Dear Rowan, September 16 Detroit
Hello from Detroit! It is great out
here on the road! I spent a week exploring St. Louis, then most of a week in
Indianapolis, and now here I am in Detroit. I get to do what I want, when I
want, and how I want. I go to coffee shops or Elmer's, or anywhere else that
has free wifi and write. I had forgotten how much better I feel when I am writing. I
feel like my life is finally going in the right direction. I am happier, and
saner, and don't have the random sobbing breakdowns for no real reason
whatsoever, like someone taking my favorite chair, or losing a pen or pencil I
like, or for no reason at all just standing in the middle of a room and
breaking down. And the feeling that there is no reason to do anything at all
other than sit and stare at a wall or just go to bed because there is no point
in being awake. I know they say that these are the symptoms of depression, and
I am well aware of the fact that depression is something that is a constant
companion and has been since I was very little. I even have the doctor's note
to prove it (I don't really have a note, just a diagnosis. Although a note
would be kinda neat, I think I would frame it. "Emily should not attend
real life today, as she is depressed and should stay in bed with a mug of tea
or hot chocolate and a good book, signed Her Doctor"). But writing helps
me balance my brain, even when there is still a landslide of things to do. If I
give myself time for writing, it really does seem to help me get everything
else done, rather than take time away from my to-do list. Not that there is
much on my to-do list these past few weeks other than "write." It is
really great. I have to write, and read, and run, and live. And the occasional
load of laundry of course, but I can read or write while laundry is running, so
that hardly counts.
I have been writing mostly fiction, I
have five books in various stages of incompleteness that I have started over
the years, and they all need work to get them finished and polished. I also
have a few short stories that have come up just in the past few weeks that I
hope to get finished shortly and submitted to magazines or contests or
something. There is also the travel writing to do, which is the "work"
side of my writing, but even that is fun. I have been trying out the travel writing I do on people in whatever cafe or coffee shop I have stopped into to see if my
descriptions work. It has been great, I get a wonderful range of opinions and it
lets me really hone my language to tug just the right strings to make people
really want to go and see the places I am describing. It would be
really wonderful if I can build my writing up into an actual career, so I never
have to go back into the real world of a nine to five punch-the-time-card job
again.
When I get stuck in the middle of
writing something, I have a few different knitting and crocheting projects
going, and I just work on one of those while I think about where I want my
writing to go next. If I get really, really stuck I have been going for runs,
which means I have been getting in at least one run a day. It is really fun to
be able to just get out onto the road and find new places all the time. Going
from city to city, and spending a week or so in each place, I have the time to
look up any major trails in town, but I am not there long enough to get bored
running the same places all the time. Heck, I haven't had time to explore every
trail system I have found, but that is ok. If I ever make it back around to
these cities again I will still have places to explore.
Detroit is a rather melancholy place
to explore though. I have heard that one third of the city is vacant, and
wandering around neighborhoods here, I believe it. There are entire blocks of
houses that are empty, some boarded up, some left open with their windows gone
and doors falling off their hinges. Some of these houses are grand old stone or
brick places, and I am sure they were really beautiful when they had people in
them to care for them. Now they are still beautiful, but it is the sad beauty
of something that was truly grand now so far gone that it is past reclaiming
but not yet simply ugly. There are also still signs of the riots in 1967, a
truly ugly moment in history that left ugly and lasting scars on the city.
There are buildings that were abandoned or burned out and just left there, not
reclaimed and not torn down. Just left neglected, like no one cared or could be
bothered to do anything about those buildings. But wouldn't a park, or even
just an empty filed be better than an abandoned burned out warehouse?
The whole town seems to be cheering
on their sports teams. I have yet to meet one single person that wasn't a fan
of at least one of Detroit's sports teams. It seems like these teams are all
that is holding this town together, they buoy up everyone's spirits and
convince them that there is still something good here, something to be proud of
and stay here for. There are all the factories of course, but while people do
seem to have pride in the cars they make, it is different than a uniting, happy
rallying point that is for pleasure, rather than to earn a paycheck. And there
are rival car companies here, so people don't seem quite as unified there are
they are by sports. If someone here is a baseball fan, they have their team
and that team is the same for every baseball fan in Detroit. And if someone is
a basketball fan, they might think the baseball people are a little weird but
they still support each other's fanaticism since they are both fans of Detroit
teams. Overall though, this is not a place I would want to live in. It is too
sad, too empty and abandoned. It feels like every gaping old house has ghosts
in it, looking out of the window hollows and seeing other ghosts looking back
from empty windows across the street. And walking though, I feel like all those
ghosts are feeling sad for the living, as though just being in Detroit gives a
person a little more mortality than they had before.
I am much more in the business of
keeping myself happy now, even though there is something sadly sweet about these
abandoned old places. I bought an 8 gig thumb drive and I have been busy
loading it with every musical soundtrack I can get my hands on. My car has a
USB port in the glove box, and the stereo will play whatever I put onto a thumb
drive. I have also been putting on tons of Disney songs, and other happy
makers. With 8 gigs, I am not too worried about filling it up, but if I do I
will just get another one and have thumb drives for different sets of music,
like mix CDs but huge. I have another thumb drive that I have been filling with
audio books. It is rather amazing how many audio books there are out on the
internet for free. There are always the audio books for sale at truck stops,
but I find I much prefer classics to the pop and pulp fiction that is generally
available there, and the books that do look interesting at truck stops are
usually available online too. I guess I am just an old fashioned girl when it
comes to my reading habits.
I suppose it is not really fair to go
on about how wonderful my life has become these past few weeks while you are
still waiting to find your perfect life. And my life is not perfect, and I know
that the "romance of the road" will wear off before too long and I
will want to have a place to go home to every day that is mine, instead of a
room I am renting for a few days. But that point has not hit yet, and I am in
no hurry to get there. It is such a grand change right now to have gone from a
dead end in Arbuckle, then a dead end in Bend, then another dead end in Wichita, to a brand new bright and
shiny world full of possibilities out here on the road. And I know that this
bubble might pop too, just like the one I was in all the way to Wichita and
through the first week or two at least. But right now I feel like I have a
plan, I am living the life I want to live, and somehow I will make it work.
Between the rent from Arbuckle and the travel writing, I think my finances will be
ok through this Grand Tour of mine, and hopefully will actually get better
after I get a good reputation and a nice set of clippings and examples from the travel writing so I get more assignments. Right now, I really think that this
crazy writing-for-a-living thing is actually going to work!
I plan on staying in Detroit for a
few days, then meandering up across the top of the country until I can cut over
to Boston. There is really no rush though, since I want to be in Salem, Mass.
for Halloween and would rather not have to backtrack to get there. I might
wander up to Maine before I go to Boston, depending on the weather. I know that
I will be driving in snow a good portion of the winter since I will be on the
East Coast, but that does not mean I am eager to get into icy driving
conditions just yet. But from what I can tell, everything is still clear
sailing (or driving) for now, so I have the whole country open to be explored!
I will write again from my next fabulous and fun destination!
Your friend,
Emily
No comments:
Post a Comment