“Get in Rosie, we’re starting a new life,” I tell the fawn-colored pit-bull who has jumped into the passenger side of my Subaru.
Her person is calling her name.
Parked in front of me, a Subaru spilling with snowboard packs, a foam mattress.

Mine spills blue mesh sacks, bundled linens from the hotel, unloaded three at a time.
Plowing through the push door of the laundromat.

60 lbs, the xxl washer advertises. I can’t tell how much I carry in my arms.

What is 60 lbs? A ten-year-old? A bushel of apples. “Up to 6 baskets,” a sign indicates. A volume estimate. A weight estimate.
“Asclán,” is the Gaelic word for “as much as one can carry in their arms.”
I felt this word in my bones the first time i read it. I am the kind who fills my arms, with as much as I can carry. The ant who sees the crumb ten times it size and says, “this one.”
“Can I help?” You say, when the car is loaded. When the house is unpacked. I smile.
“You coulda,” is my reply, smiling. Often wryly.
Asclàn, a unit of measurement, is both a volume and weight. It is three blue mesh sacks of strangers laundry. It is three bags of groceries. It is an industrial size copier. It is a Rosie, ready to go in the passenger side.  It is you.
My last name, Carman, is meant for “one who pulls the cart,” in English. A name I also feel in my bones.

“You are built to pull a cart, to lift a heavy load and bear it, to haul up the long slope, and so am I, peasant bodies, earthy, solid shapely dark glazed clay pots that can stand on the fire.” - Marge Piercy

Carman. There was some question of its authenticity once. My namesake grandfather conceived out of wedlock. Who’s to say the name in the birth certificate wasn’t a government assigned patriarch?
A DNA test cleared the uncertainty. A line rife with cart bearers. Peasant stock.

The secondary namesake, a more sanguine representational running along the matriarchal branches: Lee.
The meadow-dwellers.
If I was born to pull a cart, I exist in body that is also guided to frolic. Asclàn is bouquet of flowers, a spoonful of honey, a lamb.

Today it is laundry. Tomorrow I hope to frolic.

In a social justice training, 2018 probably, the person on the microphone let us know, this work wasn't supposed to be easy, or fun. She wasn't having fun. What she wanted was to have an island where the Black people could go and not deal with this shit.

"But here we are."
Trying.

And I wondered about that today. That mis-rememory, twisted over time. Memories are rebuilt proteins they say.

This moment we're in. Pointing at maps. Maps with different labels. Yelling.
At least I'm yelling. In my car. Tear soaked screaming on 97, my commute to work. Pointing at maps, drawing big x's here and there. The old man saluting them off the runway East. Republicans scribbling "Finish Them."

"Isn't that why we came here? To the last place? Having been run out of everywhere for raving. All those try-hards do, resent your smile. Ear to ear. In the face of unspeakable lost," Wiley writes.

We make our own islands I guess. Step away and see who comes with. Away from the erosion of continuous compromise. We gather our people. We want to know how far we can go when we are simultaneously seen and loved. Go inside. Who we can become. No raised eyebrows, the best of the worst. Violence. Nothing to reduce. Only to add. Who would we be then? Who are we when we are loved?

So the island of continuous becoming. Wherever that is for us. Wherever we can find it. Scrap together a hut and invite a few friends over to listen to records and drink cocktails made from the bottles you brought upstairs and and and.

لن نرحل writ on the limestone surfaces in Sheik Jarrah, "we won't leave."
"Find a place you trust and try trusting it for awhile," Corita Kent's Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules.

As if we can't understand the need for placed best settling as essential for developing.
"Nomadic groups," you say. "The corruption of competitiveness and illusions of ownership in post-agrarian civilization."
The daughter is passed from the father to the husband. Her title changes.

Caitlin and I talking about such a place.
"It's a hut."
"It's a shed."
"It's a shop."

On a parcel of land out of town. Or some rented warehouse. She's setting up lights and sound equipment. I've got bins of printing press material. Blow the dust off the office copier given to us by the nonprofit when they got the grant funding for a new one. Maybe they'll come for us someday. Watching Gaza. Realizing there's a force of evil so great we don't have the option not to work.

The work wasn't supposed to be easy. Or fun.

"But here we are."

Pulling out our phones, scrolling through the compost, to find the first Jonathan photo. And I find a million photos of Sousa, because Sousa had been my love then. And hated Jonathan. Because the fight in the lawn at the Officer's Quarters. And I had abstained from documenting Jonathan at that time. Out of sensitivity. But I had found one. Smashed between Sofie and Kali and a name my head refuses to remember. Why is that? Why does memory change? They say every time you can recall a memory you reconstruct it. Did I eat olives in France the summer of 2006? Did I eat the wet cake made by Alex?

Sizing each other up, side by side, not touching. Wondering how to love this person. If it's possible to love a person such as this? When time passes, little hints, we wonder.
Someone asked me today "So... what's your story Rachel? You're smart, cute, and attentive. And single?" (verbatim, with the misspell). And my mind spooled. There's so many explanations. Timing. Me. Them. Communication. Tolerance. Chemistry.
I told you, you smelled of ungrieved longing. Months later I realized you smelled like love-at-first-sight. That might've been the combination. The us.
"Can I smell it?" Josh had said, and I pointed to the center of my chest. "I put it here," and he put his face to my chest and breathed in. I forget what he said. "Doesn't it smell like graham crackers? And brown sugar oatmeal?"
Unbridled optimism. Walks by the waterfall. Love. One of sorts anyway.

He was wondering too. How to love me. If it was possible. It was too new to say.
Not in a hurry, and also not wanting to know the answer. Holding the question made it all possible. Standing there. I didn't want a palm read or a tarot read or an aura photograph. I didn't want an omen. I just wanted to be there and not know.

Playing dumb. Meant to excuse myself for that. I knew what question he asked when he wondered if I had someone to connect to about art. I knew what he meant. He had someone. I wasn't going to be that someone. A big role was filled already. There were little roles to fill. Kissing. Fucking. A bit part in the scheme. In the wants and needs. He didn't want to challenge this other thing. I didn't want to. To have a need filled is to hold your place on top of the caterpillar pile. 

I will be something. Even if it's just a question balanced in the air.