Marshfield, VT: 31yrs
Attending an Interdisciplinary Arts MFA program.
Drove cross country in my 2 geared RV just in time for Residency.
No reverse.
As always, failing at adulting.
22 ft. Luna broke down in a campground a few miles from campus.
Spacious, with woods and trails and a river through it.
Affordable=troubled.
Constant traffic. Distant Arguments.
Beggars can’t be Choosers.
Feral children. Hungry & curious.
I was also once a wild child, dirty & desperate for connection.
I avoid the shady adults and their drug/sex invitations.
I realize these kids are surrounded by the worst kind of predators.
The kind of people who didn’t care how they hurt me as a child.
The children recognize me as a bigger, less wily, version of themselves.
They often follow me like ducklings.
SLEEPING! I’m Fucking Sleeping!
I’d yell out when they’d knock and tap my aluminum walls just after sunrise.
Jip-C overjoyed with their early morning romps: she’d let herself out.
She was my ambassador in all lands.
I teach them how to open cans, sew holes in clothing, put air in tires. Etc. Whatever comes up.
I work at a homeless shelter an hour away.
Americorps. Children’s Activities Director.
I build makeshift tables under my awning.
Collect supplies from the Re-Store.
I leave the tables set with supplies on days I work at the shelter.
I come home to ducklings often.
Productive and curious, they always have something new to show.
There is always a mess to come home to as well.
The structure of the Americorps job & toughness of the shelter families difficult on my tender Aspie heart. But the Shelter kids are always ready for a new creative opportunity.
They’re not closed up yet. Still living their Chi flow.
We do photography, art and building projects.
The residents change week to week and I must accommodate their interests in order for projects to be of meaning to either of us.
Sometimes I’m just giving kids rides to school events, or a pregnant mom a lift to the store.
I’m told this isn’t okay to do on several occasions.
Fuck that. I want to serve any way I can.
Older kids move in, they want to make music.
I bring in my personal music studio & several instruments.
The kids, aged 5 to 14, start making rap, country, jazz and experimental, instinctual music.
It extends over weeks as they hone and explore their sounds.
My equipment locked safely away in the shelter’s office is a plus.
My camper is vulnerable. I live & work in rough places.
I have no street cred. Never have. Marshmallow.
A family with an aggressive male moves in.
He immediately targets me.
How I dress, walk & speak all fodder for relentless teasing.
I trudge on, ignore the bullshit.
But the art & fun is gone.
I’ve shut down.
Each lesson quantified, project reports filed.
Paperwork bullshit. Adulthood.
Meaningless bureaucracy!
Protocols I inevitably fail to follow.
Projects and resources like bikes and playground equipment that I finagle are rejected.
Wrong resource, not vetted, on and on.
I give up on finding things for the kids to have at the shelter.
I focus on things they carry in their minds that serve creative thinking.
Recognizing recurring systems and designs.
They always connect their own dots.
Our minds are as much our power as our souls.
Anything that can be taken away from us will be, eventually.
Hadn’t I learned that already, as miss hoi – polloi?
No. Not yet. More bullies and heartbreaking confusion, please.
The system is not just against these families.
It’s against all of us trying to work for them.
Most of us are students, all of us are poor.
Even the sweet director struggled to take care of his family.
In spite of often amazing work with the children, I cry every night on the drive home.
Everything is so excruciatingly hard and exhausting. I can’t pick up on all the social cues, just like in school, except these people knew far higher stakes.
But.
The campground work was dirty, muddy, freestyle.
My gruff style don’t phase these kids.
They make many beautiful pictures.
I teach them art tricks. Perspective. Color Wheels.
My camper’s exterior becomes a growing kids art gallery.
Justin made marvelous cats and trees.
I told him he was an excellent artist.
He tried to hide his proud grin.
The next day he came over and said he wasn’t going to paint.
He was upset with me.
You shouldn’t tell me I could be an artist. My mom says that’s not a man’s job.
The most famous and powerful artists have been men.
Look at Picasso. I say.
He says Picasso sucks. He could do better.
But there are lots of jobs out there.
Most artists need to work a job anyway, I say.
It’s good to have a trade that pays.
Learn everything you can, I advise.
But always do some of what you love.
He decides to make art in secret, inside my camper, while the rest of us work outside.
No one checks on him.
Every day, a crew of four or five kids.
More when families visit their campground-ed kin.
My once solo activities of biking, hiking & swimming now trailed by a haphazard horde.
Justin and Josh are excellent swimmers.
At the end of summer Justin’s mom left suddenly with the boys.
Warrants mentioned. Drug Charges. DWI. Running from a man. Sketchy stuff.
But all gossip from untrustworthy sources.
Stories surfaced of jail time and foster homes somewhere down south.
I try to get in touch with the kids or their mom, maybe family.
I feel a sense of urgency and danger, that it’s now or never to help these kids.
But the campground junkies say that’s all they know.
They can’t recall how they got their information, or where I could begin to find them.
That’s all family matters, they say. None of your business.
My camper is broken into repeatedly.
It happens in the middle of the field.
In the middle of the day.
No one ever sees a thing.
Junkie crew wants me out.
I don’t do crack and I don’t fuck around.
I treat children as human beings.
I am dangerous to the status quo.
I am officially banished due to excessive use of styrofoam.
Two years later.
Getting oil changed.
Jip-C obsesses over the iguana in the waiting room.
I glance at the newspaper.
Justin and his brother are on the front page, toothless school photo grins.
Drowned, along with their little girl friend.
Ages 8, 9 and 12.
A thousand pound stone falls from my gullet to my gut.
I suspect foul play.
That night I meditate.
Ask for Justin.
Eldest brother.
Ringleader.
Artist.
What happened? My energy inquires as gently as possible.
He emerges from the dark, but still in shadows.
He is stunned, shocked. Shaking, rushed, confused. Excited.
A foot slips. No control.
Exposed tree root. Dark. Sloping rock, jagged rock.
Deep water.
Underwater. Terror.
Holding hands. Pulling hands. Losing grip.
He whispers a name.
He is distracted by something I can’t see.
He has to go.
Excerpt from ‘Dirty Shamana.’
Gnostic OOPA 