The Furious Spinner

A year after we married, Mario and I moved to the Oregon coast. When I first glimpsed it, I thought of Ireland, which I had visited only a few years earlier. Rough and beautiful, sad and poor, the land so close to the sea often a barrier to prosperity and a threshold to the Other—to places and feelings we did not always understand. It was the place where land met water and sky met them both. Land, sky, and water shapechanged every single day. And Invisibles whispered to those who listened. No matter where you went on the coast, the Ocean was there, nearby, the sound of it pounding against the rocks or hissing over the sand, spreading its salty mist across the hills and meadows; at first you’d think the fog was the breath of the Ocean but later you wondered—when the ground would not grow food and the lambs grew moldy from dampness—if perhaps the Ocean had spilled her tears across the land.

Whatever it was, I loved the Ocean and the coastal life, even though I was often lonely for company and community. The old timers were not interested in us, and the newer folks gathered together in smokey places where I would not go. Mario and I didn’t drink or smoke; after a time, people stopped inviting us. Still I went to the Ocean every day and walked the beaches for hours. I knew I was made for this land which was so similar to the place where my Irish ancestors had lived. I fell into the subtle rhythms of the seasons and began to know what time of the day or the year it was by which way the wind blew and which creatures walked (or flew above) the beach with me. I felt myself opening, opening, opening—to joy and ecstasy and the natural world. So I was rather stunned when I became ill. I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with what they called Environmental Illness and told to avoid those things which made me ill—like the biosphere.

After awhile, I barely heard the ocean, saw only gray skies and sickness, and longed for a world where I was healthy again. Even though I slowly got better, four years after we settled on the Oregon coast, Mario and I decided to move to Arizona. Only months before we left, we became close friends with the librarian in the small town where we lived, Kevin, and his wife Vicki, who were planning to move to Hawaii soon. We spent several days or evenings a week together, watching movies, playing cards, riding bikes. We all marveled at how quickly we suddenly became friends—since we had casually known each other for four years—and decided we probably had subconsciously decided it was safe to be such good friends because we were all going to move away soon. Even though I often had allergy attacks after spending time with them (I was allergic to some of their pets), I was no longer lonely. I had found a sense of community in our unit of four. Then they moved to Hawaii, and we moved to Tucson.

Although Mario and I have been back in the Pacific Northwest for seventeen years, we have never returned to live on the coast. It still calls to me. Sometimes I ache to be near it again, and I have to go. I always feel calmer there. Strong again. Although it is the place where I first started to become ill, I often believe it is the place where I can get well one day, too.

It had been raining for week where we live. The Weather Channel promised sunshine on the coast December 19, so Mario took off work, and we drove to Newport, Oregon, the next morning. I closed my eyes as we wound through the Coast Range on Highway 18, letting the sun flash me through the trees. After weeks of rain, the sun felt like a long lost dose of relaxing joy.

Mi amore.

I was tired. After twenty years of being ill, my entire being was consumed with thoughts of death and illness. Sunny ideas did not often make their way into my brain. I felt no sense of community in my town—no sense of home—after years of battling with government officials over environmental issues.

And in the last few years, I had grown more and more uncomfortable around other people, even close friends. It was as though the shyness which I overcame as a child had returned full bore—only it manifested itself physically. If I visited someone who wasn’t feeling well, I would often begin exhibiting their symptoms, even if I didn’t know they were sick. If someone was sad, I became sad. You can only imagine what happened when I was with a group. It was a strange kind of empathy which I still do not understand. But I began withdrawing even more and feeling more and more isolated. I still missed Kevin and Vicki and wondered if I’d ever meet people again with whom I was completely comfortable.

In any case, I needed to change my world view, even if I couldn’t change my body. No more sickness and death. War and pestilence. This vacation, this trip to the Mother Ocean, was a good time and place for me to begin.

After Mario and I checked into our hotel, we walked down to the nearly deserted Nye Beach. No wind. Sunshine. About 55 degrees. The wind and water sculpted the flat beach sand into bird’s wings: thousands of feathers each distinguishable from the other. Mario said the whole beach was the ocean’s canvas, and today, she had painted birds.

We spotted a tiny spiral in the wet sand created by a small creature at the end of the spiral. Near it was a tiny orange spider. The tide was coming in, and I was certain the spider would drown. So I picked it up and took it to a log far from the high tide mark.

“Spider, can you heal me or show me the way to healing?” I talked to it as I carried it away from the water. I put it down on a log, and it immediately jumped toward me as I started to walk away. I put it on the log again, then rejoined Mario by the water. It occurred to me that maybe the orange spider had wanted to be at the tide mark, and I had just carried it back into the boondocks, as far as it was concerned. The tide mark could have been its Everest, and I had carried it back to New Jersey. Now it was cursing me from here and back. I laughed. Should have minded my own business.

Mario and I were quiet for a long while as we walked. The wind picked up. Seagulls hunkered down on the sand, looking like beach monks. Crows flew overhead. A few sanderlings ran along the edges of the tide as it came in. Sanderlings are Mario’s favorite birds. Something so determined about them, their tiny legs scissoring so fast it looks like they have many legs. Then as the wave recedes, they pick furiously at the sand.

Mario and I began talking about writing, coming up with plots for different books and stories. I told him—again—that I wasn’t sure I could keep writing if it didn’t mean anything: it had to make a difference, either to me or whoever was reading it. I could write if it healed me, but I wasn’t healed. Maybe I could keep writing if it made a difference to other people, but as far as I could tell, it didn’t. I wasn’t able to write just to make a living, not because I thought there was anything wrong with that. I just didn’t seem capable of deciding what was commercial and then writing it. I write my own novels, and they either sold or they didn’t. More often than not, they didn’t. Not because they were poorly written but because the story didn’t speak to an agent or an editor or a publisher. Who knew why? I wasn’t going to spend my life butting my head up against a wall trying to figure it out. I wanted to make a difference with my life, and I didn’t know how to do that yet.

What I really wanted was to be cured, healed, healthy again. I was still looking for the magic elixir, chant, medicine, mindset, body way which would miraculously transform me into myself again—or at least someone like me who was healthy!

Back at our hotel, we ate take-out and watched TV, then went for a night walk. No one else was on the beach. I remembered a couple had been murdered on this beach a few years ago. Just two kids out for a “joy killing.” I blinked and tried to forget about it. The beach was so beautiful. The lights from fishing boats hung on the horizon like falling stars sizzling on the water’s surface before continuing their fall to the bottom of the ocean. The white foam of the waves moved constantly, like white snakes or rows of horses rushing forward through the black water. The hotel lights were too bright, bleaching the sand nearly white.

We stood watching the water for a while, and then we saw what looked like little bits of foam that had gotten away from the waves. They were sanderlings, about five of them, playing chicken with the waves, it seemed. We followed them until they merged back into their flock. The flock moved as one entity, following the waves out and then staying one tiny claw away from the water as the wave came in again. As the wave receded, they punched their beaks into the sand like miners looking for gold. Edible gold.

Then they started all over again.

If we moved closer to them, they moved even more quickly, sometimes actually flying away. So we found one spot and stood very still, hoping the sanderlings would get comfortable with us. The waves went in and out, the flock of sanderlings went in and out, and we stood silently, human totems. The birds never got much closer, but they didn’t go away either, and I liked standing in the dark with my husband and these tiny little creatures so determined to dig sea worms, small bivalves, crustaceans, and bugs out of the dirt.

It was like being amidst a flock of dancers, their movements synchronized, regimented—almost—yet more lovely than I can describe. They seemed so purposeful. And so together. What was it like to have a community like that? Did they all feel like they belonged? All similarly-minded? Were they comfortable in each other’s company? Often I was only comfortable with Mario, not even relaxed in my own body.

We could have watched the sanderlings for hours, I’m sure, but I started getting cold, so we eventually waved good-bye to the flock and returned to the hotel. We watched them from our balcony for a while, with the binoculars.

“I love that you love the sanderlings,” I said to Mario.

His joy was so apparent. Watching him made my stomach lurch. How wonderful to find joy in the daring deeds of a flock of sanderlings.

“I do love them,” he said, sounding a bit surprised. “They're just very charming. They glide over the sand, like a receding wave. They have two speeds: really fast or stopped. And seeing them all flock together, it’s just very charming.”

“Yes, they are quite wonderful,” I agreed, smiling at my husband.

We decided to write a bit before bed. I sat at my laptop and began a short novel. I didn’t have a title. Didn’t have a plot. I just had the image and voice of this girl in my head, and I started to write. Not the way I usually write. After a couple of hours, I stopped and read it to Mario. When I finished, we both sat in the silence. The main character was called Mercy. She wouldn’t eat because she believed she was transforming into an angel, and angels didn’t need to eat. She was so wounded by what she saw happening in the world that she could see only one solution: to sacrifice her human self. It is a question many of us have: How does one survive the woundedness of the world and one’s own woundedness?

I couldn’t sleep. Twitches (these strange sensations that happen in my limbs where it feels as though I cannot keep still—and if I do, my legs twitch). I walked up and down the room while Mario slept; movement and time was the only thing I had figured out to relieve them. The movie “Shot in the Heart” came on HBO. I got under the covers again, hoping the movie would put me to sleep, and it did.

The next morning, it was raining, and I was having a bad allergy attack. No more walks on the beach—because of the cold and rain, not my allergy attack. We went to Sarang for lunch.

We had first eaten at this Korean vegetarian restaurant a couple of years earlier. The food was so good we had three meals there in two days. We met the couple who owned it, Park and Lee, and their young son Dahn (pronounced Tahn). They were so kind and loving that I was certain their food would help cure me. We returned many times over the next couple of years and now considered ourselves friends, although eating their food had not cure me.

When we came in this morning, Lee told us they had just returned from Los Angeles: a 20 hour car drive. They had only been back in town for about thirty minutes. They didn’t look tired, but I couldn’t imagine driving 20 hours and then waiting on and cooking for people all day. Dahn came and hung out with us while we waited for our food. He and Mario played a card game I didn’t really understand. Yu-Gi-Oh! Mario thought Dahn was probably making up his own rules, but he went along with him. Dahn was fair: Mario would win, then Dahn would win. The Dark Magician seemed to be Dahn’s favorite card. They would each put one card down and which ever card was “stronger” won. But then they both kept their own cards whether they won or not, so it wasn’t a very logical game to me. Dahn clearly loved the game and could play it over and over again. Mario suggested that maybe all children were slightly obsessive compulsive. What other explanation for their desire and tolerance of such mind numbing (to me) repetition?

Dahn showed us the “jazzy Santa” his grandparents had sent from Korea. Santa held a saxophone to his mouth. When you pressed the red button on his stand, the saxophone played a song and Jazzy Santa danced as he played. It was so loud and obnoxious, and we laughed as Santa Claus swang!

Afterward Mario and I drove south on the coast highway. We stopped at Heceta Head Lighthouse park. The rain had turned to mist, so we got out and wandered around the cove below the lighthouse and the keeper’s house. The lightkeeper’s house looked so cozy up on the bluff. We had been coming here for many years. One of my published short stories, “Desire,” took place inside the house. I often thought of the lightkeeper’s family and what it must have been like for them to live here where they seldom saw any other people for weeks at a time Mario and I stayed overnight in the lightkeeper’s house a couple of years ago. We walked the lighthouse after dark. Standing on the cliff in the foggy darkness, hearing the waves crashing against the rocks below and the strange low mechanical moan of the foghorn, watching the beacons from the lighthouse becoming spokes on a giant light wheel, spinning on its side like an abandoned wheel from a ghostly covered wagon of another era. And near to me, a part of this fantastic landscape, was Mario, his arms outstretched to take it all in. It was an amazing night.

Now Mario stood silently, solidly, at the edges of the waves coming in and out of the cove, like a shapechanged sanderling remembering his life on the beach.

We returned for dinner at Sarang. Sarang means love in Korean, Lee told us when we first stumbled upon the restaurant. Although we all can’t understand each other all the time, the five of us like each other. Once we talked about folk tales, and Park told us that American folk tales emphasized individualism and what one can accomplish alone whereas Korean folk tales were all about making sacrifices for the community. To them, our folk tales were troubling, and they were indicative of what was wrong with our society. Since George Bush and his cohorts were busy bombing the shit out of Iraq at the time of that conversation, I couldn’t really argue with her.

Dahn and Mario played chess after dinner. Dahn had only been playing a few months, but he was quite good. Back at the hotel, Mario and I wrote again. I liked this girl Mercy who was dictating the story to me. She just unfolded before me, wholecloth, loving and compassionate.

I had a bad allergy attack which lasted all night, but I was able to sleep. In the morning, we went to the bookstore and found a Dorling Kindersley book on shipwrecks for Dahn, then went to Sarang for lunch. Dahn wanted to play cards. Mario graciously agreed to play. I was sleepy, wrung out from the long allergy attack, so I watched them laugh and play with one another. Dahn was a smart, kind boy who preferred the company of adults. He was probably the only Korean boy in this small town. Being different all the time can be wearying. Park said in Los Angeles Dahn got to play with other Asian children, and he was very happy in their company. We gave him his book, and he had us read some of it to him. Park came out and talked with me for a while. She was probably twenty years younger than I was, but she often gave me advice as though she were the elder. It was amusing, and I listened. Good advice could come from anywhere. Today she urged me to pay attention to what I ate and to get initiated by her teacher. I smiled and nodded.

When the other customers left, Dahn turned on the Jazzy Santa. He pulled on his mother’s hands until she got up to dance. She laughed and said, “I’m shy,” as she mimicked Santa’s moves. Dahn picked up several balloons from behind the register and threw them at us. I got up, too, laughing, and slapped around the balloon to Jazzy Santa’s shrill song.

Dahn kept coming up with things for us to do, so we wouldn’t leave. We played all sorts of games, colored all kinds of pictures, until it was late and if we stalled much longer we would be driving home in the rain and in the dark. Park made us a double batch of sushi and gave it to us for the trip home. They stood at the door to the restaurant, the three of them, waving until we pulled away from the curb. I continued to wave until I could no longer see them.

As we started down the coast highway, I realized I had found a sense of community here these last few days: on the beach with a flock of sanderlings and in a Korean restaurant dancing to the beat of Jazzy Santa.

And always, always, sitting next to Mario, anywhere, anyplace.

I had twitches on the way home, but I tried not to think about them. Instead Mario and I talked novel plots and tried to figure out Yi-Gi-Oh!

“Maybe it’ll be sunny next week,” I said, “and we can come back and watch the sanderlings.”

“Sure,” he said. “And eat at Sarang.”

Darkness dropped onto the coast range when we were just past the casino, but we made it home safely. We saved enough sushi to have it for breakfast the next morning. It tasted like the ocean. 0 comments

Friday, December 26, 2003

Turned to Mush...