What are you carrying lately?

Juke is 3 years old! We're celebrating with a new smorgasbord question, and you're invited to join in...

Hey everyone! We have a bunch of new subscribers, so let me explain how this works. Every three months, I ask all our Juke contributors to answer a question for me. For example, last October, I asked everybody “What's Inspiring You Lately?” and then in January, it was "What has brought you joy lately?"

Today, to celebrate spring (and Juke’s 3rd birthday!) we’re all answering the question, “What are you carrying lately?” In case you can’t tell, I like questions that can be taken in any possible direction. And, as you’ll see below, we went EVERYWHERE with this one.

Each of our contributors always takes the smorgasbord question differently. Each responds with a different level of seriousness or brevity. That’s where the joy is, for me at least. Hopefully for you too.

Once you’ve read our answers, I hope you’ll be inspired to jump into the comments and share your own thoughts.

What are you carrying lately?

I’ll start…

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Tonya Morton:

Whatever I’m carrying, it’s never the right amount. This is true psychologically—I’m always either overwhelmed or else at-loose-ends, and never anywhere in the middle—and it’s true literally too.

It struck me recently how few items I carry around these days. I always have the normal things, of course: phone, keys, and wallet. I try to remember to carry a reusable shopping bag. Chapstick and tissues. But often, if I’m just going out for a dog walk or a short errand, I put my phone and keys into my jacket pockets and travel without any purse at all. That’s usually all I need. A phone and keys. Which really seems like too little to carry.

I keep thinking about how, not all that long ago… okay, now that I think about it, it was at least fifteen years ago… So a good while back, I used to carry a paperback with me every day in my purse. I was always reading real, physical books in waiting rooms and coffee shops. And I had a little notebook with me too and a pen. I had a lot of the things I still carry—lip balm and kleenex. But I carried so many other things. There was one year when I carried cigarettes, Djarum Black cloves. I don’t really miss carrying them. Even when I smoked, I wasn’t that into it, and the packs kept going stale. And, for years, I carried a wallet with a big change compartment, always overfilled with coins. What else? More loose change always rattling in the bottom of my bag, buried in empty gum wrappers and receipts and strange postcards or business cards or restaurant menus I’d picked up along the way. Hard candies pilfered from the bowls at the bank or stale mints from restaurants. Quarter-folded flyers for open mic nights or poetry slam nights or concerts in the park. And napkins with pen-scrawled notes whenever I forgot the notebook.

Often I’d discover a few pretty little stones in the bottom of my bag that I’d forgotten I’d put in there. And I’d find sand in the spine of my book, months after I’d been on the beach. Or a few crumbs from some treat I’d stashed in there once, a brownie or a cookie or something, that I could never seem to shake out.

After the world invented digital cameras, I carried a series of cheap little point and shoot cameras. I shot pictures of my friends making faces, or lying down in the street, or trying on hats in a department store. I carried a series of flip phones that all came free with my phone plan. When I forgot to charge them, they went dead, sometimes for days at a time, which was somehow fine. I wore a cheap watch to keep track of time. I carried sunglasses I bought at gas stations (this was back when I had decent eyesight.) I carried things I needed and things I loved. Did I love more things then? Maybe I just confused loving things with holding onto them.

And I did have a lot of shoulder pain in those days. In retrospect, it was probably too much to carry.

But I do miss carrying around a book.

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Ned Mudd:

Andy Couturier’s hefty tome: The Abundance of Less.

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Damon Falke:

My mother said, “Look at all the snow on the cliffs. It’s almost reached the valley.” She was driving. I could see the cliffs and the airport up ahead. “I don’t want to leave this place, you know? I got the cliffs, the mountains. I have a life here and people I care about.” When we arrived at the airport, she pulled into the passenger drop-off area in front of the terminal. There were two or three cars waiting. I got out and went around the car to hug mom. “Keep me posted,” I said. “I will. Everything will be alright. I know everything will be alright.” “It will be till it’s not,” I said. It was a false thing to say. It was prideful and meaningless. “I don’t know, son. With the way he is now, I almost think it’ll be okay if the end gets here sooner than not. I hate to say that though.” She pushed a crumpled tissue to her eyes. It was small and used and not much of anything. “I love you. Let me know when you get there.” “I will.” “Let me know.” “I will.” We hugged once more. I then turned around and walked towards the doors. I carried only one bag. But that’s when it all hit me. That’s when it all hit me again.

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Tabby Ivy:

A Heavy Load

What am I carrying that
strains shoulders and weakens knees?

What burdens my heart and exhausts me with
each shallow breath and lingers after a sigh of release?

Memories of loss and roads not taken lead to dead ends, 
inertia against a wall weak as a deflated balloon.

Regret fills my reserve, no space for lightness nor laughter.

What pulls me forward? Eyes open to possibility and a yearning hope.

Every decision like building blocks ready to fall
into a future yet to be.

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Paul Vlachos:

I often carry a pocketknife. This lets me open the endless stream of packages that seem to be the paper foundation of our rickety popular culture. Some people call this an “every day carry” type of knife.

Flashlight freaks and gun people use the term “EDC,” which also stands for “everyday carry.” While I don’t need a flashlight most of the time, I do carry one at night on the late dog walk. So I carry a flashlight, as well.

There’s other stuff. The usual “phone, keys, wallet” that we all have to tick off every time we exit the safety of the cave for the cruel and beautiful world outside. And, inside the phone, of course, I now carry my whole fucking life.

It’s kind of nuts how much of ourselves we now carry that once was left at home - books, banking information, files, photos, camera, videos, streaming media. It’s all there in that phone. This was not true before 2008.

I always like to have some cash on me, as well. Maybe I should go into therapy to examine that, but I feel anxious with less than a hundred bucks or so in my pocket. I carry small bags for dog poop, as well. I’m more screwed if I run out of those than if I run out of cash.

And then there’s the other baggage - the guilt, shame, beauty, obliviousness, joy, fear, hunger and pain that any of us is hauling around at any given time. Often, I need an extra cart for this stuff. But I’ll leave that here. I have enough in both hands these days and no need to think about that stuff.

But there are times when I leave it all behind and can just enjoy the day, the breeze, the sun, the rain, whatever it is that’s happening in the present. Extra points if I forget my phone on one of those days. Then it’s like floating around in the ocean on a warm day and not caring where the tide will take me.

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Constance:

Easy peasy. What I am not carrying is 35lbs or my gallbladder. Ten pounds less than an applicant to be a fire fighter must carry up stairs to pass their test to save lives and property. What was to be an easy out-patient medical procedure went awry. A week later, released from the hospital, I needed to get better first before a more extensive and reparative surgery. No fat, no sugar for 2 months+. The surgeon meant NO. That surgery went very well. So, yes, for me, it has to be what I am not carrying. A lot to process, but, a healthy outcome meant so much, as does keeping off the extra pounds. Fun to fit into my best-kept 1980’s style clothes, in fashion now.

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Patrick McCarty:

Salt

We were on our way to a picnic. Our old Oldsmobile was enormous - too big for me to see out of any of the windows. But I could tell where we were going by watching the telephone poles. The wires stretching between poles looked different on every block. Knew when we got to the end of our street, but then we turned right where we should have gone straight or turned left if we were going to any of the parks I anticipated. I asked,

“Where are we going?’

My mother looked over and down at me smiling, her right eyebrow cocked up, just like I do.

“I thought we would go to a different park today.”

I turned back to look at the wires. They became unfamiliar as we drove on. After a few minutes, she stopped the car and opened the heavy brown door for me. Lush, deep green grass and massive trees with wide leaves, bushes covered in dark red flowers, gardens in beds surrounded by stones – it was a good place for a picnic. In the middle of the park sat a low, tan brick building with a roof shaped like the letter “w”. I thought buildings like that were ugly. Most similar looking buildings I knew were smelly and some of them had doctors inside.

I wanted to ask if we were going to the doctor, but I decided not to. My mother would say in response that she would have told me if we were going to the doctor, and her feelings would be hurt. She spread an old sheet under a tree near its roots and we ate. I had a bologna and ketchup sandwich, some grapes and two cookies. My mother ate something healthy involving cottage cheese. I did not want to know what exactly it was. I liked the taste of cottage cheese but the texture was unacceptable, even to think about.

There was no playground at this park. In the distance a small group of men were talking loudly and laughing. They were drinking something out of cans and throwing the cans on the ground. Between us and the men, a flock of pigeons appeared. One of the pigeons was reddish and white. I stood up and slowly walked to the flock of pigeons. Eventually I managed to get right up inside the flock. I tried to walk as slowly as they did so as not to frighten them off.

I reached into my pocket for a packet of salt. I had started taking packets of salt when we were in restaurants in case I could get close to a bird. Just as I tried to open the packet with my clumsy little fingers, the men laughed loudly and the birds flew off.

I walked back to my mother.

“What were you doing over there.”

“Granny and her friends all tell me that if I put salt on a bird’s tail I can catch the bird.”

She laughed, “What were you going to do with the bird if you caught it?”

“Let it go.” I said.

“Well, then, what would you want to catch it for/”

“To see if grownups tell me the truth.”

She didn’t say anything to that.

The group of men had left, but I could see their cans on the ground. I asked my mother if I could go pick them up so Grandad and I could take them to the recycler for change. After she finished packing up, we both walked over where the cans were. They had pictures of a black bull on them. I picked one up. It smelled terrible.

“I don’t think I want to smell that on our drive home,” My mother said.

I didn’t say anything to that and threw the can back on the ground.

I carry about one million stories just like this. They don’t mean anything in particular, yet I am the only person on Earth who remembers them, and that seems to have a meaning to me.

---

Sean Downing:

smooth pebbles in
             my pockets,
sharpen
             as the day stretches 
                        them into razors

the river doesn't notice

numbers scrawled in steam
             on bathroom mirrors,
disappear before
                      I can solve for x

                      Feathers
collected in drawers
             I no longer open but won't 
                      bring myself to clean

an atlas with 
            torn pages
                     corners folded inward
destinations crossed out
            in handwriting that
            doesn't look like mine

geography of absence
            spreading across my palms
            my forehead, the heavy corners
            of my eyes
                                      territories I navigate
                                                    with outdated maps

poems folded into origami birds
            refusing to fly
                      perched on the edge
                                 of a lingering conversation

hourglass sand
             grinding away what
                       remains of my bones

the weight of keys that
            won't unlock
                       this vessel of borrowed light

---

Sue Cauhape:

What Are You Carrying? It No Longer Weighs on my Mind

At this moment, I'm carrying about 208 pounds of 75-year-old eating habits. As a child, I was a beanpole, a pirate's delight according to the boys at school. Once I entered adulthood and my first job at a soda shop, I began the slow ascent up the scales. Still a beanpole, I didn't get the memo that I was heading toward obesity until my family doctor looked down at my mushy middle and proclaimed, "You're getting a bit of a belly there." I thought it was an odd thing to say and was later vindicated by local accusations that he molested his patients. Glad to know I was subpar for his affections.

When I lost fifteen pounds after three weeks tramping around Israel, my aunt exclaimed, "Soos, you didn't have fifteen pounds to lose." So, perhaps my weight gain was healthier than the good doctor thought. Having inherited a Danish predisposition for northwestern European cuisine, I relished my chocolate donuts. Bread was soul food. Although I walked a lot during breaks and rode my bike for miles, the pounds snuck up little by little until I wedged myself into my wedding dress at 135. Two months after I married my partner-in-gourmandery, we both had gained twenty pounds. Add the thirty gained with pregnancy and I finally topped 200.

Jeff and I were doomed. Any town we lived in was a fiesta of international cuisine. Visiting his sister on Sundays, we shoveled in platefuls of rich Persian food. Hey! Most of it is rice, right? That's low-cal … right? The Mediterranean diet? Alas, there always seems to be a good bakery in town. I loved drinking Guiness at Truckee's Irish pub, O'B's. Despite hiking mountain trails every day as well as riding my horse on them, I STILL lifted the numbers higher. DAMN!

Of course, the knees started to ache. I injured my sacrum joint doing Jazzercise. I fell off my horse, landing on my hip as she galloped off into the forest. A decade later, the local orthopedist calculated how far he could send his kids through college on my dime. That was the one in Minden. The bone doc in Truckee told me to make some massive progress at a gym before returning to his office. When I read his notes transferred to Minden, they started out with, "This obese woman comes into my office and expects me to replace her knee."

After a billion hamburgers and trillions of bear claws, I've actually managed to lose twenty pounds. And keeping it off. Carrying what remains has left its impression upon my feet, though. I no longer walk the desert trails. I'm done hurting my body with exercise and am satisfying my need for movement by doing household chores and chasing my grands.

While I look like Jabba the Hut among the pixies at the yarn shop, I no longer carry the guilt when reaching for one of the treats they bring. I come from malnourished Depression-era stock who enjoyed food and the laugher that goes with it. I've mastered portion control, which is an accomplishment at the local Basque restaurant. Now there's a marathon cuisine designed to feed those who wrangle livestock instead of tripping across the landscape of a keyboard.

Summer's coming. No need to stoke up the furnaces against the cold. I can't bear the thought of salads, however, as raw vegetables just don't like me. I gag walking through the produce department. And I threw away the Ranch dressing.

Gazpacho, anyone?

---

Kirk Weddle:

I have been actively carrying my camera daily. I’m transitioning from Canon to Leica; The Leica is faster and lighter than the Cannon.

My camera is a baby Leica. It's much cheaper than the real bad boys, and it does what I need.

Now, I’m just trying to build muscle memory with it so I can shoot quickly on the fly.

To shoot street photography, I ditch the bulky strap and leave the lens cap at home. I tape over the camera's logos. The camera is always turned on and the exposure preset, and I always keep it in my hand. And I keep an extra battery and memory card in my pocket.

Then I walk and wait and hope.

*photos by Kirk Weddle.

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Fran Gardner:

One of my personal memes is monks and chickens. A monk is traveling a dusty road, his begging bowl in the folds of his garment. He carries a chicken under his arm.
Well, which am I? The monk or the chicken?
The chicken carries the eggs inside her, as I, a woman, carry eggs inside me.
That, when you think of it, is extraordinary. Half the population of the world carry seeds of life. The other half carry the spark.
So that is what I am carrying. The genesis of a new generation. Of course, I am elderly now, and my eggs are not viable.
So what do I carry instead? I like to think I hold the spark of the divine in my hands.
And I have been carrying around this poem for some years now, looking for a place to store it. It is about what we, as humans, carry. The grime of generations.

Elements

Earth is the first to scour,
Working at the grime of generations.
Hatred, fear, arrogance, murderous intent,
Secrets that harm, and knowledge that cannot be known.
Sand, elemental grit, scrapes hard to clear it,
The grime of generations.
Earth forms diamonds to chip away the last wretchedness.

Water, then, to wash the dust away,
All the anger, washed into the sea,
More dust settles on the flanks of volcanoes,
Deep underwater. Deep, deep,
Buried, forgotten, while the soul above sails free.

Then the volcanoes—fire—pitch the dust violently into the air,
Generations commingle in the clouds,
Pushed by the wind, cleansing air,
Scattered over a parched world, pounded down by rain.
The dust settles, everywhere, on bare stone and fertile field, on forest and lake.

The dust works its way to life. 
Bacteria knit the strands of humus. 
New plants, new crops.
Life settles in to thrive
In the dust that was once,
Long before,
The anger, the violence,
The grime of generations.

---

Matt Layne:

For the past few years, I have been on the frontline in the fight for library patrons to freely choose the books they wish to read in Alabama libraries. There are those across our country who feel like they should be the deciders of what sort of literature and media you consume. Here in Alabama, the chair of the state Republican party, John Wahl, has become the principal crusader for banning books and thusly, the darling momma's boy of Moms for Liberty. All that is to say, no matter where I am, I carry the library and my library card with me.

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Anthony Head:

I’m carrying pockets full of story seeds, many of which I’m realizing now, when I’m 57, won’t ever be planted. I’m not sure what I’ll do with those leftovers. Probably just leave them in my pockets. Other “special” story seeds I plan to sew in due time, when the conditions are exactly perfect, although I suspect most of those seeds will also remain pocketed. (Conditions are rarely exactly perfect.)

As it is, there is never enough time to tend my current crop of stories. They require a lot of attention or else they wither quickly. Finding the ideal planting and growing rhythms are key to knowing the right moment to sew another story seed, and those moments have nothing to do with the phases of the moon, but things would be a lot easier if they did.

I’ve been carrying some of these seeds in my pockets for years, decades. I don’t know if they’d even sprout after all this time. There are some that I couldn’t even tell you what they’re supposed to grow.

Still, my pockets are always overflowing with seeds; it’s possible I’ve accidently dropped some on toxic soil, some on rocky hillsides, a few in salt water, others in intoxicating spirits. I’ll admit to, at a few times in my life, reaching into my pockets with both hands and castings seeds to the winds, just to lighten the load. I know now, when I’m 57, that it only makes room for more seeds.

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