Manifesting an assemblage

The ritual vulture & okoboji

Jul 07, 2024

Hi friends,

how do you pour an addiction out of your conch and re-direct it into an obsession that lights everyone up?

how do you go from becoming an addiction- something people depended on to upend as an individual who only depends on herself?

how do you make two tails of what it is to have no tails?

LENA KHALAF TUFFAHA

The State of —

Noun gerund of the verb (to journey)

A setting out, a departure

A boy’s voice calls out from beneath what used to be

the second story of a house

I am here he cries can anyone hear me?

I am here and the night sky is sleeping on my chest

Noun gerund of the verb (to leave)

An exodus, a detachment

A father has gone in search of bread

A baker has gone in search of flour

A mother has gone in search of a cloud

A people have gone

A world in each of them

Noun gerund of the verb (to travel)

A parting, a demise

A girl steps on top of the walls of what used to be

the third story of a house

I am searching for the sea she cries

Has anyone seen it? It used to live in my window.

I spent June as the writer in residence for Lakeside Lab at Okoboji. East Okoboji Lake is a natural body of water, approximately 1,835 acres, in Dickinson County, northwest Iowa, known as the Iowa Great Lakes. Okoboji is derived from the words reeds and rushes. The towns of Spirit Lake and Okoboji sit along its western shore. Geologically, the lake by Little Millers Bay, where Lakeside Lab is located, is a glacial pothole, a remnant of the most recent ice age approximately 14,000 years ago. I ended up researching a bit on the archeological findings, research sites, and the history and geology of Iowa’s plains.

I wrote a short speculative fiction piece, a nonfiction piece, and a poem exclusively inspired by my surroundings and as a dedication to Lake Okoboji. I had a reading for the lakeside recently. As a memoriam, I decided to document each day here on my substack draft and then zipped them into bits, decreasing the order of travails

Day 0: I pack clothes that I think will not be too hot for Okoboji during the day when I would want to hike the Miller’s Bay trail. I think I packed fewer lipsticks and more sunscreen for the first time in my life, learning from the many past residencies where I underestimated the power of mosquito bites and dragon dreams of dying from dengue. I packed a very costly Australian lizard sunscreen I saw highly recommended on Wirecutter. I wonder about a similar brand of cream sold in Iowa for much less, which I don’t know about. Recently, I am okay with not knowing, though. I don’t know if I will be able to write more sitting on the bay of West Lake Okoboji than I do in front of my dried, concrete patio overlooking the parking lot of my apartment building. I am looking out for the rabbit that visits me every day, looking in as I look out. I am looking out for the baby chipmunk that I captured on my camera, digging the concrete. instead, a big, fat black turd looks back at my face quite sporadically; it reminds me of how someone forgot or intentionally made their dog poop in front of a minority’s patio. an immigrant who will be reminded of a turd everytime she looks out to enjoy ‘the nature Iowa has to offer’.

Iowa, it seems, has a lot to offer. in the coming days, I will return at a lake I have loved and dreamt of. I can’t swim, so I have an agenda. I don’t drive, so I have legs. i tell myself that i am better prepared this time. to traverse. I will walk through the revenues to the other end, circling the bays and lakes. I will pack sandwiches and fruits, a bottle of water, and pennies. a notebook and a book. pack my sunscreen and hat, my fanny pack with gloss and prayers. send mail. send some postcards, maybe.

day 1: Mary Skopec, the amazing, jubilant woman who runs the lakeside laboratory, says that, as fate would have it, Okoboji decided to have her, and she is now its caretaker. Caring enough for the next generation of caretakers and nature lovers to take over drove me from Ames to Okoboji. This was the fastest route for me in my third time here. the route of conversations and getting to know each other.

Once I reached it, I realized I was on my own. At the Tamsiea cottage, I walked around in the light of the day, slowly dissipating with the day. I found three old beers in the fridge that I slowly drank on the porch. only to get up when the mosquitoes became unbearable. I started reading in my lightheadedness, but I ate my heart out.

day 2: I walked, hiked, and trekked in the marshes till the end of the tailgate of Millers Bay, reaching Manhattan Avenue; where if I went further than that, I would be trespassing, so I turned back. I walked a different path and danced in the meadows once I learned how to plug the broken earplugs and not lose them in the prairie root growth surrounding every step I took. I walked edge to edge and boundary to boundary, wondering at last, as I returned back with weary legs, if I had done the whole trail now, what would be left afterwards? I still have 20 days left. I'll walk into town and kayak with the newfound friends from Americorps and other classes. maybe I will not get a chance to do these things, but I will get a chance. a chance is all a kid like me ever needed, sitting in front of the dilapidated building in Vavol, more grey by the minute. more dilapidated—more so the next year and the year after that. haven’t I dreamt of you, o does gray matter? more vibrant than any acid dream. Haven’t I dreamt of a lake like Okoboji sitting in a sea of trashed dreams?

Yesterday, I decided to revisit Maura Murray’s case. I should not have done that in the dead of the night. I did, though, and then could not sleep. there’s no lock on my cottage door. “you will be fine; it’s safe to be unlocked," says Mary, the director. and I believe her. more than believing, I trust her. because I trust that if I am going to get killed robbed, or disappear, there’s nothing I can do more than I have.

I wake up six times in seven hours. I take a cold plunge bath, thinking of how hot it is in India right now and what a luxury it is to turn the shower knob from hot to cold to very cold. I shiver in the very cold aftermath, but I feel reborn. I feel like I can have an early morning wine tomorrow, even though I do not like wine. I don’t like alcohol, but I will make it work, I say. I say so because I know alcohol is a luxury for many. and I will have what I like when the time comes to choose. for now, I am blessed with options that many would envy, so I get down to work.

in my dreams, I imagine a slight shower of rain for a kid living in a hut, a farmer bristling in the sun, thanking for the light shower. A shower is enough to thank but not overkill the crops for the next season. no floods, god, no droughts. I pray.

day 3: Claire, another writer in residence, messages me to go into town while I revise the six and more multimodal projects revamped by fellows in the redesign institute. I have a bit of coffee left in my flask from the morning waltz down the rabbit stream, and I decide to pour an early brunch wine into a cup from the many cups and mugs in the cupboard at Tamasea cottage. I decided on…….

day 4: it’s a slow day, but I managed to sit by the dock and under trees on slopes around the Mahan Hall and main hall. I managed to take a long nap and finish a book handed out by Mary, a text on the history of Lake Okoboji and how it was formed, sustained, and loved.

I love the slow settling in. The day is draped tight.

day 5: I drink wine at 11 00 AM, watch a flock of birds in the sky, get bitten by mosquitoes, and finally start writing. I pour over my notes, read more, and now move on to Iowa's history and geologic mystery. I outline two short stories and complete a draft of an essay that will someday be a chapter in my book. I complete the bottle in a day; I usually hate drinking and don’t prefer drinking ever. Never a bottle in a day.

at night, I take five power naps instead of sleep because the silence in the night doesn’t mingle well with the documentaries of unsolved cases involving Jon Benet, and I take an oath to myself not to watch more of these at night.

day 6: A fleet of 30 white sailboats from a sailing group down the lake, on the borders of Arnold Park, take over the far side of the lake as I chat about the weather and upcoming Juneteenth celebrations. I hiked the longest today, went on any hill that resembled the loess hills I am reading about, and sat in every nook or cranny of the wide flush of treelands and grasslands, this time, compiling drawings and sketchings of Okoboji as seen by me from different vantage points. it's an ongoing art project, visualizing my time and place when I am in Okoboji.

day 7: I complete reading two different yet tied-together books about Iowa’s geology and the how-it-came-to-be Okoboji. 16 hours clocked in various reading nooks across the Tamasea.

day 8, day 9, day 10, and day 11: Readings, long hikes, and lots of sleep. Interspersed with interesting conversations. Longing for home and my partner.

day 12: Pallid Strugeons-once-in-a-lifetime experience at the Yankton hatchery in South Dakota.

day 13, 14, and 15—more rest and less reading. Lots of shopping and convenience receipts. I learned to play a card game with two professors and my favorite person of the year so far, Lisa Dill.

day 16 and 17—so many amazing evenings and activities. Nights that end with tired legs, a full bath, and some mantra music. Kayak down the bayou before sunrise to catch the ball of yellow crashing on the hemisphere.

day 18, 19, 20- gut wrenches and paperwork that lasted all night and day long. Readings late into the mornings. lamplight, a desecrated night’s proof of dead fireflies from the night of singing. sleep was reduced to 2 hours with the flooding scare. As Lisa Dill famously said, “If we don’t all float away in the night, see you tomorrow!”

day 21: Back home. Ames. Anticipations and cold sweats.