Escape Plot

February is beginning to take its toll and I want to escape. 

I think that I would not even particularly mind being airlifted out of here and taken against my will to a mysterious Himalayan monastery where life revolves around peaceful contemplation, the acquisition of wisdom, forbidden love and escape plots. This is the premise of the 1933 James Hilton novel "Lost Horizon," which inspired a 1937 Frank Capra opus two years in the making, a 1973 cult musical with songs by Burt Bacharach, and the common use of the utopian catch-all name Shangri-la. 

For most people these days, Shangri-la is a synonym for a Caribbean vacation. In China's Hunan province, where paperback copies of "Lost Horizon" are ubiquitous, the government has adopted the name for restaurants, resorts, and even a town, in the hopes of competing with neighboring Himalayan nations for "Shangri-la tourists," if such a thing really does exist. 

My favorite adaptation of the "Shangri-la" conceit takes place in the paradise I pine for... New York of course!: see this article about the Lost Horizon Night Market Delivery Truck Circus

The night market delivery team states on their website:

You may contact Those Who Choose the Place and Time using the form below. We are particularly interested in hearing from those who wish to contribute an Establishment to upcoming Markets, or start a Market in your own town.

I want them in any town that I am ever in.

For now, alone on my boat with only a snoring mutt and the internet as my sources for dazzlement and wonder,  I'll search for my own Shangri-la between the bars of a rhyme:

the shangri-las: remember walking in the sand

the kinks: shangri-la

duane eddy: shangri-la

                                                                    billy idol: shangri-la

m.ward: shangri-la

Give me liberty or give me olives!

All week I look forward to Sunday drives.  

Here, in mid-coast Virginia, monster trucks charge down Main Street, which is also a highway, skidding from one red light to another below the graceful dark vultures at home in the highway skies. There is much and little to see along the vaguely pleasant stretch between universities William & Mary and Mary Washington. During the week, on our way from errand to errand, we go along Route 17/Main Street. We pass the guns, tattoos and donuts complex; the mega church with an electronic lighthouse sign; the ominous- sounding One Way Counseling Center; a tree nursery; Powhatan Drive; Piney Swamp Road; and all the little highway-facing houses nearly consumed now by vines and shrubs. 

On Sundays, we venture further out, taking side roads off into the country or to the edges of a city never quite glimpsed. This is such low, swampy land. The ditches fill with oily, brackish water and the chalky dirt is covered with crab grass and pine needles. The big genteel estates, as in the Old Country, are hidden away down straight, mile-long, cedar-lined driveways. There are plenty of homes hugging the deeply grooved dirt roads, though, and in one of these roadside front yards, I glimpse a lawn jockey. I am disturbed. Not surprised. Okay, a little surprised. Later, I find the most satisfying synopsis of the object's history and the implications of ownership here from David Pilgrim (curator and founder of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University).

Wherever we wander, the countryside hints coyly at its previous incarnations. These mid-Atlantic coastal backwaters are dotted with names and zip codes alluding to the villages that once formed the center of American Indian and Virginian lives. As we drive, we skirt the site of the 2003 Werowocomoco archeological dig into Powhatan's Chiefdom, and then follow the fingers of land abutting Mobjack Bay, passing through places with names like Glass, Aquilles and Guinea. These three wisps of villages and their flat ample land share an old time general store, complete with rocking chairs on the front porch. Achilles has a high school and a post office (and absolutely nothing else in the way of buildings). Guinea breeds fishermen, whose dialect, some say, evolved directly from Cornish, and is now nearly incomprehensible to all outsiders. 

On another drive we head away from the coast into Newport News on a mission to find Asian groceries. We're on another crosstown highway, this one tree-less, lined with places like the diner called Sam and Steve's House of Beef, a gentlemen's club called Chico's Chiken Palace n Grill,  the A- framed Hot Dog King, a football-sized flea market, and the imposing lot of Hockaday's Used Cars. We finally find our groceries next to a storefront hookah lounge with deeply tinted windows. 


Our other Sunday tradition calls for a brunch with bloody marys. These days we make egg sandwiches on the boat and then head to a tavern just across the river. This last week the Yorktown Pub is closed for renovations, and as our GPS is outdated and has taken us to half a dozen extinct destinations, we wind our way further inland again, mapless and with some trepidation. As we head to the highway, we pass through Yorktown. The empty park, with its trenches, grassy blockades, bamboo thickets and well-kept lawns, looks for all the world like the elaborate course for some golf-like game still undergoing preliminary testing. We find the bloody marys we are looking for, in a smoker-friendly sports bar at the Patrick Henry Mall (who knew that when Patrick Henry made a stand for liberty or death, his true legacy would be mid-range retail and beer-battered chicken wings?). Although discount bloody marys generally come unadorned here, it turns out that Southern hospitality can always be prevailed upon, and in no time at all, the bartender brings us plates of heaping pickles, olives and celery. 

The boatyard

I'm spending these mostly mild winter days living on a small sailboat docked in Virginia, accompanied by boy and dog. We are what's known as live-aboards. Here for just a few months, we glimpse a boatyard existence that parallels our own, if only for a moment. 


On this vessel, home is reduced to its absolute essence:  two long narrow bunks for storage and sitting, a cabin for sleeping, a tiny galley, a compact hand-pump operated toilet, an open-faced closet. One low stair and then a steep one lead back up to the unsheltered cockpit in the stern. 


In tying up to a boatyard dock, the freedom intrinsic in a wind and motor-powered existence  is diminished, and one grows accustomed to the amenities (showers, electricity, an internet signal) only offered at the boatyard.  Still, continuous fresh water and bathroom usage must be sought offboard, and everything within the living space must be constantly aired, cleaned and shuffled in the ongoing battle that pits marine-inclined human against the mold and mildew that adore a wooden boat. 


Let me make it clear from the very start, the boatyard where our sailboat is docked is nothing like a yacht club. A few fishermen come in to unload their catches in the late morning and late afternoon, and on the weekends, middle-aged couples wander about the yard, boat-gazing and taking snapshots of themselves by the water. But mostly, the life of the yard is that of the workmen. They haul out boats in the off-season, maintaining and restoring them. Their sanders, grinders and drills sound across the creek. It's a slow time of year for the yard, though, and more often than not it's the rhythmic creaking of the lines fastening our sailboat to the dock that punctuate my hours. 


There are several other boats with live-aboards here, scattered about the crooked, meandering piers. One guy goes mostly unseen, and I only know of his existence from the references people around here make to his boat. The deck is barren and the entrance, boarded up. He's suspected of inviting thieves into the yard, but no one is eager to track down and evict those already leading life way out in the margins. 


Dave, for one, thinks he should go. Dave lives on an old sportfisher with double rebel flags. "I'm gonna be a die-aboard," he announces with gruff, dark cheer, "'cause I ain't never gonna make it off that boat!" It's easier to make these proclamations at night, and this occasion was a rare gathering in the dusty parking area, with a bottle of Dominican rum making the rounds. 


Two boats away from our small vessel is a double-masted one, home to a staunchly forlorn couple. He, of the stiff, decrepit cowboy walk.  She, of the loose sweaters.  He edges by us in black like a Johnny Cash impersonator. She frowns briskly out of a Lucille Ball bouffant. When the tide's low, they leave their boat and head out to the grocery store. I am at my low tide vantage point. Through the portholes of my boat, they appear above me like an Atlantic City boardwalk mirage.


In the world of boats, extremes are not the exception, but the rule. I have spent time at the yacht club. In these winter months, the club members frequent the bar to drink scotch and soda backlit by the late afternoon glow off the marshes coming through expansive windows. After a couple drinks, club-goers indulge in a stroll around the docks, as the sky bruises and the light fades, they gaze fondly at their power boats.  


The day- to- day meanderings of those who populate the corners of working class boatyards are quite different. They bring the economic downturn back into focus as another Great American Depression.  They are the adventurous turned destitute: possibly foreclosed-upon, unwilling and unable to make rent, eyes wide open dreaming, embittered,  tobacco-stained,  quick to show the streak of shame gleaned from years of being poor, staunchly defiant, and hugely proud. For, the micro-world with its micro-climate of pure sanctity, of perfect refuge that a boat acquires when it becomes a home is truly an unadulterated source of pride.  
The live-aboards. As for me, I am proud to be counted among them.  

Postcards

With two months and a thousand miles between myself and Maine, I feel the same awkward surge of love and discomfort for that singular place that one sometimes feels for one's family. 

I love you, island life of mine. I love you and I dread you and I hope to never take you for granted. 

I left Maine with my island boy and we drove to Massachusetts and flew on to Rome. From Rome we took a northbound train. 

Aboard Trenitalia we pass elaborate villas undercut by tangles of shantytowns. We pass a craven hill of sheep and their lone guardian: a white dog facing the train tracks, head high. We pass palm dates and lemon trees and high rise apartments. My first steady image of Italy is that of the fountain outside the train station once we arrive in Orvieto. We walk towards the edge of the fountain to wait for our ride. A nose peers out of the water. A serpentine old concrete man lies submerged in the fountain, the top half of his head visible, a stony hooked tail snaking out behind him. I want to see this place, Orvieto, a bit before our ride comes and takes us out into the boundless country. Sitting on the edge of the fountain next to the old fish man's concrete head, I finally catch sight of the town. Orvieto proper stands high above us atop the steep walls of tufa rock that once kept invaders at bay.

We are in Umbria, and the valleys and silver edges, staggering cliffs and deep, creased corners give way to a pacific warmth dulled only by the patina of pale dirt and quiet resignation.

Each town is perched and tantalizing. I climb the low lying branches of the olive trees, up over fields of wild fennel and mint.  Each olive is perched and tantalizing. Some are deep indigo and some are pale green, some blotchy. I reach for each one, fingers grasping and combing, to rake them from their branches. They tumble to the net below and lie still, little fallen acrobats at rest.  

Our day in the olive groves is spent. We head up the hill, back towards this beguiling stone house, readying all our senses for wine and a hearty dinner. We are calm and watchful. The house was built into the curve of the dusty road, directly below a hilltop village and far from Orvieto. We have no car of our own. We seem to have stepped, if only slightly, out of time, caught here, between the filtered play of light and the rainbursts. Out of the dusk, church bells toll, and soon the howls of one farm dog are picked up by another dog all the way across the lake and the valley and then yet another far off dog. They call out to each other, they argue across the vast distances. We are caught here, enchanted, as canine expression and the flight paths of small birds punctuate the evening. 

Before long a week has passed and we've boarded another train. Now we navigate the narrowest of canyons: the dark city streets of Florence, where each piazza we encounter is a cold reckoning of stone and marble and tourist flash. Each day the city is preyed upon by the masses, and its treasures, as always,  kept behind glass and dusted lovingly by careful artisans. Leather, espresso, feathered hats, marzipan, ground minerals, razor thin meats and fine woven threads are loved dearly in shops across the city. 

We sit by the Arno. An egret stalks the shallow river bugs. A green bottle bobs up and down. A much more clamorous river of small trucks and scooters careens by on the road above the riverbanks. In parks across Florence, although we cannot see them from here, people are gesturing and sighing. No music plays. Everyone is self-absorbed and self-conscious. A woman is walking her cat below the plane trees. A young couple is trying to get both of their faces, smiling wide in sunglasses, in the shot with the Duomo. A man in a tweed jacket treads pensively below a statue, crushing acorns beneath the soles of his shoes onto the cobblestones, to feed the crowd of pigeons trailing his small, priestly strides. 

Our bags are so weighty and so unwieldy, we want to cry. We are carting around tins of olive oil from the grove in Umbria, a large book of stamps from a wistful train companion, jars of Maine marmalade and Texan spice mixes to give as gifts for our hosts. We leave our biggest suitcase (empty) on a corner, and buy a rolling duffle bag from a street vendor. The handle on that bag breaks the next day. We give up, we move on.

The Never-Before- Imagined Adventure of the Windmills

The plains of La Mancha are an excellent canvas for the restless minds of dreamers. Sunbaked and relentlessly windy, La Mancha means "the stain." Its shadows lie treacherously long, windmills looming. Quixote charges forth on his steed. Dali's mechanized human cabinets drift by. The starker the land, the more plentiful the monsters. I have never been to Spain, and my upcoming layover in Madrid will certainly not count.  These Maine islands I have come to inhabit could not differ more from the plains of Southern Spain. And yet... there is a way in which the clouds and fog of the most bland days fall across the craggy landscape, uniting surfaces, smoothing edges, leaving everything barren. On these days, nothing much happens and just about anything can and will appear out of the nothingness. 

We have just three windmills on this island. It may not seem like much, but nobody has anything like them, at least not yet. They are the first and only structure of any kind here that is visible from the mainland, rising above the ranks of the spruce trees. Two turbines spin, one waits, then they all turn together. Once in a while, all three are kept still. They below to Fox Island Winds, LLC, an offshoot of the Fox Island Energy Cooperative. They are controlled from afar by General Electric, and experimented upon by "energy experts" from Germany. Their construction is perfect and their motions, reassuring. Off on an edge of the island, they are somehow in the midst of it all, tips of their blades and then the whole set coming into surprise view from innumerable vantage points. Slicing through idyllic sun and blankets of precipitation, they whir the days away, our insidious and oracular monuments to human ingenuity, sleek modernity, and spending power. 

As I write from the attic apartment of the old yellow schoolhouse out here on the island, the wind is audible, stirring up the tips of the nearby spruces and sending the waves in the bay into a frenzy. This apartment is accessible via a nearly-hidden and all- too- narrow door at the end of the second floor landing, and up just one more flight of dusty stairs. Half of my apartment is its usual cheerily cluttered self, while the other half of the space is occupied by stacks of boxes for our impending move. 

You can't see the windmills from here. You've got to drive out to the north end of the island, along our own little ribbon of highway, zipping past swamp and tidal basin, past the barely-glimpsed beaver pond, past double-wide trailers on concrete blocks, past colonial homesteads with wood stoves blazing true, and vinyl-sided homes with shiny red pickup trucks, past rambling fields, tiny bridges and sloping dirt roads. 

At any time of year, at any time of day, even among the shrinking year-round population of just 1200, someone is awake somewhere, and someone is out driving around. 

It's dusk and we're driving away from our sunset spot. Spread out in the road before us, a dozen fawns. No does and no bucks, this is a rural street gang of underaged deer. They assume their awestruck tableau and we assume ours. It is a number of moments, not minutes but moments that stretch thin and sling back and coagulate. The moment they appeared, the moment we beheld them. Our desperate hush, the enormity of their eyes... They have already turned tail and bounded off. 

In October of 1836, a steamship out of New Brunswick en route to Portland catches fire and capsizes right out in the bay. The ship is transporting a circus, known as Burgess’ Collection of Serpents and Birds, a title that fails to take note of the camels, hyena, hippos, zebra, tiger, lions, and elephant that traveled with the show and were carried aboard that day. Of the 90-odd passengers and 20 crew members, some 30 people drowned, as well as each and every one of the animals, all within two miles of the tidal creek outside my window. The casualties can be attributed, in part, to the removal of several life boats from the vessel to make room for the circus cages at the start of the voyage. 


Some say that the elephant made it to Brimstone Island, a hilly place where the small beach rocks are obsidian black and deathly smooth.  They say that townspeople rowed out to the black rock beach with feed for the elephant. Nearly every source notes that Mogul, for that was the elephant's name, was found floating off Brimstone not too long after the fire.


A crimson mushroom against the greenblackgrey of the woods. A pearly pink pearly purple, wholly-spent corpse of a whale against the shore. A decapitated blowup doll, stuffed into a paper bag and stashed along an otherwise pristine trail. An engraved heart, with initials, on a tree in an island in a sort of lake within another island, where there is no other graffiti, anywhere. A middle-aged tourist, overwhelmed by the urge to push her kayak into the tidal rapids, and the rescue effort that followed. A raft of ducklings going over the edge of the same rapids, saved by a passerby at the last second. 


The stillness is constantly broken by the projection of our imagination against the barren seascapes and our imagination is once again inflamed, with the monsters, with the adventure, with the strange apparitions of this stark existence. 

                                                                                    copyright ADB photography

In two weeks, I leave these islands, for even more unimagined adventures, far from home. 

The Point

 In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness..."  

-Sarah Orne Jewett

In April I started a garden 

 (with lots and lots of assistance). 

       It's one island over from where I live. 
It's close enough to the shore that an unusual tidal high would sweep the whole thing away. 

We hauled enormous stones and centenarian bayberry bush roots out of this little piece of earth sticking out on the point of the cove. 

It was, really, a lot of work.

                                Now our garden looks like this:

To Make An End Is To Make A Beginning

Easter Day of 2010 sparkled with promise. I felt the corners of Life edge towards me amidst the dappled green of the lawn at my family gathering. The day was sun-drenched and airy, soft and forgiving.


Just a few hours later, the police found my sister. Now the brilliance of those last holiday moments come back to me in a crazed sort of whisper.


The day after Easter found me speeding to Massachusetts, to the house where we grew up. I arrived mid-day to rooms thick with casserole-bearing neighbors and the smell of their  funeral food, laced with grief and pity.

What I want to say has to do with losing a part of yourself that perhaps never belonged to you at all, of the little waves of horror that take hold of a life, rupturing it anew again and again in the weeks and months after suicide.

How the person you loved, who breathed into your hair and giggled on the phone and kicked into the surf beside you vanishes and you are left with remnants of her likes and dislikes, of her quirks. And it feels like failure, not to be able to receive her in your dreams, not to feel her somehow beside you. There are no messages from Nora from beyond the grave, cryptic or otherwise.

What I want to say has to do with escape and maybe even redemption.


I came to Maine, adrift, on a gloomy day, to camp with my mother for a week on a mostly uninhabited island in Penobscot Bay. And slowly I was enveloped by the ripple of the tides, the crackle of the driftwood bonfires. Sheltered by the wide dark heavens, I found an island boy from my past, walked right up to him and then just never really walked away again. 


It is exactly one year ago this week that I returned for a moment to my city life to pack up a tiny rented room in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. 


One year ago this week I started over on an island in Maine. Nora and I had come here together as children. It was our very own repository of myth and magic. Maybe the only place for me now.


The Maine State Ferry Service runs six boats a day from the Mid-Coast out to sea. Last September found me hobbling aboard the last boat of the day. I arrived with a half dozen boxes, on an ankle I sprained in my late summer NY packing frenzy. Fifteen miles separate America and these Penobscot Bay islands. From harbor to harbor, between departure and arrival, the ocean settles into herself, unfurling lazily alongside the ship's hypnotic drone and the constant churn and fizz of the displaced Atlantic.


On the other side: a new boyfriend, a new (old) dog, and our attic apartment in the town's old yellow schoolhouse.


Before I came here, I worked as an administrator at an evening English school in Chinatown. I served cocktails in the trendy part of Brooklyn. I went to secret parties on my monthly Metro Card. I arrived at crowded tables in cafes and imparted quick kisses on each cheek. I fell asleep on 5 a.m. trains, on my way home from work and barhopping.


This year, I learned how to operate a tractor. I navigated a skiff alone through thick banks of fog and then piloted a 70 foot, 102 year-old industrial ship across the bay. I can still barely drive a car. I am stronger than when I came. My hands are tougher and my nails are dirty and stubby. My hair is tangled and frayed. I've spent time around gasoline and grease, engines and compost and fertilizer and good thick black earth.


It's quiet here, mostly. Lush and still and ever-shifting. Here I found love again. Here I found a certain peace of mind.

And now I am leaving...