you're gonna rise up singing

Summertime, and the livin' is easy, fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high.....one of these mornings you're gonna rise up singing, then you'll spread your wings and you'll take to the sky.  —Summertime from the Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, lyrics by DuBose Heyward.

midnight wind, a howling and demanding wind, sucked air and tent fabric in, and then, in giant bursts, expelled them again, displacing oxygen like the lungs of a colossus, or a bellows of cosmic proportions. this was no weakling storm lashing at us during the height of summertime on a beach on prince edward island.

we were camping in the dunes on a lonely stretch of that lovely island in the late 80's, a thing unheard of in the united states due to strict dune preservation measures and laws to protect piping plovers and other birds nesting in the sand (probably isn't allowed in canada anymore, either) when a mighty gale and torrential rain blew in and pulled several of our tent pegs and poles out of the sand, toppling one side of the tent. needless to say, we survived in the tent (but of course in the tent....we would never abandon our campsite and head for the nearest hotel, well, not on that camping trip anyway), and the kids had great tales to tell when they got back to school.

a beach made of sand or pebbles or a bold rocky shore or any up close and personal view of the sea—doesn't matter where it is as long as it's not mobbed—i'd travel a distance to find a sea view like that.

where you'll find me in the summertime—where i'd like to find myself—could be the wild and blustery shore of embleton beach in northumberland in the north of england (where the signs on the motorway pointing you in a northerly direction actually say THE NORTH, and going south it's THE SOUTH). the huge, imposing, romantic ruins of dunstanburgh castle (this ground felt the likes of john of gaunt, and the wars of the roses) in the distance beyond the golf course didn't look that far, but as i walked on the beach i realized they were farther away than i thought. that walk was a long time ago, way back in 2004; i have every intention of walking there again.

or it could be on fox island, a hill of granite ledges and boulders—and not much else—deposited by glaciers, only accessible at low tide in phippsburg, maine. climbing and poking around up there is an annual thing i like to do to mark and celebrate the arrival—the essence—of summer. the rocks, wearing skirts of sticky seaweed, periwinkles and barnacles, show off exposed backs and arms and thighs tattooed with colorful lichens.

seagulls do a lot of screaming, and they'll steal your picnic lunch—i've even seen them tugging on tote bag and backpack zippers—if you don't watch out. have to keep an eye on the tide, too; it looks harmless but it's not. i leave enough time to get back when the tide turns, and i stay on the sandbar. a tempting shortcut beckons through the water, yet even for a strong swimmer who doesn't mind cold water, it is not recommended since the swirling waves can pull you under and away. if fog rolls in, foghorns—like the one at seguin island and another one at pond island—are some of my favorite sounds of summer—eerie and forlorn, but wonderful, if you like that kind of thing.

remembered beaches—crane, plum island, embleton, jasper, reef bay, singing sands, goose cove, sea glass, crescent, reid, kitty hawk, higgins, pink, seawall, tarpon bay, popham, gulfside, bamburgh—and all the beaches in between with names i can no longer recall; names forgotten, adrift, blown away as if by a distant sea breeze, but to whose shores i will always return in the sweet lullaby of memory, smiling and singing a little song of summer.

~ photo of the dunstanburgh castle ruins by ed montalvo.

bird rock or not

 a calydonian boar greets visitors at the entrance to the household wing at osborne house

our english friends, the lovely lady katherine and her handsome husband, john—a commoner like the rest of us—from horton, northampton, were recently in maine at their cottage in cape elizabeth. they took time away from their rigorous relaxation schedule—drinking a lot of tea (english habits die hard), reading books, going for walks along the beach, and barbecuing hunks of bloody, meaty things—and favored my husband and me with a few hours of their company. we met at—where else?—gritty's, our local brew pub.

lady katherine was the one who insisted i go to osborne house (!) on the isle of wight—my husband and i were overseas for a few weeks last june and he had a business meeting on the island—to see queen victoria's summer palace and the walled garden. i assumed she had been there; turns out she has never set foot in the place. the things you learn. so the four of us laughed about that, and talked about life in northampton, life in maine, life in general, and swapped stories about our aging parents and our grown children and their boyfriends/girlfriends/husbands—all the usual catching-up topics.

later, after we had said our goodbyes, i thought about the house they used to rent in cape elizabeth. i smiled to myself when i remembered how the seagulls would line up side by side, perching from one end of the roof to the other, like ducks in a carnival shooting gallery. they always seemed to be resting on lady katherine's roof, but not on any others. i guess the birds liked lady k's view the best.

funny, isn't it, how you'll have something random on your mind and then that will conjure up more similarly random thoughts. thinking about the cape elizabeth seagulls brought to mind other maine places where birds like to congregate in large numbers—the shorebirds at popham beach and in the nooks and crannies along our rocky coast, the great gatherings of puffins on eastern egg rock, and the seagulls and cormorants on the thousands of ledges and anonymous, vaguely egg-or-dumpling-shaped rocks in the ocean which are often surrounded by rafts of eiders and nosy harbor seals—also found on the "seal rocks" near portland—in the bay's rolling tide.

my train of thought kept coming back to eggs and rocks, and rocks and eggs, and rocks that, by scrunching your eyes into a good squint, resembled eggs. of course, once eggs got in my head, i had no choice but to think of birds.

i was given an animal picture book when i was a child which had a nice drawing of a large rock with lots of birds on it. that rock was the first rock—in what would become a long line of rocks—i knew to be called egg. i asked my parents why the author called it egg rock and they said can't you see why? it's obvious—it's shaped like an egg. that answer might have been obvious to them, but it was far from  obvious to me—it did not satisfy me then, and it still doesn't satisfy me. in my opinion, the rock in question appeared egg-ish or egg-like but it also appeared quite dumpling-ish or meatball-ish since it was basically roundish and therefore only an approximation of an egg's shape. i thought how dumb can parents be?

i argued with my parents that the rock in the picture book had birds all over it so wouldn't it only make sense to call it bird rock. (this was long before i knew about seal rock, which would have helped my argument immensely.) that's an obvious name, i told them. besides, some giant, mythical mutha of a bird had to lay that monster egg of a rock in the first place, and now the rock was covered with birds. everywhere birds, birds, birds. it's a bird rock, i insisted, like it or not.

my parents said to me bird rock or not bird rock, you're so argumentative you should become a lawyer. (they said that many times while i was growing up.)

maybe i should have, but i never did.


~ congratulations. you made it to the bottom of the page. now you get to hear the truth. i have a confession to make: my friend katherine is not a lady at all.... well, i mean, she is a lady, a lovely lady, just not a royal lady. i call her lady katherine because someone actually thought she was a royal lady once. but that's a story for another day.

i would rather be in bed

~ today, maybe because i'm lazy or maybe because i'm busy or maybe because it's national poetry month, i'm re-posting this scribble of mine from last summer.


i would rather be in bed, in my hand we, the drowned,
flipping the pages of this mighty fine yarn about muscular danish
sailors and their lust for the murderous sea
but then i change my mind as i often do and find

i would rather be eating lunch with pear snapdragon
that silly girl who i love but who is too busy
to eat a crumb of this nice buttery tart,
warm and filled with lane's prince albert apples,
apples so fresh they practically sing about their past life
as round, juicy ornaments decorating a queen's garden.

i reckon i would rather be on a maine beach
hot sand sifting through my naked toes,
or washing my hands with finn's fruity soaps,
pink lather dripping down my arms and onto the floor.

i would rather be walking in the shade on tremont street
sharing a joke with buddha in boston or touching the fallen rose petals
in a graveyard along the thames where dusty springfield sleeps.
maybe i would rather snip lavender blossoms in chawton
and press them, dry and flat, onto a bookmark for you, my friend.

i would rather win than lose a midnight battle with scaly prehistoric reptiles
and small cats hidden in a wardrobe, a dream that leaves me sweaty enough
to turn on the air conditioner until they turn off the electricity due to high demand.
we plunge into darkness and heat, a three-year black-out.
when at last we're reconnected—for now anyway, until we really run out of juice—
nbc reports the heat wave is stuck in missouri.

wouldn't i rather plug the long, black skinny cord of the cd player into the wall
to hook up to my friendly neighborhood power grid for entertainment?

my act intensified, juggling cd's in a three-ring circus, my life, vexed,
trying to choose between chopin and lady gaga, or the fleet foxes
and joni mitchell, spinning, spinning, and making money under a well-lit bigtop.

~ i found the pink roses and fallen rose petals (june, 2011) in the graveyard where dusty springfield sleeps in henley-on-thames in the uk, a neighborhood oh-so-close to some of my favorite bloggers. 

windowsills

~ dear jane, many of us, well, we women certainly, and also a generous helping of english professors and austen fanatics, have read your work. (many more have watched your books-turned-into-movies on a newfangled thing called television.) for a person who lived two hundred years ago you were remarkably ahead of your time. the brontes didn't have kind words for your prose, but henry james and many others did. and so do i. your house has changed; your garden is considerably smaller, your orchard is gone, but don't worry, the ladies have done a nice job—it's still quite a pleasant place. ~

jane austen wrote about what she saw in and around the villages where she lived; she wrote about life as she knew it, and even though nothing too dramatic happened in her imaginary world (except things like who was marrying who), that was the point, wasn't it—austen wrote with shrewdness and quiet satire about women's daily existence, a slice of the social order, her chapters filled with well-off young ladies, sometimes silly, sometimes not, who loved the latest fashions, learned to paint and play the pianoforte (if they were like jane, they would be encouraged to pursue their yearning for a richer education), filled the hours with social events and spent most of their time searching for a husband (beware of the perils lurking in that endeavor!). hmm, in some ways not unlike life today.

on the windowsills at chawton cottage vases of freshly cut flowers from the garden delight the eye, a simple homey touch which charms away the centuries and makes the cottage feel more like a lived-in home than a museum, as if jane were about to sit in her chair by the window overlooking the main thoroughfare and begin writing at her little table. (ha, her inkwell needs to be refilled first.)

her ladyship in henley

no, this story is not about you, lady katherine p. besides it would be called her ladyship in horton, right?

anyway......

henley-upon-thames, especially the upon thames part, with its river walk and regatta, is a rawther british town filled with brits, naturally, and also filled, unnaturally, with tourists like me. when i was there the week before the regatta (a great time to go if you don't like snobby mobs) i stayed at the phyllis court club. the room was quite nice; it had a great view of the thames, somewhat blocked, however, by the regatta tents. (not this view of the thames, though, because this is the henley bridge in town.)

phyllis court was definitely dominated by an aging crowd; there were an awful lot of old, slow-moving, white-haired members hanging out in the restaurant, bar and tearoom. i felt downright young in their midst while i drank my gin and tonic and had a look around. it is a very traditional club, a tad stuffy, with a croquet green (players are required to wear all white), a dress code (just like prep school—no jeans, t-shirts, sneakers, sports clothing, must have a jacket and tie in the main dining room) and room keys that are real keys on a wooden fob (no plastic credit card keys here).

at one point i left my husband and our host and meandered down the hall to find the ladies room. it no longer had the fabulous pink sofa, only a boring tannish one. too bad. when i finished drying my hands i stood at the mirror and put on a little bit of lipstick and turned to leave. an elderly lady came in just as i finished with the lipstick, and i mean elderly, 80+, and i mean lady as in "her ladyship". she was the loveliest 80+ year-old i have ever seen: tall, slim, white hair in a classic french twist, expensive silk dress, pearl earrings and necklace. in her face, the beauty of her youth was still easily visible behind the wrinkles. no question about it, she looked downright regal. i thought here we go. this one is going to be a real piece of work, a real aristocratic snob. she is going to stick her nose up in the air and walk right past me like i don't even exist.

was i ever wrong.

this genteel woman looked right at me with the most marvelous, twinkling blue eyes and a big smile, and with a very posh british accent said "a little dash of powder, a little dab of paint, makes a girl look like something that she ain't."

as i hooted with laughter, she emitted a delicate, crackly, old lady chuckle and told me in a firm, friendly voice about how her grandmother used to recite those words to her when she was a young girl just starting to experiment with make-up.

i thanked her for those funny lines, which i had never heard before, and wrote them down in a little notebook.

it only goes to show, you never know who you might meet in the ladies room and, more importantly, oftentimes things are not what they seem.

a queen's walled garden

after a high speed ferry ride and then a jump over a small, puddle-like inlet of water on the unique chain ferry (if you don't take this little car ferry, which is actually, incredibly, pulled back and forth across the water by chains, you have to drive way around a river to get to east cowes on the other side), i ended up on the isle of wight with four hours to myself. i decided to visit osborne, which was once the private seaside retreat of queen victoria and prince albert.

i enjoyed strolling around the villa (until i ran into a large tour group), and the italianate terraces and lawns, but the real attraction for me was the walled garden.

i thought of the secret garden, one of my favorite childhood stories, when i stepped through a side door in the brick wall which surrounds the magical garden and came upon a welcoming, flower-filled retreat. it was peaceful and uncrowded (only a handful of people), unlike the queen's house, where i encountered too many people, and most annoyingly, a very large group of noisy german tourists.

inside the house two women in the tour group insisted on going in the wrong direction to view osborne, in the process running into people going in the right direction, which was supposed to be an orderly, circular, self-guided procession through the rooms. the guard politely and patiently—i was impressed—turned them around and told them not to go back the way they started, but to proceed on their tour the correct way.

sometimes i hate being a tourist.

the women argued loudly with the guard—they in heated german, he, coolly, in english, all rather comical—about this point for a moment, then shrugged and seemed to comply with his wishes. they were in front of me for a while as we flowed along, a current of bodies surging through rooms, but then, thankfully, the women disappeared into the crowd.

sometimes employees at tourist attractions must hate being employees at tourist attractions.

my elbow-to-elbow walk with other tourists around osborne house was interrupted a second time by the german tour group leader herself, an attractive woman in her early 40's with a loud professorial voice. i understand some german and this woman was obviously knowledgeable, but did she have to have such a booming, loudspeaker set of vocal chords? perhaps some of the german tourists had hearing problems.....

i had to pull away and separate myself from the noisy masses at this point. luckily, i was nearly finished looking at the rooms open to the public anyway, so i could make a dash for the door and get outside on the terraces and lawn, where i finally had space and could breathe properly again. i ended the day in the walled garden, content and thankful to be in the secret company of flowers.

in the new forest

beaulieu means "the beautiful place" and so it is.

in the south of england, in hampshire, you sit in your rental car and drive past deep woods, shady glades and the open fields of the new forest national park, once upon a time william the conquerer's hunting grounds—making it, in fact, a very old forest indeed—on your way to the villages of beaulieu and buckler's hard. you are surprised by the number of "wild" ponies that you pass—ponies set free by their owners to roam, breed and graze as they wish for most of the year—around every corner, sometimes literally on the corner. you slow down and remain on the lookout for these amazing creatures.

after one particularly sharp turn as you cruise under a thick, tunnel-like canopy of green branches and experience close encounters with stems, twigs and leaves grabbing at you on the passenger side of the car, you emerge in the sunlight again and admire the pastureland on both sides of the road. you see a foal nibbling in a patch of ferns on the right, and his mother with her face in a hedgerow on the left. you pull over and start taking pictures, slowly inching your way over to the mare. you pull an apple out of your pocket, bite off a piece and place it on the palm of your hand, an offer of friendship. she accepts the offer. her curious son ambles over to see what's going on, holding up traffic in the process. just another day in the new forest.

and then, right there, a foot away from the pavement and three feet away from where you are standing, the foal impatiently nuzzles under his mother, thirstily searching along her belly for comfort and a drink of sweet milk. you are oh-so-thrilled to be in the right place at the right time to view this event taking place on the side of the road, the pristine, natural order of life unfolding before you as it has since the dawn of time before the development of organized farming, and the restrictions of barns, barnyards and fences.

you aim your camera one last time and then walk away and leave the pair alone. even if you don't see another pony in the forest for the rest of the trip, you will still be happy with what those two have given you. (luckily, you do see many more ponies as you explore the forest, but never a scene like the one you just witnessed.)

you pass beaulieu. ahead is buckler's hard.