Painting by Pamela Heater
Old 70: A road near Old Fort, North Carolina, originally a Cherokee trail and later a mountain crossing for colonial settlers, but more recently has been paved for local bikers and hikers. The view to the south sweeps down a valley and back up to the Pisgah Mountains and is dotted with train tracks and tunnels and hills and hollars and dormant kudzu. Hurricane Helene washed out parts of the mountainside. We peer over the edge where the earth has fallen away. Lime green moss glistens on the stone wall to the north. On the face of a tunnel high on a hill, Amy is painted vibrant red, a relic of some prior love.
French Broad River in the Arts District: A river, currently clogged with storm-related debris like trucks and plastic tubing, gliding past the dusty remains of warehouses. Street signs smashed on the ground—crossing signs, stop signs, interstate signs.
Thomas Wolfe House: Where there is an auxiliary building called the "Children's Playhouse." Peer into the window to observe how a museum keeper has posed a baseball and mitt, books, and a toy train. The free audio tour indicated on the sign out front informs that Thomas Wolfe's dad built the structure for $100 to entertain and delight young Tom.
My Office Window: Like a secret portal because in the dining room of the restaurant across the street, hung on the wall, is portrait of Thomas Wolfe staring back at me.
Reed Creek: Where a family of bears roams like the buffalo who once inhabited these lands. I imagine them, broad and towering and free to graze, uninhibited by buildings and bridges and hunters with guns.
The First Blush of Spring: The moment during which pink blooms on the bush. Later, the smell of gardenias a full block before I spy the fledging buds.
A Pair of Toddler Shoes on a Sewer Cover: Found by a passerby and arranged there in case a parent strolls back by looking to reclaim them.
The Greenway by UNC-Asheville: New graffiti on a small concrete embankment by the creek says, YOU CAN'T STAY THE SAME.
St. Patrick's Day: Suddenly cold, 20-mile-per-hour wind crushes against my hood as I take a walk on my lunch break.
Embassy Suites: The sliver of sky where a hotel sign towers from behind the yellow stucco of First Church of Christ, Scientist. In the gray and gold morning gloam.
The Farmer's Market: A place where we buy delicate things to enrich and then disappear—chives, onions, kale, radishes, lettuce, local bacon, homemade ramen, and focaccia.
City Notes: Cars grinding. Branches creaking. New leaves purring in the trees. Sounds framing a temporal environment and then dissipating like vapor.
The Alley Between the Back Wall of the Cambria Hotel and the Back Wall of the Haywood Park Hotel: The nexus of two hotels where the green dome of the Basilica comes into view.
A Picture of My Two Youngest Daughters when they were Four and Seven Standing Beneath this Same Cherry Blossom as I Shook the Branches so the Pink Petals would Rain down on them While they Squealed and Laughed: Now they walk underneath them without looking up.
Hail Pebbling the Sidewalk Before Me: Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.
The Silver Moon: What we see as my husband and two of our kids tromp through the back gate at night, starstruck and silenced by a relentless foreign object that has never forsaken us.
The Next Morning when the Kids Leave with Friends for a Spring Break Trip: The house grows very still.
Late Morning Downtown Sidewalk: Empty cafe tables, a restaurant manager pulling apart a stack of turquoise chairs, and the sunlight half-illuminating the sidewalk. The 11:00 AM Basilica bells begin to chime.
Down a Backstreet: A large-bottomed woman bends over in a doorway and scrubs something foul from the sidewalk. Distant cars and the shush-shush-shush of her scrub brush. There is a varnish on this town, worn thin in spots. We degrade it and repair it everyday.
The Kids when They Return from Their trip: Noise returns to the house.
The Grove Arcade: Where you can get your aura read and your chakras balanced.
The Greek Orthodox Church: Where a mass of people move down the street two days before Easter, led by two men in heavy gold embroidered robes carrying a large cross. A traffic cop manages cars while the people pause to pray. Burgundy flower petals cluster in the gutters. A dog barks from someone's back yard. A mournful song begins among the crowd, and as they sing, they begin to move again, winding their way around the corner and back toward the church. As their backs pace into the setting sun, a statuesque woman presses through the group coming from the opposite direction. She is wearing a hot pink body suit from her ankles to her wrists, a pink fuzzy beret over her upswept hair, and large pink headphones. As she parts the crowd and exits out the back of them, she turns onto a different street and goes about her way. Whatever she is listening to in those headphones must be profoundly different from what the church-goers are singing. I turn to my husband and whisper, "I love this fucking town."
Webb Cove: One of the hardest hit locations. Tens of thousands of trees, shorn from their bases, lie in one direction, down the side of the mountain. A sweep of stunning valley falls to one side, and the towering side of the mountain climbs the other. The Blue Ridge Parkway is still closed from storm damage. Without cars, the soft scruff of our tennis shoes on asphalt is the only sound other than the trill of birds and the occasional scuttle of squirrels in dry leaves. The forest lays flat as a sheet, as if mowed down by a giant God-sized press, gnarled and destroyed and taken from us.
Empty Early Morning City Streets: Who will witness them, if not for me?
The Missing Cat: He's back! The gray and black one I have not seen since the hurricane. I thought he was gone for good, but this evening he darts out from under a car. He rolls over on the asphalt, and I scratch his neck and ears as he purrs.
The Back Yard of a House: A lawnmower growls while a man pushes it, the cord snaking through the grass. A woman with a baby on her hip steps out onto the back stoop, the screen door slamming. A dog gets caught in it and emits a yelp of surprise.
The Quiet Season: The time between spring break and Memorial Day when kids are in school and people travel less, when downtown is emptier than usual. The time between destruction and recovery. The time between having babies and having old age. The time you walked a stranger with the cane and a dizzy spell one block. It took ten minutes while she gripped your arm, and you were so happy to be late to that virtual meeting. The time between centuries, the space between sentences, the breath between stories, between novels, between lives, the only time, the only place where we live, where we notice that we live.
