under a cuban sky

and standing on the free soil of the pearl of the antilles—i can wish for it, wish for the impossible, wish for the possible—that's a better attitude—there's always that. no one can stop me.

instead i'm here, on a ship, atop a lounge chair, dressed in a t-shirt and striped pajama bottoms, cruising past the tropic of cancer—the cays and isles of the sabana-camaguey archipelago to the west—through the great bahama bank at a steady 19 knots, staring at the ghostly form of her cool, pine-covered slopes, slopes partially cloaked in gray clouds—the trinidad peaks, the sierra del escambray, the sierra maestra—moving, shifting in the distance—what is land? what is sky? what is hidden?—getting closer, 14 nautical miles to starboard, cuba the unattainable.

elusive freedom. a ten years' war, an 1898 war, regime after regime, with wars and rumors of war blocking her, blocking us, and always the fight to ensure her citizens would have civil and political freedom, the fight to guarantee that, at the very least, her sons and daughters living away from her shores could visit and send money home. always the fight to lift the barrier—push it away once and for all—which shrouds the pearl from our view.

to hear her music—the latin american son cubano of spanish guitar and african rhythms, and the derivatives, salsa, rumba, cha-cha-cha; the mambo "conversation with the gods", songs in kikongo brought to cuba by central african slaves—in the place where it originated. into cuba. a wish. will it happen in our lifetime?

             
i tried to bring you the buena vista social club's mandinga but it's not working and i can't delete it. sometimes i hate computers.

welcome aboard

for years i think it was a mixture of wariness and dread—a mild dread, but dread nonetheless—yes, those two things, that affected my whole notion of cruise on a monolithic cruise ship.

i was uncomfortable with the thought of being stuck onboard a vessel hundreds of miles out on the ocean with 2000 strangers. i was unnerved by what i perceived in my own (mostly imagined) version of the cruising demographic (mostly based on food orgies, attire, and level of drunkenness, instead of the usual age, sex, and income level): vacant-eyed, rum-guzzling gamblers under the hypnotic spell of slot machines and blackjack tables, white-haired folks (god love 'em cuz i'll be one soon enough) with tall white sport socks rising stoically out of tidy white sneakers (white hair is fine but, dammit, i refuse to put on this footwear as part of my twilight years fashion ensemble), people whose pot bellies tried to remain politely contained but instead willfully cascaded over high-waisted pants, and those travelers with a kooky love for nonstop eating in general and ice-sculpture brunch buffets in particular.

it all started last year. we bid on a cruise at a charity auction, never really intending to be the highest bidder, only meaning to have some fun and to raise money for a good cause, but then, before i knew exactly what was happening, the auctioneer called out "SOLD" and pointed in our direction. it was a done deal.

suddenly i was going on a cruise to the caribbean.

i know that most people would jump at the chance to sail in the warm turquoise waters past cuba and around jamaica and the grand cayman islands, and i know, had i written this before i left, that if i had told you that as the date of our embarkation approached i began to get a little nervous, you would have said to yourselves as you read this how can she be such an ungrateful wretch? she should stop being ridiculous and just have a good time.

exactly. i could hear you saying those words, i had a premonition about those words, so that's what i did. i listened to you. i went on a cruise and had a good time, just like you said, and i lived to tell my tale.

but before i go and have that good time that i'll tell you about soon (let's pretend it's still a few weeks ago), i have to get something off my chest, so to speak. i must confess something embarrassing to you, the real reason i balked at going on a cruise all along. confession #1: i hate crowds. i'm talking about the kind of crowds at the mall on a rainy saturday (you'll never find me there), the crowds in subways during rush hour, the crowds in touristy gathering spots like times square on new years eve (nor there either) and the all-day crowds on the piazza del campo in sienna (i survived), and the kind of crowds i envisioned on a giant cruise ship. confession #2: it's embarrassing, but i can get physically ill in dense, surging masses of humanity that press against me—my skins crawls, my palms start to sweat, my heart races, i feel headachy, nauseous and dizzy.

there. i've said it. i feel so much better now that i've unburdened myself.

as it turns out, i needn't have been concerned about crowds in the first place. the ship was huge and obviously, obviously—look at how i can toss out that word "obviously"with confidence and reckless abandon now that i've returned—the 2000 people were easily dispersed over all that square footage on deck after deck after deck. only the pool area was mobbed, but even the pool was okay when gobs of people debarked for excursions in the ports of call.

we walked around in town and then jumped back on the tender hours before we were due to set sail again to take advantage of the uncrowded atmosphere, to relax and listen to the live steel drum music onboard.

and the real demographic of the cruise? a pleasant mix of older folks, those in the middle aged 45 to 60-ish (that's me in the middle of the middle age demographic), trendy young people, and families.

as for the conclusions i drew from my own unofficial demographic, i can sum them up easily enough—my fellow shipmates dressed very nicely. i didn't notice any long, white tube socks paired with white sneakers—no, not even on those glassy-eyed, vacantly-staring gamblers. i couldn't help observing, however, the extreme popularity of the over-the-top ice-sculpture brunch buffet as i walked from table to table laden with platters of mouth-watering goodies (i've never seen so many different salads, meats, fish and desserts in one place) and happily filled my own plate sky high.

it was a wonderful trip and the millennium is a beautiful ship.

~ i'm back on dry land again at home in freeport and i am shaking my head and wondering about my imagined fear of cruising. coming up: more on cruising—stuff you won't find in travel brochures.

unlocked doors

it is a quiet crime—an unlocked door, nobody home except one ancient cockatiel and two gentle labradors who welcome anyone with lovely smack, slurp kisses—and a tidy crime, too—almost unnoticeable until you look real close.

come in; walk with me. do you see what i mean?

no mess, no untidiness whatsoever. this is not at all how i imagine a crime scene to present itself (too much hollywood in my head, i suppose). no drawers opened and riffled through, their private contents lewdly pawed over and exposed, raked and sprawling over the edge of the wood. no breakables broken, no lamps toppled, no paintings hanging askew, hardly anything out of place. no evidence of a ransacker (such an expressive word!) until.....

you get to the master bedroom where there is some damning evidence that a ransacking has indeed occurred. the burglar had inspected an antique jewelry box, and its contents had been partially, selectively, removed—why, i want to ask this person, pocket a few nice looking pieces of jewelry and not the others? even though some of the pieces may have seemed expensive, none were—everything in the jewelry box was cheap costume jewelry—except one piece which, quite inexplicably, was left behind. why did you do that? and another question for you: why remove an infant's silky pink hair bow from the box—a keepsake from when my youngest was newborn—and take it with you? you worked very precisely, whoever you are, nothing knocked down or tossed aside, or, in an effort to make a hasty retreat, dropped onto the floorboards on your way out the door.

next let's turn our attention to other areas of the thief's plunder. witness this: several pairs of fine gold earrings snagged from the top of a bathroom counter (normally my good stuff is in a safe place but, unfortunately, not on this day), one macbook pro deftly lifted from a desk, but another, clearly visible, left on the dining table—why? one large backpack was stolen, too (i presume, and the police presume, to carry all this stuff); i had left it on a bed (in another of the four rooms where items were stolen), filled with folded clothes, a couple books, paper, pens, and a cosmetic bag i was bringing on a trip with me in two days.

witness a totally neat freak thief: the clothes were not quickly, messily, dumped out of the backpack, as one might expect, to make room for the burglar's loot, but instead were neatly, and oh so tidily, removed and placed on the bed, still carefully folded and rolled the way i had packed them earlier in the morning. of the three sterling silver bracelets on the bed beside the bag (the only items of value in there), one was pilfered, the other two left behind. i say spooky. weird. a quirky thief?

people ask me if i'm nervous these days, they wonder if i feel sullied, violated—almost in a physical way—because my home, my private domain, was rudely invaded by a faceless stranger. i can honestly say no, i don't feel those things. i'm just glad no people were home and that the dogs are fine (if only the dogs could speak! if only they were fangy, snarling dobermans!)

at first i was angry—now i'm only saddened. i'm not saddened by the loss of mere material objects which can be easily replaced, but by the shear desperation of a human being who has sunk into such a mire and feels compelled to do something like this. for what? drug money? or just money? why? i want to ask the thief how did you get to this place where burgling is a normal and okay occupation? how did you reach this point in your life? what caused the plunge to this lowest of lows?

the police detectives continue to investigate. there have been nine other similar robberies—unlocked doors, stolen jewelry and computers—in neighboring towns.

things change. maine country life is not as idyllic as it used to be. we have to increase our vigilance and be aware of suspicious activity, strangers, the unknown. we have to remember to stick the key in the lock and give it a forceful turn, even if we only step out for a moment.

red

the calendar says it's almost march, it feels like it's almost april, but i'm stuck in some kind of time warp trying to figure out when february appeared and how, all of a sudden, it's almost gone. the thermometer reads 40, there isn't a storm in sight, and a vigorous sun shoots out long white rays like magic tentacles reaching down and turning the sloppy snow and dirty puddles into blinding shards of crystal which stab my eyes.

i walk up the driveway and, yet again, see that flash of red, and say to myself for the hundredth time in seven days christmas was two months ago, lady—where have you been?—you've simply got to take the wreaths off the lamp posts TODAY. 

i hate to take the wreaths down—didn't i just put them up? they look so pretty with their bright red bows and long, fluttering ribbon. they remind me of family, family snugly together, at home for the holidays.

okay, okay. i'll do it. i lift the still strongly scented and intact balsam wreaths off the posts and slip the giant green bracelets over my arms. when i get to the garage i put them on the floor, pick up one at a time, and unwind each ribbon's wire where it attaches to the wreath. but first i bring the wreath up to my face, stick my nose in the glorious woodland needles, and inhale—deeply, slowly, noisily, extravagantly—just like the dogs inhale, their noses wildly snuffling, searching the dirt with an urgent need to pick up a scent.

that's when it happens, but i don't know it's happening until after. my brain fires a series of millisecond pulses—an electric red spark: snap, snap, snap—and i smell cinnamon and brown sugar and christmas tree and wood fire; i see christmas all over again. i hear laughter, glassware clinking, the shelling of pistachio nuts, the crack, hiss of piney sparks, a pack of dogs yipping in excitement over so many people to lick and lick.

then, as quickly as i am offered this glimpse into christmas past, the memory picture falls away and is gone. i continue to untwist the slightly rusty wire and pull off the creased ribbon and think soon it will be spring.

after a long day

after a long day that i just don't want to talk about, my ghost comes home with me and we settle into our evening routine. she sits on the couch flipping through the new yorker and i make dinner. (my ghost is not that interested in food; i, on the other hand, am starving.)

when dinner is over i take a shower. my ghost refuses to go with me. oftentimes she is frightened and confused by contact with hot water, so i don't make a fuss and let her keep reading.

i finish blow-drying my hair and i notice she is still sitting on the couch, pretending to read. when she's distracted and unable to focus like this i can tell ghostie's a bit down. it's hard for her, you know, being a mere shadow of me, mostly unseen, unheard, unnoticed—to her mind, nonexistent. i try to cheer her up by telling her she's important to me; she's a part of me, for crying out loud.

at ten-thirty i yawn; it's time for bed. i turn down the thermostat (this pleases my ghost—she likes it cold, but i'm just trying to save money on my oil bill) and climb into bed. tonight i'm too tired to read. i scoot under the covers and pull the soft, puffy comforter up to my eyes and try to get warm. with the lights off, my ghost begins to relax; she drifts along the drafty rooms from window to chilly window, anticipating the darkness beyond them, imagining what her life would be like if she didn't have this constant need to slip past walls and through dimensions and across time, if she could only be content sticking closer to home.

by three-thirty the ghost of myself finally returns, exhausted from her travels through the sullen, wintry land, but calmed by her slide into those beckoning regions where weather doesn't exist. while i sleep she remains close—silent, hovering, watchful—and is absorbed into the black air. she arches her back and stretches her tight leg muscles, cat-like. she feels recharged, invigorated, ready for sleep.

ultimately, as we all do, ghost begins that fade into dreams—down, down, away. from the ether comes her clearly enunciated but barely audible whisper—good night. my tired ghost has one wish: that i would stop snoring long enough so she could get a little rest before the new day begins.


~ snoring is something i frequently think about because i hear a lot of it at night in various tones, patterns and frequencies emanating from the one husband and two dogs sleeping nearby.

pirates and 21st century people

good morning. today you all may witness [above] hot, sexy queen conch love. (i should have been quicker and gotten this out yesterday, love day.)

queen conchs (both he and she are are queen conchs—there are no king conchs) are found in tropical places like the caribbean, where divers pull these mollusks from the sea and leave great piles of the empty pinkish-orangish shells near the waterfront after the conch meat has been harvested and sent to markets and restaurants.

if you like raw seafood like escargot, you'll like the taste of conch, which is similar to eating enormous escargot. the entire animal may be eaten, including that lovely appendage up there, as you will see in a second.

slurp it up like an oyster, chew it as is or in a nice seviche, sample it in soup, or eat it battered and fried in its frittered form. no matter what, it packs a powerful punch of protein.

way back in the 16th century (when these kinds of things started to get documented) pirates, pygmies and royalty professed a love for conch, especially since it was, and is, thought to be—perhaps a lot of wishful thinking, guys....and gals—an aphrodisiac, like oysters.

today, ordinary 21st century people like me enjoy eating it, too. i just recently learned that my niece, christina, has actually eaten queen conch penis—mm, mm, good—she beat me to it. (way to go, christina!) i'll let you know how it tastes when i try it sometime.

and that's all i have to say about conch—and conch penis—for now.



photo credit: jerry corsaut

girl in a sunhat

yoo-hoo. see that girl in the sunhat over there—the one standing beside the red mustang convertible with her arms around a handsome, dark-haired boy? the one whose dad "grounds" her on a regular basis for pushing the limits of her curfew, for being routinely late?

on a saturday night it's way past midnight—more like one in the morning—and the girl's coach has already turned back into a pumpkin, she has lost her shoe, and she can't seem to find her way home. but don't worry, she's fine. she's a good girl, a "straight A"student—she just can't resist night. it's always one more beer, one more laugh, one more kiss, one more song on the car radio.

during the week the boxy, wall-mounted phone in the kitchen rings and rings, always for her, always guys with the same question: wanna go out dancing this saturday night? her parents are tempted to install another line, but they are frugal folks so they resist. they resign themselves to a life where the phone calls are never for them.

look—there she is every summer weekend hanging out with her crowd, gossiping, smoking cigarettes. her lashes are mascaraed dark and thick, her eyebrows plucked, her lids carefully colored in those 70's blues and greens, as she walks along the beach in a bikini. the girl looks so good, so brown, all slicked and shiny in baby oil with no SPF's on the label—who knew about SPF's?—that number was out of sight, out of mind. to speed up tanning their faces, she and her girlfriends wrap double LP record album covers in aluminum foil, lie down on their colorful beach towels, and open the albums like books under their chins for extra sun reflection.

oh, girl in a sunhat, maybe you should drop that album and put your sunhat back on. and, come to think of it, maybe you should start looking for that missing shoe.

~ the idea for this fictional piece came to mind the other day when i needed some aluminum foil to cover a dish that i was about to bake in the oven. i remembered wrapping double record album covers in foil (three dog night in vinyl!) exactly like this when i was a teenager, and then lying out in the sun with them. (maybe we used our old LP covers for this purpose because cassette tapes were rapidly replacing vinyl.) i shudder to think of it today; and, in case you're wondering, i NEVER, EVER came home too late from a date (haha—my father would have something to say about that!).

this, an almost winter

this, an almost winter, beyond the window glass a little white, yes, a little cold, yes—a lot bird chatter

and streaming sunshine—but no drift, no crystalline glare slamming my eyes, no climax of foul weather reportage and shut-downs, no excitement with hulking plows and their forceful rumble and snow rising up like great fortress walls. there is none of that, there is only a meager crust from small morsels of flakes

sprinkled stingily over these winter weeks, packed down, icy ugly, pocked with a porridgy thaw turned to cinder block refreeze and back again, no fun only hazard, no man in the yard with a carrot nose, button eyes, a rakish grin, only hungry chickadees and titmice sitting on high branches hammering away at sunflower seeds nipped from the feeder.

fluffed feathers, a twitch of tails, and me, puffed plumply in my own (hardly needed) down—they, surprised by the sight of me, me surprised by a lovely shiver of shells descending to earth—in my own thrilling forecast this momentary storm swirls merrily in my heart—it is winter after all.

you can't find it on a map, my friends

it's official. last week on the nightly news with brian williams i learned that there's a new kind of country out there (maybe more like an empire? ruled by a king mark I?)—but don't try to find it on any map—a real, unreal place, with the third largest population on earth after china and india.

a mostly a friendly nation, this nation of faces, it is a wealthy, data-processing land primarily at peace (except for occasional controversies and disagreements amongst its citizens), and the folks residing there are extremely social and blessed with many friends—the more friends the better—and a network of connections. their leader's view is that everything is better when shared.

everyone's made to feel welcome here—there are no illegal aliens and there's no need to pass a citizenship exam. it's free and easy to cross the country's borders and become a citizen, and—this is important—have your every click archived and analyzed turning you into a product of the country—just sign up and sign in, please.

even now as i write, a high percentage of the over 800 million citizens in this land of tap, tap, click, click are doing exactly that, and displaying pictures and products, writing on walls, liking this, disliking that (but really mostly liking), tagging this, untagging that. they have a voice—a huge voice, a noisy voice—but often you can't actually hear it with your ears, because this nation's voice sounds off in text/images.

it can be a quirky place—quite a few of the region's populace are obsessed with cats, others with the beverages they're sipping or the pieces of food they've just swallowed, or they show a passion for meteorology: is it raining out or not?—where its people are continually putting up a non-stop insipid chatter of meaningless drivel or countless mind-numbing images, updating everyone in a steady minute-by-minute ritual drumbeat rhythm of the trivial. this land can be a marketplace for the blatantly inconsequential, and yet, sometimes, it illuminates the not-at-all-trivial global events being played out on the world's stage.

some members of this country's population post an endless stream of pictures of themselves (taken by themselves) at parties—or not—(sometimes they pose nude or semi-nude for all their friends to see—man-oh-man, these people are fun!) that they just snapped two seconds ago. then, when they're done with their own stuff, they look at everyone else's newly updated stuff. (you know the old saying if you show me yours, i'll show you mine.)

hear it? there they go again. another gazillion clicky clicks. well, i don't need to tell you any more about this magical land. you already know way more than i do anyway.

note: just about everyone, of all ages, including my 80-year-old father and the rest of my extended family, is a citizen of facebook land. i only know of five people (ages 30-55) who aren't. one of them is me.

she sleeps in deep woods

surrounded by roots, nesting in the warm dry earth. here is a rare view of the bear hidden in her den; this is the north maine woods—the largest forest east of the mississippi—where she is having a delicious snooze, dreaming her wonderful winter dreams. she is a hibernating wild maine black bear and her name is lugnut. (not a very feminine name—i would have preferred "daisy" or "apple" or something.)

on january 16, 2012 lugnut gave birth to two cubs. when you click below you will also be able to see the cubs being born.

go here and you arrive inside her cozy nook, and the live streaming video camera will introduce you to mother and cubs. [click rectangle on lower right of video for full screen.] visit when you can and don't be discouraged if, at first, nothing's going on. truthfully, it can be kind of boring in a midwinter den. lugnut sleeps a lot (do you see her side rise and fall as she breathes?). try again later—believe me, she does wake up to stretch, yawn, shift position, and tend to her babies—and then you might, if you're lucky (like i was), see mama bear, and sometimes the little ones, quite clearly, very up close and personal.

as the cubs grow and become more active, and as we head into spring, there will be lots more to see before the bears leave their den.

i hope you enjoy this rare peek at a miracle of nature in the place i love called maine.

~thanks, denny, for telling me about lugnut.

to be or not to be unplugged

a small thought:

when i'm on vacation i generally like to remain unplugged and get totally away from the computer. i prefer to look through a window screen, not at a computer screen. for me, the idea is to block distractions, open up my mind, and allow new stimulation to grab my senses, so that when i do get back online i can—i hope i can, anyway—write from a fresh perspective.

but in january hannah brought a computer with her on our family vacation and i confess, i cheated.

i logged on.

but guess what? i found i only needed a little fix.

honestly, i felt better when i was logged off.

and guess what? the world kept spinning around, and i didn't miss anything of actual importance during the time i had been unplugged.

but first papillotes

she had seemed to be recovering, sandwiched between hospital sheets and topped with wires and tubes through which drugs and nourishment licked into her veins. but now the doctors consult in hushed tones, standing above her bloated body and shaking their heads as if she wasn't there.

people arrive. she doesn't understand why so many of them are gathering in this place—some dabbing their eyes with kleenex, others kissing her cheek—until gradually it occurs to her that they are here on a solemn mission. she realizes how very old she is, and that these people—whoever they are—have come out of kindness. soon it will be time for them to cover her up, turn off the lights, draw the curtains, roll her away.

but first she is exploring the world with colleagues and friends, life in full swing. she has written many books about her travels—and about food, always the food. interspersed throughout the chapters discussing faraway people and places are her thoughts about the foreign dishes she discovers and tastes year after year in these different lands. her taste buds are extremely discriminating: boar's head, caviar, brain masala, moussaka, elk, pates, terrines, turbots, papillotes, paupiettes, and wine—oh the wine—she sings the praises of all the local gastronomia.

but first there are the crazy all-nighters—and a diet rich in high calorie, college food-service fare, chinese take-out and beer—culminating four years later in a much deserved top-of-the-class graduation from a fine university.

but first she impatiently slams the refrigerator door after grabbing her brown bag lunch containing a veggie and cheese sandwich on whole wheat, carrot sticks, and one cookie. she turns and reopens the fridge and peers inside, hopeful for something else to add to her bag. she finds there's nothing but leftover carrot soup, salad, and rice, none of which seems appealing. the school bus will be here in a minute. she leaves the leftovers behind, kisses her mother good-bye, and runs out the door.

but first she sees a vision, an array of lovely colors—bits and slices of red, orange, yellow and many, many shades of green. the colors are so beautiful that she can't peel her eyes away. she stares and stares at them for a long time. how about one of these? someone says and she is coaxed to pick up a finger-sized portion of asparagus, clementine, or strawberry off her highchair tray.

but first she is surrounded and wondrously enfolded by hilly mounds—the curves are so soft! one at a time she sucks them forcefully and at length to produce sweet, warm spurts in her mouth, which she quickly swallows.

but first it is time for her father to drive her mother to the hospital, three weeks early but she's ready, yes she's ready.

go fish

while my family and i were on vacation on sanibel island earlier in january, we spent a day fishing in the coves and inlets around the ding darling wildlife refuge. we hired a local guy recommended to us for fishing expeditions to take us out on his boat and provide fishing rods, bait, and his knowledge of where the fish might be biting.

with the exception of kevin, not one of us is a die-hard fisherman. by die-hard i mean a person who gets all excited about baiting a hook with slimy shrimp and casting for hours on end with very few nibbles. honestly, we can hardly call ourselves fishermen at all. but we really enjoy being out on the ocean, cruising and checking out the sights on a warm, sunny day.

the weather was perfect; the fishing was not. four (out of six) people cast their lines repeatedly for five hours and only one person—my lucky husband—caught anything. he reeled in four fish—two 17-inch spotted sea trout and two redfish.

not many fish in the sea near us, but plenty of brown and white pelicans circled on the air currents above out heads and did take-offs and landings in the sanibel bayou wetlands. they, too, were looking for fish; they, too, moved on when they didn't spot any.

on our way back toward the sanibel causeway, the ocean in front of us filled up with breaching bottlenose dolphins. dorsal fins were everywhere. clarence, our captain, noted that a few of the dolphins were rolling on their sides near the surface of the water. that's a female breeding behavior. (dolphin love occurs all year but can peak in the spring.) and then, after entertaining us for ten minutes, they were gone.

and so were we. back on dry land again we were ready for a late lunch and a few beers.

nests

a clock ticks cracking ice
shadows & keyholes stamped on the walls.
i hobble a memorized route
along the corridor on a foot swollen—
puffed like punched-down dough on
the rise—inert, useless.

running mice in the frame of the house
are pulling threads out of my old socks
& reweaving them into cushy
nests, winding the colored strands in and out

of tissue tufts, hair, dog fur & dryer lint for their cold
hairless newborns hidden deep within the timbers
behind the piano. i wait for
no one, go nowhere & dark shapes
fall away as the sun squints
& i open my eyes & yawn.

island syllables

a few words spoken, or unspoken—but always in my head—during the lazy winter vacation days on sanibel. i'm in maine again, but recalling these simple syllables will keep me warm for a long time:

barefoot       lazy

waves          sunrise

iced tea        oysters

hibiscus         beer

sunset          SPF

crabs            sand

towel           waves

starfish         breezy

salty             iced water

pelicans       palm trees

waves          dolphins

swimming    tide

fish              calamari
reading         fishing 

seashells      waves

barbecue      laughter

herons          ibis

green            blue

sighs             happy

sunshine       waves

surf               walking

tide pools      sweatshirt

family           together
flip-flops     ocean     

into the teeth of the sea

i look back to where my mother set up our beach chairs. the hot sand is covered with a sea of colorful striped beach umbrellas. our own red, yellow and green umbrella is out there somewhere, but i can't find it. they all look the same to me. (one day—could it have been this day?—i got lost on the beach amidst all those confusing stripes, but my mother found me before i wandered too far away from our place on the sand.)

i squeeze my mother's hand. i am so little. one of my earliest memories is this day at the beach. we are walking toward the water, toward the waves. don't let go of my hand. don't let go of my hand. i am thinking those words. do i say them to her?

it seems as if we have been walking for a long time. i am tired. i notice the curvy lines the mollusk-filled, lettered olive shells create, leaving wet sand messages just like i do with a stick. i am sweaty and i want to cool off in the ocean. suddenly i see the waves. they are huge and frothy, white and noisy. my mother senses i am nervous so she encourages me by leaning down, looking into my eyes, and smiling.

"the waves are fun, you'll see. i'll lift you over them and you'll be flying along the water like a dolphin. you'll be at home in the sea like a starfish or a seahorse. and i promise i won't ever let you go," she says.

i am afraid the first time i meet the monster's foaming mouth, the waves like teeth noisily chomping at me—i wonder how hungry is the sea?—ready to snatch me up and swallow me down as i foolishly wade straight into them. a big one, a real soaker, gets me, throws its big mouth over my head trying to devour me, but my mother never lets go.

that was long ago and this is today. today i have no fear of the sea, i have only a deep, unquenchable longing for its beauty, its seductive power, its vast wildness. as much as the sea changes, turning by degrees from calm to roaring, rolling, churning, it also remains the same, an endless, comforting, back and forth—a sea time shuffle across the shore. i like that.

when i am on the island i open the sliding doors to welcome the sound and the smell of the sea into the house. the waves no longer look scary, but instead have turned into broad, toothy grins smiling up at me. the sea rushes in and does not attempt to eat me up, but greets me kindly and fills me to overflowing with peace.

excerpt on a clothesline

dealing with a constant barrage of dirty clothes is a universal human activity except, of course, for some lucky people in remote, tropical places who don't have to wear any clothes at all. in the warm weather it can be an inspiring sight to see a colorful (or not) display of drying laundry (ok i'll speak for myself.... i, at any rate, am a little weirdly inspired to ponder laundry) perching and flapping on lines like some sort of unusual upside down bird (bat?) species, especially when the garments are hung in an innovative manner. grab a pair of binoculars—only kidding—and take a look.

laundry on clotheslines puts the personal on display. it is both interesting and startling to see someone's belongings, often intimate belongings, draped and exposed out-of-doors for everyone to behold. after all, people inhabit and bring to life these otherwise innocuous bits of fabric—they work in them, play in them, sleep, love, die in them. clothes really make up a great part of who people are; personalities can be detected in them. are they bargain basement threads, ones with brand names—amazing that some people will only shop for very specific brands and no others—or ones with fancy designer labels sewn inside?

i always seem to be doing laundry, even with just the two of us at home, and the dirty clothes really start to pile up after we've been away for a while. there's the laundry i should have done before we left but didn't, and now there's the laundry from our trip that's falling out of our suitcases and backpacks onto the floor—and i even washed clothes while we were away. where does it all come from?

why do our clothes seem to get dirty so quickly, and are they, in fact, really that dirty—like we're lumberjacks, farmers, car mechanics or lobstermen or something....those people have a good reason for all their truly dirty clothes—or are we just too tidy or too picky about our clothes? a little obsessive/compulsive clean?

well, i think (hope) we're just typical/normal clean people. anyway, i have to stop now and throw in a load.

salty breathless love

solitary beach—for now. winter vacation. full moon, setting. chilly.
hoodie zipped up, hands stuffed in pockets. walk quickly to stay warm.
prevent the nippy air from wiggling through the outer layers, creeping
crawling, sneaking in. dawn. orbs, orbs, orbs.
one orb setting, another rising. panting now.
warming, yes. stop. take a picture. this is exactly—
untouched, no tinkering with nature—what the lens saw:
surrounded by reds, a melted butter sun pouring out a bright path
across the dark water as if to say this is the way.

stoop. pick up a seashell, a cross-barred venus.
then others: lightning whelk, angel wing. mysterious forms
touching my fingers, what's lying at my feet now, and tomorrow—
here there is no time, only tide, a low full moon tide—
horseshoe crabs, starfish, heart-shaped cockles, elegant yet
exuding elemental salt, pungent as morning breath and body odor
year after year left by the sea, they, no longer alive yet beautiful; they,
bearing the story of the waves, the sand
—they, breathlessly telling.

the small still life of snowflakes and pears

fat wet snowflakes dawdle down from the planet's heavenly rooftop as if taking their time, stalling, delaying their inevitable earthly fate—contact with the ground—where each flake will one day melt, evaporate, disappear.

it is both true and false that every snowflake is unique—true for the large complex crystals composed of a multitude of molecules stacked and connected in all directions—snap, click like so many invisible lego bricks—and occasionally false for the small, simple snowflakes which may, on occasion, boast an identical twin.

as for the totality of snowflakes which have fallen to earth over eons of time—what an unfathomable, unknowable number!—amazingly, no two large ones could ever—ever—have been identical—the number of molecule combinations borders on the infinite, making duplication almost an impossibility.

and as for a display of pears in a bowl near a sunny window in winter, the discussion comes down to this: these piled up fruit lean in like eager, big-bellied, pear-shaped women bearing irresistible secrets and about-to-fall-off-the-tip-of-the-tongue gossip; hear them? they seem to be saying do tell.

the dots, lines and bumps that light up the patterns on their lush flesh, the rise and fall of shadows within the warm clefts of their skin—one-of-a-kind.

do you see? snowflakes all over again.

repose

you fondle each jewel before you pick up the pen containing archival ink. you sigh. you once were the reigning queen of movieland but today you sit on a velvet settee in front of an antique writing table and slowly flex your arm and fingers preparing to make another label. a maid could easily do this for you but you resist the idea.

the truth is you like writing the little tags. your handwriting is exquisite and you're glad that the schoolgirl years of laboriously copying the palmer method of penmanship—the flourishes, embellishments, ornamental details—have finally come in handy.

one diamond tiara. tiffany, 1973.

one diamond choker. bulgari, 1959.

one sapphire ring. cartier, 1967.

one strand of opera pearls. cartier, 1985.

and on and on, labels for all the pieces of jewelry you have acquired over the years.

with your insatiable thirst for jewels you are like a pirate sailing the seven seas in search of more booty. how many decades worth of treasure have you hidden away in chests and boxes, one or two pieces in each, each adorned with its own meticulously handwritten card?

you stop working on a 2010 label. a little smile sparkles on your lips. you are thinking about when you will be handed your last script—the script for life's final role—when you must lie still as dirt in peaceful repose in your casket and you are pleased when you imagine your collection of jewels and how they will also lie peacefully in theirs.