nebraska (a short story)

The ladder existed in the middle of a field swarming with chiggers and ticks. It was a day in June I would have titled: denim cut-offs sky with acid washed pocket clouds, had I thought long enough.

Leigh did not like heights; she could barely stand on her tip-toes without feeling excerpts of vertigo.

This ladder was buried eight feet deep into the ground. Held by cement and sturdy earth. She told me she was doing this to get closer to the sun because—and here is where I must quote her, “because when we whisper our truths to the sun, they are burned into us like ritualistic brandings.”

photo by Raluca Albu

 

We had only known each other for twelve days and she announced her queer after an evening of shared mead. I can still feel the fermented honey drinking my tongue.

Where she came from, she told me, there is no room for declarations such as this. You are born into the gender you are assigned. You are to marry the opposite of what you are.

I told her that where I come from, they extended the land perimeters to make room for the additional boxes declaring the array of humans that exist.

Of course, I come from New York City.

I watched her ankles tremble. Even her blond hair shook like corn stalks in the wind. I stood at the bottom, ready to catch her, but I knew she wouldn’t fall.

And when she finally got to the top, she kept on climbing.

notes from a writing residency

written specifically for great weather for MEDIA

 

When I first landed in Grand Island, Nebraska (population 50,000), the first thing I said out loud was:

dear nebraska, I want my chest to be flat like you.

(all photos taken by Raluca Albu)

 

My roommate and I (Selina Josephs, the magnificent collage artist/painter) was traveling with me. We both got accepted to the writing/artist residency called Art Farm and were venturing to the town of Marquette (population 228) to spend two weeks savoring the flatlands and creating like mad.

Ed Dadey, the owner of Art Farm, picked us up at the tiniest of airports where only one conveyor belt rotated luggage. There were no skyscrapers here. All the clouds roamed without interrogation of bolts and metal. The sky was like an open stadium.

After a trip to purchase groceries, we made our way to this curious land in the middle of nowhere, where the grass stretched tall like preening models. Ed dropped us off by the house we’d be living in called Victoria.

Victoria house

Three stories tall, many walls unfinished. It was vast and haunted and magical and overwhelming. Throughout my days there, I got accustomed to the sound of mice traveling above me. These rodents were bold; chasing each other around the house; sipping water out of available mugs. There were also the raccoons. A family lived in the house. In the house. We could hear the babies chatter and the mother, we called Ricki, left each night at dusk and came back at dawn. I saw her once, as I rocked back in forth in a beautiful rocking chair in Selina’s art studio, while I typed away words gathering momentum on my computer. I heard the scratching of nails against wood, looked up and saw Ricki: climbing up the wall, slinking into a hole in the ceiling.

Add to the mix of wildlife: chiggers (mites which burrow beneath your skin, lay eggs, and create a monstrous display of itchiness), ticks (resilient– even landing on a citronella candle meant to ward them away), flies, flies, flies, ants, mosquitoes…….

Monday through Thursday for three hours, we worked on the farm. Tasks included gardening, moving furniture, digging holes, planting trees, and my personal favorite: carpentry. I picked wood, measured it, cut it down using a beloved and sexy band saw, sanded it down, then hammered into place.

photos by Raluca Albu

Then, the day was ours. Each artist worked in their studio; I alternated writing at the desk in my bedroom overlooking the farm, writing in the library or at a cafe called Espressions & More in Aurora (population 4,000). At the cafe, I drank delicious coffee, ate homemade sandwiches and met several locals. Here is where I found much inspiration for what I was working on. I wanted to infuse this Nebraska in my work. Hear stories of the humans who lived here.

During my time at Art Farm, I wrote over 15,000 words, ten poems and several letters mailed away. I skinny dipped in a beautiful lake beneath (what felt like) a million stars and called out my spirit animal (elephant) at a bonfire where the planet Venus glowed above us.

I (semi) conquered my fear of heights as I climbed a ladder that went to nowhere (an art installation by a previous resident), played my ukelele on a rooftop and swung from a very high swing shaped like a unicorn, hung in a floating barn.

Here in Nebraska, I found bits of my wild. A wild that had been stifled and punished and hidden for many years. A wild that always got me in trouble. A wild that put me in rehab at nineteen. A wild that knocked me out of relationships. A wild that bullied me back into drugs many many times.

I thought the wild inside me was bad, so I ignored it. Stopped going to parties, talking to strangers, trusting people. But in Nebraska, I was reminded that there is a good wild too. One which reminds me other ways I can celebrate my body, even my nude, in ways that won’t make me feel tarnished and scraped. A wild that reminds me the impact of words and creativity. A wild that encourages real friendships, allowing me to fall in love everyday with the humans around me. A wild that validated my existence.

I’m writing a novel. For years, I would not say this “n” word, for fear of what that meant. I’ve been writing this novel for over eight years. By the end of this summer, I will be done with my first draft.

On my final night at Art Farm, we opened up our studios and went on a creative crawl……viewing everyone’s art, hearing the words of the writers. It was incredible. I presented some of the words I had written during my two weeks, while Laura from Aurora (an enthusiastic local and wonderful human) played guitar.

presenting my work, with accompaniment by Laura from Aurora

I cried while viewing the art of my favorite oil painter called Lindsay. She captured many of the spaces on Art Farm, infusing each painting with the energy one can not see in each room, but it is certainly felt. During my time at Art Farm, Lindsay was the one who kept reminding me the importance of being present. So much of my wild came out because of her.

brilliant oil painter and human, Lindsay Peyton

Art Farm residency woke up so much of me, that I am still trying to articulate. Being back in Brooklyn has been an adjustment. The sky is zipped up in ways I never really noticed before Nebraska land. People move a lot faster here and when they ask you how you’re doing, they do not wait for the answer. I’ve been writing less, but trying not to be too hard on myself. I learned that I may not be that hippie I thought I was, but I am a hybrid of farm skin/city scum/open-road eyes. I’m still not quite sure where I belong or even how to be. But this residency taught me about resilience, facing my fears and the magnitude of trust. What a beautiful, powerful realization.

 

Lindsay, me, Z, and Selina (photo by the wonderful fiction writer and Brooklyn resident, Raluca Albu)

 

 

 

Read more Aimee in meant to wake up feeling 

 

an ode to the flatlands

photo by Raluca Albu

Dear Nebraska,

I coveted your squares. They were unshaky and so green. And brown. And itchy. In New York, I notice the bricks and windows that shield the sky from full-frontal nudity. But your sky was a true nudist.

I inquired about your routine. How you got to be so…flat. I have been pushing myself down for quite awhile now, training my body to be like you (even before I knew you) and when I remove my clothes at night, my curves always come back. How do you keep yourself so smooth, Nebraska?

I wanted to lay in your grassland, but there were the chiggers. And ticks. So I fantasized about your blades of green against my back, tickling my ankles, which I always had covered because….well…..the chiggers & the ticks.

I wanted to tell you that I didn’t think we’d get along, but by the time I left, I wanted to ask if we could be exclusive. I was ready to try monogamy with you. But I never said this because I knew New York would always slip its way into my mind.

I wanted to tell you that I stopped being so afraid of your mites and insects. I stopped fearing heights and loneliness. I gave away some of my secrets. I even let you see me naked. That night in the water with several other planets watching without judgment.

There is still so much I want to say to you. So I write them down and float them toward your flatlands. Toward your birdsongs. Toward the artists.

how to catch a butterfly

I am painting a window pane, which I found on the street many months ago. The time of day is passionately hot and I secretly love the singeing of my skin from the aggressive sun.

Chosen paint colors are turquoise and green like grasshopper or grass stain. I am slow with my strokes, meditating on the spread and merge of hues.

“What are you painting?”

I look up and see a kid who I immediately feel a kinship with because I cannot for the life of me calculate their gender.

“Oh, just this window. I found it awhile back just waiting on a curb to be thrown away.”

“Cool. I love this garden,” they say, referring to the one surrounding me. “I always visit it. Just looking in. But…I never steal.”

“Well, no worries if you do,” I say. “It was planted by one of the tenants here.” I point to the building I’m beside which my partner resides in and I tend to sleep in as well. “Anyway, so much was wasted. So many herbs and vegetables, so if you want to take, you can.” I say this knowing they won’t.

Suddenly, the young one’s attention gets stolen away by butterflies.

“I catch them,” they say. “You know the best way to get one?”

“No,” I answer.

“Grab it from behind. But the white ones…they are the most difficult to catch.”

I watch as this kid slowly remains still, pinches their fingers together over wings and catches one.

“See?”

“Wow,” I say. “Nice job. But…what do you do once you catch them?”

“Put ’em in a jar. I’ve got a few already. Do you have a jar?”

“Uh…” I don’t really want to encourage the enslavement of such beautiful creatures, so I shake my head. “Sorry.”

We chat a little longer. Mostly about butterflies. How they mate. The plants and flowers which they tend to yield to.

I listen. I listen, as I think of a beautiful oil painter in Nebraska who reminded me that so often people swallow their words, living in silence until…until someone warmly rotates their volume to loud or loudER. Some people just really need to be heard.

The young one leaves and I continue painting. My skin drips into a pile of early summer sweat below me. I want to splash in my perspiration but instead, pick up my window, which has rapidly dried from the sun, head upstairs and write.

 

how to find (your) wild

Dear Art Farm,

Here in Nebraska, the ticks confuse beauty marks, but humans grow closer through each inspection of skin and lift of cotton and hair.

In Nebraska, mosquitoes engage in foreplay. Ignore signs of disinterest (bug spray and swatting) and stick to skin until until    until    penetration

Here in Nebraska, a poet falls in love with a band saw, meditates on the circular movements of electric sander.

In Nebraska, the stars wallpaper the sky.

Here in Nebraska, mice collaborate with an oil painter through midnight parade of paws on paper

In Nebraska, happy hour is whenever one calls on it, as wine drips onto tongues, slow and tired from farmed imaginations.

In Nebraska, the poet’s body (shy coward in the city) digs itself out of clothes and skinny dips in a lake. Breaks up with binder, pressing down gender of flesh just for a moment in order to free the wild within.

In Nebraska, shovels become totems. Holes are dug to remind the humans how deep this earth goes. To remind the humans how trees begin.

In Nebraska, raccoons replace house pets. So do spiders, wingless flies and mice sneezing on cayenne pepper.

In Nebraska, artists & writers find themselves as they find each other.

In Nebraska, stories are pressed into palms and given away over cups of coffee and long drives from one town to another.

In Nebraska, we become the wild life. We become wild. We become. We become. Free.

fear of / no longer fearing

Sometimes we need to say yes in order to remember that we can. That fear is just a stamp we can remove because perhaps the postage has expired. Perhaps fear is just a word now, with all the meaning thinned out and ghostly.

How long have you been haunted by STOP signs and hiding places.

On a sunday in june, you put on your rain boots to walk in the tall grass, which hides tiny mites which crawl beneath skin. Yesterday, this fear would have kept you inside.

On this sunday in june, you walk with a group of artists into an open field where somebody one day built a ladder going to nowhere, rooted into the ground with concrete and soil. And on this sunday, you slowly ascend with eyes gazing forward. With each climb, you think of yoko ono. Her curled staircase twisted and trembled. But even then, on that thursday in may, you traveled. Up and past fear.

Also, on this sunday in june, you swing from a carved unicorn hanging from a barn, floating without ground. High up, you swing. Thin, pointed horn made of wood between your legs, which you stroke and remember.

On this sunday, you say yes and forget about what frightens you. You take off all your clothes and rub your scars into nebraska. You kiss the wind with your toes. You remember how to be alive. Like this.

how skinny is your swim…

dipping skinny         

          venus spotlight

 

 two billion ways to

         locate stars

 

limbs fly through water

        : propellers of flesh strokes

 

lips

        singed from mosquito wings

 

soft water dried from ember

         flight of bonfire spirit animals

 

moon light too shy

         to compete with planets

 

but if it were to slide

         into view

 

its gleam would stop

          on breasts, milky drips

 

terrible swimmers, but 

         floating

 

nipples like hooks digging in

         to tread the rest along

 

some body that i used to know

This has been the longest relationship I have ever been in. I can celebrate over three decades of this partnership; yet, I’m still trying to come to terms with what we actually have in common. In the morning in my nude, I am reminded by what I have. I am not haunted by all of it. In fact, there are some parts to my body that make me want to take it out to dinner and forego sleep in order to get to know it even better.

We’ve slept beside each other every night for over thirty years. We’ve been joined by another, though these were the times I lost track of its shift. You see, bodies never remain static. They shift in shape and desire. Sometimes, our bodies get loud enough in this displacement that alteration of clothes or vocabulary are not enough.

Initially, when we meet someone, there tends to be that immediate attraction that either let’s you know this is a possible friend or future love interest. Then, there are the ones we meet that remind us to keep walking. We cannot be expected to get along with everybody. When things don’t work out with someone you love, you break up. When things don’t work out with your body, it is far more difficult to walk away.

Recently, I was trying to explain my relationship with my body to my dad. He has seen me poke holes through various piercings, distract my skin in ink with tattoos, and alter my appearance with hair color and wardrobe. He wanted to know why I’ve been so afraid of the word, pretty. I stood beside him in silence trying to understand why he thought this and if he is right. Why might I be fearful of this simple word?

Beyond this adjective, I think about the parts of me that might attract such a word. Often, I am approached due to the boldness of my hair: knotty, red curls. My responses range from thank you to complete silence. Perhaps I shun this word because I prefer that my intellect and poems get approached, rather than the curvature in my hips or the flames in my hair.

As I officially slide into my mid-thirties, I recognize that I have been cheating on my body. I think of other bodies when we are together. At night, when it is just us in bed, if I am not too tired to be intimate with myself, I imagine my shape as something else. Not quite male, but not exactly female either. How to describe this?

Over five months ago, I started wearing a binder. There are many different versions to choose from, but the one I purchased is kind of like an extremely form-fitting tank top, that flattens my breasts and slurs away my curves. I’ve worn sports bras that have a similar effect, but I wanted something that completely smoothes them out. In addition, I have acquired a few more of various lengths and fittings.

My relationship with my breasts has been tumultuous like most love affairs. I desperately wanted them and then once they finally arrived, I eventually wanted nothing to do with them. Over the years, this detachment has grown more and more. Wearing this binder has been an experiment; I wanted to see if it would help the way I viewed my body. Now, I notice the way my button-down shirts, held captive by double-windsor tie and vest fit so smoothly over my paved chest.

Recently, a complete stranger called me handsome. When I was called this, I thought: perhaps this is how I am expected to feel when I am called pretty. Funny how letters pressed together have so much significance to us.

Here comes the possibly confusing part: I do not desire to be male and I do not view myself as transgender. If I must label, though I prefer not to, I see myself as gender non-conforming, genderqueer, and transgressing though consonants (M/F).  

When I was fifteen years old, I started treating my body like a tree. I began carving my way in and through my skin, searching for a way out. I soon learned this behavior was called cutting and I also learned I was not the only one. Many years went by and the wounds healed, replaced by scars. As I made my way through adolescence and into young adulthood, reactions from lovers and strangers ranged from looks of pity to obscenely rude accusations and questioning.

Summertime in New Jersey at nineteen. I am filling up my green car, scratched up just like me, and as I pay the guy, he says: Yo, what happened to your arms? Why they all marked up? At an open mic at twenty-seven. A young poet approaches me after exchanging no other words with me throughout the night, grabs my left forearm and says: These markings are so beautiful. Were they part of an art project or performance?

In the beginnings of these self-induced hieroglyphics, my mom suggested vitamin E and other scar-reducing creams. I got angry with her, though now understand that she just wanted to make it easier on me. Humans have a difficult time with scars. They immediately want to know how they got there and then they want to know if there is a chance more might arrive (depending upon circumstance).

I refused the cream because a large part of me wanted to be reminded of these markings and these years of sorrow inside my body. I am no longer a cutter, though have relapsed a few times in recent years. When I look down at my arms and the few ghostly markings on my hips, I think of these lines as words. What was I trying to tell myself? I want to believe that I was digging my way out and toward the innards of not only my gender but the core of my self.

How true is this body? What will it take to fall back in love with it? Have we ever been in love or has it been like an arranged marriage? Would I choose it if I could?

If we all came with our own airbrush machines that the fancy fashion photographers clearly use, I wonder what parts we’d compress away or enhance. Would I leave my scars alone? Would I flatten my breasts out permanently? Would I leave my dimples, otherwise known as skin deformities? How about dead-ends left on every strand of my hair due to forgotten haircuts? Would I want my thin lips to be fuller and my collarbone to be bonier and more dramatic?

We exist in these bodies that grow and shift in ways we accept and in ways that can be deeply confusing and even painful. Some things can be controlled. If that extra weight on your belly overwhelms you, then a few months at the local gym or daily sit-ups may flatten it away. If the skin on your face sags in a way that disturbs your ability to feel pretty, you may choose a face-lift. What isn’t big enough, you can now make bigger. What is not small enough, you can pay someone to take away entirely. No one can really say what isn’t necessary, because no one is inside anyone else’s body but their own.

It’s not that I want to break up with my body. We’ve been through so much that I feel like no one else could possibly understand me in the way that it does.

It survived that faint from the deeply traumatic panic attack at age twenty-seven that left me with several cracked teeth, a scratched up face and nine stitches. It survived mental illness and more suicide attempts than I could possibly keep track of. It survived drug addiction. Deep into the night, it has begged me to remain. My body has allowed me to orgasm even when shadows of sexual trauma have crept its way in. My body has given me more love affairs than one should be warranted in a lifetime. My body has remained even after all the walk-outs (my self included).

However, even after all these years, there are still times like now, where I feel like we are still getting to know each other. I no longer wear dresses or bras with a clasp in the back. I prefer much simpler attire. Sometimes I have to remind it that what I wore last year may no longer feel right against my skin. So, we must unhang, fold and give away what no longer matches how I/we feel inside. It is not too late.

I want to give myself time with this binder just as I gave myself decades in these scars. I’ve learned to come to terms with the discoloration of skin on my body: war wounds from the battle between my body and me. This disconnection I have with my breasts may not be flattened away with assortment  of binders. I may need to move forward and make a more permanent choice. My fear of telling others obviously ends here.

The need to speak out has been modeled to me each time I hear a poem or read a story that moved me enough to write or speak up. We all have these bodies that encapsulate all these stories. If we continue to speak up, more languages will form. More and more humans are realizing that they’ve been living in the wrong body and finding ways to rebirth themselves into their truest form. There is absolutely nothing more powerful than that.

 

(Thank you, Imogen Binnie for breaking my mind open with your transferring language, relocating my thoughts in so many directions with your incredible book: Nebraska. Other gender warriors: Ivan E. Coyote, Dhillon Khosla, Carter Dyer, Kate Bornstein, Tahrah, S Bear Bergman, Dylan Scholinski and the list continues)