Untitled

Rachael Truesdell

I woke up to my alarm last Wednesday and knew I had to get away, to flee familiarity and the staleness that pervaded every corner of my life in the city. I was living a routine, waking up each day in a haze with a sincere lack of passion for anything I was obligated to get up and do. I’d stopped cleaning my apartment or folding my clothes, dishes mounted with great vigor and ease. I hadn’t read a book in months, my tarot cards and journal buried under a pile of mail. My yoga mat, unfurled and resting on the floor in my living room, had become a glorified rug after I’d decided to leave it out to motivate spontaneous stretching and strengthening sessions. Now it was just a dusty soft spot on the floor for my cat to stretch out and dig his nails into. It was ugly and I had to leave.

I packed up my backpacking pack like I was going to spend a week in the woods, including a water filter, a little cook stove and my purple titanium spork. It was early spring so heading north to the muddy, possibly still snowy mountains was out of the question, so I hopped a bus southbound to the Cape knowing it would be quiet and I could probably camp on the beach unnoticed. I hadn’t been to the Cape since I was a kid, so I decided I’d revisit some spots I’d been with my family. On the bus ride down I was bombarded with idyllic visions of digging in the sand, riding on my dad’s back and clutching his neck as we charged out into the waves, and eating french fries and ice cream in some hot, sticky old lobster shack by the sea. I closed my eyes and saw my sandy little girl feet and red and white polka dot bathing suit, eating Cheez-Its in my mom’s lap on a fold up beach chair under the shade of an umbrella.

I packed my favorite old Kerouac novel, Dharma Bums, hoping I’d have the mental capacity to sit long enough to read. The bus was the perfect opportunity, but I couldn’t even bring myself to make the effort to reach down into my pack to dig it out, so I stared out the window into the gray, misty morning and allowed melancholy to sink in. I didn’t even call in to work or tell a single person where I was headed. I thought about ditching my phone but that sounded overly dramatic and potentially reckless, so I just turned it off, stuffed it in my pocket and pretended it no longer existed. I was traveling back in time to the 80’s, to the land of the pay phone and asking for directions. This actually excited me a little and I knew I was onto something good.

I got off the bus in Barnstable and vowed to walk and hitchhike the rest of the time, hoping to make my way to Provincetown where I could catch a ferry back to Boston in a few days. I put on my raincoat and set out walking down Main Street in the misty late morning towards the lighthouse I’d seen signs for on our way into town. Within a quarter mile I found a coffee shop in a converted old house with creaky wood floors and empty seats. The young girl behind the counter wore all black with dark eye makeup and lipstick and chewed her nails with disinterest as I ordered a black coffee. She stared at my backpack as she pumped the carafe and when she noticed I was looking she looked away. She set the coffee on the counter without saying anything and walked into the back room, leaving me alone amongst the chairs and tables and piles of pastries.

The walk to the lighthouse was deceivingly long. What I thought would take maybe an hour proved to be more like four, but I was stubborn and kept reminding myself to just be present, I had nowhere to be, I was in no rush, I should just put one foot in front of the other and eventually I’d be at the beach where I could lay around in the sand and watch the waves. I must have looked miserable because a couple pulled up alongside me about two hours into my sojourn and asked me where the hell I was going and if I needed a ride. I said generally the lighthouse but anywhere in that vicinity would be appreciated. They said they were going to have a drink and I was obligated to join so off we went in their old Volvo station wagon.

The bar was actually an Italian restaurant, and it wasn’t open yet so the couple decided they’d drive me all the way to the lighthouse and stop along the way to pick up some booze. We drove along the coast and drank canned wine and listened to classic rock. They asked me what I was doing and I said escaping reality and they nodded and seemed content with that. When we got to the lighthouse, they got out with me and we meandered down to the beach with a bag full of wine and some chips. They were an unexpected pleasure to be around. Both in their late forties with no kids, both divorced and blissfully jaded, they’d found each other one night doing karaoke at a local bar. She sang his favorite Janis Joplin song and then he belted out Ramblin’ Man with such abandon that she ran up to him afterward and kissed him on the mouth like they’d been together for years. And they’d been together ever since.

The beach was empty and we ran around all over it like children, leaping and laughing and flailing and rolling around and splashing in the frigid water. When she went off into the dunes to pee, he grabbed me by the waist from behind, spun me around and thrust his tongue into my mouth. I pulled away with such force that I fell on my butt in the shallow water. The fear must have shown on my face because he immediately started apologizing and trying to help me up but I swatted his hands away and yelled in his face. I ran back to the car for my backpack, grabbed it from the back seat and started trudging down the beach in the opposite direction, panting and trying not scream or cry.

WHY are humans so messy? HOW do I find myself in situations like this so often? WHY do men think they can have their way with me so easily? I started running and even with my heavy pack I felt strong and light and I ran and ran into the great expanse of sand and ocean and trees until I felt wholly alone. I collapsed on my knees, removed my pack and let out a series of barbaric, guttural screams until I started laughing, and then crying, laughing and drooling simultaneously. I submitted to the weight of it all and just laid down on my back in the sand and listened to the roar of waves and felt the mist on my face and the alcohol buzzing in my brain as my lungs filled and depleted and the blood coursed through my veins.

I slept in the sand that night. I didn’t even set up my tent. I slept so deep that I only woke up once long enough to get in my sleeping bag and notice that the sky had cleared and the stars were up there blazing in the darkness. When I woke up in the morning, the sun was just about to crest the horizon and the sky and the light around me was a pale pink. The ocean was calm and the air soft and still. When I sat up to take it all in, there was a single pelican standing by my feet, looking at me with one of his eyes. He didn’t even flinch, and I guess neither did I. We just sat there in mutual stillness. I closed my eyes, mostly to avoid eye contact or spooking him, but eventually I just focused on my breath and meditated and felt for the first time in a long while the interconnectedness of things… me, the pelican, the rhythm of my breath and the flux of the sea, the softness of the ground supporting me and the sky enveloping us in the warmth of the sun. When I opened my eyes, he was gone. I smiled and stood up, stripped off my clothes and ran down to the water and without slowing to acknowledge the cold ran as far as I could before diving headfirst into a little wave.

I was alive again. I packed up my things, slowly meandered back to the parking lot and ran into some high school kids getting into their car. They looked over at me, ambling up soaking wet with a giant backpack and I grinned and asked humbly for a ride. They asked where I was going and I said P-town and they decided they’d go there too and grab some lunch at their favorite pizza place. It was still early, maybe 9 am, but they hadn’t slept after partying on the beach all night and had decided to skip school today. They were seniors and embodied that air of carefreeness that I’d abandoned somewhere in my 20’s. They asked what I was doing and where I was from and I told them I was a nomad with no home, walking and hitching wherever I pleased. They thought I was crazy. The girls smiled at me knowingly and I felt my eyes twinkle back.

When we arrived in Provincetown I had them drop me off at a trailhead outside town where I could hike down to the beach, explore the cove and get lost away from the crowds. I had hiked this trail with my family a few times when we were down here on vacation. We would come here to hike down to the beach for sunset after we had showered and put on our pajamas. It was always a struggle for my parents to keep us from jumping in the water and rolling around in the sand, but they’d bribe us by saying if we stayed clean we could go get ice cream after. As I walked down the trail I could actually smell the soap we used to use and remember the pattern on my nightgown and the way it felt to be with my family, how simple and safe it felt. Tears came as I suddenly remembered what it felt like to be taken care of. I’d been neglecting myself.

I walked into Provincetown after a good long day at the beach. I was hungry and felt like a big hearty dinner in town. I sat at a bar and ordered oysters and the daily catch and drank white wine and read Dharma Bums. I pondered my location, this little town way out on the easternmost tip of the cape, surrounded by strangers but feeling more grounded, connected, and purposeful than I had in years. I may have lost my job, but if I’d gone in that day and perpetuated that same old tired routine, I wouldn’t have made it to this moment, sitting at a bar covered in sea salt with messy hair and a big full backpack covered in sand, reading my favorite book. I lost course for a bit, but I was circling back. After one more night sleeping softly in the sand, I went home and I cleaned and I cuddled my cat.

Interview by C. VanWinkle

June 20, 2022

Can you please begin by describing what you responded to?

It’s beautiful. It's a textile piece, some kind of sewing. I don’t know what you’d call it. Needlepoint? Embroidery? I don't know that much about that kind of thing. The image itself looked to me like a map. I noticed that there was a little area that looked like a beach and there was a pelican. In one area there are circles, in another it says “sleep,” and then there was also a compass. It made me think of being at the beach and also of a buried treasure map. It just got me thinking of adventures, like sleeping on the beach. And the compass reminded me of traveling and losing your way and then finding it.

Could you relate to it pretty quickly?

Yes, pretty much immediately! I pulled it up on my phone when I was sitting outside of the coffee shop where I work. It was this misty morning, so no one else sitting outside, and I immediately started writing in my notes. I saw it and I thought, “Oh yeah, I know where I'm going with this immediately.”

So what happened next? How did you get started?

I actually didn't use that at all. I don't even look at it again. It might be interesting to go back and look at it. When I think of a story, I get a tone or a feel in my head and it just sort of starts forming organically throughout the days. You know, I'll be working and sort of flash to the place, which in this instance was the Cape, and what it felt like to be the person in the story. I feel the tone more than anything at first, and what it feels like to be there, and then it comes together really organically as a story. It's more like real life, so it doesn’t have a beginning, middle or end, and I go in and try and describe the tone. Events just take place naturally and I really don't force things. The story just comes out of me, more based on trying to convey the feel of the place that the textile piece elicited. There isn't even really a climax. It's just a few days of someone's life.

I find it intriguing and refreshing just to write from someone else's perspective, who is definitely similar to me. But she’s not me, so I can have anything happen and I can say anything. There's a freedom to that. The memories that I included in there are actually from my childhood. I've never been to the cape other than with my parents, and I get nostalgic really easily. I was thinking about being on the cape as a kid, trying to write about someone else being on the cape as a kid.

One time, I was hiking in Oregon and I was only one out there. It was raining. It was just a very lonely, misty walk in the woods. Someone somewhere ahead of me clearly had used this soap that we had used when I was a kid. It brought back so many vivid memories. My mom, and thunderstorms in the summertime, and going out and playing in it, and then coming in and taking a shower, and we'd all smell like that and put on our nightgowns. It made me start crying. Like in a good way. It’s such a good feeling to connect with, actually feeling like a kid, because it reminds you of who you are at your core.

This happened on the other side of the country, so many years later, and the smell took you right back?

Yeah!

This adventure that your narrator goes on is not something that you yourself have done, right?

No, but all those things definitely could have happened to me. [laughs] I've done similar things. You know, that encounter with that couple. It's not real, but it's similar to things that have happened to me in my life. And she goes to that coffee shop and gets sort of bad service and there's no one in there. You know, you go to a coffee shop for familiarity and to kind of connect, and she didn't get that there. I've definitely had that happen, though not in that circumstance. It's all pieces of experiences I've had, but framed from a different perspective.

She's pretty impulsive. Are you?

Yeah, definitely. Especially in moments where I feel like I need to shake things up. That's when I know I need to be impulsive in order to create change in whatever behavior patterns I'm stuck in.

How does this piece relate to the rest of your work?

I like to write from the first person in general. Like I was saying before, I like to try and describe what it's like to be in someone's body, in their head. And how we flash from the present to memories, and how that all flows in a linear way through time. In most of my writing, I try to capture that, where you're actually in that person's head. I enjoy that.

You have lived in other places, but recently returned to Massachusetts, and then you wrote this piece about Cape Cod. Do you usually write about where you are?

No. Actually, my mom and I were talking about it. She asked, “When you saw that, didn’t it make you think of San Diego?” And I said, “No, it made me think of the Cape.” I think that part of it is maybe that the piece itself is pretty wholesome looking to me. That's what it elicited from me. And I think of the Cape as being like a wholesome, cozy place, where San Diego feels more modern and edgy.

When I saw the textile piece, it seemed nostalgic to me as if someone made it based on this moment in their life that they didn't want to forget. They wanted to make a map of it. So you can look at each different component on the piece and it would remind you of certain things you did in that time period. There were even dates written on there: April 27th to May 10th. This person did all this stuff and they never want to forget.

Is the ocean a big part of your life?

Yeah, I would say that. I think it probably is for most people. It's one of those iconic reminders of how tiny we are and then also the rhythm of life, you know? It's also very calming for the most part, unless there’s a storm and the ocean is all stirred up. Like most people, I can just sit by the ocean and feel very soothed. But I also love swimming in it. Some people hate swimming in the ocean; I think they're scared of it or something. I'm not scared at all. I love being in something that's so vast and so powerful. I love it.

The piece you responded to is actually called Dream Log. Are your dreams important to you?

They are. Unfortunately, I don't remember a lot of my dreams, but I've had some really iconic dreams, like unforgettable life-changing dreams. Namely one. I think dreams are incredible. They're one of the coolest things we do in our life. They blow my mind.

I like that they are ours to do what we want with. If you just forget about them and not care, you can do that. Or if you want to analyze them and learn about yourself or the universe or whatever, you can do that.

I wish I was more into lucid dreaming, the idea of being able to control my dreams, but I love just going to bed. I don't want to be proactive in my sleep. I just want to go there and who knows what happens? I don't want to be trying to do anything! But I appreciate people who do lucid dream. I think it's a really cool idea to be able to control what happens. I had a flying dream not too long ago. That was incredible. I was basically bouncing, but kind of like in a video game, I could bounce higher and then stay. So I was getting higher up into the air and then suddenly I just became weightless and started flying. It was the coolest.

That’s beautiful! Wait, was it beautiful? Was it scary?

Oh it was incredible. It was the best feeling. You know how people talk about wanting to go back into their dream when they wake up? I felt that 100%. But it happened right when I woke up, so it was so fresh and I could really remember it and feel what it felt like.

Some find working from a prompt to feel restricting and some think it’s freeing. How did you feel about it?

I thought it was great! I feel like I, especially with writing, can get into ruts. It was just a very refreshing little thing where I’m being held accountable on some level. It was nice to have a deadline. I hadn't had that since school, which was clearly a really long time ago. But instead of it being like school where you don't really want to do it, it was fun.

What's your advice to someone else approaching this project?

I would say to just let it wash over you. For me, it felt pretty effortless, and that was really enjoyable. I think that I could do it again and it could be harder, but there's no pressure to make it into anything other than what comes to you. Just allow it to be an organic response and don't think about it too much.

Call Number: C74VA | C75PP.truUnti

Rachael Truesdell is a nomadic nature worshipper who derives inspiration from new experience, feeling free and open and without expectations. Her most creatively prolific times happen when she's out exploring, sleeping outside, and feeling untethered by social expectations. Being exposed, lonely, and vulnerable in new environments serves as a reminder of what's truly important and that's her relationships and connections with people new and old.