We took a ghost tour last night in downtown Charleston. The ad in the yellow pages proclaimed it to be “The Best Ghost Tour in Charleston!” I’m pretty sure it’s the only ghost tour in Charleston.
Myself and some 20-odd people wove in and out of alleyways in the cold dark, led by a white-haired gentleman wearing a baseball cap. He was fond of bad puns and had a flair for the dramatic, often leaning into us and dropping into hushed tones to ask if we could “feel the overtures of the spirits.” I was most enthralled by the end of the tour, when our guide left us to wander back to our cars, ostensibly, through a graveyard. My fingers were numb from the cold, knuckles buried deep into my coat pockets as we stared into the dark of the headstones. One of us commented he wouldn’t mind sleeping in the cemetery were it not for cold, as he’d done many times in his youth. I shivered.
We walked back between the old buildings, flickering torches marking each entranceway: a tavern, a defunct dungeon, an apartment building lit by candlelight. The apartment windows overlooked the side yard, headstones cropping up from the grass. It seemed every available spot of grass had a burial plot, and the caskets were buried end to end to make use of every last corner of land.
I knew when I first drove through the city that it was filled with the dead, but I didn’t know I was being quite so literal.
Our tour guide ended with a list of safeguards against ghosts, borrowing from the traditions of Gullah, apparently practiced by the black folk in Charleston. He told that one could paint their archways a deep indigo blue – “haint” blue-- and paint old glass bottles blue and hang them from the trees in the yard to keep spirits away.
...
I met a man with hooks for hands, who sold flowers on the street. As he passed me, he dropped a cutting of yard flowers, and they fell at my feet. He stopped and turned to me, and I handed him the flowers, realizing too late he couldn’t take them. He held out his hook to me, and I tried several times before finally slipping the stems over the sharp metal.
Later, I would think of Blackbeard the pirate, and how he died in the Charleston dungeons, and wonder if the hooked man was real.
I'm in a bar on Christmas. The smoke is thick, the room surprisingly full. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing you advertise. I look at the people in the room and imagine them waking up past noon, cotton-mouthed, realizing they should be celebrating something, somewhere. Like homing pigeons, they are drawn to the lone neon light in the cold, an open sign flanked by beer logos.
A women is at the bar, scratching off a lottery ticket in a frenzy. A roll of uncut tickets is sitting next to her. She tears them off five at a time, her quarter moving furious across them. “I’m gonna win!” She shrills, giddy. “I’m feelin’ LUCKY tonight, it’s Christmas! I’m gonna win, I just know it.” I don’t know why she is here. Maybe she doesn’t either.
I am here to eat before going out to a movie with my husband’s family. We careened carpool from strip mall to empty strip mall, hunting for a bar in a fever. “Nothing is open on Christmas,” I tell them. Silently I wonder, after pulling into the third darkened parking lot of the evening, what kind of people spend Christmas in a bar.
I am surrounded by them now. The smell of fried chicken wafts in from the kitchen, oily, and dry. The woman at the bar straightens suddenly. “I got two dollars! I told you I was feelin’ lucky!” She leans over and hugs the man next to her. The way his hand slides around her waist, I think they are strangers. Bonded by the camaraderie of loneliness and cheap beer. She leans over to the man on her other side, giggling and kissing him once, twice, nearly missing. He is folding the discarded lottery pile in his hands, his eyes easing over her, sizing her up slowly. He knows they will both be there a while, and he takes his time. There is nowhere else to go.
Folded in warm silence, I am laying alone in bed in strange country. Cats prowl and rest about my feet, while a great green lizard climbs above my head.
It is my second day in Charleston, and I have opted out of the evening’s festivities, feeling both tired and restless. Moments after my hosts departed, I got a call that my apartment has mysteriously flooded in my absence. I’m not sure if it is better or worse that I am away, though it seems everything points to me needing to take some sort of vacation at the moment.
The last several weeks have become more still, and more resonatingly sad than I am used to. The Friday before I was to go out of town, my husband took me to a Christmas dinner party. When I arrived through the door, streamers came flying at me and people appeared at all sides, screaming “Surprise!” and throwing confetti.
I about had a heart attack.
I realized I was at a birthday party. My birthday party. My surprise birthday party.
For a girl born on New Year’s Day, you can imagine that few people would, in light of the festivities, generally remember my birthday. So over the years since being quite small, I’ve had a long-standing fantasy of being thrown a surprise party in my honor, as it would be the best way in one brilliant gesture to be really remembered for one day.
I’ve never told anyone.
I was warmed to the bone for what my husband did for me. The gathering was very small, and cherished. I will never forget it.
As it is, Charleston is growing colder, and it is said that snow is coming this weekend. The town is silvery with tiny lights, and everyone smiles slow smiles, and walks as if they have all the time in the world. It reminds me of New Orleans, but smaller, safer, quieter. I want to walk alone on King Street and take in the ghosts that live there, see what I might learn before I leave.
I'm in Charleston, with an internet connection fashioned of twigs and leaves for about two seconds. It's like they haven't even heard of the interweb here. ;)
And other things I'm disallowing myself at the moment. The good news is, my body is feeling better. The bad news is, my mind... not so much. I'm a little flaky, too flaky to be juggling all the work I've got going.
I briefly freed my characters from the stasis I imposed on them from neglecting my novel. And no, I won't tell you what it's about. :) It's a secret... which is part of why I think I'm able to write as much as I am.
I couldn't sleep at all last night, laying in bed, staring into the darkness. Feeling hollow and unreasonably, violently sad. An earthquake passed through the house as I laid there, echoing my mood.
I think I should go outside before the sun sets. Out of curiousity, is anyone out there actually reading this?
I'm on a miniature fast, just till the end of the week, just to give my body a chance to rest. I feel a bit of a cold coming on, and I'm craving all sorts of odd things I haven't eaten lately. The more often I fast, the quicker my body starts jumping into the symptoms of fasting: craving things I haven't eaten in months, smells become intensely magnified, body temperature rises.
I've also been drinking dandelion tea, charged with the effect of being a blood cleanser.
Yes, the novel is laying lonely now, waiting for me to rescue my characters, frozen in mid-sentence, mid-stride. I leave town for South Carolina on Sunday, and then they will begin running around, happy to stretch their legs for the first time in days.. though I hope to get in a slight jog before then. Travelling always, always, always makes me write.
I was going to write something, somewhere, on some folded napkin or stray envelope just now. Something about how sometimes I feel that writing is the only power I have.
I was about to fold my laptop shut, my laptop with my burgeoning novel, scribble this sentiment on some stray page. And I bent over across the bed, hand tugging at the laptop. And out scurries a small brown spider, thimble-sized.
Whenever I doubt myself, or my magic, spiders will appear in my notebooks, on my pillow, near my stories. Once, very magically, a spider built a web for the night on my witchy basket, of herbs and cards and things.
I felt isolated, most of the day, and a little sad, not up for company. One of the days where fear becomes stronger than any other weapon I have. And the spiders come to remind, and friends from over the sea come to remind me. And I sleep with a small dream tucked beneath the fertile soil of my pillow, that I hope will become a very big sort of dream, one day.
I smell like cocoa. My face is slathered in some chocolate cake concoction, promoting the wellness of pores and skin and the sugar industry.
I spent the day writing in coffee shops. Plural. Starting at about 1am, I plopped down at Anastasia's on Wilshire, typing out a story hunt-and-peck style. I have decided to join the legions that lose their minds for a month and write a novel. 50,000 words in just one month, and novel authorship will be yours! The only stipulation is that in order to get to 50,000 words, many concessions must be made. Your words must come fast and loose, and yes, most of the time, they will be crap. But you have battled the enemy, the self-effacing editor, and when it's all said and done 50,000 words that belong to you and you alone will exist where before there was nothing.
And that's something.
The catch is of course, National Novel Writing Month was last month. So. I'm late. Mostly because I found this book on the last days of November. And talented as I may sometimes find myself to be, writing a 50,000 word novel is just 3 days isn't one of the miracles I possess.
I went from 300 to 3300 words between 1am and 7pm today. There's something gratifying about letting quality loose to the wind and worrying about nothing but word count. (Though secretly, I am in love with what I am writing. At least, so far. The aforementioned book promises this will change.)