Simply 60

Child psychology

With my playmate gone back to Concord and my personal trainer benched with a lacerated paw, my excuses — my diversions — were reduced to size, and I got back to work today. 

I am in the mind of an eight-year-old. Or trying to be. Not just 'in' but revealing it simultaneously to the omniscient reader. It's an out-of-body time-traveling experience. Hovering just overhead. A voyeur with a clear view but a murky one as well. How long it has been since I myself was eight. Is it possible to remember the inside of a child's head? Forage faithfully in that long-ago heart? It could only, ever be the child I was, as hers is the only child's interior world I will ever experience. For all that veracity, it still feels like a kind of trespass. Shining a probing light into a sacred space.

I wrote some. Now I'm thinking more. I do my best work in the middle of the night (though there is competition for my waking hours these nights — trying to work my way through The Red Badge of Courage — of all things) or while walking solo for endless miles along a beach or through the forest. I am reminded often of the old rube about the writer whose wife thought him a good-for-nothing because she did not understand that, when he stood gazing out the window, he was working, not goofing off.  I gaze inward and backward on this project, sleuthing for clues to the whys of sibling discord, the whys of parenting missteps. Having only been a younger sibling and never a parent.

Too bad I only have one more day to give this child, to help her find her feet on the page. Not that I will abandon her. But that she will have to vie for my attention along with house plans and permitting meetings, last minute preparations for England and ongoing preparations for everyday life. Much as she vies for attention and space in the lives of her fictional parents, losing more often than winning. At least in the short term.

Truffle: A bike ride to Madaket, including an interlude with a nesting cliff swallow who ducked in and out of a nearby birdhouse feeding unseen young.

Quote of the day: "Funny how fallin' feels like flyin' — for a little while." (song from Crazy Heart)

A room of one's own...

...is no longer enough. Or at least is not enough for this 'Virginia.' Part of the problem is the lack of a Leonard. That is, a husband who centers his life on my writing achievements. No genius, I. No manservant, he.

Perhaps the larger part of the problem is something Virginia Woolf knew nothing about. It used to be that when you closed the door of your study you were closing out the distractions. Now, that room is loaded with procrastination potential, real and imagined. And most summon you with bells or, in the vernacular of the day, ring tones. Cell phone, land line, Skype chime, email (email!) and its attending lure down the internet rabbit hole. And where there is not a sound, there is a sight. The little green light that says so-and-so is available for iChat or the Breaking News streamer.

The worst Virginia had to face was correspondence — remember the kind? Requiring a pen? and stationery? — and the requisite writer's pile of unread books. When she sat down at her desk, she meant business. (Actually, she stood at her desk, no doubt a deterrent to time wasting in its own uncomfortable right.) When I sit down at mine, I have two choices: dive right in or just take a quick peek at my email. Guess which is the more likely victor?

So this afternoon, I moved my office to the patio. The idea was that I would level one mountain blocking my forward writing motion: the weather. Oh, these glorious days! I rationalized that I could sit outside and write. If the weather gods would not cooperate in giving me days of deluge (all the better to sit inside and amuse myself with Bedlam) then I would beat them at their own game!

Not.

Now the room of my own was the great outdoors. Neighbors stopped by; an errant dog moseyed into the yard, sniffed and, before being sent packing, left a solid calling card; a bumble bee flew between me and my laptop; Cajun went on a puppy-tear through my newly mulched gardens; I checked my email.

I don't need a room of my own. I need a cell — convent, jail, submerged biosphere. Or a prolonged stay in a Swiss sanatorium. That, or — tomorrow.

Truffle: It is the same. It is always the same. Some variant on sameness. Being here. Alternately, the black bellied tern in full breeding plumage we saw while birding this morning.

Quote of the day: "How soon 'not now' becomes 'never'." (Martin Luther)

Figawi

Nantucket town is howling. Usually, especially in the busy days of the summer season, the description is "humming". But not on Figawi weekend.

Two hundred sailboats, maybe more, raced from Hyannis to Nantucket today in what is, indisputably, the biggest party occasion of the year. The seas were Caribbean in both color and winds, the boats heeling well over, crew dangling off the gunwales as a kind of human ballast, bows cutting through swells dipped in whipped water like cream as the wind kicked up to a fairly steady 20 knots.

Between the salt air and the gross expenditure of energy, it's no wonder all these people pour onto the island with a powerful thirst. I have never seen so many empty beer cases as I saw today dumped outside the Tavern's gazebo. At $6/bottle, a lot of money changes hands, that is, until it lodges itself like a cork in the bank account of the local owner. Then again, I've never seen the gazebo itself so crowded — it was like a conga line that had encircled itself into a motion stalemate.

The Figawi race was never a gentleman's outing, Ted Kennedy's participation: a) either as an aside; or b) as point in case. Or proof. And I'm not talkin' 80 proof. Let's recall the origin of the term 'Figawi." Light years ago, when Figawi was nameless, a bunch of mainland sailors, eager to get the sailing season underway after another onerous New England winter/spring, leapt at a bar challenge to race the Sound to Nantucket. It being late spring, and it being Nantucket, fog happened. Setting sail with all hearts optimistic, they immediately ran into seasonal pea soup. From one bow to the next rang out the New England-tinged worry: "Where the fugawi?" 

Once again the race is feeling the heat of public disgust — too much booze, too much rowdiness (raunchiness as well) and virtually no stake in the island they claim as destination of choice. Equal parts off-islander putdown and no respect for the island. Blah blah blah.

Gentlemen (and women) aside, the Figawi both kicks off the summer season and kicks back cash and infamy — for,as we all know, even bad press is press — to the town. Oh, there's a lot of moaning about drunk and disorderly sailors roaming the core town. That's the vote-getting position. The Chamber of Commerce groans under the weight of  public disparagement for an event that began as a spontaneous young-salt challenge to race across the Sound and has grown into a flush-and-tumble marketing bonanza. But the everyman, that shopkeeper or retailer or restauranteur, lifts a skirt to flaunt a tempting thigh to the Race Committee. Come hither. Follow me. Buy me buy me buy me. 

For Nantucket can be bought. And is, on a predictable schedule. President's Day Weekend, Daffodil Festival, Figawi, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Christmas Stroll. And those are just the big ticket weekends. Lots of money is made on this island in a variety of high and low profile ways. A mighty din of Christian moral outrage is aimed at the Figawi Race Committee. As well as a variation on the NIMBY theme. We don't want 'those people' darkening the doors of our interior realms but we do, oh yes we do, especially in the Great Recession, want the Race Committee to choose Nantucket to rape and pillage.

So it goes.

Truffle: 24 Sunset Hill. The patio. Lunch al fresco. Book al fresco. 

Quote of the day: "Don't it always seem to go/That you don't know what you've got till it's gone/ They paved paradise/Put up a parking lot. " (Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi)

Holy cow!

I remember the first time I saw the ocean. It was at Acadia National Park in Maine when I was about four or five. My family had been vacationing in a tiny cottage on Lake St. George where we brushed our teeth each morning in the lake and all the kids piled into a dormatory at night and spooked each other with ghost stories. One day the family drove to the coast, I don't recall why. Perhaps to visit Acadia; perhaps we just tacked that on to some other plan. What I do remember is getting out of the car at an overlook. The waves crashed onto the rocks far below, throwing up the giant white claws of some enormous bellowing monster. The sound. And the fury of it. But then, the Maine coast is good for that — spectacle and drama and a good dose of salt spray. All I could say at that first sighting was "Holy cow! Holy cow!" My father eventually had to pick me up and carry me off, still summoning that heavenly bovine from under his arm.

I still think Holy Cow! whenever I see the ocean; I am still every bit as transfixed. Things, though, have changed since that first introduction. I am capable of walking away from the sea when time or circumstances demand it. I can also walk toward it any time I choose. And while I remain in awe of it, it is not so much about its violence as about the peace instilled by its rhythms. Whether lapping or lashing, the waves washing in and out are a kind of breathing, steady and reassuring. 

Late this afternoon we headed for Cisco Beach, Pete to try out a new surfcasting rod (no luck), I to keep him company with book and dog. A breathtakingly beautiful afternoon and that beach to ourselves. So much for the book. Briefly I was absorbed in dutiful mother thoughts as Cajun took on the surf for the first real time — dogs either have surf sense or they do not. The latter can kill. Until I was certain she had the moves — a feint here, a daring leap there, a back jump when a breaker was too big or broke too close, a slightly raised tail on the swim in (the better to get a boost onshore from the curl) — I kept a close eye on her. 

Before long I could keep a distant eye on her, a kind of peripheral awareness, while every other sense and bodily antennae turns toward the sea. It brings out the philosopher in me. And allows me to settle. Both at once. Large questions, of life and eternity, cycles and continuums, plan and coincidence, roll in like the ocean itself. Surfers and seals temporarily distract, bringing me sharply back to, well, if not earth then certainly beach. Sitting by the sea is like time-traveling to another planet where the considerations of the world as I know it are washed away, and in their stead comes a Siren of a different stripe. Not a temptress but a yogi.

Truffle: Finding a parking place without circling once as Nantucket gears up for the Memorial Day madness of Fugawi.

Quote of the day: "I love the soft collision here of harbor and shore, the subtly briny quality that all small towns have when they are situated on the sea." (William Styron)

Me-o, my-o, gotta write a bio

Years ago I had to write a biographical essay as part of my application to Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. My opening salvo was this: "I was a product of a night of wild abandon."  That line was quoted back to me numerous times once I started the program. Moral: Few things are more important than the opening line. With it, ya either hook 'em or ya don't.

I was reminded of this today as I took a break from the sun (O, woe — what a miserable consequence of fair skin and old age!) and came in to address the problem of another biographical statement being required of me. This time for Harvard. I cannot — never could — face the prospect of some droll catalogue of my so-called accomplishments. Embellishment! Not of fact, no. But of means of expression. What I want to write is something, well, more, let's just say, spirited. To, as it were, turn a phrase or ten.

I was tempted to cheat, and just use the 'wild abandon' line again. Easy. Lazy. Who would know? Me. So I struck out with a new, undoubtedly less provocative, curtain raiser. Something about whelping and islands. 

Which brings me to the discipline of word limits — the bane of all student writers. One can blither on to book-length with reader-numbing ease. But to write succinctly? That is another kettle of fish. Indeed, speaking of fish, putting a pithy essay on paper is like fitting a whale in a teacup. The Harvard bio, more's the pity, has no word limit. I kept it to 500. Which is pretty good when: a) one has 60 years to account for, and b) one is attempting more than a droning list.

This could be a blatant justification of blither. Hmmm? You decide. Be my editor. Please. 

Download HILR bio

While you get out the red pencil, I believe I will go shopping. It's that or chew my cuticles to the quick.

Truffle: The chocolate souffle at The Ships Inn. The accompanying creme anglaise is suitable for IV infusion. 

Quote of the day: "Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart." (Erma Bombeck)

Incommunicado

The payoff was HBO free for three months. The payout: a day without any communication with the outside world — okay, this is slightly overstating it, as I do have my iPhone — for most of the day. Switching to Comcast last week had its all-day downside today — no phone, internet or cable TV (which is the say, no TV at all).  Moral:  if you bundle all your communication avenues you could be left in a blind alley if something fails. Some little itsy bitsy thing. Like the cable itself. 

This techno cutoff was coupled with something weird happening with the electricity in the cottage. When the refrigerator cycles on, the lights in the living room dim and then pop back. Put on the dryer and the light over the sink next to it FLASHES brighter, then dims. As predictable as the flip of a switch. 

Hmmm?

Because this was a return visit less than 30 days (hardly more than 30 minutes) after installation, Comcast 'rewarded' us with the free HBO deal. Propitious, as three months of those seven channels will stretch just about as long as our rental season. Good news. A perk for the renters. So long as the cottage doesn't burn down in the meantime because some of the wiring has gone, well, haywire. 

Tomorrow I call National Grid. In the meantime, I am forced to admit that going a day without email, however much it results in cold sweats and spiking blood pressure (they are not mutually exclusive after all), was probably, if only ever so slightly so, if at all, marginally, good for me. I don't know why I say that. Clearly, if this blog is any indication at all, I am far and away happier communicating my brains out.

That is, as long as I'm not sending sparks flying somehow, encouraging the house to burn down around me. This could, for me, redefine the concept of 'firewall.' 

Truffle: A bank of night black clouds backlit by the moon to the south; and to the north the sounds and lights of a passing storm.

Quote of the day: "Take your passion and make it happen." (Flashdance lyrics)

Weather thou goest

How droll to write about the weather! But, apart from my brother-in-law's 1963 Triumph convertible going up in smoke at the body shop today, the weather really is the only topic of note.

Such a spectacular run on spring has rarely, if ever, been seen here before. Here being Nantucket. It is evidenced everywhere and in all manner of ways. The sashay of snapping turtle trails wending their way toward nesting, or back again. The curlycue paths of lustful horseshoe crabs decorating the beach at Madaket harbor, large, barnacled males half burrowed in the sand, exhausted, hoping for a tide to wash over them before they simply expire, sperm-spent and frying. The moors blooming their heads off — beach heather and broom, daisies and blue grass flowers, beach plums and now, my lupin and even a large-headed poppy ready to pop. 

I have broken my back in the garden. My tiny little patch of garden. The tiniest garden of all gardens out of Lulliput. I move from bed to bed, scuttling around like a crab on my butt, weeding and replanting. But really just exercising that old flower-child inclination. I am but a sunflower disguised as a human. I turn my face — oh, prohibition of aging! — to the sun and bask; spray myself down with spf 15, willing sun to my arms and legs (believe it or not) on the advice of my dermatologist; and mulch. And mulch. And mulch. It is back-breaking work  all right but mind -liberating, too. I got more done on Bedlam in the garden today than on paper in the last month. 

One of these days — odds are it will now be sooner than later — May will return and late June evaporate. Shorts will be put back in the drawer. A blanket drawn up at night. Rain will come. Indeed, it must come soon or all will be lost. All the green splendor in and of the grass lost to brown straw. Still, what a run we've had! There is time enough on this Grey Lady for fog and overcast, misty rain and nor'easters. In the meantime, I raise a glass to the blue sky and sigh.

Truffle: Bryce, my exceptional nephew (okay, great nephew, in both senses of the word), will get his Scuba certification in June, giving us the opportunity to open up the world of diving to him in August in St. Thomas. As he said to me, "I can't explain how excited I am." Ditto.

Quote of the day: "Between two worlds life hovers like a star, twixt night and morn, upon the horizon's verge." (Lord Byron)

Publish or perish

The clarion call of academia — publish or perish — is actually not so far from my own frame of reference in life.

I figure the reason I have not perished is that I have failed to publish. What, one might ask, counts as 'published'? If having a by-line is the object, I would have to confess: goal accomplished. If having an actual book-length document see print, I would have to say — okay, well, yes. That has happened too. Twice.

So, what in the world is my problem? Ah well. Now that is a different question.

Determined to get back to Bedlam, I spent the weekend rereading Part III in anticipation of picking up this morning where I last left off — whenever it was I last worked on it. This morning I would champion the cause. I would, I promised myself, get down to it once and for all. A new week. A new beginning. A renewed commitment to completing the &*^%%&! thing.

Silly me. 

I am so far from the continuous stream of writing that allows one — one as old and as addle-brained as I — to stay on track, I returned to the keyboard only to find, at the end of the morning, that I had muddled the time sequence. Scratch all that effort. All that optimism. Instead, swallow the ipecac of bitter truth: one cannot write a complex novel episodically. 

Which made me think of this blog. Every day for nearly two hundred straight ones, I have made time and imagination for it. Why can't I, don't I, do the same for my book?

What is my problem? That is the question of the day.

Truffle: An uncommonly fine May day concluded on the balcony at Beverly's in Madaket watching the sun burnish the sea in lieu of a sunset. Long leisurely days this time of year. Spent with an old chum. Could anything be better?

Quote of the day: "The nice part of living in a small town is that when I don't know what I'm doing, someone else does." (Unknown)

Red start

I got a red start to my day. It's Sunday morning and we went birding, meeting the usual suspects at the high school parking lot. Edie began with a corpse. A frozen one at that. Show and tell, she called it. What is it about birders that they don't mind: a) dead specimens, and b) tossing them in the freezer over night? Next morning, pullout a frozen waffle, a can of orange juice and a dead red-throated loon. Of course. Doesn't everybody live this way?

The loon, a beautiful creature in full breeding plumage, its belly white, its head delicately striped, its beak elegant and throat patch a deep rust-color. Its neck limp, its eye sanded over. It was found on the beach yesterday, so intact as to be suspected of sleep. Instead, it is destined for the Maria Mitchell Association and its permanent specimen collection. Via the deep freeze.

We trekked all over Sconset, from Low Beach to the Summer House, from the Summer House to the Pump, and then we drove to the gatehouse at Wauwinet. A nice walk. Short on birds. Until we got to Wauwinet. And then there was a riot of redstarts. Neither of us had seen one before so it, like the loon, was a tick mark in our  Nantucket copy of Peterson's.

Birding is a peculiar passion championed by peculiar people. I am not that peculiar, alas. While I can tell a cardinal from a crow (both by sight and by song, you will all be relieved to know), I cannot tell a warbler from a wren, or a flicker from a flycatcher. I can identify bluebirds, bluejays, robins, Baltimore orioles (in flight and on the diamond) and I'm not half bad at discerning great blue herons from cattle egrets. But no matter what, you will never see (or hear) me by the side of the road clicking, chirping, lip-sucking or any other human attempt to 'talk' to the birds. "Bring them in," as Edie says — and does.

I am as tone deaf to the vagaries (as I hear them) or the specifics (as birders hear them) of bird calls as I am to those high pitched whistles dogs can hear. It is enough for me to spend a couple of hours gazing up into the trees or following some small flying object darting across a picture-perfect sky. Visiting a part of this island that I sometimes know, as today, and as often didn't even know existed, a true gift of rare discovery. And it is a perverse and delightfully voyeuristic indulgence to grab my binocs and pretend to be a birder — watching them watching the birds, competing to identify them, 'scoping' them, and even, today, whipping out an iPhone with a bird call app to verify a call. Crazy. But crazy wonderful too.

Still, I draw the line, along with lip-sucking, at picking up carcasses and stashing them alongside my frozen yogurt. 

Truffle: Brant Point beach on a perfect afternoon — man, dog, brewskis, book (mine), fishing rod (his), blue skies, light breeze and temps in the mid-70's. Oh, and lest I forget to mention it, the world's finest water feature lapping nearby. Close eyes, take a deep breath, listen.

Quote of the day: "Beautiful isle of the sea, Smile on the brow of the waters." (George Cooper)

Viva la vino

Such a deal! Here's what I had for lunch today: fois gras (American, cage free, 100% natural), fresh Duxbury oysters on the half shell, sushi, smoked salmon, clam chowder, arguably the best chocolate I've ever enjoyed — and all the wine I wished to drink. On Nantucket. Where this fare and pouring generosity isn't available at any restaurant for fewer than four U.S dollar digits.

It is Nantucket Wine Festival time, and we partook of the noon-2 grand tasting this afternoon at the Yacht Club. What a venue — harbor view, a warren of rooms with nearly two hundred vintners and a plethora of food ops. It didn't hurt that it was yet another in a string of perfect 60-something days.

Let it be said here and now that to survive past the second row of tables, the Festival is a sip and spit event. Let it also be said that the sheer crush of boozy humanity and all that choice is instantly overwhelming. In my Map & Legend days, I routinely attended this event. A hardship of the job, doncha know. But for Pete it was a new experience and at first he thought we would run out of time before we had cased the joint, let alone enjoyed the experience. Soon enough though we had settled into some genuine investigative sipping: is there, or is there not, a perfect pinot noir?

To focus on one kind of wine, with deviations allowed for the odd Reisling, Sicilian nero d'Avola, gewurztraminer (a Pete favorite), Veuve Clicquot (a Kate favorite) and whatever else appealed to either our curiosity or our imagination, was a form of inspiration in its own right. We were still taste-bud dead by the end of our session but we were certainly sated. If not on wine alone, then on the Hudson Valley fois gras, briny Duxbury oysters and Pure Dark (aka 'Chocolate Harvested from Nature). 

Plus, we added five wine glasses to our Saltcoats stemware. As we had one Wine Festival glass, that makes a set.

As for the perfect pinot? We must now review 'the literature' and sample more completely. At our leisure. Before advancing an opinion — and stocking our wine cellar.

Truffle: Mulch. Few things are as instantly satisfying as the first application of mulch to a garden in springtime.

Quote of the day: "Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things — old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read." (Francis Bacon)