Bellbrook Studios on Poster Board

This online real estate has been sitting idle here, sometimes lingering with very illogical and disconnected content, for a year and a half. I haven’t been able to organize all my mind’s puzzle pieces into one big picture, so my “purpose” would make sense. I still haven’t completely, but the discovery and meandering are the real joys, anyway.

Sort of like this post.

As a girl, I spent a lot of time in my room creating things. I pestered my parents for all sorts of supplies: embroidery, cross-stitch, paint, drawing, you name it. I especially loved office supplies, so date books, pens, paper, junior typewriters. They were always eerily supportive and bought me whatever I needed, which I learned as an adult was primarily because it meant I would be in my room. It was the ‘60s and ‘70s, and I had a problematic older brother who pretty much exhausted them. I understood and frankly enjoyed being left alone, so it was a working relationship.

The one supply I never had enough of was poster board. I liked to arrange the shiny thick paper along the trail of pink shag carpeting between my bed and my furniture and closets, connect them with tape, and draw little cities on them. When I ran out of space to draw, I’d steal my brother’s hot wheels and army men and play “Life” until I got tired of that city, tore it up, threw it out, and asked for more paper. While I waited for my mother’s next trip to an office supply store, I’d use whatever paper I could find.

 What occurs to me now, that the time I spent playing “Life” was short, typically a matter of an hour or two. But the time spent planning and drawing out my bedroom city? Days. And I loved it. I never thought about getting it done. I never thought about “Life”. I just wanted to build my cities.

I’m old now. So old that I just bought compression socks for circulation. I went to the dermatologist with horrible bug bites on my toes last winter. It happened the winter before, too. I’m still not used to the bug behavior in the desert, and it’s never truly cold here (some would argue), so I just assumed these were winter mosquitos. They sting, and then my toes swell, hurt, itch, turn blue, crack and peel. When a few weeks pass and you think it’s over, they sting again. This last year felt worse, so I was desperate.

I showed my feet to the doctor, and he said, “Those aren’t bug bites”.

“Well, they just have to be.”

“Those aren’t bug bites.”

“But I feel them sting. I wear socks now all the time, and still feel the stings.”

“Yea, those aren’t bug bites.” “Your feet look horrible. I can give you something for the inflammation. But really what I’d do is recommend some blood work for auto-immune deficiencies. If I had to make a diagnosis by looking, I’d say lupus.”

“But I feel the sting when they bite.”

“I heard you.”

“So you’ve never seen a bug bite like this?”

“Those aren’t bug bites.”

He left the room to get his prescription cost chart or whatever it is doctors look at, and when he came back, we both just looked at each other and started laughing.

“You just went bug bite to lupus on me in like 30 seconds.”

“Yea, ‘cause those aren’t bug bites.”

“How much extra for the floor show?”

Instead of blood work and more doctors, I consulted the Google for now, and of course dammit he’s right, and I’ve apologized, and incorporated some home remedies into my daily routines, like the compression socks.

Actual picture

With warmer weather comes critter activity. One thing I have come to accept in the desert are packrats. They’re not city rats, thank God, or I would’ve gone insane from insomnia by now. They’re almost cute, if it weren’t for their size and spine-chilling tail. They live in huge nests they build out of shiny things far away from the house hidden amongst the prickly pear, which is also a comfort. But recently, I found a pair of Jeffrey Daumer eyeglasses on my front patio. My son swears to me this was packrat, and not serial killer, activity, but he really doesn’t know.

So…Death is coming for me, and it’ll be sooner than later. Either people with badges will be checking my doors for forced entry** or my compression socks will stop working. But It’s coming.

So, why am I attached to outcomes that don’t matter? Why don’t I, as an adult on the edge of life, just draw my cities and tape my boards and throw them away and draw new cities?

I feel like I should stop writing now, because, after all, who would be reading this? And why? And what’s the point? There is no point. I have started and stopped things, over and over, because the outcomes have been disappointing. It’s a struggle to remind myself that that’s playing “Life” and not at all what I ever wanted to do.

So, I’m drawing a new city. I’m calling it Bellbrook Studios. I’ve completed two certificates in the last year to make it feel official, but it’s really just the first flowerbed in the first park in a new city on shiny, white poster board. It’s the drawing and the taping together until I run out of space, I guess. Or the forced entry or the bug bites.

**I should leave them a note now that it would have to be forced entry, because I know no one here anymore (God knows I tried). Tucson, Arizona, has been a joy. But it is unequivocally a city chock full of the unwell. I feel like I’ve spent most of my stay here being beaten down by or recovering from one toxic work or community relationship after another.