There is a kind of weariness known only to sailors.
I am no sailor, but I have climbed the coast in a little boat and arrived into a daydream spring, with mildew and mold blooming into every corner of my life, threatening to devour every one of my possessions. And so it was that we climbed off the Julep and onto the 90 foot fishing boat (a 100 year old oyster dragger, actually). Her name is Louis R, and she has a wheelhouse reached by a tall and rusting ladder. Up above the cove of our little island we look across the Reach towards town and the vantage point is supreme...
It was still cold in the evenings when we arrived from our long sea voyage and the three of us shifted into our familiar positions in our new tiny habitat. We carried trays of seedlings bound for our garden up the vertical rusting stairs, and each night hopped boats from the galley on our sailboat Julep, armed with steaming cast iron pans full of dinner across the oyster boat's deck and up into our tiny wheelhouse, with its kerosene heater. We awoke to the chatter of lobstermen on our VHF radio, laughing hoarsely and giving each other hell in the wide spaces of morning. Our shelter from the constancy of the rains was temporary, as everything around us buckled and pilled and faded and rotted as day after day we raced the clouds in our skiff, slept in our car in the parking lot by the town dock, waiting for a break in the weather to head back across.
Now the campaign is won! Now (this far north and east), the days are quick bursts of semiconsciousness abutted by the gathering darkness of the winter solstice. Now I've spent another month amidst stacks of boxes, another month of in-between days.
What is not New York? Not the Old World? Not the island?
Certainly not the South? This winter I take on Portland, Maine: it's shiny little highway and quiet, steady heartbeat. I have never spent so much time in a car in a city and as I case the streets (still the passenger), I feel like a reporter without a good lead. In other words, I am still unemployed, starting anew, and keeping at bay the flashbacks of last winter's starkly broke and bored Virginia days.
Portland is the East End and the West End, it's Munjoy Hill and Deering and Bayside and the Back Cove and it's the Old Port and the Promenades and spectacular captains' houses and hills that start off with elegant homes and descend into dingy vinyl-sided places with charming patches of roof lichen. It's still Maine, so it's stalwart in its loneliness, this confident loneliness that comes into sharper relief with each kissing ball and red and white lawn ornament that goes on display. I am eager to drive these streets at night, when the mansions and the rowhouses alike are all aglow. My island boy mocked my desire to do so as cloyingly domestic. It's not unadulterated domestic pleasure I'm after, though, but that dark and lovely loneliness of Americana, that is best experienced at Christmas, in a place that is familiar but also unknown.
It was still cold in the evenings when we arrived from our long sea voyage and the three of us shifted into our familiar positions in our new tiny habitat. We carried trays of seedlings bound for our garden up the vertical rusting stairs, and each night hopped boats from the galley on our sailboat Julep, armed with steaming cast iron pans full of dinner across the oyster boat's deck and up into our tiny wheelhouse, with its kerosene heater. We awoke to the chatter of lobstermen on our VHF radio, laughing hoarsely and giving each other hell in the wide spaces of morning. Our shelter from the constancy of the rains was temporary, as everything around us buckled and pilled and faded and rotted as day after day we raced the clouds in our skiff, slept in our car in the parking lot by the town dock, waiting for a break in the weather to head back across.
We did get a break here in town finally, setting up shop in our friend's boathouse with its one big wooden chamber perched on the tidal rocks. A big, welcoming space with two lofts. We brought in our driftwood, we brought our little glass bottles and our spider plant and our seething arguments that filled the whole chamber and then the entire narrow cove, frothy words blowing back in our faces. We brought our big ambitions and ceaseless meal making and enthusiastic beer drinking, we brought our public radio with its twangy music and its interviews with park rangers and the fighting in Syria and the long campaign trail. We brought our snoring dog and our big strong love into those lofts. And that is how summer came to us, as a huge sigh of relief before a headlong rush of workaday activity, with only the shift in the cascade of wildflowers on the hill marking time.
The rhythm of the summer was too deep for conjuring words. The campaigners campaigned, the weeds crept out and devoured sunlight as weeds have for time immemorial. The island held me like a tiny figure perched in a teacup, clutched by a weaving cyclist. I climbed out of the teacup and already the fall's hurricanes threatened.
The rhythm of the summer was too deep for conjuring words. The campaigners campaigned, the weeds crept out and devoured sunlight as weeds have for time immemorial. The island held me like a tiny figure perched in a teacup, clutched by a weaving cyclist. I climbed out of the teacup and already the fall's hurricanes threatened.
Now the campaign is won! Now (this far north and east), the days are quick bursts of semiconsciousness abutted by the gathering darkness of the winter solstice. Now I've spent another month amidst stacks of boxes, another month of in-between days.
What is not New York? Not the Old World? Not the island?
Certainly not the South? This winter I take on Portland, Maine: it's shiny little highway and quiet, steady heartbeat. I have never spent so much time in a car in a city and as I case the streets (still the passenger), I feel like a reporter without a good lead. In other words, I am still unemployed, starting anew, and keeping at bay the flashbacks of last winter's starkly broke and bored Virginia days.
Portland is the East End and the West End, it's Munjoy Hill and Deering and Bayside and the Back Cove and it's the Old Port and the Promenades and spectacular captains' houses and hills that start off with elegant homes and descend into dingy vinyl-sided places with charming patches of roof lichen. It's still Maine, so it's stalwart in its loneliness, this confident loneliness that comes into sharper relief with each kissing ball and red and white lawn ornament that goes on display. I am eager to drive these streets at night, when the mansions and the rowhouses alike are all aglow. My island boy mocked my desire to do so as cloyingly domestic. It's not unadulterated domestic pleasure I'm after, though, but that dark and lovely loneliness of Americana, that is best experienced at Christmas, in a place that is familiar but also unknown.
This is beautiful. You are beautiful. I am going to bite your face off and eat it.
ReplyDeleteVanessa