'I wanted the forest to swallow me up, absolve me of my modern suburban sins'

Jul 8, 2004 ☰ an illegally inhabited bomb-shelter of a place — zapatista woman painted on the wall looking down on us in the concrete night — the beauty blinded me — I wanted the trees to eat me up

“Different places we’ve been. One in the desert of Arizona. Blazing sun so bright the photo can’t even show it. He’s shirtless and barefoot. No civilization can be seen for miles but these sparse telephone lines far off.”

“I also saw the ugly frightfulness knowing that my crafted ‘nature-activism-health-freedom’ experiences were fully due to my life with Marc, which in a way made them beautiful and equally alarming… Finally that day in the forest I broke down. It was the beauty of that party, the families, banjos and music, the homemade cider and the hand-built house with the composting toilet… everything was so different, so good, so healthy and real-feeling that I broke and out poured all my Southern California-grown insecurities, frustrations, fears, judgements. Everything came out as I stumbled around drunkenly in the dark, amid old-growth trees and damp soil… me blindly begging him to just let me get lost in the woods, let the spell pass. I wanted the forest to swallow me up, absolve me from my modern-day sins, my mind and heart that had been laid to waste by my upbringing, comfortable and suburban and thoroughly useless.”

“Finally the curtains were pulled back and I saw the whole world exposed: the love, the neighbors and families at peace (peace! I never knew what it meant!) and all enjoying themselves together, in simple ways making a joyous noise, communing… In my shit upbringing I saw ‘rural people happy’—but it finally made sense to me. This is life. …now I saw what it could be like. And the beauty blinded me. I wanted the trees, ‘those useless trees,’ to swallow me up, a night spent in the dirt… the smell of wet soil and clean air… eat me up, make me new.”