One day, I was exploring my town with my camera. I found an alley sitting behind a row of store and I took pictures as the day passed. Today, I look at these pictures and I think about the things that I did not consider while taking them. What is behind the closed doors? How does the difference of an hour change the way a place looks and feels?
A few blocks from my house, there is a historic cemetery, one that is over 150 years old. It is surrounded by a fence. Behind it, there is a bus station. Across the street from it, there is a gymnastics center and several warehouses. Other than the fence and the gravestones, there are no markings and I think most people drive by without ever noticing it.
I first noticed it one day while I was driving to the library. I came back later with my camera and I took some pictures. At first, it was difficult to concentrate with the sound of traffic in the background but the longer I spent standing outside the gates of the cemetery, the less I heard of the traffic.
Later, I learned that the people buried in this cemetery were among the first to build a town on this land. Without these people, who came from across the country, these roads and warehouses and the new gymnastics center would have never had a place to be built.
As I left, I saw an American flag raising over a nearby used car lot. I made sure to get a picture before I went home.
I don’t believe in ghosts but I may have seen one when I was 18.
It was the summer after I graduated high school and I was in Italy, discovering what the world outside of both high school and America looked like. That night, my sisters and I were staying at a hotel in Rome. I had a room to myself. The Vatican was nearby. At two o’clock in the morning, I could still hear the sound of motor scooters roaring past on the streets below my window. I naturally wanted to go outside and see what was happening but I had promised my sisters that I would not leave the hotel and wander around Rome late at night. As they pointed out, I didn’t speak Italian so, if I got lost or into any sort of trouble, there would be no way for me to ask for help. As well, we were visiting the Vatican tomorrow morning. I didn’t have to sleep, they knew better than to ask me to do that. But I did need to stay in the hotel.
So, I took a shower, I put on my usual late night outfit of a t-shirt and underwear, and I lay in bed and I listened to the scooters outside. When I got bored with the scooters, I turned on the TV and I watched an episode of an American soap opera that had been dubbed into Italian. I could follow the plot just fine and I found myself wondering if maybe my sisters had been exaggerating the language difference.
Finally, I decided that, even if I couldn’t go outside, there was no reason why I couldn’t step outside of my room and walk up and down the hotel hallway. It would give me a chance to stretch my legs and work off my restlessness. Plus, it was two in the morning. Every other guest at the hotel was probably asleep. I’d have the hallway to myself.
I stood up and walked over to the door of my hotel room. As I approached, I felt a chill in the air and I shivered a bit. At the time, I didn’t think much of it, figuring it was due to me being underdressed and that maybe there was just a random cold spot in the room. I put my hand on the door knob, turned it, and slowly opened my door.
There was a woman standing directly across the hall from my room. She appeared to be in her forties, short and slightly heavy-set with long, jet black hair. She was wearing a shapeless brown dress and her dark eyes narrowed at the sight of me. What I immediately noticed about her was that her skin was an ashen gray.
I stared at her for a few seconds, not knowing what to say but fully aware that she was glaring at me.
Slowly, she asked, in perfect English that carried not a trace of an accent, “What are you doing here?”
I still didn’t know what to say.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!?” she snapped.
I tried to say something but the words wouldn’t come.
“I OWN THIS HOTEL!” she yelled, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!?”
She started to move towards my room. I slammed the door shut and locked it.
I stood there for what seemed to be an eternity, listening for her. I was expecting her to start pounding on the door and screaming at me to come out but she didn’t. Instead, after I shut the door, I didn’t hear anything in the hallway. I didn’t hear her breathing. I didn’t hear her walking away. I didn’t hear anything.
Finally, after what seemed like an hour but was probably just a few minutes, I open the door a crack and peeked outside. The hallway was empty. The woman, whoever she had been, was gone. Still, I wasn’t going to take a risk. I closed the door again, got back in bed, and I didn’t get out of bed until the next morning.
When I asked my sisters if they had seen the woman, they had no idea who I was talking about. They hadn’t any seen any woman fitting the description at the hotel. They told me that I should have called them or the front desk for help and they were probably right but, at that moment, I had been too frightened to do anything. I had seen enough horror movies to know that calling for help was usually the least effective thing you could do when confronted by a maniac. It was my sister Erin who told me that the woman was probably a ghost, maybe the former owner of hotel demanding to know why I was in her home at two in the morning. Maybe she was. I don’t believe in ghosts but if I ever did see one, it was probably her.
This nature trail is located a few miles away from my house. When the weather is just right, I like to go down there and walk along the path and just enjoy the peace and beauty of nature.
What many people do not know, even those who visit the park on a daily basis, is that if you take a step off the nature trail and follow an overgrown path through the trees, you can find a historic cemetery that has sat in the park since the town was founded in the 1850s.
It’s rare that I visit the nature trail without also visiting the cemetery. It’s a reminder of the people who were here before me and who lived on this land before it became a park where people jog, ride their bicycles, and look at their phones when they should be looking at the world around them.
One evening, four years ago, I went for a walk around the neighborhood. Two blocks away from the house, I saw that something that I hadn’t seen before.
This run-down RV was parked against the curb.
The closer I got, the more obvious it was that the RV had seen better days. The tires were flat. The windows were broken. Though the picture above may be blurry, you can see that some of the back paneling was forcefully removed from the vehicle.
The front of the RV was not much better. The hole in the windshield was probably made by a rock many years previously and I wondered who had thrown it and why. The orange ticket was a notice that the RV would be towed if it wasn’t moved but I knew that the RV had only been sitting on the side of the street for an hour or two so I wondered when the ticket had been taped to the glass. The ticket itself was from the city but the line for the date had been left blank. The license plate said “Go By By.” Someone had once probably loved traveling in this RV.
Because the side door was missing, I took a peek inside.
I didn’t go inside, though.
The next morning, I went outside to check on the RV and it was gone. I guess the city towed it away but I didn’t notice any tow trucks in the area the night before. Ever since that evening, I’ve wondered who owned the RV and why it ended up parked off the side of the road.
Some days, you are lucky enough to wake up and discover that your entire neighborhood has changed over night. Though it looks like snow, it’s actually just sleet and ice. The roads are slippery enough to justify staying home today. I still went outside and snapped a few pictures. Outside, it was very cold, very still, and very quiet.
Some days, you are lucky enough to wake up and discover that that your entire neighborhood is covered in a photogenic fog. Around seven in the morning, I decided to take a quick walk around the block and snap a few pictures.
His name was Zac and, for a few weeks during my freshman year of college, I thought that I might be very deeply in love with him. He was a tall, muscular 23 year-old with thick blonde hair that fell clumsily down to his shoulders. His face wasn’t really handsome. The sight of his pink lips surrounded by his messy blonde beard always left me wanting to buy him a razor. I often told myself that, whenever we had grown close enough, I would talk him into shaving his beard and revealing his true face, scars and all. I assumed he had scars though, in retrospect, I guess the beard could have just been there to try to disguise the fact that he actually had the face of a 12 year-old.
Zac wasn’t handsome but that was his appeal. I was 19. I was away from home for the first time and I was desperately trying to not to let anyone see just how scary that was for me. I’d already given the socially acceptable, alcoholic frat boys a try. I’d had my flirtations with the painfully sensitive types who wore their hearts on their sleeves and cried whenever I said I didn’t see myself getting married before I was legally old enough to drink. I’d had the fantasy men. Now, I was ready for a real man and I was convinced that reality was hiding underneath Zac’s grotesque mask of a beard.
I sat directly behind him in Intro. To Creative Writing and the first day of class, I sat there and I stared at the blonde hair cascading down over his shoulders. Over the winter break, I’d had a very brief fling with an aspiring screenwriter who, even at the age of 20, already had a bald spot. It had reminded me of the importance of a thick head of hair and, if nothing else, Zac had that.
The first day of class, each student took a turn going up to the front of the room, sitting on top of the teacher’s desk, and telling the class who we were and what we hoped to express with our writing. When Zac was had his turn, he told us that Jack Kerouac was a major influence on his life and that “No one is going to tell me how to write!” His nostrils flared as he spoke. When my name was called, I briefly stopped fantasizing about running my hands through the thick head of hair in front of me and I went up to the front of the room. I hopped up on the desk and I immediately mentioned that my ancestors came from Ireland, Italy, and Spain. No one appeared to be impressed by that unique combination. I said that I was a city girl with a lot of country inside of me. I paused and waited for a reaction that did not come. In my usual rambling manner, I continued to go on about myself. I was already feeling awkward and it didn’t help that it was obvious that, despite my best efforts to be cute in a flighty way, none of my fellow classmates were really listening to a word I had to say. Some were talking amongst themselves, some were looking over the class syllabus, and a few were just staring blankly at the wall behind me.
No one was paying attention to me. No one was looking at me as I spoke.
Except for Zac. As I rambled through my introduction, Zac never stopped looking at me and soon, I felt as if I was talking to him and him only. Of course, looking back, I also remember that I was wearing a short black skirt on that day and Zac wasn’t quite looking me in the eye. In retrospect, it’s probably a lot more realistic to assume that Zac was more fascinated by the color of my panties than anything I had to say about myself. If I remember correctly, they were hot pink. I always made it a point to wear colorful underwear whenever I was otherwise dressed in all black. It was my way of embracing the duality of nature.
But, on that day and at that moment, I wasn’t thinking about the duality of anything. All that mattered was that he paid attention to me and after that one class period, I decided I was in love with him.
As the semester continued, I would look forward to every Tuesday and Thursday because I knew I’d get to sit behind Zac and stare at his lion’s mane of blonde hair. Some days, he was very talkative in class as he would tell us why another student’s story was or wasn’t honest. Other days, he would sit in a sullen silence and I would wonder what inner darkness he was wrestling with. As the days passed, I wondered when he would finally read us something he had written. What mysteries would be revealed when he finally opened his soul.
One day, he came into class, turned around in his chair to face me, and held up a thick bundle of papers.
“I wrote this last night,” he said.
“Are you going to read it?” I asked, trying to hide my near-giddy excitement.
“No,” he replied before suddenly ripping the pages in half, “a true artist has to be willing to destroy what he creates.”
I sat there, shocked. I wondered if I would have the courage to be a true artist. I wondered if Zac would ever trust me enough to let me know what he had just destroyed. Yes, I decided, he would trust me. If I had to, I would spend the rest of the semester earning that trust.
Unfortunately, at our next class, Zac did read us the story he had previously “destroyed.” It was about an angry, rebellious, bearded 23 year-old who, one night, spotted a dead dog in the middle of the road and it caused him to reconsider everything that he felt he knew about his girlfriend, his friends, and the father who never understood why his son didn’t want to take over the family hardware store. It was a long, angry narrative about crushed idealism, spiritual ennui, and lots of profanity. The main character had a habit of responding to every comment with an angry one-liner and no one could ever refute his arguments, which I guess is the advantage of writing about yourself. It included a lengthy sex scene between Zac’s doppelganger and a high school cheerleader who was secretly fed up with being popular and I had to swallow a giggle when Zach hit the line, “His hands found her breasts,” as if they had previously gone missing. In short, it was really, really bad.
That was pretty much the end of things for me and Zac. The beard, the intensity, the self-righteous anger; it was all kind of annoying without any talent to go with it. Still, it was a good few weeks.
Zac read a few more stories over the course of that semester, all of which were about the same angry and profane 23 year-old who didn’t get along with his Dad and who spent his time “telling it like it is.” Usually, I zoned out whenever he was reading. Occasionally, he would still talk to me about his artistic insights and I would nod and smile without actually hearing what he was saying. He mentioned Keroauc a lot but I couldn’t help but get the feeling that Zac would have been one of the fans that Keroauc complained about in Big Sur, always dropping by unannounced and demanding to know if Kerouac had written anything else about Dean and Sal. About halfway through the semester, I think Zac finally figured out that I was bored with him because his stare became a bit less intense. I caught him rolling his eyes once as I read a story about an angry 19 year-old who always knew the perfect thing to say and who spent a lot of time considering the duality of nature. After the end of the semester, he disappeared from campus. Whether he graduated or dropped out or transferred somewhere else, no one knew. Actually, to be honest, no one cared.
I do sometimes wonder what happened to Zac. Is he still writing or did he eventually take over the family hardware store? And did he ever shave that ridiculous beard?
I met My Dolphin 15 years ago. It was Christmas Day at Kitty Hawk. I didn’t have any kids yet and the presents were done. I was not hungover; those sorts of mornings happened later. It was a nice Christmas; in contrast to my Christmases growing up- they were very scary because of my Old Man. He would try to stay out of his cups for some holidays and that was always much much worse. I remember wishing that he would just drink and get it over with. Christmas Day back in those days were like distilled fear; I’d get smacked around and go for long walks in Virginia until late afternoon broke and my Old Man’s no drinking pledge would subside.
I was older now, but I still got anxious Christmas morning and liked to go for those walks alone. I needed to feel that wind . . . that cold December wind brace against my cheeks. On Christmas, Kitty Hawk has grey skies and bitter salty winds in beautiful abundance. I liked the way the wind smacked me around safely.
I left the beach house front door, shut it smartly, and remembered to lock it and check it. You can’t trust locks and doors at the Outer Banks the rust and decay is ubiquitous and the salt blows through everything like alpha particles clumsily meandering in space toward wherever they want to go. My shoes made that scraping sound where the salt and sand and shoes come together. I turned and looked ahead to the Dunes that I’d crossed thousands of times. There’s always these openings along the beach road that takes you along the length of island, until the next bridge, and the next barrier island and the next and the next. I always entered to the left entrance where it’s filled with countless footprints no matter what time of day; the wooden entrances just don’t have the same feel. I always looked both ways first, not for cars but to see just how empty it was both along the left and right. I went up and down the Dune entrance, seeing the ocean with that green color it has.
I was about to exhale, but then I heard the screams.
I saw a man trying to pull a beached dolphin back into the ocean. It was low tide and he would be pulling and then the dolphin would roll back to shore. Then, I was upon the man and breathing deeply. I had run at a sprint without thinking. The Man was skinny and no older than 30 with a full beard with beat up jeans and a wool sweater. He grabbed me and had tears in his eyes.
“Help!” “I can’t get him in! I already called emergency marine life, but they’re not answering.”
I grabbed the rear fin – (assume that what it’s called), the man grabbed around his center, and we dragged the dolphin towards the water. We were losing our footing. I remember digging against the wet sand, pulling as hard as we all could. His skin was rubbery, but rough from the sand. He tried to help us by bucking to get back into the sea. His blood was on my hands and washed away. With a pull of all of our strength, the Man, the dolphin, and I fell into the mini-shelf where ocean, sand, and pebbles met. The waves would hit and push us all back. This pattern went on ’til our hands were numb and our clothes were heavy and soaked. Every step was like fighting through foot deep wet snow. Finally, the three of us were exhausted.
I pulled the dolphin to the beach by myself; the Man told me that he was going for help, but we knew he wasn’t coming back because he couldn’t meet our eyes. I hugged My Dolphin and looked into his eyes- they had clear awareness and thought; that’s when I knew that for the first time in my life that I was going to have to help a person die.
My Dolphin was so scared. He wasn’t bucking or squirming anymore; we were too tired for that. He was in my arms and looked at me pleadingly. I shook my head, held my tears in, and told My Dolphin- “You’re gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay.”
He sighed, looked away for a moment at the sea, and looked back at me- calmly. His eyes were telling me that it was going to be okay. My Dolphin died in my arms. Then, I let myself weep.
I’m sure that he had a name among his family, but I’ve always called him My Dolphin that is who he is and will remain to me. We all die, but My Dolphin passed in the arms of another person who loved him. We were gonna be okay…. we were gonna be okay.
