Holly Selph

Circus Girl

The only things I brought back to prove I had been anywhere were 12 plastic boats. Some were blue, some yellow, and some green. The only function they can perform is to float. Still, I had to have them because they looked like prizes, like something just a little better than a gumball from a quarter machine. I put them in my purse by the handful from the large jar on the counter just before leaving the bar that had been my personal carnival for the last four weeks.

I tend to insist on souvenirs. I keep t-shirts of boys I've loved before, which usually are retrieved while still smelling of their cologne and then are ritually washed once I've moved on to another t-shirt with a better scent. I used to insist on taking photos with virtual strangers in photo booths at the arcade on the beach because I had some idea that we'd write through the school year and revisit each other summer after summer, until we grew up and apart only to meet again on a street corner in the rain in New York City where we'd end up being best friends, or lovers, or better---lovers who never were to be, both of us having settled for someone else, each of us still keeping in our wallets that faded black and white photo. I prefer not to consider this sentimental, as that reeks of manufactured sincerity. I like to think it's symbolic, these archetypes I keep and cast away just to prove that a moment existed.

So, when I had gotten myself back to Atlanta and ran straight into the arms of some of my best girlfriends, I presented each of them with a plastic boat. In return, they fed me vegetables and poured wine. These friends generally laugh off these eccentric gestures, and I play along: "I woke up one morning naked and face down on the bed with all the lights on, and my purse was filled with these boats, along with a water gun, a pretzel, and a lot of coupons for Finlandia vodka."

This is a truth analogous to saying the ocean is filled with water, food has one taste, asking a question that demands only a yes or a no. There is a story behind all of this that I haven't told. That one day I will tell in its entirety. But for now, this summary shall suffice:

I meant to move to Phoenix, Arizona for one month to see if I would sink or swim. I went to revisit, alone, a place I only knew while living with a gray t-shirt that smelled like John Varvatos cologne. The boy in the gray t-shirt called me a mermaid and then left me for a sailboat, and then left the sailboat for girls who have to hold their breath when underwater. But, I never made it back to Phoenix, Arizona. Along the way, I joined a circus, and not one word of this is a lie.

A man in a jester hat made from the British flag poured me a drink and introduced me to twin midgets who peddle Jell-O. I sat next to a legendary second baseman whose native and only language is numbers. I learned from him how everything, no matter how giant or small, has a root somewhere else. We combined our languages and he now has made complicated equations of words, and told me what it is that equals happiness. I have devised a way to extract the square roots of words like avocado, rhyme, mediocrity, cliff, and dive. In one ring, we showed racing goldfish, in another I was a mime while coconuts sang dirty ballads, and in the third, we caught fire again and again until we saved each other's lives.

On Wednesdays, a half giant, half wolf came in. He could speak so fast that only dolphins can understand him. The Jester can juggle pretzels, ice cubes, and dildos all at the same time. When they disappear, you will find them in your pockets or in your purse.

A bear with a ponytail who travels back and forth from Bangkok guards the door. You can only enter if you have proof that you have lost your way. A Gambler comes because he has lost his money, and wants it to be pulled out of a hat. Someone is always spinning the wheel of fortune, another is drinking from a plunger, and the skeletons of clowns and pirates dangle from the ceiling, still fornicating even in death. 

I left this circus. I said goodbye to the Jester, who made it rain, and whispered numbers to The Graduate. I wished luck to The Gambler, took gelatin communion from the twin midgets who rested their chins on my chair. I sang one more song for The Wolfman, hugged the man who grows breasts, spun the wheel of fortune one more time.

I'd believe none of it, as you should believe none of it without proof, except that I found in my purse one pretzel, a broken water gun, and eleven plastic boats. I went to Phoenix, Arizona, to sink or swim and found myself in a stranger place, where I learned it isn't sink or swim I must do, but float.

I would return, but I am certain it wouldn't be there. I've healed too much. But, if I could, I would tell The Jester that I miss him most of all. And I would give The Graduate the numbers 11, 4, 0, and whatever is the square root of someday, the tangent of opposites, the cosign of circumstance, the fraction of time that represents former mermaid turned breathing girl.

How To Make a Comeback

It starts with being ashes, being willing to exist after you die. 

Drink wine with your friends in the open air, even if it is too cold, even when it is too hot.

Raise a glass of water up and place it on your head and have long conversations while keeping it there.

Forget that it is there.

Then, catch it in your palm without spilling a drop.

Sleep a lot.

When you cry, let your eyes stay black with mascara like you are part of a tribe.

Let your mouth stay dry like it is a desert.

Let your hands be a mask for your face like you are part of a tribe.

Once you can feel your bones again, and the color of fever is on your cheeks,

Leave.

Fly somewhere even warmer, where you do not know a soul,

Where you are a stranger, and everyone else is part of a tribe.

Wear a green dress and walk into a room like you belong there,

Like you are your own tribe.

Tell your stories again and again.

Tell someone about the time you got your sunglasses caught in your hair

That it took five friends to lie around you in bed for an hour and free you strand by strand.

They will understand that you are here to disentangle yourself.

When they ask what is tangled in your hair,

Tell them birds, tell them kites, tell them your eyes.

Make a home in a hotel room.

Put milk in the refrigerator, but don't buy bread.

Drink coffee so weak that it tastes like your last kiss.

Hang your dresses in a row, and stack your books like they are your tribe.

Keep a pile of ashes outside your door where you have put out fires.

Hang beads around the neck of your lamp because you have made this room your own.

When you can walk out on to the sidewalk, 

Knowing which direction leads where,

You will know it is time to leave again.

You will pack your bags, but leave everything unfolded.

You will put milk in the refrigerator that will be left to spoil.

You will pull your hair back from your face,

And talk to a shaman who will mark your body with black ink

Whatever symbol means you have scattered enough of your ashes and are ready to rise.

He will wipe the blood from your arm, and you will see that it is red again.

You will feel your bones move under his hands.

Your arm will be a totem, a resurrection, an initiation into a tribe.

You will know you are alive again

When you have no more stories for strangers,

And many for your friends who are saying:

Come back. We have wine. 

The air is not too cold or too warm, but it moves.

Here are your eyelashes,

Here is a glass your size.

We have your hands. Show us your eyes.

HCS 

Phoenix, Arizona 8.11.2009

Ingredients

I've always wished I could be made of something different: mint, honey, absinthe, iron. I went to Arizona to find out what I was made of. I am skin.

Strangers want to consume me. They imagine that they care about me, and say they don't know why, it is inexplicable.  I know why. It is because I twist my lips while looking out the corners of my eyes and nod knowingly while they speak. They think they have a secret. It is because I am an altar of myself, raised on high heels, chin like an ancient artifact, eyes that have witnessed something so terrible that they no longer blink. It is because I can insult someone in just the right place so that they think I have honored them. I can speak quietly, and make a person lean in just before I scream.  So far, three people claim I have put a spell on them. I am magic, they think. But, I have learned. I am only skin. 

I did not expect to learn most about myself from people who don't know me at all. If I could, I'd grant each person I know the gift of traveling alone and finding out what strangers think they are made of. It is dangerously intoxicating, and terrifyingly humbling to shimmer, and know you're fool's gold.

I am somewhere in between Arizona and Georgia, leaning toward one, crawling back toward the other. I am made of skin. On the inside are bones, and labyrinthine systems that end precisely where they started, synapses that misfire when too close to desire, entire geographies of places I tried to read like the fortune on a palm, and the postage of how much I really weigh, the wealth of shipping me home, the loss of returning.

I Say Potato, You Spell Potatoe

"I'm running out of money. I think I have to go home," I said to The Graduate.

"You are home," he said.

He has these rare moments of seriousness. When they occur, it is best to be quiet for a minute and make sure he doesn't burst out laughing or follow up with an insult. I stared at him and he stared back.

Then, it was back to normal. Arguing about everything except avocados, the only thing we have in common besides a passion for virtual farming. This is why two unemployed people should never be friends. It is easy to feel like something has been accomplished as long as you harvested enough digital strawberries to afford to expand your soybean plots. We actually celebrated the day I had earned enough points to grow rice. He gave me a virtual cow. I bought him a real beer. 

There are good things about it as well. He can call me on his webcam and I can tell him to straighten his tie before a job interview, but that otherwise, he looks sharp. He calls me out when I say I am willing to take any job, but only apply for the ones I want.

I've let my farm go. For four days, I've had rows upon rows of plots filled with browned and withered strawberry plots. Four cows stand side by side, needing to be milked. The chickens, by now, must have constructed pyramids from the eggs I've neglected to collect. The Graduate likes to pretend that this is a symptom of depression that occurred after we decided not to date and to be friends. Who called it  is an ongoing debate. Which came first, the chicken or the ex-girlfriend?

The truth is, I am home. I have two of them. This one feels like much less of one than Atlanta, but I love it. I want to stay. I want to stay long enough to get an old Volkswagen bus that would carry me to Sedona where I can grow lavender fields--real ones--and finish writing the book and have a pottery wheel and a couple of barefoot children who run around while I sit outside and drink sangria around all my brilliant friends who paint on easels spread under Juniper trees. 

But I have to admit--and this is the only time I might be this kind--that having a friend here, whether I get on a plane on Friday, or next week, or if I stay forever, made this feel like a home. I've had some strange encounters. I had to contact a friend in Atlanta in middle of the night because I am fairly certain that something was slipped into my drink (and then the guy followed my cab). I had someone else harass me for about 24 hours by phone calling me a whore and a hypocrite, with no provocation except I declined to date him. I considered jumping off a cliff. I considered gambling all my money. I considered giving up when my motives were questioned.

 I've also had moments of bravery. My plane let off right at the spot where I once said the most difficult goodbye of my life. My chin trembled but I held my head up and kept walking. I picked up my own bags, got in a cab and gave an address to my new home, a place I had never seen before. A natural introvert, I've marched right in to conversations with strangers. I sang karaoke with coconuts on. I jumped into a pool in my underwear at party where I knew almost no one. I have spent endless hours in silence, without the distraction of television or wine and written more words in 3 weeks than I have in the last year. 

I know where I have a home. It's anywhere I go. This is the greatest lesson I have learned. But, when there is not a friend in sight, and moments get lonely, you'll take almost anybody. Luckily, I found a friend who is maybe just a notch above almost anybody--just a hair above average. He may vote republican and think that numbers are superior to words and is infinitely infuriating in conversation, but he's a good side show act after a few drinks if you ask him to find the square root of large numbers. Even more fun is giving him words to spell.  He doesn't believe in any of my magic. He calls my blue eyes blue. He only listens to about twenty percent of what I say, and then makes up the rest. But, I rather like him. And, he's compared me to heroin (you made a metaphor!), so I'm guessing the feeling is mutual. He's raked leaves and scared off the crows in the farm I've abandoned. And, if I've rubbed off on him at all, he would have done it even if he didn't get more coins to expand his farm into a capitalist empire. 

It was hard to leave all my friends who are like-minded. It was an even greater challenge to befriend my complete opposite and find topics to discuss other than all the great things than can be done with avocados. But if you ever need a list, we have one.

Holly Caulfield

When you are alone in a place where no one knows you, everyone wants to meet you. Conversations are a series of interviews. After a person asks, "what do you do?", which is generally the second or third question, I start to attract a crowd. The best part is, I've started being totally honest. At first, I was generic: "I am a writer." But then, people want to know what newspaper I work for or they want to tell me their book idea so I can write it for them. Now I say, "I have no idea." The other night I was waiting for my cab and a man walked by and said, "you look lost." Reflexively, I wanted to say, "oh, no. Just waiting for my ride." Instead, I said, "I am."

What people get are fragments of a story, and it's entertaining to see how they try to make me fit in a box. One person called me the "female Holden Caulfield." A lot of people just shake their heads, sometimes in awe, but mostly because they find me incomprehensible, and say, "you are brave."  Last night, a sweet round fellow just could not imagine being able to go out alone, "especially on a Friday night." I get this a lot. Usually in the form of "how could someone so gorgeous be out alone?" I don't find this flattering. If I didn't want to be alone, I wouldn't have to be. Aloneness is something others want to consume. Nobody wants it, everybody needs it. The implication is that I need to be rescued. And, sometimes I do. When someone hits on me, I just have to text the bartender who will come over and kiss me, which usually gets rid of undesirables. The other bartender puts dildos in my purse when I am not looking and then calls attention to it. This is also an effective means by which to clear my space. How did I make myself a home at a bar that has a supply of dildos on hand? I can only answer that I am now a girl who will sing karaoke with coconuts over her breasts.

Before I sound like I have completely regressed, this is the first time that I have truly been single since I was seventeen years old. It is uncomfortable, meaningless, which is precisely why I must pursue being single with the sort of fire I would normally put into being in a relationship. Two days ago, I fell apart.  I wrote all day until I realized I had only spoken once, and it was to a goldfish. So, I went out for a short time, realized I didn't want to be there, and wandered off to find a cab. I walked until I was lost, and then until I was standing in front of a place that was from a past life. So, I went in and had a drink with my old self. We were rudely interrupted by a table of people who insisted I join them. Such a pretty girl should not be sitting alone. Apparently, they could not see that the chairs around me were filled with ghosts.

I went home and promptly began pricing flights back to Atlanta. Then I cried so hard that my hair hurt. When I found myself steps away from renting a car to drive to Sedona so I could jump off the highest peak, I made contact with the only person here who doesn't just know one of my stories, but knows at least 59 of them. The result might make you think it was a bad idea. He didn't know this story and I didn't tell him, but I let him write the last line anyway: I'll leave the door open. Before you infer that this was an invitation, I should advise you that I was being mocked. The female Holden Caulfield knows a phony when she sees one. Also, how to close a door.

So now, unfettered from my past and running out of money, I have two weeks left. Anything can happen. I can make a home or go back home. Either way, I have a new set of rules and a sense of myself one can only achieve by learning that finding oneself can only occur by being willing to lose one's mind. Maybe, even, they are the same. Holden Caulfield's last words in The Catcher in the Rye are better than any last line I could come up with: 

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."