Talk Here
An Essay from My MFA Thesis
1984. Sandycrest Terrace. The first place I lived all on my own as an adult. The first place I was totally financially responsible for myself. The first place I was in charge of my whole life. Twenty-two, naïve, alone. Just me—paying the bills, figuring out who I’d become.
Twenty-six years later. Here I am again, back at Sandycrest Terrace. A start-over homecoming, it seems. Brick buildings and door vestibules by which I can mark my progress, reflect, make sense of who I’ve become.
In this homecoming, I want a seamless adherence to the truth of my choices, a rationale to the trajectory of life I set myself upon the last time I was here. I want to see the clean progression between then and now, yet all of the past lurking in the darkness just outside of my daily reality wants to tumble out now, to stand as a reflected image, to murmur as an echo, begging my contemplation of the strands of adult life I try to tuck out of the light.
As I put my new key in the door, I notice the old intercom box with its chipped green paint. The instruction placard reads, Talk Here.
I awake, amongst the boxes and clutter of the move-in.
Lucid dream this morning—I dreamt of the Himalayas. I have a certificate for having flown over them, over Mt. Everest, in a little plane when I was eight. It was in a cheap frame, brown with gold along an indent in the middle of the molding, glass-covered. The certificate itself looked quite official, with a color-print image of the mountains and a wordy declaration of my feat and my name had been hand-lettered onto the form. I was dreaming partly of the piece of paper and partly of the event itself. I looked down and I was above Mt. Everest, and I was in the plane. All of a sudden, as the plane swooped, the snow changed into grass that was lush and electrifyingly green. I realized the scene had changed and I was walking a narrow path through the verdant fields of the Himalayas. I passed a monastery that lay off in the distance, above the path. I looked back at it. Seeing the monks, I smiled. They were emptying large burlap bags of rice into brown ceramic pots.
I like the idea of the cloister world of monks. Of spiritual intellectualism. Of how their days are filled with simple tasks and big ideas. They do not follow compass directions of place, but of heart and mind.
In 1984, during my previous residency at Sandycrest Terrace, I set some goals—the big life kind:
Teach at a small college
Write and photograph alongside teaching
Make money from other investments
Buy an old barn and convert it into a house
Have a self-sustaining farm
For years, I used that list as my compass. I had originally written it on lined notebook paper and kept it folded in a stack of important papers. A year or so later, I bought my first journal—a hardbound black sketchbook. I pasted the list onto its flyleaf, making it more official, deeming it part of my daily ritual.
I am not a keeper of my journals. When I feel they have served their purpose, that I’ve chewed on the musings in them long enough, I destroy them, rooting all their mumbo-jumbo in the past. I burned that journal, but before I lit the match, I cut out the list of goals and pasted it into a new blank book. Through a series of cut-and-pastes, I carried my compass with me, forward in life.
Just three or four years ago, I realized I’d accomplished most of the list—or a version of it. I taught at a top-notch high school, the barn idea had shifted into a 1920s Portland-style bungalow. I wrote and made photographs, and have an investment account.
Then I lost my partner. And my way. I was forty-two, grief-stricken, alone. Just me—paying the bills, figuring out who I’d become without him.
I tried to change everything. I moved out of the city to Central Oregon, landed a nice teaching job there, and bought a house. In just two years, just as the world shifted, as the recession hit, I ended up stranded in that new town, no job, no home, no plan.
That’s how I landed back at Sandycrest, back to shaping my life.
The grounds at Sandycrest are beautiful, atypical for an apartment complex. Maples that curve over the street, creating a curtain that veils my apartment from the world beyond, tulip trees that drop blooms that look like fireworks, and the courtyard tree with the redolence that wraps around the atmosphere at night. I have a bank of paned windows that look out among the treetops and across the side street. I look eye to eye with the birds. Much of my time is spent sitting on my perch, pondering. I spend some evenings in the yard, often sketching my surroundings—the chestnut tree, so bold in its flowering and germination. The crows, as they taunt my dog and sing out the threat of his presence.
Spring has turned to summer and then to fall.
Now it’s December.
The winter solstice sneaks up with it’s darkness and then, all at once, is shining light. One year, I was standing on Waikiki, all the hotels and tourist hustle and bustle behind me, brightly lit, and I was alone on that world-famous, usually packed, beach. I watched the moon, walked barefoot and watched the nighttime ocean wander in and then recede.
This winter I’m in Portland, a city so long my home. I think, maybe coming back is moving forward. No matter one’s location, the solstice is a sneaky thing, begging internal reflection.
My yoga teacher asked today, “What is hidden in your darkness that you are not letting out?” In Jungian conception, the darkness, the shadow side of life, is two things—it is that which we perceive as weakness and want to keep hidden, and it is the beauty in each of us yet to escape.
As I drove through my day, I kept thinking about the question. It is one of the human heart.
A daunting question in this world of work-a-day and bill paying.
The question brought to mind my little list, of all the times it had travelled with me, and I began to wonder if the shadow answers could still be found on that slip of paper, penned by a much younger me, on some other day when my mind wandered, trying to make sense of the string of events I was calling my life.
Back home, I put my key in the latch of my door and glance at the speaker box and its insistent command to Talk Here.
Maybe, just maybe, my twenty-two-year-old self was on to something.
Really lovely, Neva.