Time Traveling

  Sometimes, if the oscillating fan in my room shifts and squares and rusts a little and sends wind into my face like the Caribbean air, I can time travel.  When the light is perfect.  When I leave the window in my shower open and close my eyes and use a very specific shampoo, I can hear outdated dryers clanging, staining someone's clothes with rust, and I can hear friends collecting the recycling from Swoop.  I stay there as long as I can.
 
 I try to start from the top.  From the road behind my tent and the gate that leads down into the neighborhood of treehouses that still feels like home even though it's no longer standing.  I step flat-footed and cautious, knowing as all of us did that boardwalks are either splintered or slippery and nothing in between, and one must walk like an elephant to avoid injury.  I let my front door slam behind me.  I was one of the fortunate few who had a door which would actually close on its own, and so the slam feels a bit like privilege. I walk [flat-footed] down my own staircase, saying a quiet hello to the doorknob that had been bolted to our front railing by a ghost of Maho past, probably long before I had ever even heard of the magical place.  The 802 is to my left, and a boardwalk the leads to Bonnie's tent which was Joe Junk's tent, which was who knows tent before that is to my right.  If it's a little rainy on my time-trip, the Swoop showers are running, housing someone who is willing to risk a special terror for a chance at hot water.

Once, I got stuck in a swoop shower with a hummingbird.  Another time, with a tarantula.  Another time still, with an unidentifiable slime slicking the floor.  Against all odds, the hummingbird was the scariest.

If it's rainy or if it's not, the washers and dryers are running, the library is packed with books that no one will read, the closet is packed with clothes that someone will end up wearing as a costume some tipsy boat trip afternoon, and there is a shelf which holds up a past staff member's decor as if it might make sense to anyone else, asking to be placed in another random space in another random tent until season ends, and it lands back here.

Through Swoop, I am back on uncovered boardwalk with the Fishbowl to my left, and the Bamboo to my right.  Someone is watching a TV, wasting a perfect day because you forget that the days are perfect and you occasionally wish instead for them to just be normal.  There is a trail which follows some line or another down to Circuit City, which is really just Jared's tent.  The living room of the Fishbowl is to my right, open for the world to see, earning its name even in the daylight.  Further to the right is Where the Sidewalk Ends, which is really Marty's tent.  I walk and walk along the long, central boardwalk in staff.  Under the shoe tree.  Watching ahead through the gate that leads to E-section, where you don't go, where only guests and 4-hours go, where you are proud to not belong.  I try to walk slowly here.  This boardwalk is the resting place of a number of heavy conversations, and it deserves the respect of time taken.

Eventually, the Kingdom is to my left.

(I have to stop for a moment, sweet reader, as I realize that I have gotten lost in Staff section.  The Quite Please is farther up, but I cannot recall how to get there.  Flanked by Skull and Bones and the Compound, it was twice a home of mine.  For reasons I won't share here, I think my memory is probably doing me a favor by blurring that path, and so I suppose I will leave it where it is)

I lived in the Kingdom.  I painted its floor from black and white to green and lived in its tiniest room and loved its dining table and the year and roommate I had there.  I knew its occupants before more, and I knew its occupants after and I will love that fallen tent forever.

Down a few stairs, and the Barefoot Mansion, which has always been the Barefoot Mansion is on my right.  Bits and Pieces is on my left, another tent I called home, another floor I painted, another life I lived.  I survived my first heartbreak inside those screened walls, and learned who I could be when I thought I was gone.

A tent called Betty Ford is a bit down and to the right.  The last of Staff.  It's actually Karen and Mike's tent to me, and though it certainly deserved reinvention, I'm not sure that Betty Ford was fair or just.

If I've planned this poorly, I let that latticed staff gate close behind me and find myself nose to nose with the Donkey room.  I smell humid trash and bacon.  I smell crappy coffee that I'll dress with the cream that they let me steal from the kitchen.  I drink it from a blue cup as I check out the breakfast specials drawn on a whiteboard, and the friend whom I sell wine and Panna water and pretzels to will take my order.


My less and less tiny daughter has just woken up. Nothing wakes you from the past like a baby crying in the present, and so here I go.  The staff will eat breakfast without me.  The rest of that boardwalk will wait there for another daydream.