Studio Visit

Diary of snowy Vermont and a Lynchian reception room

Feb 15

Writing from the snowy banks of Vermont where the C clan has commandeered Uncle M’s winter bunker for a long weekend. He was quick to remind us we were guests, repeating “Keep it neat” three times on his way out the door Saturday morning to ski. I dutifully wiped a few stray bread crumbs off the kitchen counter and recalled feeling like a nuisance the last time we stayed over.

I have often been a guest, sometimes for extended periods, and find the experience fraught and full of small humiliations. You are not a full citizen when you are a guest, and your say diminishes accordingly. I can keep it neat just fine, but I don’t like tiptoeing around, which is exactly how I entered the Vermont abode Friday night at 10:30pm. Famished, I groped around in the dark for leftovers and settled for toast. The crumbs were mine.

It is strange to read about Joan Didion’s California in Where I Was From and look up to see a lake frozen. The whole scene is blinding white and I am glad once more that I dared to get transition lenses, which have helped me transition into my villain era. More snow is expected the following day and I am fully prepared to stay in. Cards, books, tea, fire. Ingredients for a blustery Sunday with the extended family.

I have felt a protective ferocity lately toward those I hold dear. Toward C and her creative pursuits and generous emotional reservoirs. Toward my brother and mother. Toward my father for how unloving his father was. Every wrong feels like a wound.

I’m not sure what triggered it but it makes me worry for parenthood, when so many threats exist and so much has to be learned. It is hard to let those you love learn things you’ve long known. Hard, too, not to become vicious toward those who harm, especially when they are friends and family.

Yesterday, I trained up to Hudson to meet C for a nice Italian lunch. I worked most of the sold-out train ride, only catching glimpses of the frozen river to my left and the frosted rockscape to my right. Aside from Super Bowl Sunday, I hadn’t seen C all week — she’d been upstate for the past two weeks on a self-made residency in Canaan.

The studio she worked out of was a rundown, carpeted storefront in a strip mall, massive by New York standards. The only furniture was a foldout table, folding chair, beat up couch, and a metal pilates machine with BDSM overtones. It felt like a Lynchian reception room.

The pretty receptionist artist.

C presented what she’d been working on; it was impressively researched and thoroughly conceptualized. She was interview-ready, had a reason behind everything and made a murder board mapping her genealogy of ideas with references images, swatches of fabric, and neatly written notes.

It was so nice to see her back in a studio setting, and nice to be in one myself. To physically enter a zone devoted to a creative practice is refreshing when I’m accustomed to remaining at my desk and mentally shifting gears from work brain to writer brain. I’ve never had a studio space, and don’t really need one — a tremendous upside of writing is the low overhead — but I would like a dedicated room or office one day. Even though this studio wasn’t cozy in the slightest, I found its spartan discomfort inspiring. The empty coffee cups and seltzer cans strewn about were evidence of thought, focus, devotion. I miss the immersion that comes with creation.

Feb 16

Woke up to big globs of snow parachuting to earth. Felt like the family in Little Women returning from our winter walk, stamping our feet and removing our scarves as we piled into the small vestibule. We went as far as the bridge where fish huts dotted one side of the lake while the other shored up pristine overnight snow.

I put the kettle on and made everyone tea. I wish it was just me and C for part of the day at least. I always crave the quiet and stopped for a moment on the walk to watch the tall firs sway in gusty winds. I heard one moan, but I couldn't tell which.

A fire is blazing now as the ladies labor in the kitchen and the men think about what they did and didn’t do.

Our social lives are evolving. Widening yet shrinking. It feels like a typical couple trajectory. You start hanging out more just the two of you, and with other couple friends and with each other’s families. It always seemed to me like a dull decline, like giving up or caving in. But in reality there’s so much warmth that lures you in and it’s nice to grow into a family. Nice to entertain ourselves at home alone and share Sunday dinner with her parents and siblings.

Feb 17

One last snowshoe romp over the frozen lake. Heavy gusts of wind kicked up loose particles of snow. I see it now bending boughs and hear it humming through the valley. Oddly the wind chimes have gone quiet when their racket kept me up well into the night.

My villain era.

I pretended I was on an Arctic expedition crossing the temporary expanse. The blinding white created by sun and snow, the cutting winds lashing my face awake and then numb, that peaceful pit I sometimes find in moments of wild solitude. I wonder how long I could endure the elements and the emptiness, and what I might find in that alien landscape.

I was not quite ready to return to the city, but I am glad it was with Celina. We started an audiobook but ended up talking the whole way. Talk makes a relationship, and we had loads to say after so much time away. We talked about work, politics, public education, family dynamics, friend dynamics, dinner.

For a long time, I thought sitting comfortably in silence together was the highest ideal in a relationship, but that is actually the dream of someone who has nothing to say. From the very beginning, I was drawn to C because she was so easy to talk to. She let me ramble, asked questions I’d never considered, and was always thoughtful in her responses. She still is. Talk is one way to gauge the health of a relationship, measuring closeness, tone, range. Good conversation starts with listening — listening kindles all the rest.