A Good Day

Yesterday was a good day, beginning with breakfast by a window in the dining room of an old inn, courtesy of the gracious hostess, Amanda, who made an exception and allowed us to sit in a part of the dining room that wasn’t really open. Because she was right. I did help her open a can of worms — as someone else came in after us and also wanted a window table. I probably should have just waited for one of the other window tables to clear, and why I didn’t think of it at the time, I don’t know. It’s not like we have an agenda, or are on a schedule when we come here. I can be a pain-in-the-butt like that. And that leads me to the next good thing. Conversation. The deeper, rawer, could-be-can-be scary kind that turns out all right in the end because we’re listening more from a place of openness rather than our “wounded animal” selves, and we’re hearing it from someone we know in our bones loves us unconditionally, for whatever-the-f$ck reason they do. Those conversations can lead to better self-awareness, perception, and emotional insight, and I like those breakthroughs. There was also porch sitting, watching pre-schoolers lined up waving mini-flags for the Flag Day ceremony at the church across the street, and checking out the swarm of seniors on a bus tour disembarking for lunchtime at the inn. This included bearing witness to the cleverest comb-over you are ever likely to see. It truly was impressive.
All of this in the end led to some good character and story development for a project I’m working on with my favorite Manimal, and when I can feel like I am not only pleasing myself, but I am also pleasing someone else, well for me, that makes for a very good day.

Notebooks


My words sprawl across the pages of inexpensive, spiral bound sketchbooks. I’m a messy writer, scrawling and scratching and scribbling out words before I finally get a piece the way I want it. And sometimes I just have to let it fly as it is, knowing it’s not gonna be perfect but it’s the best I’ve got in the moment. It’s why I don’t like the precious, pretty journals they sell in bookstores and stationery shops — they intimidate me, the outside already looks like a finished work of art, while inside the blank pages stare back at me daring me to mess them up, and I just can’t. Give me scraggly sketchbooks filled with words spilled across the pages in my sloppy cursive and haphazard printing instead.

Style Diaries

There are many interior design styles people share here, from Scandinavian and Japanese austere, breezy California coastal, shabby chic thrifted, and the various accompanying tags #minimalist #coastalliving #cottagecore #grannycore and so on…Ours resembles none of the above. We live in an old house that was never in good shape from the beginning, and while we did what we could with it, there’s always something else to be done. I’ve mentioned the ceiling leak into our sitting room from our upstairs bathroom before, and when we had it repaired last summer, we knew the fix might only be temporary. It lasted a year before the re-patched corroded pipes began leaking again. So this year, we bit the bullet and the bathroom pipes will be totally replaced. Figured we may as well replace the toilet while we’re at it (leak is from sink and tub, not to worry!), so we’ve had the boxes with the replacement toilet and tank sitting in our space, along with the 5 gallon bucket we keep handy for leaks. We’re pretty used to it after it being here for several weeks now, and the boxes make serviceable end tables. The black plastic bucket — it sort of blends in anyway. Meanwhile since the plumber’s going to be here, we’re also going to replace the laundry sink he installed in the kitchen for us last summer when we had to replace that on short notice. The three basin restaurant sink with drain boards arrives today, and the faucet Friday. So that will also join its plumbing compatriots. Not sure when Graham will be available to get to any of it, he’s good about fitting us in where he can. It’s been a stellar year for contractors with no letup in sight, so we are thankful to have a couple who are accommodating. But that’s not all. We started having some air quality problems in our basement and have begun clearing it out. This means we’re spending as little time as possible down there and rather than hanging the clothes on the line we have downstairs (we don’t have a dryer), I now have them hanging across a pole on our front room ceiling. When you live like this for a while as we have, you can’t help but laugh because humor is sometimes all that keeps the curveballs bearable. Bearing that in mind, we’ve dubbed our interior design style a curious blend of  Green Acres Core with a Schitts Creek Vibe. It does bring comfort to call it that, and like I’ve said before at least I have beautiful negligees to at least keep up some sort of appearance.

Questions and Answers

One of my favorite heroines, Zora Neale Hurston wrote the line “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” Apparently it’s to do with the flow of creative life, but I can also see how it can apply to the days of our lives, our day to day flow and how we can be cruising along, blissfully unaware, perhaps on autopilot  — and then — blindsided. A shattering blow. Friday was like that for my sister’s family. I didn’t see the text until yesterday morning when I went downstairs. Times like these, I want to hit stop motion, press pause, rewind…and return to that sweet spot before the world turned upside down. But I can’t — so I return to the book on tape I’ve been listening to intermittently, Suleika Jaouad’s “Between Two Kingdoms,” — Suleika, a recent college graduate, 23 years old, off beginning  her adult life in an exciting city — and bam, hit with a gutting diagnosis. At the moment, our family remains in that in-between space of not knowing and not wanting to think or say what we’re afraid of, hoping and not daring to hope, that place no one wants to be in and everyone wants to stay in if it means living in this eternal moment of possibility just a little bit longer. For the next few days, there will be times we breathe, and times we hold our breath.

Wild

There was a beautiful home perched high above us on our walking route — settled on the utility pole right before our turn off onto another beach road. It’s been there for the past few years since we’ve been walking that way. Such a sweet home — I’m not sure if it has had the same stewards each year or not, but you can tell it’s been cared for, and the couple tending it work together in tandem, keeping it so. Sometimes one will fly off for some grub, perhaps while the other one nests. Monday we saw the two of them, sitting up there in their cozy nest, watching the world go by. We skipped yesterday’s walk because of the wind, but today’s we didn’t — as we neared the beach I dreaded to find what I saw was littering the road ahead. Yesterday’s fierce winds had torn through that nest, and smashed it to smithereens on the street below. I wondered about those ospreys. I was heartbroken for them, wondering if they’d found a safe place to land, while they rebuilt — hoping they hadn’t lost their babies and that they weren’t feeling as discouraged as I would’ve felt. Later this afternoon, I read in one of my newsletters about the Eastern Monarch Butterfly, and how 90% of their migratory grassland habitat has been destroyed by development.
War isn’t the only activity that decimates the landscape and its inhabitants. Home loss and violent weather systems brought on by human conceits — these things destroy lives too, both the living land and the beings who live upon it.

Walking

When I walk there’s much to experience that can set the tone for my day. The time of year and day can make a huge difference — tourist season, ferry schedules, landscapers, builders, rush hours — all of this plays into it. Some days are better than others, and I come home happy. Other days, while content, there may be underlying disappointment and irritation for any number of reasons, usually encountered on the walk. But not today.
We cut through different lanes on each walk, and today I wanted to go by what I call the Easter basket house — with their side garden full of yellow daffodils, lavender, pink, purple, etc. hyacinths, tulips, and a host of other spring bulbs. All they needed was a few bunnies and chickens to complete that giant basket overflowing with joy. There were ospreys, robins, starlings and geese, and shrubs blooming magenta and cherry blossom pink, and it was all a visual treat.
I even found delight in the Wonder Bread bag caught on a post, and yes it’s plastic, and yes it’s litter, two things I very much despise, but it was a lighthearted reminder of happy childhoods of bologna, PBJs and fluffernutters on puffy white bread, and all the other memories that go with that childhood — all inspired by a plastic piece of trash decorated with colorful, cheery polka dots.

Lessons from Animal Friends

What my dog taught me today. Some days I can be driven to distraction. Actually, the truth is…MOST days I can be. And I realized that today when I was settled in and relaxed over a task that can’t be rushed through. I tend to rush through my tasks. RushRushRush, I feel like we’ve been conditioned to rush. But I notice that when I slow down and can really give the specific task the attention it deserves, it can actually be an enjoyable thing. I learned this from my dog, Oonagh. A lot of nervous energy she has and she feeds off mine. And once I do actually settle down to the task at hand, she settles down to what she believes is her task — keeping me settled, and keeping a lookout on the world through the windows so we don’t have to.

Poetry

I am enjoying more resistance art these days, particularly poetry. A recent favorite is a young poet originally from the Ukraine — art, resistance, despair, hope — the art and the resistance, whether passive or active can somehow help make the despair more bearable. The following is an excerpt from Ilya Kaminsky’s poem “American Tourist.”
From “Dancing in Odessa.”

“When Moses broke the sacred tablets on Sinai, the rich picked “adultery” and “kill” and “theft.” The poor got only ‘No’ ‘No’ ‘No.’”

Rhythm and Routine

Back to the daily rhythm of a familiar routine. A routine gives me an anchor as I make my way in the world, regardless of where I’ve landed. Daily walk. Tea. Meditation. Connection of some sort — whatever it takes, it can all help make a difference for ourselves, others, and how we move through the turbulent times of our lives.

The Monday Dash

Monday, Monday, be good to me. It’s what I said to myself this morning, and it hasn’t disappointed me. I love a slow dally into the day as much as I love old cemeteries, the hush and the reverence of a slow dawdle in a place where time stands still for an eternity for those who lie beneath There’s that dash on gravestones between the year of birth and the year of death, and the question “what did you you do with your dash?”and I wonder about those dashes. If their dashes felt the way ours do nowadays, like we are literally dashing through our days, and how aware were they of the blur that was their lives, if it was a blur the way our lives feel in the age of environmental and social collapse? Especially if we’re lucky enough to live for more than half a century? What rapid changes swept them up in their lifetimes as they sweep us up in ours, in the perpetual whirlwind of so-called human progress?