If you sit in the black chair with teal pillows on my back porch at midnight, to your west you can see the moon. Shy, it hides behind the pine trees. You can get dizzy staring between the glow.
Nights are cool but pleasant now. Sneezes are frequent, eyes glazed behind yellow powder. During the day, wispy pollen clouds brush through the air detaching from towering pine trees.
During the insomnia phase, I like to stay up late and write out here. Black as night, Mabel listens and sniffs the four corners of the yard making sure I am safe. It’s warmer out so the frogs are belching those deep, juicy croaks. I imagine a choir holding slick hands encircling the pond hitting the notes like an organ, assertively thunderous.
Under the moon, there is a stepping stone near the stairs leading up to the backdoor. It belonged to my mother. The smell of pinestraw heated by the sun in July and bottled weed-killer spray from Walmart take me back to my childhood, to my mother making this place a home and spending every weekend working in the yard. Since I am now the owner of this home, I claim the stepping stone as my own.
The stone reads: where you seek magic, you will find it.
This is the first instruction to disappear.
We’d been back in my hometown for nearly two years and still I was in what my childhood friend-now neighbor called denial.
God, Ali, I thought to myself. You’re not actually living in a trailer surrounded by pollen and ticks again…are you? Last you were here wasn’t your dream to join the Peace Corps? Or move to the city? To teach?
After all those years of dying to get out and explore the world beyond barbed fences and pine rows, I was back in Saluda County-three months before Covid hit and the world fell apart- and I was in complete awe, anger, and wonder as to why. It was never part of the plan I had for myself.
When I saw one of my favorite classmates at the Family Dollar in town she said, “Ali Hammond I never thought I’d see you in Saluda County again!” Was that an insult or a compliment?
I got a job at a wine bar in the neighboring town and was told by family members, “Aren’t you a little old to be working at a bar? Especially after all those years of education?”
I felt like, well to be honest, a disappointment. A fuck-up. A loser. I had not met certain goals expected of me. I hadn’t peaked when I was twenty five like society tells us we should. My life had not gone according to the “Future Plans” section of my senior yearbook. I was a thirty two, childless woman who had moved back to her rural hometown with nothing but faith, hope, two precious dogs, and one Beloved who supported me.
We’ll be here until we find the next right thing, I boasted to any and everyone who would listen. We are starting a restaurant! Something, ANYTHING to hold on to, to believe in. Otherwise how do you admit: I’m just trying to survive.
Living in the American South during a global pandemic, post MAGA was simply that: survival. Covid changed the world. Covid and moving back to my rural hometown, to the county that raised me, changed me.
Across the way, I began spending time with my neighbors scooping the horse poop and talking about life while their girls Ascenda, Autumn, and Dakota wove around us in the pasture. Wild Mustangs rescued from South Dakota, they were beautiful and intimidating.
My neighbor told me to keep an eye on Dakota. The smallest of the three horses she had a deep auburn coat, a black mane and tail that reminded me of paintbrushes and, occasionally, a sassy little attitude. When she was done with you she’d flick her tail and stomp her foot. You always knew where you stood with her and this is why she became my favorite.
“Y’all what people ‘roun here would call yuppies,” my neighbor told me. Short but mighty, she and her husband in his eighties, scooped up after their horses twice a day. Rain or shine. From one fence corner to the other. This is wisdom-making kind of stuff.
“Because we went to college?” I asked, more amused and genuinely curious than offended.
“I think so. Butcha’ not if ya really get to know y’all.” Her perspective intrigued me.
Looking back now, it’s funny to see how I’d spent my youth dying to get away from my bucolic home with its painted landscape of cows, combines and chicken houses just to end up at the most prestigious agricultural program in the South where I was to get my Master of Fine Arts. The irony makes me smile.
Education had always been a part of my repertoire. An NPR listening, nonfiction reading nerd at heart, I spent seven years working toward terminal degrees to teach in higher education and now I was back home without a completed degree and with zero interest in teaching.
Unsure where to begin upon my return, I tried to get a part-time job at the local Hardware/Feed and Seed store. They asked who I dated in high school and what I knew about cows and promptly did not return my phone call for a start date when I replied: not much. Looking back, the nose ring and tattoos may not have helped.
A bit defeated, I realized I had heaps of knowledge about many subjects- from Art History to the Psychology of Religion- but knew very little about practical things that living on land entail. In addition to being isolated (a pinpoint on a map and a mandated stay-at-home order), I felt ignorant and so, so lonely.
Getting outside every day to scoop horse shit was one of the few bright spots of my day. Somewhere between the hoe and the wheel barrow, I had a startling realization that I’d never in my thirty years of life given myself permission to study the one subject that would be with me throughout my entire life: me.
Georgia O’Keeffe once said, I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life- and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.
Lean into the fear of facing yourself. This is the second step to disappear.
The first thing I got serious about was commitment and discipline to daily movement. I’d been a runner for years but ever since I left my fine dining job where I had access to heaps of pasta after an eight-mile run- that I didn’t have to cook!- my diet no longer matched the amount of cardio I was putting in.
So I bought a yoga mat.
Like most people, I thought because I wasn’t flexible and couldn’t quiet my thoughts that I wouldn’t be a good yogi. Thankfully, the dancer in me was attracted to the mind-body correlation that yoga provides so I turned on music and moved around on the mat like an antsy preschooler who won’t simmer down during nap time.
I didn’t know anything about meditation or the different styles of yoga or the history of the practice. That came later.
Often called “the seat of the soul” they say we carry all of our junk in our psoas (hips). I love this. Any time I felt the urge to run to others to sooth my junk- physically or via messaging- instead I went to my room, closed the door and pigeon-posed until I cried from loving release. This act taught me how to parent myself.
The (Clemson) orange yoga mat that my hands so lovingly gripped became my refuge. Some days I nailed the poses and flowed until I was covered in sweat. Other days I laid down and wept. Sometimes I danced with joy and gratitude. Yoga has a way of meeting you where you are.
It doesn’t matter where we start, it matters that we start.
Once I started, I became addicted to bettering myself.
Instead of purging my incoherent thoughts onto this blog, I incorporated journaling and facilitated breath-work which helped regulate my nervous system so I could manage emotions in a healthy way instead of projecting them onto others or shutting down or raging, like I’d been guilty of doing in the past.
I realized I had attachment and codependency issues so I read the books, went to meetings and eventually completed a Twelve Step Program.
I wanted to become a better friend and partner, a kinder daughter, and a more grateful human so I began practicing mindfulness. Therapy also helped as I learned compassion and forgiveness for myself and for others.
I wanted to feel more embodied. To do this, I first had to shake the stigma from the repressive religion I’d grown up in by acknowledging feminine desire and sensuality. Additionally, I had to address something I’d run from for years: surviving sexual assault.
As I began openly talking about my experience with others, I found I was not alone.
In your classrooms. Your congregations. Your places of work.
I cannot speak to how others choose to live and handle their experience but I can say that now that I have healed from mine, I will never shy away from talking about it. I know full well the labels that come with speaking up (crazy, liar, attention-seeking) but those labels are just another part of a system that doesn’t do a great job at protecting women.
Do you know how hard I punched back?
Do you know how loud my voice can be?
It was not fair what happened. It was not fair how it affected my relationships. It was not fair that I could not be in my own body for the first thirty years of my life. It was not fair how I equated sex with shame and guilt. And crying. Lots of uninformed crying.
Somewhere along the way it clicked for me: I am not responsible for the shitty thing that happened to me. But if I want to fully live- fully be free- then it is my responsibility to heal from it. Change happened when I decided to no longer live as a victim.
From there I studied somatic therapy, tantra, sensual movement, and started cycle syncing- respecting my body and honoring my flow by living according to its rhythm. Finally, I learned how to actually live in this body and experience pleasure.
After researching and speaking with people I trusted, I closed the chapter on healing my inner child by microdosing with her. In the delicious lightness, I wrote her a letter apologizing for how unkind and judgmental I had been toward her. I told her how proud I am of her, reminded her that she is loved and asked her what she needed from me.
It proved to be true what Yoko Ono said: You can be very wild and still be very wise.
Live wildly, use discernment and wisdom while you do it. This is the third step to disappear.
Beloved and I left the megachurch we attended around 2018. The year before the big move back home, we’d drop in on the 8am service at a local Episcopal church. We loved the oils, the rituals, the wafers and Chianti and Father Jack. We also loved that we could get in and out in less than forty-five minutes.
Unfortunately, there is no Episcopal church in Saluda. Instead of going back to the Methodist church I’d grown up in- a community I adored- I decided to continue taking a break from one of the biggest identifiers my ego laid claim on: church and organized, Evangelical religion.
I’d been a church-going Christian all of my life and I knew how we talked about people who left the church. Now I was one of them.
During our break, I saw the ways in which my religion had held me back from experiencing a full life, which is truly what I believe we are here to do. Why else are lips made, if not for kissing? Music for dancing? Wheels for runways and road trips? Why else are we all so different if not to learn from and love one other?
I wanted to know what I believed on my own, sovereign terms.
Additionally, I saw the ways I’d used my religion to defend some unhealthy behavior such as being judgmental, having a black and white skewed view and a rather embarrassing God complex where I felt the need to save others from themselves, as if I knew what was best for anyone else’s life but my own. I was pretty disgusted with myself.
I began to see this same behavior in others, only this time I was on the receiving end. Talk about karma.
When Megan Thee Stallion’s album Traumazine came out in 2022, I listened to the lyrics of the song Anxiety on repeat:
I would ask please, show me who been real
And get ’em from around me if they all been fake
It’s crazy how I say the same prayers to the Lord
And always get surprised about who he take
I lost people. Relationships changed. It was incredibly difficult- not to mention ironic-to actually live out parts of the Bible I’d only read about. Forgive them, they know not what they do was the mantra I found comfort in.
When I finally figured out who I was, my discernment sharpened and I stopped throwing my pearls before pigs. When I listened to the Higher Power within, I stopped explaining myself. I got real. Unapologetically authentic.
And you know what? I gained more than I lost. New friends found their way into my life and old friendships either deepened or trailed off as needed.
Check out for a minimum of six months. Rid yourself of influences that drown your inner voice. I highly recommend this as the packaged forth step to disappear.
There’s a nasty little inferiority complex who sometimes rides on my shoulder. When I tried to flick him off during my sabbatical from life as I knew it, he told me I was a quitter for resting and that I was selfish for focusing on myself.
This was reinforced by people who told me that I was mean when I not only set boundaries but honored them. What they did not understand is that a boundary is meant to keep someone in your life, not exclude them.
Thankfully, I was able to step back and for the first time in my life finally be the watcher of my thoughts instead of the obsessive, exhausted thinker. With that grace, I reminded myself that everybody deserves a break when they need it and that we can all start over at any time.
There is no right or wrong or rhyme or reason to any of this- it’s simply existence, a life of choices.
Just before I left my job during the Great Resignation, Beloved and I unexpectedly and tragically lost our eight year old golden retriever Cedar, right in front of our eyes.
If you’ve been keeping up with this blog, you know Cedar was the first dog I ever had on my own. My mother bought him for me before I left for graduate school in Clemson. I’d feel better knowing you had a big dog, she said. He was big but he was mostly a big ol’ goober. We both knew he was for emotional support rather than protection.
And unwavering loyalty and love he gave. The way he woke me up in the mornings immediately ready to go outside for a walk got me out of the bed when I could have stayed under the covers all day. On days when I just could not go into the studio or even to class, he was always willing to skip with me. He loved hiking Table Rock State Park and swimming in the creek that ran beside the dog park near my apartment.
Global pandemic, existential crisis, mosquitoes and invasive species in Saluda County and now grief… Are you kidding me?
The thing about grief is that it holds memory, like clay or muscle. When you live with it you aren’t just processing the immediate loss, the pain is compounded by reminders of grief’s presence throughout your life: Lost friendships. Lost loves. Old versions of self. Big moves. Grandparents.
To get out of the house, I joined a clay studio in the next town over.
I liked getting there early, around seven in the morning before the businesses and shops opened along Main Street. There is a charming cobblestone street that runs along Main, a yoga studio, and a market that sells the best pasta salad I’ve ever eaten. I became a frequent visitor at the local coffee shop, gaining points for every black coffee and matcha I bought.
Quietly, I put on my apron in the studio, covered my hair with a bandana, plugged in some music and let the grief work itself out. I knew how to do this: it is how I got through undergrad.
Rediscovering my love of sculpture, I built things. I began to develop design ideas and even started using my trusty sketchbook to problem solve. I learned how to throw on the wheel. My biceps grew. I was finally able to laugh at my mistakes and turned the imperfect pieces into something beautiful or useful, lovingly calling them my little wonky derps.
I worked my butt off and eventually had enough inventory to start selling my art at the local Farmer’s Market and at a couple of festivals. To my surprise, the derps gained the most attention and the pieces I’d made because I thought they’d guarantee safe cash flow or fit a festival theme did not.
This was a valuable lesson in my career and reminded me why authentic work is important: it cannot and does not lie. Whatever I made from a place of honesty and truth and pure imagination was what others resonated with. To quote one Young Jeezy, Real recognize real, I suppose.
Artists: You do not get to chose what kind of artist you will be. It’s a need or a drive that comes to you. Something that teaches you how to keep going and how to live. You have to give yourself permission to be totally open to those drives. This is how art saves and makes your life. -Jerry Saltz
Not only do you have to learn to stay open, you have to work hard and find ways to use all of it: beauty, mistakes, imperfection, pain, everything inside of you.
Don’t entertain dreams: make plans and actively get shit done. Time will run out.
This is the fifth step to disappear from a blog.
I’ve always been a little bit embarrassed by my hands. They are not super soft or feminine. They are maker hands. Hands that grip shovels and dig in the dirt. Hands that pound clay and have bent steel. They scratch dogs on their hind and hold apple slices for the horses to eat. They assist my neighbor, she scraping away with the hoe, me pushing the wheelbarrow.
During a poop-scooping session, she told me once that you can get anything you want out of life, just don’t want so much.
I disagree.
Indie Art Student. Sculpture Studio Supervisor. Art Center Volunteer. Sculptron. Teacher Assistant. Teacher. Adjunct Instructor. Guest Critic. Muralist. Art Center Program Coordinator. Painter. Small Business Owner. Local Witchy Potter (according to a friend).
Reflecting on a lifetime as a born creative with more than a decade of a career in the arts under my belt, I’ve gotten it all and then some. Way more than I ever expected or thought possible. And I’ve mostly kept my sanity doing it.
When I took the time to love myself and own my gifts, opportunities began flowing in abundance. I met other artists. I was asked to illustrate a book. I participated in an AI Art Exhibit at an NFT Museum. Honestly, I’m still not even sure what an NFT is but I loved getting to dive into that performance artist part of myself. A month ago, I got my very own studio.
It is a beautiful space with a window that opens onto a balcony overlooking the same cobblestone street I walked by two years before. I crawl out of it to eat lunch and people watch during my breaks.
Right now I am learning how to be a full-time creative. I have my business for ceramics and prints and I hope to have enough work for an Open Studio this summer and an exhibition sometime in 2024. Later this summer, the illustration project will be coming out. Published Illustrator. Add that to the list.
There are some other non-art related things that I am looking forward to that I’m not quite ready to share. They fulfill the service part of me that wants to help others in their journey.
Additionally, I’ve challenged myself to overcome my shyness by frequently posting on different social media platforms. Even showing my face.
The final step to disappear? See the dopeness. Embrace opportunity and when things don’t work out, ask yourself: what did I learn? Keep going. With a grateful heart.
Beloved has set up a bird sanctuary outside of his office window. When Mabel and I water the plants in the morning, dozens of them fly close to the ground. Cardinals, chickadees, cowbirds, even a woodpecker. Lizards scurry down the steps, bulging their pink throats at threat of dog or crow.
I do not have a timer for watering the plants so I typically sit on the steps, holding the hose and read that familiar, comforting stepping stone.
I don’t know what is next for this blog. Maybe I’ll finish those twenty seven drafts that sit in the queue. Maybe it is time to explore a different creative writing platform.
What I do know, is that just like the stepping stone recommends, I will continue on seeking magic.
I cannot wait to see what’s next.
May 10, 2023
Trailers and Trampolines 