We flew out to Nantucket on a ten-seater
and I sat up front beside the pilot. First time
on a plane that small! In fact, when we checked in,
the ticket agent needed to know our weights.
OUT LOUD. IN PUBLIC. Paul and Bill leaned away
and I leaned in and the ticket agent leaned up
so my very demure body size could be whispered quickly.
And then she weighed my handbag.

Nantucket is all window boxes and violas and whales
and grey weathered siding and cobbled streets
and $350 cork screws and $650 linen blouses.
Did I mention that it's a bit pricey?
The streets are "paved" with irregularly-shaped
rounded stones -- crossing is tricky and one tends
to wobble and slip. The sidewalks are a bit better,
bricked, but over the years tree roots have heaved
the bricks upward into rolling waves, so no matter
where one steps, close attention must be paid
or else it's face to face with a bloody brick.


I peered into the window of a real estate office
just for grins: a "cottage" can be had for a mere 3 million.
And we think Seattle is expensive!
As usual, we spent a fair amount of time in book stores,
and Paul met a store manager who graduated from the MFA
program at UW (fiction writing) and was familiar
with Floating Bridge Press. How small our universe has become!
We flew back to Boston at dusk, into the urban haze
of a big city.

In Boston today -- a fabulous exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts
titled Rhythms of Modern Life: British Prints 1914-1939.

My favorites were by Cyril Power, two of which are pictured above.

Strolling through the exhibit, I felt as though I were seeing

visual representations of good writing; specifically, well-written poetry.

This is difficult to explain, but I'll try: there was color, form,

meaningful repetition, whimsy and an almost visceral movement

across the paper. There was punctuation in the swooping lines.

Stanzas. And not a word in sight!

On to the European collection, for my filling-up with

Cezannes, Monets, Renoirs, Seurats.  I loathe to think

that many of the images from this era have become 

cliche, common almost, as they appear on mugs, placemats, 

shower curtains. Nonetheless, as I stood in the center

of that gallery I found myself moved to tears, such was

the emotional impact of those colors and that light

streaming from those canvases.

Oddest artifacts observed today were the cat, aligator,

snake and lamb mummies: sacred beings from ancient

Egypt. (And I loved that, as we passed from one room

of Egyptian artifacts to another, the sign on the door stated

that the items in this new room were from Old Egypt.)

Tomorrow we head out to Nantucket Island for the day,

then it's back to The Emerald City.

And lastly, this, heard outside Starbucks

(where Top Pot doughnuts are for sale):

(setting: four thirty-something women)

woman #1: so, how far along are you?

woman#2: five months.

woman #1: oh good, then you won't gain any more weight.

And then a murmur of agreement from all.

Ha! Ha!

 

At Rite-Aid this morning I walked through
the "Dollar Days" aisle. I love these aisles.
I love to see what kind of crap we as a society
are foisting upon dollar-toting consumers. These
aisles represent to me all that is wrong with our
consumer-driven lives. And in every "Dollar Days"
aisles there is usually one item which speak louder
than any other, and today it was little net bags
of shells, for, of course, a dollar. Now I'm going
to get all nostalgic: I remember when the only place
one could purchase little bags of shells was at
a store beside an ocean. Little bags of shells
and shells in bins individually priced. Exotic
shells, glossy shells, shells with odd spikes
and pearly insides which, when held up to the ear
echoed a far-away surf. As a six-year-old, I usually
had perhaps a dollar to spend on a memento
of my trip to the ocean, and most shells were ten cents
or maybe a quarter. They always slipped nicely
into a slim paper bag, and I'd take them out later
when I was alone and examine each one, every swirl
and stripe. These were my treasures, more valuable
than any other possible souvenir, and I dreamed
of walking a beach far from the limitations of rural/suburban
Renton where every shell was a wonder I could not
have ever imagined -- glint, sparkle, shimmer.
When I was 26 I walked the beach in Normandy
and instead of sand there were only tiny irridescent shells,
literally millions of them underfoot, up and down the strand
as far as I could walk. I scooped handfuls to my pockets,
carried them home across an ocean and a continent
carefully packed to minimize breakage. Sometimes when
I think that this, too, was just a dream, I return
to the vintage glass jar where they are stored
and I sift them -- a bit chipped after all these years --
through my fingers.
The dollar-bags of shells at Rite-Aid this morning
turned what I have always thought of as treasure
into a cheap commodity. I considered buying some,
even picked up the mesh bag and turned it over
and over in my hands, but it just wasn't the same.
I think what I really needed from the Dollar Days aisle
was a set of orange plastic cups: stackable, unbreakable
and ugly. Maybe tonight I'll dream of a meadow
with orange plastic cups blooming from every stem.
But really, I'd rather it be shells.

We slept with the windows open last night, all that cool air
inhabiting our dreams. I awoke at 3:11 to the song of a robin
coming from somewhere up in the bigleaf maple, or the cedar.
A sparkle of a sound, the way it seemed to jig up and down --
zigzag -- looping over and around itself. But at 3:11am!
Take away the artifice of daylight savings time, and that dang bird
was blaring out its come-hither avian aria at two in the morning.
A bit early for romance, at least according to this bipedal mammal.

Watching basketball today -- middle-schoolers --
my nephew -- at this age they are so much an elongation
of bone with barely enough skin to cover.
So unformed, still, with their grown-man stances
and aggressive ball-bouncing and shouldering-aside
of opposing teammates, with the occasional ultra-graceful
pass or free-shot. The only place to sit was courtside,
or rather, nearly inside the court,
and there were a few moments when the players & ball
thundered towards us, shoes squeaking, barely managing
not to plow us down. I felt so vulnerable
sitting so close, so much flesh & living-matter.
The game even smelled differently, in close range.
(Well, you can imagine.)
The nephew scored 15 points, and I sent him home
with a big box of no-bake cookies, a belated birthday gift
owed since last December.

I have seven pots of geraniums that I winter-over
and slowly acclimate each spring to the topsy-turvy
weather of a Seattle May. This year it's been either
bring them in! It's too cold!
or bring them in! It's too hot!
Somehow I managed to get it right this year --
they are lush and thriving. And as they are the only
garden I have this year in house #2, there is no excuse
but for them to be bountiful. I am lacking, though,
in scented geraniums and those lovely hardy blues
that spill and spill onto the garden each spring....

I must remember to pay attention, and to listen.

------

Yesterday's Daily Vocabulary:

anagram
Moses Lake
nodule
preview
airline
$15
crammed
concertina
Saint Vincent
holiday
pool
stripes
grey
China
scooter
$4.02
Salumi
olive
levee
sea-moss
dogwood
Phoenix
tatterdemalion
zigzag
(The rules for Daily Vocabulary:
any word listed must have been spoken or heard,
either live or in any form of media. The written word
does not qualify.)

One of my favorite images is laundry hanging
on a clothesline.(I know, terribly domestic,
but it's the truth.) So, I move into the fascinating
world of film with the following video.....
(It's only a minute and a half long.)

Kingsville on the Line

Bread pudding is one of those desserts that I can make

with my eyes closed, and no measuring cups: just stale bread,

eggs, milk, vanilla, cinnamon, a grating of fresh nutmeg,

a dotting of butter. Serve it gilded, if necessary, with a scoop

of vanilla ice cream. A cure-all.

-----

Poetry group last night, and as usual,  a wildly varied

vocabulary and subject matter:

Jeff: ventilating anger

Rosanne: morning cloud walk

Peter: hangover blues 

Susan: missing "M"

Ted: Not Paris

me: measuring grief

From my walk in the woods:

red alder 

skunk cabbage

salmon berries

scouring rush

red elderberry

buttercups

western cedar

Douglas fir

wild (native) blackberries

lady ferns

sword ferns

salal

one pileated woodpecker

and five male mallards, who hung out with me and chatted.

I love the internet because it has allowed me to order parts

for my prehistoric sewing machine without driving all the way

to Louisiana or Indiana, whence cometh the parts. 

And I did not feel compelled to spend all my time

in close proximity to the sun these past few days

simply because it has, finally, emerged.

-------------------------

Joy and Sorrow, Zhong-yang Huang

-----------------------------------

You cannot look at grief under a microscope.

I mean literally. Last night as I entered that

dream-manic state between wakefulness

and all-out sleep, where images rise up

at frantic speeds and disappear just as quickly,

I kept trying to capture a physical shred of grief

in order to make a slide, so I could scientifically

deconstruct its myriad parts under the light

of magnification. It didn't work. I awoke

and recounted this to P. who was beside me reading.

He looked at me and stated, very soberly, 

"You can't do that."

Blend

At Target the blender selection ranges from a basic all-plastic

model for $19.99 to those in the one-hundred dollar range.

Most sport about a dozen different speeds, with words like

blend, stir, chop, mix, whip, mince, frappe and puree.

As a child I was fascinated by the numerous

descriptions of what this appliance could accomplish.

Frappe! (Rhymed with what -- trap?!) We didn't have frappes 

in Renton! (What was a frappe, anyway? Something frozen. 

Something that happens when you push the frappe button 

on the Osterizer.) I remember when I realized that each button 

essentially just made the blades whir, albeit at different speeds.

Oh! The disappointment! The innocence lost when I realized

that something as plebeian as chop was synonymous with frappe!

When you get right down to it, all you really need is 

go and stop. Maybe a go fast and a go faster. 

But a childhood without frappe seems barely worth enduring.

If I had the privilege of naming the blender buttons,

I would choose these:

flutter, julienne, lacerate, fluff, mingle, chew, rend, sever and dismember. 

At Target, today, I chose a "classic" style blender: chrome base,

glass jar, with two speeds: go fast and go faster.

But in spite of the lack of a better blender vocabulary,

tomorrow I'm going to throw in some fresh strawberries,

yogurt, vanilla and ice and whip myself up a nice pink frappé.

Driving home tonight down Rainier Avenue

I saw a man in a light blue suit pushing a shopping cart

containing a sleeping bag (among other things)

into traffic. He wanted to cross. In the middle of Friday

traffic. I stopped as he wended his way around cars.

When he got in front of my car, instead of continuing on

to the curb, he decided to turn his cart 45 degrees and

continue down Rainier in front of me. My first inclination

was to open my window and yell. Then the "C" word

popped into my head: Compassion. I thought: quite possibly

everything this man owns is in that shopping cart. That sleeping

bag is most likely his bed. And the blue suit, well, it was a good fit.

He kept motioning back to me with his hand, like, "just hold on,

I'm busy."  When I thought about it, I was really in no particular rush 

to get home to my comfortable house and the glass 

of red wine, pizza, shaved parmesan on my salad could wait. 

A reasonable guess was that he was homeless, perhaps mentally ill.

After a few moments, he turned his cart to the curb, bumped it up

onto the sidewalk, and I continued on my way home, 

in my fuel-efficient car, my cell-phone at the ready, 

certain of a bed, a meal, a well-stocked refrigerator, 

a lock on every door.

O fragile universe!

Today's vocabulary (in no particular order):

gallery  

de-mystify

oatmeal  

represent

$60  

despair

interview  

red

bath  

graham

Latin  

exotic

rhododendron  

surf

grim  

coq

crossword  

78

This is what I made for dinner: Niv ua Qoc.

As I won't ask you to hold your computer

up to a mirror, I shall translate: (backwards) Coq au Vin.

Backwards because I had no intention to cook up

a classic French dish; in fact, I didn't really even want

any dinner. Thus:

Home late, chicken legs in fridge: saute in olive oil

with a little salt and pepper. Boring! Add chicken stock,

a little of the red wine I'm sipping. Needs something else --

bay leaves, thyme. Wait! Onions! Garlic! Simmer simmer.

WHAT ABOUT BACON? Okay okay.  Added browned  bacon.

Reduced sauce, threw in a dab of butter: Dinner.

Dipped thick bread in the lovely sauce: my own private gravy.

There is something about this dish that demands

it be eaten regularly, or at least something way back

in my cultural genetic memory that tells me

This Is Something Good. It's not a dish from my childhood,

but when I hunkered down at the table tonight

sopping up the bacon/onion/sauce with bread,

the feelings of comfort and completeness

inhabited every cell in my body. In fact,  Coq au Vin

doesn't even date very far back in French cuisine:

Various legends trace coq au vin to ancient Gaul and 

Julius Caesar,  but the food is not documented until the early

20th century, though it no doubt existed as a rustic 

country dish long before that. (Wikipedia.) 

I'm fairly certain that someone, somewhere in the

land of my foremothers, long before the 20th century, 

figured out the sublime pairing of chicken, red wine, bay leaves.....

Maybe this someone even began backwards, as I did, searching

the cupboard for yet something else to add to the sizzling poulet.

I raise my glass (and the little that's left in it!) to her.

Check out this short film here.

It's quite amazing.

Today I rubbed black paint into the surface

of fishbowl-shaped vessels, onto the image

of a dandelion gone to seed. Scritch scratch.

Black-splotched fingers. (I get paid to do this.)

When M. announced that she had made her

spinach soup, a cheer rose from our crowd-of-four

because today it was winter, again.

Perhaps we should dine on gazpacho on Thursday

when summer arrives with a nearly fifty-degree

temperature change predicted.

Wool, or cotton? Goretex or linen?

The extra-terrestrial is my brother.

(In a manner of speaking.)

In Safeway today after work, waiting for a prescription,

I lingered in the hair-products aisle, and happened

upon this:

Notice the delicious creamy color!

New! And improved! I wonder if it comes

in a reduced-fat version.