The fallacy of alone time - #98

The myth, the miracle.

I love being alone. I love being in my own company and operating at my own ease. I love meandering through the day responding to my whims and my whims alone, so when Ben leaves to go into the backcountry, I get excited! It’s gremlin time, baby! Do I want to do this assignment in bed at 6am? Sure! Do I want to take a midday bath? I do! Shall I play not one, not two, but three of Celine Dion’s greatest albums in a row? I shall indeed. Being alone is utterly luxurious; a time to relish in your best worst habits and run your days exactly as you see fit.

Except this is a fallacy. Had I woken up on Thursday morning and done exactly what I wanted, it would have gone like this: 

Wake up at dawn, before the sun is over the mountains. The house still smells of the palo santo I burned at bedtime. The pets are sleeping sweetly around me, and I rise without disturbing them. I take the kettle into the sink, and fill it for the morning’s coffee. While it heats, I sit at the table to pull a Tarot card, and then begin my morning pages. The writing comes swiftly, and I’ve already scribbled a page when the water reaches a boil. I pause to make coffee, turning on some music to set the day’s mood. I hear Cooper trot from the bedroom, so I take a moment to give him his medicine. He takes it, happily, and then I take him out onto the patio and then let him outside. The cats appear on the patio, rubbing against my legs before taking their perches to look at the birds. I go back inside, my coffee is ready, and I am back at my pages as music wafts through the air and the sun begins to pour into the valley.

Instead, it went like this:

I wake up at 7:30, tired, because the pets woke me up three times last night. Each of them is curled up in the bed, looking curiously guilty. I swing my feet out onto the floor and feel why. One foot is resting in a pile of mostly dried vomit (Cooper), and one is on a dead mouse (Finn). I don’t know why Banzet has that look on his face, but I’m sure I’ll find out. I go to the kitchen to get a paper towel and it smells out here. It smells bad. I have an inkling what it is, but I have to deal with the mouse and the vomit first. I use the paper towel to pick up the dead mouse that’s propped against the pillow I always throw on the floor at night, and I whip the dead outside into the field for someone’s breakfast. Then I use the same paper towel to clean up the vomit. I go to throw the paper towel away in the bathroom where I catch a glimpse of myself: both of my eyelids are noticeably swollen without noticeable cause. Great. I head to the kitchen to wash my hands and fill the kettle. Oh right. I forgot I put this plant in the sink because yesterday, when trying to hunt down a strange smell, I found Cooper had peed by the plants and one of the terracotta planters had soaked it up. I need to repot this plant. I fill the kettle around the pot. Wait. That’s what the smell is. It smells like pee again and… something else. 

I get down on my hands and knees and begin hound-dogging for evidence. There’s a large puddle on the tile by the front windows between the electric water fountain and several of the larger plants. That’s… too much for pee. I get down to smell it. It is dog pee, definitely cat spray, and upon lifting the fountain, find the fountain bottom has begun corroding and it is leaking. I take the fountain to the sink, but the pee-soaked plant is in it, so I just dump the remaining water on the plant, then throw the fountain out. It had been having mechanical failures for weeks so whatever, fine, I am mad and it can’t be saved. 

I go back to the wet tiles with a roll of paper towels and cleaning supplies. Banzet runs through the wet puddle. I run after Banzet. Running after Banzet triggers Cooper who runs after both of us. The excitement of running after us causes Cooper to vomit — again. But post-vomit is the best time to give him his medicine, so I give up on Banzet, and go get the wet cat food required to get Cooper (a dog) to take his medicine. I smear the first pill in hunks of cat pâté and hold the chunk out to Cooper. He rejects it. I pry his jaw open, shove the mound in the back, and then he asks for more. Sure buddy. I turn around to scoop more cat food out of the tin on the counter, but now Banzet is up there eating straight from the tin with his dirty paws. I carry Banzet immediately to the bathroom sink where there isn’t a pee-soaked planter and rinse his paws. He is not happy about it. I catch a glimpse of my reflection. What the fuck is happening with my eyes?

I leave him in the bathroom and go back to give Cooper his last pill. God it stinks in here. I go back to the tiles and start spraying the ground only to find the pee has crept along the grout-lines to under the heater. I take a breath big enough to swallow the ocean, and keep scrubbing. I scrub the floor for maybe 20 minutes before remembering the kettle, which I turn back on. The cats are both screaming now, and I can still fucking smell something. I get back on the floor and follow my nose to the front hall where I find it: Banzet has sprayed Cooper’s rain coat and Ben’s climbing shoes. I check the rest of the shoes, finding Banzet has also sprayed on one of Ben’s boots, and then I move all of Ben’s unsprayed shoes to his closet and shut the door. I carry the sprayed shoes to the slop sink downstairs, then go back upstairs for the rain coat. I remember my pillow — and that there had been a dead mouse on it not even 40 minutes before this, so I go into the bedroom to take the pillowcase off to wash it in Dawn with Cooper’s coat. I go back downstairs and hear the kettle go off. I start the laundry, go back upstairs, get the cleaning supplies to clean the front hall of cat spray smell. This takes another 15 minutes, and then I light the sage, the palo santo, and the incense. I go to the bathroom to wash my hands and see that my eyelids are now only what someone might call engorged. I don’t have time to worry about this because the smell still lingers and I realize of course: it’s the piss soaked terracotta planter in the sink. So I carry that outside, go into the garage to find another pot, repot the plant, bring it back inside to water it, and then I turn the kettle on for the six thousandth time. My phone pings. I have a meeting in five minutes. I think about burning down the house, but then pour myself a glass of water, put on my bluelight blocking glasses that truly do not do anything but act as an obstruction to showing everyone my extremely swollen eyes, and head upstairs to sit in front of my computer, all three pets trailing behind me, asking for various things. 

When people say “just drink the champagne” I think of moments, or pileups of moments, like these. There hasn’t been a single morning in the week I’ve been home alone that hasn’t started with cat spray, dog piss, someone’s vomit, or a dead animal. My dream morning has not come to be once. I am still catching whiffs of foul scents that I can’t track down. It feels like it is haunting me. And it may very well be that it’s simply locked into the wood floors, the grout, and the terracotta tiles, but when I am not tired, I will try harder. We will do a deodorizing wash. We will slather the floor with baking soda. We will do something, but it will be a we because I cannot fathom cleaning any more animal fluids by myself. 

There was joy, though, to this alone time. It might not have gone exactly as planned, but I am writing this in a bathrobe with a plate of chicken tenders next to me, luxuriating in the sleaziest way I know how. So in honor of it not being a total loss, here are the little moments that delighted me this week:

The Sunset

When there’s no one to hang out with but the dog, you hang out with the dog. Of course you hang out with the dog when there are other people around, but typically with people you plan dinner. You pick a show. You talk about your days. Then you say hey, should we walk the dog? Without all that pretense, you just walk the dog. So I’ve been walking the dog.

If you stay low in the valley, there are lots of places to take the dog. You can go on the yurt trail through the woods. You can go a little up the pass to watch the beavers work on their dams. You can head down to the creek to walk the river trail — the one covered in moss and shoulder-high pines or the one that weaves through the woods like a race track. You can traverse the avalanche field to amble by the singular ponderosa, or by the broken zip-line, or up to the sweat lodge. You can draw squares through the grid-work of the houses. Or you can just let the dog bushwhack and see where he goes.

We took a different route this time, a route I took last year when my grandmother died down a trail no one uses to a tailings pile long buried along a stream with no bridges. Fire scorched through her a few months ago, and Cooper and I investigated the burns before carrying along toward the creek. Then, through the trees, we saw a doe and her fawn, picking through the brush toward the creek. We followed quietly behind until they trotted down the embankment and up the other side. 

I made my way to the edge and saw below two fallen aspens laid across the creek, side by side, and then the flutter of fabric in the trees across the creek. A bridge, a camp, and a quiet exit. The sky beckoned us back toward town as “god rays” shot through the trees like spotlights. The clouds were turning quickly, a mood ring in the summer ambience, and we ran after the pink light before cresting the hill. A sunset kissing the valley below. They’re rare here, sunsets. The sun has long fallen over the ridge line, saving its colors for the mesas beyond, but for a rare week of the year, it sets directly in the dip of the valley and sends its sweetest goodnight. 

We stood there, side by side, paw to foot, and watched the day turn to night.

Sweet glory.

The Wind Chime

Behind the cabin is a shed of sorts, the sort being the kind with just three walls, only big enough for maybe two full-size goats to stand shoulder to shoulder. Around it and in it is detritus: ladders, pallets, tires, rustic spindles for both the interior and exterior railings, and various other pieces of things. A month ago, Ben and I were attempting to sort this area, doing our best to make it look tidy, or at the very least, tidier. Buried under one of the pallets, I found a short metal tube, then another one, and another one, until I’d unearthed the components of an old wind chime. 

The top piece made of beaten wood was broken in half, only three of the aluminum tubes still attached to it. The nylon thread was worn bare, and the rest of the tubes were scattered about. After a little digging, I found all six tubes.

Progress was slow from there. I moved the tubes to the front stoop for a week or two. Then into the front hall. Then onto the kitchen counter. Then finally said to Ben, “I need you to make something.” He made, to his best approximation, a replica of the old topper — a sort of hammered wood circle, and I told him I would do the rest. 

This week, after my assignments were complete, I found myself in the wood shop with a drill. I used a brace to hold the circular topper against the workbench, and then a narrow rotary drill bit to create six holes. As I bore each hole, smoke wrapped around the drill bit from the wood, wafting a campfire aroma through the shop. With my six holes in place, I did the tedious work of stringing on the aluminum tubes. I didn’t do a great job. But I did a job. 

Because it’s so windy here, I didn’t need a clapper (the disc that hangs between the tubes) or a windcatcher (the piece that hangs below the tubes to catch the wind, sending the clapper into the tubes.) Here she is:

A wind song.

A bit stringy and off-center, but no longer laying in the dirt behind the house. In the summer, the door to the patio is often left open, and now you catch the subtle clang of the aluminum in the wind. It feels like it’s always been here. It reminds me of barns and Twister and humid midwestern afternoons. It reminds me of this house’s history, like letting someone else’s memories breathe again.

A wind chime, the kind with the bigger aluminum clangs instead of chimes. Its sound always a little foreboding, carrying the heavy reality of storms on the horizon. It makes me feel alive.

The Milky Way

Cooper’s been peeing in the kitchen. Part of his life-returning meds include a diuretic, and he’s drinking and boy is he peeing. But Cooper is afraid of the night. He knows he’s a small animal. He knows outside there are animals who aren’t. So when Cooper has to pee in the middle of the night, he doesn’t tell anyone. He simply gets out of bed, heads to the kitchen, and pees where he pleases. In an effort to prevent kitchen pees, we’ve been walking later and later, until finally we walk so late that any shred of the day is long since left to the calendar and we are cloaked in darkness. The only guidance reflects off the ground from the little red light attached to Cooper’s harness. He follows the crunch of my footsteps and I follow the alien light bobbing beneath him.

One night we stepped into the darkness and saw a cloud over the ridge line in the dark of night and gasped. Maybe he didn’t, but I did. There was the galaxy, all around us, in her watercolor glory smeared like a condiment across the sky. 80% of Americans never see the Milky Way because of light pollution. They see street lights and box store signs, the metro glow. They do not see how absolutely tiny they are. They see a green light and they just keep going. 

It’s not that seeing the galaxy is rare here — it isn’t. When the full moon retreats and the clouds clear, she’ll be there. It’s just that I like going to bed at 9:30. But as Cooper gets older and older, we go out later and later. The sky does her best; a darkness in life can be salved by a darkness at night.

God she’s pretty.

We stood in the middle of the dirt road, his nose to the ground, my eyes to the sky, in awe of all there is left to take in. 

When we came inside, I lit the palo santo, I put on the Celine Dion, and I laid down on the cleanest part of the floor as the pets, one by one, curled up next to me.