VOODOO VIRGINIANot necessarily being a fan of Virginia Woolf, I have to give her some props. “A woman must have money and a room of her own.” Woolf meant this in order for a woman to write. I am going to elaborate on this. “A woman must have money and acres of her own.” And not just for writing, for thinking. For breathing.
Whenever I go home to Washington it just becomes more obvious that I am person who needs room to stretch and wander. Years ago, my parents sold my childhood home on the water. I still dream about it at least once a month. It had a huge pasture where I used to sit out with my sheep and read and pick the most amazing wild blackberries. It was also right on the Puget Sound so my summer days were filled with swimming in freezing water, digging geoducks, paddling my dinghy and building sand castle forts that never saw the nighttime.
Still, their new home has room to move around outside. Yes, you can see the neighbors, and it is on this odd-shaped lot. But there are flowers, trees, two ponds, fruits, vegetables and lots of grass. I can wander around outside with various animals following me and pick random fruit. I can sit on their small deck and listen to birds. Of course, I take into account that one of my main sources of relaxation is I usually have nowhere urgent to go when I am home. And yes, most of my meals are cooked for me. And yes I can write and quilt to my heart’s content. But it is quiet (when my dad, who is now going deaf, isn’t blasting his various TV shows) and it is green.
I was raised without art, without literature, without music, but I was raised to go after what I desired.
In New Orleans, I like to spend as much time as possible on my back porch. I am a firm believer in the mental therapeutics of a hammock. But sometimes moving about the yard, even for the shortest time, gives me heat stroke in the summer. And I can still hear loud music from my neighbors, and cars speeding down the street and the occasional argument.
Would I miss the city and culture? Yes, of course. Where else can I have a weekend like last weekend? Attend a voodoo ceremony where the voodoo priestess wore a thong. Sit next to drummers from New Guinea and try to have a conversation despite our language barrier. Talk with a woman who traveled from Delaware with her adorable grandkids to be healed. Get my hair washed in the traditional voodoo rite - water mixed in with things from the alter: cake, flowers, perfume, fruit, etc.– in this gunky paste that covered my head while they chanted. Then have my head wrapped in a white cloth and be told that I needed to wear it until the morning in order for it to work and dream my prophetic dream (which I did). And to have all of this interrupted by my friend’s text message. “Y’all coming to the sex toy party? Now at Bridge Lounge? Me drunk. Fireworks.” And then to go to the Bridge Lounge, dressed in white with my cakey hair and white headpiece and be mistaken for a nun (or a “really hot pirate”) before we get our drinks and head to the back room for a private sex toy party that goes late into the night. Watch my friends argue over who gets to wear the vibrating panties, or be tied up and blindfolded, or fight over various lotions that they rub on different parts of their bodies and compare notes. Or have my friend pick up an armful of toys and yell across the room, “X, will you show me how to use these?” And to have the slightly shaken “hostess” tell me at the end of the night, “Phew, I am used to having at least one rowdy person in the group, but not the entire group.” Yes, I would miss that. Definitely. And I am not saying that there are not opportunities for solitude and nature in the city. It’s just in the city you usually have to travel to it, not wake up to it.
And sometimes I have just as much fun playing Chinese Checkers with my nephews, or hanging out with my friends and their family on their couch talking and having a cheap glass of wine.
It makes me even more determined to get what I want. To be able to float between those two worlds on my own terms.
I don’t think contradictions make people hypocritical; I think they make them more full human beings.
I write this on my childhood bed, an uncomfortable twin bed with a bookcase built in. (my teenage bed is safe in my office in New Orleans). I have a quilt my mom made out of Crown Royal Bags on my lap, my cat Fido is stretched out next to me, and on the walls are these pieces of wood my mom decoupaged with Raggedy Ann & Andy and some framed pictures of bunnies. There is also a vase of fresh flowers behind me. And in the bookcase on my bed? “Hell in a Very Small Place - the Siege of Dien Bien Phu,” “A Perfect Hell-The True Story of the Black Devils, the Forefather of the Special Forces,” “Infantry Aces-The German Solider in Combat in WW2,” and “Star Trek – Strange New Worlds.” Ahhh…. Home.
To quote Virginia Woolf again, “Arrange whatever pieces come your way.”
I am off to kayak.
P.S. For breakfast I had a smoothie I made from my mom’s garden with fresh raspberries, cherries and strawberries, a few pieces of black licorice, a bowlful of raw peas from my sister’s garden and a poptart. I love being home!
