There are many places I have yet to write about. One of those places is Appalachia, where me and my then-husband Barry lived, from 2000 until 2002.
I am about to go back to my dozens of sound files that I recorded when I was down there .. square dances, old time fiddle music, clear mountain springs high enough that the pollution couldn't get to it ... the distinctive accent, the coal trucks, the clicking and hissing of mountain bugs on sweaty hot summer nights.
If things go according to plan (that is, if my arts funding comes through), I will be starting to create a documentary poem with my good friend Angelyn deBord. Ange is a mountain woman, born in North Carolina, who has lived almost all of her adult life in a hundred year old house on a mountaintop. She's an accomplished writer, actor, painter, storyteller and she's now learning how to play the fiddle. It will be wonderful to go to Angie's mountain and work with her again.
It will also be a time to process my own thoughts and feelings about a time which was very beautiful, transformative, full of of good things. But also full of challenges. We happened to move down there two weeks before the first US stolen election, and we also lived there when the planes hit the towers. There was a kind of intensity that was hard to put into perspective .. and a very good opportunity for insight into what America really is as opposed to what it says it is. Revealing, but also disturbing on a number of levels ...
It was also the beginning of the end of my 23 year marriage. I wonder sometimes if we would have split up if we hadn't gone down there, and whether it really was a good idea.
But that's hindsight .. and now there are stories to write ... I almost feel ready ... almost ...
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