One of the first Empty Places I went to, as I was learning about The Blink, was Heartwood County Conservation Club. Its been closed for a long time. Heartwood as a whole is pretty empty since the RV factory closed, but there is a restlessness to it that makes it hard for me to think about The Blink. The Conservation Club is calm, though, or at least not Antsy. The squat building that is mostly basement was the club house – the kitchen, bar, hall, and meeting room. The stillness there is why I originally went. But after several visits, I found myself less and less at ease there. Perhaps it was the sense of transgression that I felt, being in someplace so recently living. No, instead I found myself spending time under the pavilion. Behind the clubhouse, and bordered on three sides by adult evergreens, the old pavilion gave a greater sense of shelter than many homes I’ve lived in. Somehow or other, the weather always worsened slightly when I was at the pavilion. Gray clouds blew in on a gusty wind, bouts of rain roamed across the field in front of the club, threatening a downpour, but only following through with a shower. And the worse the weather got, the more the pavilion felt safe. Six picnic tables in varied states of disrepair huddled together near the front of the pavilion, away from the leaks at the rear. Jammed between their asymmetrical, crooked boards: acorns, rocks, beer caps, pop tabs, gas station receipts, empty cigarette boxes, chewing gum wrappers. Its been long enough since they were last cleaned that the debris counted for a larger space between the planks than the gaps did. And there, haphazardly rolled up, was one of the first pieces of Detritus that I found.
I knew it was from The Blink the moment I saw it. One of those small return envelopes they send you with your bill. The return address just has blank lines, but there is a small logo for a local power company: Fulton Power. They’re part of some energy co-op now, a group of smaller utility companies under one central management- working together to help them compete with regional power suppliers. I looked up their name when I first found the envelope. “Core” something. Something “Core”. Anyways.
It was rolled length-wise imperfectly (so that the the result was wider than the envelope itself, the inside of the tube sticking out one end), then creased to wedge between the planks of the picnic table. On one side, The Fulton power logo and blank lines printed for you to write the return address and destination. The flap of the envelope is sealed closed, though there isn’t anything inside – just the black, printed privacy pattern to stop people from holding it up to a light and reading whats inside. The back has two verses written on it sideways (so that the flap is on the left), and slightly tilted. The ink runs dry in a couple places, with little more than the impression of the pen-tip to leave a legible message. In other places, the tip of the pen has pierced the first layer of the envelope. The way the pen pushed into the envelope at times makes me think that it was written against something soft.
Context provided, I now present, without further comment, the verses I found between the boards:
sitting in the ice rink parking lot- picking family up. Listening to the world end over speakers and peeping stickers on the cars of people pleased as peaches with it and themselves. Tired. Fingers hurt, heart-be-burning, itchy/scratchy, greasy hair and dry eyes. Thinking bout the things I ought to do, got to do, what I want to think to do… but I'm happy for the sun. It warms my skin, warms my cheek - cold from frosty glass that bounds me from the world - and it warms me somewhere deep. The radio speaker says to chase your bliss so here I sit and am happy for the sun.