams, tapping on ferns, and bubbling in garden pools. The plastic sole of my sneaker squeaks and slips over slick cobblestone, another thin layer between us. Water is everywhere, flowing over and permeating everything. The memory merges with the cobblestone river from a few weeks earlier.

Walking up a mountain
foot falls slick
leaning up, into the mist
(thunderstorm and rain out in the open, want to get to the trees)
against a cobblestone current
Carved paths

At this point, I’m clacking LEGO blocks together, the big ones. Easy, grippy things, in primary colors. It feels just as satisfying, like a toddler unknowingly constructing the foundation for a tower. I’ll soon be knocking it down and rebuilding repeatedly, which is always the fun part.

I take a breath and go back to the memory. I feel the water vapor everywhere, and it seems important. A book of Pantone color swatches fans open and flutters to life. Water is everywhere, sure, but what I’m feeling is shades of water.

different shades of (water vapor on face, water tap on jacket, water thin layer above cobblestone)

and I’m feeling it. on my body. I’m not reading it or thinking about theoretical water, I’m moving through and with it.

cheeks breaking through clouds, water vapor

the floodgates open a bit more, as I start to feel my body move through and over the water.

cheeks passing through clouds
feet stepping / rock hopping
cobblestone current and not-quite absorbed, water vapor

This - oh, wait, here’s the critic again.

“Not-quite absorbed”, huh…

Yeah, well, that’s what it felt like. Somewhere between my skin and wherever water comes from, and like it was on its way to being absorbed, eventually.

“Not-quite?” so what is it?

I’m getting there, !@!#

cheeks passing through clouds, water vapor
taps
cobblestone current
flow in rivulets
always in motion, looking for home in paths to be absorbed

“Oh, my! The scholar is here. Rivulets have been spotted. And anthropomorphized water”

Alright, this isn’t gonna work if you’re constantly interrupting.

“Am I wrong?”

I’m not quite sure what it is you’re even saying, constructively.

“There you go with Not-quite, again”

At this point, the Critic was really starting to annoy me.

It had surreptitiously replaced the warm, supportive image I held of Neil Gaiman in his leather-bound library, calmly pausing to pick up and gently deploy advice from one of his own books in the most genuine “Anyone Can Cook” Gusteauisms, with his bizarro twin: not mad, but disappointed; not-quite setting down his reading glasses on the crystal side table and squint-pinching the bridge of his nose, muttering a quiet incantation for patience.

Great, now I was wielding a Writer Icon’s imaginary judgement and skepticism, in vivid detail, as friendly fire. This wasn’t working. I was losing the thread, and decided to try something else.

Turn up the noise

What was I hearing in the memory, again? OH, right. A deluge of water. A memory from my childhood tosses bizarro Neil out of his leather chair, flips the library scene upside-down, Inception-style, and puts me inside a plastic doghouse.

It’s 1990-something, and a freak rainstorm is painting San Diego grey. The plastic igloo is warm; Crouch-laying sideways on an old blanket, head nestled in the upper area of the dome, I remember being enveloped in tapping, my golden retriever sighing heavily and shifting, wet fur in my lap. I’d never really seen things from his perspective, out here. It would be lonely to be out here in the rain, but today it was a refuge for us.

Where can I find the feeling of water tapping again? I search YouTube and find it: “Mountain Rain & Thunderstorm Sleep Sounds - Ambient Noise For Sleep & Meditation” - no, I’m not sleeping, but right now, I need to be wrapped in rain.

To my surprise, it works…the voice is gone, thanks Blaze. Waves of shakiness wash over me. My eyelids wobble, wet in the corners. I’m mourning, still, aren’t I?

collects and grows
sliding down barriers
collects on new barriers
collects and flows, sliding around barriers

Whenever this happens, I try to hold it back. A deep breath in through the nose, finger-wiping over my eyes, apply pressure to the wounded area.

I started to feel the water collecting, in droplets. Containment as a temporary illusion, water overflowing a dam.

collects, accepts effortless
gliding over open barriers

Crying. I was crying, sort-of. Definitely? I usually don’t identify with crying. And this wasn’t Ugly Crying, was it? More of an evaporative release. Water moves in so many ways. Anyway, look over here!

foot fall slick
leaning up, into the mist
cheeks passing through clouds, water vapor
collects, spinning in
acceptance
soon to be gliding, open barriers

I was trying to distract myself from the feeling, but deep down I was starting to accept it. Words like “soon to be” and other “not-quite” phrases kept popping up, like road work disclaimers tempering the mess you’re about to see.

Icebergs. The bow of a ship, progress, carving a path through nature.

a bow splitting cool water vapor

But, softer. I’m moving, not the Titanic, and it feels more like a merging I’m going to allow.

cheeks cutting cool, water vapor
collects, acceptance
spinning inward on itself / folding inward on itself

where do the water and I meet?

cheeks cutting cool, water vapor
collects gently
passing over ducts and folds
diving for space, gliding over open barriers
unhurried but seemingly on the way home

There go the disclaimers again! It would only “seem” that I want to let go and feel whatever is coming up for air. So, something is still holding back.

diving for space, gliding over open barriers
instinctual, always in motion
flowing downhill
all the way home

I let go and felt it wash over me, here. All of it. Selling and moving away from my childhood home, the one with the igloo doghouse and the treehouse ladder that nobody could climb. It took us a year to figure out we needed to anchor it to the ground. Walkie-talkie radio chit-chat with the neighbors: house to tree-house, over?

Another memory fragment: on that second hike in Sintra, where the mist was catching my eyes. Having just sold my family’s home, and everything in it in a garage sale. Every item laid out, bagged and tagged with a suggested price. Missing the idea of home, but not wanting to go back. Feet slick on the cobblestone as I continue to climb upward, into the mist. Kendrick Lamar’s “Mirror” in surround sound:

Ask me when I'm coming home, huh
Blink twice again, I'm gone

I choose me, I'm sorry
I choose me, I'm sorry
I choose me, I'm sorry
I choose me, I'm sorry
I choose me, I'm sorry
I choose me, I'm sorry

There’s a moment when you think you’ve let go, logically. You can form the idea, like a hand grasping. And then there’s the full release, where there are no words.

beads collect, falling inward

After falling, the rest is all instinct. You can twist and contort, using your own mass for leverage. There’s nowhere to go, really. You’re home.

foot fall slick

leaning up, into the mist

cheeks cutting cool, water vapor

beads and collects

an instinctual falling inward

passing over ducts and folds

diving for space, gliding

flowing over open barriers

only finding new ways home

Thanks for reading the first edition of The Messy Part! What did you think?