in medias res

My Great Disappearing Act

My thesis is long overdue, and I knew I needed some kind of big push to make it finally happen. Thus, The Great Escape was put into motion. I originally planned to pack up my car and drive to some strange town in Florida to work for several days. A week before I was to depart, a lady at work offered one of her houses to me for as long as I wanted to stay. The house was in Apalachicola, Florida - about 80 miles from Tallahassee. However, my great disappearing act didn’t quite start out as I had hoped.

Preparing was great. I gave myself permission to pack comfy clothes and to leave my jewelry and my hair straightener behind. I went to Fresh Market [cue the angel choir] to pick up fresh fruit and veggies for sustenance. One of everything, and a celebratory bottle of white wine. I even took The Bruise for a nice long walk at Lake Ella in a typical bad-parent move of trying to spoil my child before I abandon him. I took my time on the drive, and stopped anywhere that tickled my fancy. (This included “Junk in the Trunk” thrift store and a field full of rusted out trucks, all in a row.) I took pictures – not very good ones – while I drove.

At first, the roads seemed pretty familiar. Mike and I used to make this drive all the time. We’d drive down to his friend’s house down on Alligator Pointe (I insist on the “e” – gives it more character) – just the two of us for the day. This was my first time behind the wheel on this drive, so I noticed everything a little more. When I finally passed The Pointe, the road was completely new to me and my adventure was really beginning. Then, I hit a bird. That made me cry a little - like a bad scene in a chick flick.

My original plan was to be working by noon, but I didn’t even get to the house until 2. This house, by the way, is magnificent. It’s a one-story house built in three exclusive sections – a kitchen/living room/dining room, a master bedroom/master bath, and a guest cottage (two bedrooms and a bathroom). Each has two locking doors and all three share a sprawling porch. I felt like I was in a Caribbean plantation house. The actual house is dark brown on the outside with a rusty tin roof. The inside has wooden floors wooden paneling on the walls painted eggshell or beige, and white crown molding. High ceilings. The simplicity is offset by the original folk art that covers the walls and the iron and galvanized steel sculptures that seem to somehow fit really well. No matter how I try to explain this house, it will end up sounding bizarre. Just think House of Blues meets Pottery Barn. My favorite thing about this house is the outdoor shower. It has a tin privacy divider and wooden saloon doors, but the top opens up to the world. Before I die, I must live in a house with an outdoor shower.

After I explored the house and carried everything in from the car, I decided to start work. I got everything ready, but when I turned on my laptop, I got the dreaded blue screen of death. I tried restarting – same problem. At first, I didn’t panic. I called Dell, and “Michelle” helped me run some diagnostic tests on my computer. While we were running those tests, she kept saying, “Just to set your expectations…” and then told me that she was probably going to need to send me a new hard drive, and that I would need to go pay $$$$ for some computer store to pull all of my old files off of my computer. Then, mid-test, my cell phone dropped the call. I called my dad and I started to cry. Everything had been going far too well with getting to this place, and I refused to go back to Tallahassee without SOMETHING written. It wasn’t looking good.

Michelle finally called me back. After we determined that the hard drive was the problem, we started the computer in safe mode, restored the system to an earlier point, and then ran diagnostic tests for the next four hours. The problem with the hard drive miraculously disappeared. I professed my undying love to Michelle, did a tiny bit of work, and crashed by 10pm. I was hungry (the veggies weren’t doing it for me) and emotionally drained. The first night, I didn’t sleep well.

You see, the only problem with my little dream house is that it isn’t very well lit. During the day, it’s a delightful haven. But, even at 26, I’m still a little afraid of the dark. The house creaks and groans. The front screen door and the gate on the side of the house slam with every gust of wind. People walk up and down the street all night long. It was eerily quiet enough for every noise to be exponentially louder than it actually was. My overactive imagination created sinister characters to roam the porch and hide in the woods. The first night, I slept on the couch in the main part of the house. I was too afraid to walk across the dark porch to the other part of the house to set up my bed. I told myself I was too tired, but really, I was too scared. Thursday night, I finally made it to the bedroom/bathroom section of the house. I was up until 4am, when I finally fell asleep from exhaustion. I convinced myself that I had forgotten to lock the front door, but I was too afraid to get up and walk through the dark porch and unlock that part of the house to check it, so I just prayed for morning and had a nightmare that my camera and my computer and my printer were all stolen. All night long, I stared at the small light on the back porch, expecting a dark figure to move in front of it to stare back at me through the thin curtain.

I promise, I did actually work on this trip. Thursday was a lovely day of work. I got up early, went for a nice, long walk through the old fishing village to clear my head from the restless night before. None of the shops were open yet. I went to the Piggly Wiggly to get a few more basics, since my few veggies were leaving me hungry.

Finally, sick about how much time had already been wasted, I sat down to work. Once I started going through old drafts I had sent to my major professor along the way, I realized that I had more written than I thought. It just hadn’t been put into the right place yet. I started filling in some of the holes. Mid-afternoon, I went for a quick run. The town was more alive this time. I enjoyed the nice weather from the porch, talked to a good friend on the phone, and read through some really important articles I hadn’t had a chance to read yet. I steamed some more veggies for dinner, and I felt very grown-up. At one point, I was really in the zone and didn’t leave my chair for four hours. By the end of the day, I had twenty pages in the first chapter, thirty pages in the second chapter, thirty pages in the third chapter, and another ten pages of miscellaneous information. Now, most of this is still rough and in draft/notes form. I felt good about the work I was able to do. At midnight, I finally braved the scary porch to get to the bedroom. But, as I already said, sleep wasn’t to come for a very very long time.

Friday, I was too tired to work. I decided that I had to go back to Tallahassee – that I couldn’t spend another sleepless night in that house. Since the owners of the house were coming to town on Saturday morning anyway, I decided it was finally my day to explore the town. I took an extra-long shower in the great outdoors, and then I went to town for treasures. (I wanted to get a gift for my lovely hosts.) I also wanted to take pictures. I don’t know if it’s kindness or curiosity, but people love someone with a nice camera. They assumed I must’ve earned it somehow. I wandered through the antique stories and several stores full of really cool decorating trinkets. I took pictures of the old fishing boats. At one point, a man (mid-50s?) stopped me to ask about my camera. Bob and I spent the next two hours discussing the beauty of Apalach and the story of how he decided to restructure his two big businesses in Colorado so he could come be an artist in Apalach. He introduced me to the locals as they walked by. I met Ryan. She and her husband are cooks at the Gibson Inn. They were trained in New York City, worked at a very successful restaurant in Chicago, and then they decided to get away from city life and come here. I also met a woman who worked for years at a university in Canada. This past December, two days after they arrived in Apalach for a six-month stay, her husband died. She told me about how she left for awhile, and finally decided that Apalach was where she most needed to be. She has been returning to each place they lived, slowly spreading her husband’s ashes over every body of water. Next, trip, she’s off to Ireland.

Bob showed me his old warehouse that was a commercial space below, and was being converted into an apartment above. They’re maintaining the rustic look of the warehouse. The ceilings are at least 12 feet tall. Bob, who is 6’2, can stand in the windows and still have several inches above his head. At one point, when I was following Bob through a trapdoor onto his roof to get a better view of the town, I thought, “Is this really my life!?”

That night, before I left town, my neighbor Anna Maria took me down to the Gibson Inn for cocktails. She was an art curator in textiles at the Met in NYC before she and her husband, an attorney, moved to Apalach. Now he’s a general contractor and she’s a real estate agent. We talked about small towns and colleges and running, and the town drunk came over to kiss her on the forehead for selling a house that made his property values go up $80,000. The whole town was at the Inn. Forget Cottondale. When I finally run away from home, I’m running away to Apalachicola. First, I suppose I have to create a fabulous life to run away from.

Now, I’m back n Tallahassee for the rest of the weekend. Last night, I crashed. Today, I’m going to work. This was a much longer post than I expected it to be, but I guess that’s the luxury of finally feeling like I had time to breathe. Even with everything before me, it feels good. I feel good - better than I have in a really really long time. “Everybody needs a little time awaaayy…”

posted by tara @ 10:47 AM