Kay Walsen: 'Mayflowers'

All contributors of the Serein Lark Review are interviewed for our blog.

You can read Walsen's interview here!

'Mayflowers' is the sort of writing that transports the reader to another world, another lifetime, one that is not unrealistic, yet just out of reach; a quiet dream. My reading experience slowed down time. It was grounding. In this creative non-fiction piece, Walsen shows what happens when you stop escaping boredom through screen time, and reminds you of the many hidden hours in the day, your local creak, and the essential needs that make us human.

I have moved my few things onto the bus on the hill. I have found the necessary things, such as the French press and linens, checked if the gas is working, left my things in a pile in the closet because I don't like to unpack. Some people find it comforting to make a home when they get somewhere new. I find it anxiety-producing because in my mind I am already leaving. I haven't wanted to unpack anywhere until the house I am building is done and I can unpack one final time. 

It's wet. It's raining and dim, and it feels like the Pacific Northwest, although it is only a grey day in Vermont. The bus is chilly, but it is not cold. I don't bother making a fire in the small wood stove that lives in one corner; I'm leaving for work in an hour, so I just sit out the cold. I'm already bored. There is no electricity here, and the cell towers don't reach. Nothing is happening. There is no outside world, and nothing is taking place except for the rain and the dog moving about and me standing in the small space between the bench-couch and the kitchen counter. 

That's all there is. 

What is there to do? Only what I make happen. No offloading my time onto someone else, a screen or an algorithm. 

I pick up a book. There is nothing else to do besides sit and stare out the window or write. I put the book down and pick up my phone to write, swiping out words, translating my stream of thoughts into run-on sentences. I wonder if I've been sent a text that hasn't been delivered, like a letter waiting for me at the post office. I had asked a sweetie if they would agree to meet me in June, and I was hoping to hear from them before I climbed the hill into digital silence, but they didn't answer before I left reception. Up here, the anxiety of anticipation is gone. The question is out there and away from me, it seems distant and almost absurd. June? June? Today it is May, and it is raining, and the sound of the rain is loud on the skylight over the bed, and the air feels damp and wet, and everything is so quiet. 

At the top of this screen there is a ! by the reception bars, a battery sign (78%), the time (12:43), and an unread text. Whoever sent the text can tell me what they need to say in person when I visit them shortly. There are no other icons, no sixteen unread messages in the group threads, no notification of a comment on Instagram, no missed calls, no emails from employers or banks or airlines.

My book lies open and this thing in my hand, with its screen and its tiny on-screen keyboard and cracked screen protector, seems empty. It has become an unnecessarily complex clock  + music player + notebook. That is all. 

It will transform suddenly, on the drive down the hill, into everything all at once again. A little box of my friendships and scheduling and endless entertainment and infinitely scrolling soundbites and bodies and hot political takes. It will happen abruptly. It will go from a small thing no different substantially from my book or the teakettle to an object holding nearly half my world. 

"Come, you," I call my dog, and she leaps up the stairs into the bus. She will wait quietly for my return while I visit friends and run errands and do the minimal amount of work that is required of me. She is uncertain whether we live here or are just visiting. Typically, after two days, she'll decide a location is where we belong, where we possibly always have been. If she turns up at your door before then, tell her to go home and send her away. She might check for me in the village, but she'll learn soon enough that we live on the bus by the brook, with its brightly painted sides and little wood stove and driver seat that has become a coat rack.

After work, I stop by a friend's house with only vague plans discussed three days ago and no “I’m on my way” text. I show up unannounced, relying on my friend to welcome me without requiring an exact time for my visits. Living alone in the cold season means warmth and company are something that must be actively sought out, or the loneliness will slowly eat away at you. My friend has made a small fire, and his tiny home, no bigger than the bus, with walls you can nearly touch on both sides if you reach out your arms, is cozy. I stay long enough for tea, long enough for his company to soak in and fill the parts of me that need others. Then we hold each other in a short embrace, and I return to my solitude, leaving him in his.

I make the short hike through the woods to the back of the property where the dry kindling is stored. The brook has swollen and drowned the plank bridge that crosses it in a half inch of foaming water, submerging one side entirely, so you have to step widely from bank to stone to reach it. My shoe leather gets wet, and I will have to dry by the fire. 

Canada mayflowers unfold their upright single leaves in a sparse carpet under the birch and fir. When they've just come up, before they spread open, I am reminded of unfurled flags. It is May; it is time for mayflowers and also time to bend over seriously in the woods and lift the shy trillium flower up to see properly, the way you might lift up the chin of a shy lover to see their face fully. Yes, the bloodroot in the village gardens has all gone by, but the violets haven't even begun to give up, and the forget-me-nots in the margins of my village yard are only now opening. None of those flowers are present here, only woodland ephemerals and fiddleheads unwinding and moss growing like a dense sponge on the forest floor.

When I return in the early evening, I make a fire. I sit and stare into the open door of the woodstove. I pick up my phone to write, and it is the same as when I last put it down - no notifications, nothing. A blank screen with a note app. The fire distracts me from the phone. I let that sink in: the fire, the flickering light, the cracking of the wet wood, is more immersive than the illuminated screen.

The pop of it, the brightness, and the dancing of the tendrils of flame. It is more engaging than my phone. 

I thought I had decent phone boundaries. I don't scroll on Instagram or Reddit. I don't take it into the bathroom with me. I use it for things that feel good, like connecting with people. It's still the same phone as everyone else has, the same addictive device. I’m still addicted, the same as everyone else.

I am amazed at how the world transforms when I am out past the furthest reach of service, up that extra half mile of Maple Hill into the small dip where the brook meets the creek and the topography cuts out the signal. I may as well be in the wilderness. I read a hundred pages slowly. I move my bags to the closet space. I make the bed. I walk idly in the woods. I stare blankly at the brook out my window from the bed and think of nothing in particular.

Time passes with a different weight. It's like being in a foreign country where you find your dollar stretches twice as far. I stayed up till tenreading last night, then another hour simply staring into the darkness and enjoying the comfort of the bed. I wake at fivewhen the light comes in the windows. I leave and go about my day, then I come back here where my dog is waiting, take off my outside clothes, put on my house clothes, put my phone down, and stop thinking about everything. 

I walk down the road and listen to music. I lie out on the trampoline and watch the clouds move across the sky. I eat an unnecessary amount. I move things around on the counter. I read five chapters, and then I write for ten minutes. I sketch my dog napping. I find my camera and take pictures. I tidy a bit. I read another five chapters. 

Two hours have passed. 

I begin to feel like I have enough time, enough time to live and to spend with people and to be bored and to make art and to do work and to nap and to cloud gaze and all the other necessary things. I have nothing consequential to do, and yet all of this feels terribly important. 

I’ll read another five chapters before my evening shift. 

If you want to reach me, and I don't text back, you know where I am. Come by, and if I'm not on the bus, look for me down by the brook (the spot past the footbridge on the left where there is that small patch of beach and the big rock that gets so warm in the sun that even on a cool day it will warm your bare ass when you sit on it).

The End.