Paul Gauguin:
cover art for Catalogue de l'Exposition de Peintures du Groupe Impressionniste et Synthétiste
[Catalogue of the Exhibition of Paintings of the Impressionist and Synthetist Group] (1889)
Book containing eight zincographs and letterpress text
in black ink, with photomechanically printed gray stripes on cover, on tan wove paper

"I never learned how to feel as though I belonged there."

In late March 2009, The Muse and I left our beloved Villa Vatta Schmaltz for an indeterminate exile. Over the prior month, our local newspaper had published my series of essays entitled The White Collar Recession, which recounted our recent dénouement, our fall from grace. The prior autumn's economic crash had left our once-thriving business and us bankrupt. Coming concurrently with my father's death, the blow had been devastating. We fully expected to lose everything, including our beloved Villa, once the symbol of our success turned into our most visible evidence of failure. The bankruptcy administrator found us faultless, but his judgment did little to assuage our feelings. We were less than a month away from moving into a barrel when The Muse was offered a prestigious job with one of the Department of Energy's National Laboratories. The rub was that we would have to relocate far from the center of our universe. When entering that stage of life where we had been expected to be winding down our wandering, we were forced to rewind ours. By the time the newspaper declared my White Collar Recession their second most popular series of the year, we were no longer there, for we had been Exiled.

We landed in a close suburb of Washington, DC, Roslyn, Virginia, in transition housing, a sixth-floor apartment overlooking a firehouse and beneath the final approach to National Airport with two restless, edgy cats. The eldest, Crash, who had adopted us when we lived in an apartment outside Portland and came with us when we moved into The Villa, had never seen the likes of that place. He'd pace the perilous railing of the high-rise balcony, howling at six o'clock in the morning. His yowling best expressed how I felt about the experience. I had been taken down several pegs and felt essentially left for dead. The Muse was entering a fresh phase of her career while I felt left there to reassure the cats. I would occasionally sneak them outside beside the pool around the back of that place to offer them some dirt and some sense of place, for I knew they would find no solace scratching in a litter box. I feared they'd slip away beneath the fence and disappear into a wider world than either of us could grasp, but they always returned, however dissatisfied they seemed. We had an apartment courtesy of The Muse's new employer, but we were essentially homeless and felt it.

When a fire truck left the firehouse below that apartment, I'd think all Hell had broken loose, for the apartment was ideally situated to amplify and reverberate the bedlam below. Further, promptly at six each morning, the succession of airplanes landing at National began their parade. One every forty-five seconds until ten o'clock that night. The roar and flair varied little until after daylight left again. No planes were allowed to land at night, lest the din disturb those resting in Arlington National Cemetary, located very nearby. One debtor from the bankruptcy had not gotten the memo that the court had released us from our obligations and called me from different numbers several times each day. I would be trying to find my way through unfamiliar streets when my pocket would tingle, and I would reflexively answer, only to be subjected to some fresh form of verbal abuse. I'd try and fail to explain that they were late to the game. They'd threaten to go after my daughter. I can't imagine how anyone could have gone any lower. Our bankruptcy attorney finally sent that creditor a letter inviting him to a meeting at our local courthouse where, if he attended, he might plan for longer than an overnight stay. After an interminable time, those calls finally ceased. Those were almost the only calls I received in the earliest weeks of that Exile.

I relearned how to become invisible. My job became to stock our meager larder and to find a more permanent place to live. Utterly unfamiliar with the Washington DC area, I found myself continuously lost. I'd cross the same bridge three times before I figured out which lane I had to be in to avoid being routed back across again. I did this pretty much every time I attempted to cross the Potomac into DC. Every route seemed similarly perilous. I parked the car and took to public transportation. I refused to carry a map with me when I roamed. I figured that if I got good and lost, I would force myself to get good and found, so I deliberately got lost on my forays out into that fresh wilderness. I was engaged in serious business. The early days of any exile amount to an existential crisis, for one loses the cues to one's own survival. Just finding the necessary services nearly overwhelmed me. Finding a hardware store and then figuring out how to get there and back might take up more than a morning, especially after discovering that the store I'd chosen had gone out of business without removing its website. It seemed that I needed to learn my way around the hard way. Everything felt unfamiliar and hostile.

The Muse's new job was no bed of roses, either. Her early months featured an over-controlling boss who, until The Muse figured out how to get her reassigned, drove us both blind with her heartless demands. We had been responsible professionals before our empire collapsed and were unaccustomed to the primitive machinations of entrenched bureaucracy. The Muse learned how to make even that machine dance, but the dance lessons left her feet bruised. I, too, found the new environment hostile, though I persisted. I found a library that proved a godsend, allowing me to escape into more familiar territory and suspend myself there. Even the cats took solace and cuddled close to me as I read another novel from a blessedly familiar author. I eventually found sources for our essentials, even expanding our initially meager list of needs. I warmed to some of my choices, though even the best alternatives seemed alien to my sensibilities. I never once felt a part of Roslyn, a city in perpetual transition, a stopover place seemingly without permanent residents. The Metro seemed full of lieutenant colonels commuting to the Pentagon, and I felt as though I was just invisibly tagging along. I never learned how to feel as though I belonged there. Such was my introduction to having been Exiled.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz