Fall is my second favorite F-word. Bumper sticker

You call it Newton’s 3rd law of motion; I call it Karma.

“Future love doesn’t exist—it’s a present activity only.” Tolstoy

“There is no winning, only degrees of losing.” D Devito, War of the Roses

They say the first war ever waged was man against women and in general, men won. Hundreds of ensuing wars over many millenniums involved humans against humans, humans versus technology, humans vs the elements. We tooth n clawed it over territory, property, right to rule… They also say the last war waged will be women against men, outcome unknown. In 2010, I wouldn’t have argued with that premise.

It had been a decade of moves, from VA burbs to NC plantation, back to DC to consult for a year, then big leap across the Appalachians to another burb house in E TN, and finally landing where I (still) am, a house on a cul de sac with a Cherokee name, surrounded by trees, a lake view, and a modicum of privacy. Here I would contemplate future retirement, past accomplishments and ambitions not realized, turn 60, 70, 80 perhaps?

1960-70s counter culture was legions away from the E Tennessee burbs where I’d been living for the last three years—although… A neighbor several doors down was rumored to be either in rehab or the local loney bin. Folks that lived on the opposite side of the street were swingers, and knew where the cities gentlemen clubs, tittie bars, and backroom gambling establishments were. This aptly named scruffy little city was getting crowded. It was time to head for the Smokies foothills.

The worst realization that year was I seemed to have fallen out of love…with people, though there were a few exceptions. On my loathing list was the real estate agent I hired that championed the folks buying the Knox house I was selling instead of moi—the person paying her commission; an odious, big mouthed, clueless sister; an old friend who crossed a peculiar rubicon, and a daughter that… An ex had returned to past bad habits, to which he’d added a death wish. While brushing up on my French for an anticipated trip to Paris in 2011, I avoided conjugating the verb aimer (to love—something we do) and its noun form amour (something we feel).

However, while unpacking at the new house and waiting for cable and Internet to be hooked up, I began watching DVDs of old romantic shows. I binged several seasons of Sex & the City, Beauty and the Beast, The English Patient, and the romcom where love’s thrown as a bone to those with less power. Was it ironic or idiotic that instead of divorcing, I opted for a house with his/her floors and separate bedrooms to effect separate peaces?  I would need a new vocabulary to describe this wobbly form of congealed ardor détente. I would need to forget that a hard man is good to feel (Mae West).

2010 was another year of self-learning, compliments of the www and the beautiful bookstores I frequented (that would begin to fold and implode around 2013). As this new home had few built in bookshelves, and there was no time for someone to cobble shelves together, I bought over 20 foldable, stackable pine, cherry, and painted bookshelves, in addition to ones I already owned. I filled every one of them and have bought more as needed (though in 2020 I issued a directive, for every new book I bought, I must purge a book from the ranks).

A book that paused the unpacking for a few hours was Roland Barthe’s A Lover’s Discourse. In a chapter titled The Intractable, he talks about his difficulties, despairs, desperation to be done with love, while affirming it as a value above all else. He treats love like the Japanese treat a broken bowl. The art of Kintsugi (gold seaming) is about cherishing flaws and chips, forgiving imperfections. I gazed at the gold wedding band on my right ring finger, but could only think about the story of the caveman that chained his mate to the cave while he hunted. After time passed, he only had to tie a string round her finger to remind her she was his property.  The last movie I watch that evening was War of the Roses. The last Barthe passage I read was a Buddhist Koan, where a master holds a disciple’s head under water until bubbles stop forming. The master then revives the disciple and says ‘when you crave truth as you crave air, you will truly know what truth is.’

That summer, there was a riotous array of fireflies in the hounds new picket fenced back yard and in the deep woods beyond. Who needs July fireworks when there are fireflies and the melodious music of the night, a hooting owl, chirping crickets, wood clicking on wood, and whispering lake breezes? August was drier than usual, but by September welcome rains arrived and continued into late October. By then, the house had acquired a personality. Walls were repainted; plates, oil & water color treasures, and mirrors were hung; hardwood floors were buffed and graced with oriental rugs. Into closets I crammed boxes full of bits and pieces of a life I wasn’t sure fit the new décor or rustic view.

I wish I could say the same thing about my own inventory. In one room, there were 3 large mirrors awaiting assignment. As I carefully unpacked a set of china, a person stared back at me. She wasn’t 30—or even 50 anymore. Her body felt like a paperweight; her skin was too pale, hair unkempt and moist with sweat. Later, trying out the new bathtub in another mirrored room, I noticed faint marbling between breasts and a thin blue veined roadway that ran down my left thigh. Jo 2010 also had broken two fingernails. It was only after turning out the lights and drying myself by candlelight that the image softened and the hard lines blurred.

Autumn was a splendid and welcome assault to the senses. After morning mists left, the trees put on a fashion show or was it more a carnival of colors? I longed to linger and stare at nature’s creations. Trips into the city were infrequent and involved numerous stops: groceries, bookshop, liquor store, flea market…Many items were ordered online or bought for pennies at weekend village garage sales. I claimed as my own the unheated room at the back of the house, lined with windows on three sides. It felt like being in a tree fort in an enchanted forest. I hung a suitable sign on the wall that said Camp Runamuck (with a bit of luck, we won’t run amuk).

Despite the excitement of moving to a house in the shadow of the Smokies, having a work from home consulting job and a new fenced in yard for my hounds, I seemed, that year, to be composed of mirthless dark matter, the invisible stuff that allegedly makes up 85% of our universe. Had I arrived at my ‘best if used by…’ date? Had I been manipulated to do something I didn’t want to do? Or was I feeling pangs of angst and agitation due to certain world events?

Should I apply the Chaos Theory to my life—conjecture Russian suicide bombers in Moscow, the magnitude 7 earthquake in Haiti, or the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was somehow responsible for my angst? Or should I just say angst for the memories and be grateful I’d finally found a charming cottage in the woods? When I wasn’t working, cleaning this behemoth of a house, or entertaining the hounds, I read poetry and books about people with worse luck in love than I had, the Cyrano’s, Romeo’s, Deidres of Sorrows, Tess of the Durbervilles. I began to attempt to answer an ever looming question: what does who I love (or think I love) say about me? Question #2 was often: why do we expect so much of an antiquated arrangement never designed to work equally well for both partners?

It was time; would this be the place where I finished excavating myself? Could I pull off being both objective narrator of ‘herstory’ as it unfolded, and in retrospect? Could I impartially describe the parts that felt like a buzzing, stinging beehive of terrible things?

Mondays began in darkness—up with the hounds—first pot of coffee drained by 9am. It was the most efficient way to get hours of paid work done (plus 5-10 minutes of zen yoga) and soldier through the never ending emptying of boxes, painting of walls, sketching of minor renovations needed…As I found places of honor for personal mementoes, I thought about my dad, who had seldom said ‘love you’ but showed it in his actions, in the many items he handcrafted while suffering chronic back pain and failing eyesight. What would he think of this lake cottage that could double as a small B&B was I ever so inclined again?  I found homes for my box coffins of ex’es memories, cards, letters, and the few pictures that remained after an angry spouse burned a bulk of these mementoes.

It felt different, dastardly to lose ex lover artifacts, the enduring Braille of their former presence, scent, touch, animated voice, symbols, a cocktail napkin, pressed twig of evergreen… (those foolish things). Gone was time borrowed for my tomorrow’s; I was bereft, with only memories left—names, places, passions spent. But was still able to travel to the long ago in dreams—dry, wet, wild. It was clear—this move—and decisions made—had unsettled me.

While waiting to fall in love again with something (besides my hounds), I explored the area around the village. The new relationship territory I’d entered into was too uncharted to navigate. But close to noble Sequoyah’s birth place, there was an archeological dig—where in 1889 a stone slab (Bat Creek stone) was unearthed while excavating a Hopewell Indian mound. Other artifacts included copper bracelets, and nine skeletons laid in a row, heads facing north, plus two more nearby. The inscription was 1st-2nd C Paleo-Hebrew. Consensus among archaeologists was the tablet was a hoax (or possibly of Cherokee origin). However, other similar stones were found near Nashville and dated to the lstc CE.

When the TVA created Tellico Dam and a lake by flooding a wide swath of land in the late 1970s, they committed cultural genocide by submerging the mounds. Cherokee towns of Chota and Tanasi were also flooded, graveyards were washed away, as well as valuable artifacts and evidence of the indigenous pre-Clovis tribes that had lived here for more than 5000 years. Sadly, the nefarious Smithsonian claimed the stone so no further testing has been done. The stone was on view (in 2015) at the Museum of the Cherokee in NC.

While relegating Shakespeare’s plays and poems to a bedroom bookcase, two shelves below erotic writings of Pauline Reage, Henry Miller & Anais Nin, The Happy Hooker, Emmanuelle, Winterson’s Written on the Body, Joy of Sex, Updike’s Couples, and dozens of books about the history of the senses, breasts, phallic symbols, and the highly illustrated Karma Sutra, Hamlet slipped from my hands. I’d underlined passages, including Polonius advice ‘to thine own self be true. As it must follow, thou canst not then be false to any man.’ Was I, had I been true?

There was something about the assumed reciprocity of the whole love thing that bothered me. It was an act that begged for equality. Too often we barter with the word. I said it, now you say it (and mean it). Confess. If you say it and don’t mean it, there will be consequences, sad songs written, images of gory, bleeding hearts drawn. With friends I’ve loved and lost, I often tried the stoic approach, the Epictetus they were only on loan to me attitude. The antidote to their absence was to embrace the temporariness of life, the lack of ownership of anything, and express gratitude for the grift gift of shared memories.

Towards year’s end, after November’s beaver moon had waned, I took a few weeks off to gaze at clouds and assess my surroundings—not as survivalist, but as a person whose journey had slowed, who was still moving, not necessarily forward, but inward. The clouds were Rochart Tests, but to say this or that one resembled a cow’s milking apparatus was udder nonsense. They were all anatomy.

The house no longer looked like a hoarder’s hideaway. Handymen had been hired to renovate the kitchen and two of the bathrooms. 2011 approached; I’d be another year older, wider, wiser,  badder bitter better…And if not better under the garish glitter of a southern sun, at least I was still fairly fabulous by candle and fire light. And I’d discovered something. In the glare of daylight, we are practical. By candle light or fire’s flame, we wax poetic. The flame leaps, not us. Hold it close, it rises. You feel its heat. Hold it at arm’s length, it seems to shrink, ceases to warm. This next decade would witness a series of moving violations on my part. Movements that would defy Newton’s lst, 2nd, and 3rd Laws of Motion.

PS, 2023: What a peculiar phrase sorry for your loss is. After the recent death of my eldest hound, the sentiment was repeated often. But I didn’t lose her, I kept saying, I know right where she is—in a grave in the back yard, near the walnut tree. In dog years, she’d lived a long life, though in her final year, the fierce, shrill Staffordshire bark was softer and a few teeth were missing, but not her Staffie smile. A celebration of the joy she brought seems a better thing than condolences—to sing a being into the mystic and choose a totem that forever will remind you of this being that brought joy.  

Up next: 2004 To Be or B&B?