Corita Kent (Sister Mary Corita): the sure one (1966)
Printed text reads: Dial "0" FOR HELP
/ The Sure One
/ Anybody who thinks he can manage alone,
he's an idiot

" … damned to return to a world poorer for his absence after inhabiting a world seemingly poorer for his presence."

The Exile didn't begin until about ten days after The Muse and I left our home behind. We spent most of that first week driving across the country to our temporary apartment in the Rosslyn neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia, every inch of twenty-six hundred miles from what had been our home. On the way, we stayed over one night outside of Kansas City with dear old friends, though we were hardly even shadows of ourselves by then. We'd seen Sandhill Cranes gathering like angelic buzzards along the Platte River reaches near Grand Forks, Nebraska. Our cats were grateful for a night over in something other than a motel room. I guess we were sociable enough. The next night found us in Lexington, Kentucky, and the following in Rosslyn. It took three trips to empty the car of all our possessions, up and down in the elevator from the underground parking garage.

Other old friends happened to be passing through town that weekend. I remember it was threatening to be Cherry Blossom Festival, and the weather was already June hot in April. I got lost coming up out of The Metro in what would eventually become a signature move for me. Whenever given two choices to reenter the world from down in the Metro, I'd reliably choose the one I didn't want, then have to cross the surface street to get to my starting point. This would become emblematic of my orientation to this new world we found ourselves in. My intuition, long my preferred means of navigation, would reliably prove faulty there. I'd, over time, develop adequate compensating responses, but I would never outgrow that ability I demonstrated from my earliest forays. I'd almost always drive myself sideways.

After a fine Sunday evening supper with our visitors, The Muse headed off to her new office the following Monday morning. I accompanied her as far as The Metro, kissing her as she melted into the swirling throng of people starting down that cavernous escalator. I turned around to head for what would have to pass for home, suddenly feeling every inch of twenty-six hundred miles from any place I might recognize as home. I scanned the faces of the people I passed as I wended my way back toward the apartment. I was surrounded by people I couldn't for the very life of me relate to. They seemed stranger than strangers to me, as, indeed, I suddenly felt stranger than any stranger to myself. I prayed that I would remember the apartment number, that I wouldn't lock myself out of my new life before I'd even finished my first morning fully embedded within it.

I made it "home" but had no clue what to do from there. The silence that greeted me immediately deafened me. The cats acknowledged my presence as I had been especially careful to deliberately acknowledge theirs. We had somehow become scarce. The sensation scared the shit out of me. I had yet to discover who I was supposed to be there.  I didn't yet feel as though I was anybody. I felt as if I'd been filed away in a cabinet awating processing. I had helped get The Muse to her work on time, driving us across the country and dutifully hauling our meager possessions up from the basement garage. Still, I'd not yet discovered a purpose for my presence there beyond those opening activities. Sure, I could clean the kitchen, tidy up the bathroom, and even make the bed. That took all of ten minutes. What then?

A profound hollowness greeted me once we'd arrived at our destination. Every sense of adventure left me then, transforming into an abiding sense of incarceration. I'd had no say in our location. The Muse's employer had decided. I had little apparent self-determination left but a string of obligations stretching far beyond every imaginable horizon. I remember feeling a tad overwhelmed. It seemed as if I'd been sent back to Go again and without the requisite two hundred dollars. It appeared likely then that we'd end up living on Mediterranean Avenue instead of Park Place. AnAloneliness overwhelmed me.

How would I spend my day? Was this even my day anymore, or did it, too, belong to The Muse's new employer? It had been a Hobsen's choice. The position she'd been offered came with a catch. She'd need to move to Washington, DC. When given the choice, we quickly decided, for it had been a choice between DC or, very probably, homelessness. We chose the only horse on offer and considered ourselves extremely fortunate: lucky! Later, like on that April Monday morning with absolutely nothing in the offing for me, I began to see the soul of an encroaching loneliness, AnAloneliness that would haunt me in some ways through the ensuing twelve years we'd be Exiled. I learned to live with its presence as it sometimes even almost threatened to leave. Gravity never once worked right there, and I felt every second of it. The dirt was clay and chert, hardly fertile and almost unworkable. The mockingbirds there seemed to be mocking me.

I would learn how to burn those hollow mornings, though I came to know them very, very well. There were few when I felt particularly driven once I'd returned from escorting The Muse down to The Metro. I'd return wondering what I might do to fill a morning hollowed out by distance. I'd tidy up from breakfast, make the bed, put the bathroom in order, and then find something to occupy my mind. Being Exiled becomes a double bind, damning whichever course you choose. Because the premise was innocently chosen, it carries no particular omens but still reliably damned me whatever I choose. The cure for Exile was always returning, though returning, too, couldn't possibly occur under any Exile's terms. He's damned to return to a world poorer for his absence after inhabiting a world seemingly poorer for his presence. Being Exiled seems no different from being born or being damned, for both seem to come with the same guaranteed outcome. I'd learn to construct better premises than the ones fate had seemingly dealt me. I'd take charge of my foreground even if my background would remain unchanged until after I'd returned home a dozen dog years later.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz