The Route to Texas: Ruston

Ruston, Louisiana:

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." -Martin Buber

Ruston never crossed my mind.
I hadn't even heard of the place until Rae Danielle told me she lived there
and not only did she live there, but 'there' was on the way to where I was headed.
Heck yes, I'd grab a coffee
and then end up staying for an all-night laptop-karaoke situation and eventual two day stint at Rae's.
Cheers to Facebook for connecting the dots to her doorstep.

Rae shredding a karaoke chorus in her living room. 

I met Rae in the heat of the Nantahala summer
with a sunburnt nose and a set of markers to play with, we colored.
We had a grand song-filled, selfie-stick sort of sunny season, her and I.
Now, Rae lived with her long-time friend Lauren in her 22K-populated home town.
Ruston's only interesting feature, so far as I was concerned, was Rae.

Her summertime grin remained even through winter and I wondered if mine did as well.
I lost my freckles, gained a degree. Lost my best friend, picked a map and left.
It was winter, and I didn't feel the same.
Yet summer burned in her and we sat by the fire-place, missing all the nonexistent events happening in her town.

The two-day pause helped catch me up with my sanity- I was growing tired of leaving cities the moment I remembered street names.
Yet to Tyler's roses I had to roam.
(After, of course, I wrote little affirmations on chocolate boxes and hid them around town.
It seemed fitting, chocolates and roses.)

Tyler, Tx:

With exceptional enthusiasm, I drove two hours with high hopes of smelling rosebuds. 

Kelsey Blue, being the florist she was, got a huge kick out of grand gardening.
This stop of all stops seemed obvious for her list.

What I hadn't considered was the season -winter.

I pulled into the empty garden parking lot and figured I'd come too early.

The 14-acre garden must not open until later.

But open it was, open and stranded and flowerless and unfortunate. 

In photos, proof of extravagant colors seemed more like a tease.

It was a luscious layout, such a well-handled variety of flora, such a shame it was winter.

I walked the 14 acres of forgotten blossoms resting until spring and just meditated.

Kelsey would've pointed pruning techniques or gathered rose petals for tea.
She made gardens magical, but I lacked that pixie dust.
She wasn't there and I just had to imagine her,
perhaps playing in petals like she used to.

The Tyler Rose Parade Museum caught my eye inside.
There, I learned the parade resembled a town-wide, rose-filled prom with a theme-costumed queen and royal court and all that business.
The town wasn't as small as I first assumed.
Thousands roamed to Tyler every year to witness the rose festivities- some so familiar as Reagan or  Eisenhower.
But they were there with roses, I was without.
I suppose we could call Tyler a four-hour pit stop.
It was time for Dallas.

Dallas, Tx: 

 One city, two couches, three hours from Austin.

I preface this entry by stating Dallas is not my type.
In terms of dates, I wouldn't be aching to call them back. However, the people I met and the Deep Ellum I roamed didn't disappoint- even if I almost got mugged taking pictures of murals there.

My first host was Andrew Gallegos, a gentle-natured photographer for the college newspaper. He played a great game of ping pong and a sweet song of Charlie Brown on the keys.
Andrew showed me the thirsty wonders of BrainDead Brewing where a mini-library of brew guides taught curious customers the difference between hoppy and malty, traditional and experimental brews. Each book seemed like a text Haley and Josh, my home-brew-guru friends from Asheville might own.
No book of Dallas knew the secret recipes to Haley and Josh's pineapple habanero ciders though,
that's what folks ought to be reading.

We finished our chalices and regally roamed to Off the Record Bar, a wonderland of vinyls and brews where old folks wore button ups and youngans sported waxy mustaches and flannel. The crowd nodded to the live band and sifted through the extensive Radiohead and Avett Brother collection.

The streets saturated with mural-filled walls and the restaurants swam with smells from kitchens.
Deep Ellum had spunk.
It had creepers too.

Namely, it had a gent who decided it'd be fun to follow me.
Every corner I turned, peripheral vision in full-alert, I caught his figure in my frame.
He wasn't incredibly close, but I watched him watching me snap photos of street art.
I walked around one corner, two, three, and there he was.

I didn't see any stores to walk into but remembered a handy gadget my aunt Tina gifted me -a stun gun.
A good one.
And I took it out and gave the thing a good, indiscreet sample run.
I zapped it again and he saw it.
Needless to say, I found no figure around the next corner I turned.

Anyhow,
Andrew and I took photos of the Dallas skyline and chewed some tamales by the Dallas Farmers Market.
The sidewalks were constantly empty- the streets were bustling with cars- and I could never understand where all the city's people hid.
But the virtually empty farmer's market made for a suitable practice space.
I took my ukulele from my pack and played some songs Andrew might know.
He knew Regina Spektor's "Fidelity" and after a few trial runs,
I put him in the musician's seat and he gave the instrument a go. He wasn't half bad!

My second host house was a couple, Nicole and Travis. They were the best thing that'd ever happened to Dallas.

Before I reached their home, I volunteered in a center for those without shelter.
Austin Street Center, established over 30 years ago, was a ministry outreach facility.

Photo courtesy of Austin Street Center: Empty cots before guests arrive.  

The center divided into two sections- one for women at least 18 years of age and one for men, 45 and beyond. They were full for the night, 100 women and 300 men would sleep there.

"We're always full," Doris Hill, a gold-lipsticked minister at the front desk said.
Some guests had permanent beds through case workers, some were just traveling through for a night.

They had shavers, bus passes, plastic cups and toothbrushes for guests' disposal. If you had a headache, the front desk had aspirin, if you were diabetic, we had crackers.
I handed toiletries left and right until finally the army of bright eyed church ladies with paper plates and baked potatoes lugged through with eight coolers of milk and bananas.

It was dinner time.

They said their prayers and formed a line which wrapped around the entire inside of the auditorium.
Doris suggested I play a song over the intercom.

400 people? Sure.
Doris led me to a chair and held the microphone by me.
After "Sea of Love" I bowed. They roared for an encore and made my brain all kinds of humble sauce.
I sang them my song "Colors" and Doris took the microphone, thanking me and telling everyone to enjoy their dinners. They settled into their seats and started chewing.
I left and found my couch for the night.

Arriving, Travis and Nicole's yard thrived with wind-whisked prayer flags. Peppers grew intended for future hot sauce. 

Nicole said salmon was for dinner, salmon she caught on an Alaskan adventure with her father.

Inside, the kitchen was sprinkled with magnet poetry. The bedroom sported traffic-sign decorations.
No wall was white and no detail missed.

We chatted of travels and airplane interior design, carrying on and mixing ingredients for chia seed pudding desserts and overnight oatmeal for breakfasts soon to come.

We talked of the many couch surfers past and planned to come. They had a wall of guest Polariods, scribbled in autographs and thank-you notes.

I wrote them a stationary of appreciation and exchanged adieus.
Dallas duties were done.

Now, to Austin!

Jackson, Vicksburg and Clinton, MS: The McGreggors

"We were voted cutest couple," Janie pointed out, skimming her high school yearbook for the photo.
"Quite a few years ago," Gaylan said, adjusting his glasses to look.

They were cute alright, nothing changed in that regard.
Janie had a face of perpetual bliss. Her smile was full of stories and her fridge was full of souvenirs.
Gaylan had a voice like an old-time country singer. His conversations were sprinkled with endless trivia and fantastic dad-jokes.

54 years down the road, they still blushed about their first kiss.
They said it was on Reelfoot Lake pier. Janie found a snapshot of their more recent pier-smooch and showed me.
"We reenacted it."

The two of them were the parents of Matthew McGregor, a friend from college.

He gave me their number after noticing my stop landed 20 minutes from their home. It lined up flawlessly.  A day later, I parked behind their blue, flower-filled pickup in Clinton, Mississippi and gave Gaylan and Janie hello-hugs.

We were having fried catfish and greens for supper.
"You've got to have the real Mississippi experience," Gaylan said.

At Cock of the Walk Restaurant, Janie could hardly contain her excitement.
Out walked our waiter with a cast-iron skillet of cornbread and Janie told me to ready my camera.
They threw the cornbread two feet in the air, letting it spin twice before catching it face-up on the pan.
I was pretty impressed, admittedly.

The rest of our food arrived and one of their friends from church came around.
"You know the origination of hush puppies?" the gentleman asked.
"They started when a cook, back in the day, had cornbread to bake. A dog came in smelling the food and wouldn't quit barking, so the cook grabbed a ball of dough and fried it up fast, threw it at the dog and yelled 'hush, puppy!'" He smiled and awaited our reaction.

We replied with puns.
Their granddaughter Rae usually supplied the jokes, but Janie had a napkin with all her two-liners penciled down. I tried to ketchup and remember some, but I figured I'd leave the comedy to someone else.

Night one was sweet. 
I learned that the word ukulele means dancing fleas in Hawaiian native tongue.

I found out that Boniva, a town not so far away, was noted in the Ripley's Believe it or Not  for having a storm of frogs falling from the sky (due to a tornado that swept them up from a pond, but still)

and I grew familiar with the term "Nabs", short for Nabisco snacks, which essentially includes any cracker snack pack or munchie someone might want to go grab a Nab for.

The night ended after long conversations in the kitchen.

Gaylan and Janie felt nothing like strangers and I felt completely at home.
Their bed was comfy and it came with a quilt, hand-crocheted by Janie's mom.
Just like everything else in the house, the room was a mini museum, framed in old art projects and relics.
Sleep came easy, and in the morning, we were going to the Petrified Forest.

Day Two:

Kelsey Blue wanted to see the Petrified Forest pretty badly.
She liked fossils, crystals and stones. She enjoyed sifting for them in gem mines, picking them up in rivers and memorizing their meanings in shops. Once or twice, Blue gave me stones for protection.

She said she was scared I'd run into trouble. I ran into a lot of things, but I figured I was invincible enough. Blue gave me an agate key chain, "just in case," Kelsey would say.

Once, I was an idiot and ran around with my far-too-large Claddagh ring and it fell off somewhere. I wasn't invincible then.
I was sixteen and my parents had just given me the ring out of Irish tradition and I lost it within a week.
Blue was with me when I searched for it.
I told her its parts. It had a heart for love, a crown for loyalty and hands for friendship.

And it was nowhere.

Then Kelsey Blue, being the friend that she was, found my ring size and gifted me a new one.
This one had opal. She said it bore a 'loyal stone' which would make me look after it better.

I haven't been without it (aside from having to get it fixed) since.
It's on my right hand, always.

Blue studied that sort of thing, stones and fossils.

She wanted to see them in their natural state, part of earth before excavation. That's why the Petrified Forrest was on her list. So to the Petrified Forrest we went, right after passing the heart of not-so-bustling Flora, Mississippi.

On the park grounds, we walked past 38 million year old sequoias, firs, maples and spurge trees, once buried by silts of the Forest Hill. The trees' bark, filtered with minerals, eventually turned to stone and resurfaced. 

The petrified pieces were scattered, eroded, half-buried next to the living pines and ceder. We saw lichen slowly turning the rock into soil and stepped around the red sand walls from the Oligocene Epoch, wondering how the erosion kept the hills so tall.





































Loess silt eroded laterally, forming steep drop-offs and we crunched pine needles with every step, taking it in one petrified tree after another.

We walked the trail and thought about those who walked it before us.
When we were though, we decided to take a different kind of trek.
One through where the Confederates surrendered in 1863,

Vicksburg, Mississippi.

It was the town with the impenetrable natural fortress, Fort Hill, which stood watching over the Mississippi river.

There was no way down the Mississippi without passing by. Union troops back in the day couldn’t float supplies to the South without facing cannon fire. Someone had to gain control of Vicksburg in order to win the Civil War. 

According to the many pamphlets and videos, Union troops had quite a time trying to overtake the Vicksburg Confederates. The fort was stationed atop a high bluff, able to overlook a river bend slowing every ship that passed it. They had an easy target range.

Gen. Ulysses S. Grant went on surround the city from the south and east,  creating a siege on Confederate lines from both land and sea. 46 days later, after Vicksburg succumbed to desperate hunger after living off rats and occasional missing pets, Gen. John C. Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg on July 4th. The town hadn't fully embraced Independence Day since. 

"That's why Vicksburg never put on a firework show for the fourth of July," Gaylan said, regarding  the years they lived there, wondering why no gunpowder illuminated the sky.
"We had to wait for the casinos to come in and do it."

We stopped by the river thereafter to catch whatever glympses of overcast sunset remained by the bridge.

 The other side was Louisiana.
But we didn't have to be in Louisiana to have ourselves some serious creole crawfish.
We made our way to Froghead Grill and pounded through a basket of crawfish popcorn
(essentially breaded crawfish tails fried to crispy perfection) and made our way back home.

Janie and I turned through endless childhood albums of Matt
(which was hilarious, by the way)
and after enough mullet jokes surfaced, it was time for bed.
Tomorrow was going to be busy.

Day Three:

I found not just anyone can roam the wards of children's hospitals. Which makes sense.
With too few days to train and file background information, I had to give up my intended project and instead gift a few purses full of deodorant, toothbrush/paste, hair products and good intentions to the hands of some folks that could use them.

Hence, I walked around pot-hole filled Fondren, gave the purses away, then decided to dedicate some time to contacting volunteer places in Texas.

This trip through Mississippi was coming to a close,
and I spent a few hours at Cups Espresso Cafe getting to know what lied ahead.
I made some couchsurfing requests and planned to leave for Texas.

Instead, I found out Rae lived in Ruston, LA.
Hence, to Rae I went.

Tallahassee, FL

Tallahassee marked the first unfamiliar city of the trip.

Made of knots, 

I hit the Florida line realizing I was alone and would be for quite some time-
which had to be okay.

At least the drive was mellow and the radio played quick jazz.

In town, I circled the neighborhood and finally found Jorge Gamba's unlit front yard. 

Rang their bell and future PhD Jorge answered the side-door.

"Hey, you're here!"

Jorge waved his hands toward the yard until a light clicked on outside.

"They're motion-sensored and I think you're too short," he chuckled. 

In a few exchanges of formalities, the tangles in my stomach eased.

The only knot remaining was the noose I saw upon entering.

"What's that gator hanging from the ceiling for?" I asked, pointing. 

"Beats me," he said, "it was up there when we got the place."

It was FSU after all- the rivals of the UF Gators. It wasn't entirely surprising.

I assumed the place was once home to some serious football fans.

We moved on, talked dinner. 

"Momo's Pizza," he beamed, "has pizza the size of your head."

And we went - and it did - and we tried the kung fu something or other.

If you find yourself hungry for pizza the size of your face in Tallahassee, try it.

The pies prove drool-worthy.

Anyhow. 

Night one was pizza, beer and bonfires between Pink Floyd songs, "Don't Hug Me I'm Scared" videos and talks about bananandas- bananas in bandannas.

I fell asleep wondering why Kelsey Blue wanted to visit this place.
I kept pondering if she would've couch surfed or if insisted on a hotel.

She probably would've voted for security,
but it was my constant job to knead her from her comfort zone.
It was my obligation to remind Blue of her bravery.

Day Two:

I woke up before everyone else.

Walked outside and the sun was nothing but toasty on my winter-drenched skin.

I think Blue would've liked Tallahassee.

She mentioned it in passing, saying her class went on a trip there once but she couldn't go.

Well, there she was, with me.

"Made it," I thought before reaching the co-op.

This was my service project of choice: 

Bread and Roses Food Cooperative, founded in 2009.

It was a member-owned grocer with a healthy, dainty restaurant attached. 

The store was run by mutual aid volunteers running 3-hour shifts a week.

The Tuesday I walked in, Henry Meeker, the bicycle-touring aficionado/key holder of the day manned the counter.

Robert Foe, the gent with the face-tattoo of Florida, stationed the self-made dance floor between the free-market and the grocery isles. There was no music but he made his own.

The free-market stayed loaded with clothes, old VHS tapes, dime novels and random house appliances. 

It was all for grabs but was a better-kept secret than the store hoped it would be. 

New trash bags of donations piled the wall with questionable new entries to fold or toss and I manned the station for a while, placing tops with tops, bottoms with bottoms.  

The bathrooms had Sharpie jottings along the walls. A shelf held a composition book labeled "Bread & Roses Sketchpad: Leave a thought, poem, drawing, idea, story, etc"

and inside, pages blasted with outbursts of anonymous brainwaves. 

Along the isles, signs were posted for The Rotten Collective, a project for musicians which randomly-assigned band members to a project then gave them 30 days to write original music before playing it for a show in town. 

I saw the poster and wondered how Asheville hadn't adopted something similar. 

It was a cool concept - and upon meeting to a member of the collective, Matthew Mesler, I learned a show was coming up just after I scheduled to leave. 

Bum.

Bum.

Bummer.

We got to talking and Matt granted me an Expo-marker drawn list of Tallahassee places:

1. Leon Geo Sinks

2. Marianna Caverns

3. Torreya State Park

4. St. Andrews

5. Native-American Mounds

6. Museum of Florida History

7. Cape San Blas

Then Robert chimed in with stories of his tattoos.

"Wanna hear a story?" he'd begin.

He furiously tapped his temple where his Florida tattoo rested, said the tattoo was from a girl.

"It was really dry that year and I went to a concert on mushrooms and wine. This girl said she was into painting serial killers and it was her idea. She did it wrong, put Tampa Bay on the wrong side."

Robert pointed at another design, explaining it.

Some ink tales later, the store was fully cleaned and the day hit 4 o'clock.

Henry and I were through for the day, and he readied his touring bike.

The plan thereafter was to check by the Bicycle House, a cycling non-profit founded in 2010.

We were going to make sure my ride was up to par.

It was. 

While inside, I saw their mission statement- it centered on bridging different social groups in order to build community trust. It offered a safe, practical transportation method which advocated healthy living.

Sounded wonderful to me. 

The community needed less 2-ton vehicles and more transportation mingled with exercise. 

If I were staying in town longer, I would've been completely game to learn the in and outs of bike maintenance.

Day Four:

I was overdue for an All Saints Cafe session. 

I needed their tall, star-filled ceilings and quiet places drenched in caffeinated graffiti and seclusion.

On one table, the wood etching read, "Peace or an expensive car?"

They had a hand-written board game titled "Coffee House"- much like the lovechild of Monopoly and Truth-or-Dare.

On the wall, concrete blocks displayed Emerson's "Earth laughs in flowers".

Before I set to work, I sipped my boiling Joe, noticing the green-haired goddess Kayla Owens pushing through the door. She changed my plans for the better.

There was no need for solitude when a story was better shared.

Kayla and I talked about her brother and my Blue, 

his alcoholism and Blue's silent depression, 

his death and hers. 

We were both missing a heart-string, a best friend.

We shared and shared- communicating on that level only loss could bring.

She made me look at the whole ordeal with different lenses. 

She said it was a strong thing, to drop everything and heal, in order to keep a promise. 

We started to understand something greater about death- remembrance. 

Asheville, NC: The Starting Point

The original plan had David and I driving to Blowing Rock together.

I would get to know Blue's foreign car as the miles added up from Florida to the Carolinas

and David would be there, watching the landscape change from constant summer to snowy winter.

We would chat about little things like Cheerwine but also weighty stuff such as Kelsey Casamo’s remains, resting in a glossy blue vessel under the passenger seat.

The trip turned out differently.
I had to leave a week early to get a title and tag for Blue's car before it expired,
and I hit the road alone and planned to meet David in Asheville. 

The Solo Drive: 

With a string of vehicles halted behind an accident,
I witnessed a range of scenes through car windows in Columbia, SC.

A man to my right climbed over his seat, took some puffs from a bowl, and returned with a snack-bar hanging from his mouth.

A young couple in front of him did some climbing of their own, namely toward each other in a grand romantic gesture. 

I'd never thought car sex seemed all that comfortable but when they landed in my peripheral vision, I had to change my perspective.

I'll leave the imagery up to you, but know that their execution was less than discreet.
To keep distracted, I turned my engine off and practiced ukulele.

The traffic finally started crawling, but my car wouldn't.

I needed a jump.

And I was in the fast lane.
And this jerk behind me was honking.

So I got out of my car, knocked on the jerk's window and asked for a jump.
Their sour face shifted from aggravated to empathetic, and he shimmied his car to the lefthand shoulder.
Two minutes later, a symphony of beeps emerged, urging us to get moving.
With no desire to egg on their noisy encore, I tried to start my engine.
It worked
and we got moving.
*
I got into town and slept maybe 3 hours before Tuesday morning hit.
Inside the DMV, a rosy cheeked, curly haired lady waved me on. She squinted through her thick prescription glasses, reaching for my paperwork and she raised her eyebrow.

“This is some awful chicken scratch, “ she said.

But she shrugged and got to typing anyhow.

 “Honey,” she called after a good while, “you’re all set. ”

Her wrist shook arthritically as she handed me my tag.

“You take care now. And hon,” she said, “get you a thicker sweater.”

I nodded. I left. 

It really was cold as hell, I guess I just hadn't noticed.

The Solo Week: 
*
Tuesday: 

With the DMV dealt with, I had a slew of days to play with before David's arrival.

Brett decided to host dinner to get everyone together and we had ourselves a Taco Tuesday.

Now, I have to tell you,
swinging a full liquor bottle at your friend's head is not the best way to make an entrance.

Poor Nicole, my Boston bartender friend, did not take kindly to calling dibs on first hugs only to be intercepted with a blunt object.

I went in for a host hug, carrying a brown bag of Old Crow as a gift,
and as my left arm came across Brett's shoulder, I felt a hard thud that was followed by a loud cry.

"Jesus! Right in the money maker," Nicole yelled, half in pain but still half happy to see me.
I handed her the bottle and she took a stiff swig.
"This was not the way I pictured the night going."
She wiped her swollen eyes and commented about the top-knotch choice she made in waterproof mascara.

"Typical June bullshit," she said.
And then we ate tacos and had a fine time.

Wednesday:















It was the strangest thing, having to knock.

It was mine, but not mine anymore,
the apartment.

I looked around and saw my old tea kettle, my hand written map of Asheville and my Sound-Portrait painting. It was all in its rightful place, but it was now a remainder of a lease I no longer belonged to.

The wild turkeys were outside, the bears were no doubt waiting for trash and the rabbits were scuttling across the dead-end street like usual.

Nowadays, Horus lived in the canvas-covered dining room I spent my first year there living in.
The spoon-chandelier I hung there had six or so spoons missing.

George lived in my latest room, the master bedroom with my orphaned favorite books.

Gunnar still slept loyally in his bedroom, the one he kept since we became roommates.

This was our stomping ground, but  now I was the guest on the blow up mattress.

Thursday: 

What grandmother lacks love for chocolates and roses?
I made my way to Hendersonville and stocked up on valentines gifts.

Grandma Patti peeked out of her door in a toboggan and a long jacket, shivering. It was 76 degrees inside her room yet we were both overdressed and freezing.
It was then that I realized why the nurses laughed as I asked for Patti's room number.
We were "perfectly identical" the blonde nurse giggled, "give or take 50 years."
I didn't mind favoring her, she was a hell of a lady.
In her many years she's been an actress, a radio host, a special-ed teacher, an activist and a dancer.
You might say she's condensed quite a character into her 4'8 frame.

I found a home for her roses, sliced her a piece of chocolate cake and played her a song before having to miss her again. We talked about the road trip and she wished me luck. I told her I'd send her postcards here and there. She smiled, she walked me out, she kissed me a trillion times.
"Never goodbye darling, always see you later," she said, closing the door.

Friday:

(Left side: Henry, Gunnar, Brooke, Gilbert. Right side: David, me, Horus.)

At last, David arrived! After driving all day, we brainstormed on nightly activities.
"To the bar,"the roommates suggested.
David doesn't really drink, especially not beer. I pondered.
"Well he's in Beer City, maybe we can sway him to the dark side."
And to Wicked Weed we went, for food and brews.
Then to the Southern. Then to the Vault.
Brooke and Horus swarmed the dance floor with me and we made our way back.
At the house, the misspelt label 'hommus' had Brooke cracked up to terrifically-buzzed tears and we all joyfully munched the typo-ridden snacks until it was time for them to go.
That was pretty much the evening, first night around.

Saturday:

With zero intentions of leaving Asheville without Biscuit Head, the Jeffopolis folks
(meaning the people that lived or loved "Jeff", our apartment)
bore the blistering cold of the line to sample the dozens of jams available to stuff in our faces.

They had sweet potato chai, rosemary peach and banana foster jams hanging out with the bacon butter.
The novelly was drool-worthy. We got our fix before hitting the road.

Then the real reason for the visit came into effect.

Blowing Rock, NC:

I get the butterflies just typing the name of the place.
Blowing Rock was named after a cliff ledge that supposedly blows the winds upward.

Legend has it that a Chickasaw chief hid his daughter with a squaw after a white man showed interest in her, and there she hid until one day a Cherokee brave walked in the woods below and caught her eye. She shot an arrow toward him, I guess in a Catniss type of flirtation, and he followed the arrow's path to where she stood. He, enamored by her presence, found his way to her and tried to woo her with songs of his land. She was wooed. They fell in love.
But some time later, the brave caught a strange red glow in the sky and figured it was an omen of some sort. He figured his tribe was in trouble and felt the sudden urge to help his people.
He couldn't bear leaving the side of his love, however, and felt infinitely torn between his two desires.
Instead of choosing either option, he jumped off the cliff and left the maiden alone.
She cried and cried to the winds to bring her him back to her.
Eventually, the Great Spirit finally gave in and sent a gust of wind upwards, bringing her lover with it.
The wind shot her lover into the air, where she reached up into the sky to grab him and bring him back to her. Ever since then, the winds continue to gust upwards, even sending snow floating rather than falling.

David and I found the rock and stepped upon it. This was Blue's favorite place.
You could feel her there, smiling.
Maybe I was just remembering a photograph I saw of her there once.
She was poised, perched like a lady fully emerged in her element.
This was the place she always wanted to take David and I to.
I pictured her on the rock, perched just like the image I knew.

She seemed completely present, making the wind dance, laughing at us when we shivered in the 28 degree gusts. We blew warm air into our ever-freezing fingers, but the only way to find warmth seemed to be running inside the visitor's center, so we did.














We would meander one path, run inside, then find our way through the next patch of trail.
Eventually, we came across a cliff where the land below seemed vast and sun-drenched.
The wind was quiet and the crowd was nowhere near.
We waited for the winds to die down and opened my bag.
Inside, the ashes of Kelsey Blue rested.
"She was never meant to be put on a shelf," David said.
He looked at me, nodded, and we shared a moment of silence for goodbyes before he stood up with her in his arms one last time, closing his eyes and breathing out.
"I'll miss you," he whispered.

And there she went, blowing in the wind.

Valentines Day in Asheville:

David must have left the Carolinas at some ungodly hour-
I got up just after the sun rose and he had already gone.
Then there it hit me, Valentines day.

I already had an aversion to the day.
It was my mother's birthday and ever since she passed, the day seemed less sweet.
When I was younger, she'd always ask to be our Valentines.
Now, I felt like I was both without my mother and my best friend.
No valentines could beat those two.
I couldn't get my mind off of them.
Two of my favorite people.

Eventually, I decided I had to do something.

I would buy bouquets with Franny and gift them away,
flower by flower, to any passersby within arm's reach.

She got purple and I got yellow. We blasted the heat in her car then readied ourselves for the cold.

No one was on the street, but we managed to find sporadic footsteps.

Outside Dobra Tea, a few men stood chilly by the doorway.

Two of them were chatting cynically about the Hallmark marketing behind valentines day,

one man was just laughing at them. 

When Frances and I curtsied and placed flowers in front of them, their expressions gentled.

I asked for their photograph and they let me capture this:

The evening arrived, the champagne was sipped, the sun was drenched in clouds.
The visit to Asheville was ending

and I was ready for Tallahassee.

Seminole, Florida: Blue's House

There wasn't much to Seminole.

Blue lived there. Her brother lived there. 

I lived there, in her brother's room, after he moved out.

(Which got interesting when he came down to visit and had to sleep on the living room sofa.)

But Seminole as a whole was a retirement crap-shoot.

The only folks there were the newlyweds and the nearly-deads.

Either way, Blue's childhood house was my favorite place.

It was right behind the high school football field where we could troll games during dinner.

The garden out front thrived with frogs that her mother helped raise from tadpoles. 

Their spray-painted tree crowded with seats her brother arranged for hookahs.

The backyard swarmed with loyal squirrels who received peanuts just for existing. 

I made a habit of visiting.

I even drove by sometimes to drop letters in her mailbox.

(We exchanged enveloped notes.)

-The first night I stayed over, it was in her older brother's bedroom.

I snuck from my window's ledge, into my car, and through his.

It was late. When my eyelids blinked open, I must've drifted to dreams 

because it was daylight and I was late for lecture (and in loads of trouble, I imagined).

I snuck by pretty often regardless.

My parents caught me maybe twice.

My brother caught me more often than not, 

but he was always off sneaking somewhere else-

hence, we had an understanding.

After the courtship ended, I had no need to sneak through those windows.

Yet Kelsey Blue insisted I keep coming over.

Neither of us had any idea that eventually his room would be my room.

Time passed.

In Seminole, we'd wade the Indian Rocks shoreline, Kelsey with her metal detector, me with my quarters, trying to give her something to find. 

I'd take her to dinner, sneak wasabi in her green tea ice-cream.

She'd write secrets on sugar packets, put them back when our waitress left.

We'd, over time, told Splenda a terrific chunk of classified information.

We'd also, by default, told each other every secret we could remember. 

and when we ran out of mysteries, we'd re-cap.

*

When I would stay over to hang out with Blue,

we would compete to wake up first:

I'd set my alarm 15 minutes before I knew hers would chime

and I'd make her breakfast with tons of ketchup and far too crispy of hash browns.

She'd sometimes beat me to the punch.

Then, a thousand breakfast-in-beds later, 

I woke her up with the jingle of my car keys.

"We're going on a day trip," I announced.

She rubbed her eyes, still only half absorbing English.

I told her to get dressed and grab her iPod, I was dragging her to the sponge docks.

We decided during the hour-long drive that we would make plans for bigger trips. 

After our Turkish coffees in Tarpon Springs and our mini heart-attacks from finishing the mud at the bottom of the cups, we picked cities in a frenzy. 

Then, we set aside a huge ceramic piggy to deposit trip-funds into.

The time would arise. 

We just had to wait.

And maybe play patty-cake in the meantime.

That was Seminole that we shared.

Once with Blue: Language of Flowers

Daffodils are blooming,
at least in ceramic pots outside the plant nurseries.

"Daffodils," Blue once told me, "symbolize new beginnings."
But you must never give someone a single blossom, she said,
because they foreshadow unrequited love.

She stole a bundle of wilted daffodils from her florist job once,  six or so years back.
"It wasn't really stealing," she reasoned, "they dubbed the flowers 'unsuitable' for the storefront."

She stuck them in a clear bottle and added food coloring to their water.
"For contrast," she said, adding. "they're dying and won't suck up much of the blue anyway."
She'd add blue to anything.
She'd add flowers to everything.

Daffodils were always the flower Kelsey asked me to mail her from the Carolinas.
I would find some on Proflowers,
but in hindsight, I should've added food coloring packets as well, for contrast.

Daffodils or peonies, she'd say she favored.
Or tiger lilies or orchids or night-blooming cereus, depending on her mood.

She always sent me flowers.
On valentines day, the first year we weren't able to bake cupcakes and plaster our faces with chocolate morsels, she sent me tulips.
"I know you hate roses," she wrote in the attached note.
Blue insisted I never settle for roses, or anything else I didn't truly fit the norm for.
She had opinions and stuck to them, embracing them
She always remembered things.
I always forgot them.
That's why she was the one to tell all of our stories.

(Which is why I sometimes daydream that she left behind all the written accounts,
detailed more delicately than my belated, blotchy remembrance.)

Yet I still recall:

Peonies she fancied for they were the fuller, cooler, more sophisticated sister of the ordinary rose.
Then cereus she adored for their rare blossoms, only open for a single full moon.
Her mother once gathered us the night the cereus finally let free its petals.
"This is a special species," she would say, "a desert flower."
Blue and her mother, Amy, had green thumbs.
They taught me the language of flowers.
They taught me many languages,
but Kelsey Blue especially,
showed me how to
blossom from my
own type of
bud.