Monday, November 29, 2010

They Come Just As They Go

“Welcome to Vacationland, the way life should be,” is a slogan that lures strangers from afar to this northern state of New England, to explore the great outdoors, the rugged coastline and what Maine has to offer.

The season for a coastal-tourist-town is short lived; it begins early May and ends late October. The town thrives and makes it's livelihood off these tourists. The peaks of the season come in waves.

The spring breathes life back into the village; the shops open their doors and streets fill. They come by road and by see, in car or tour bus, on boats or cruise ship.The official kickoff begins the Fourth of July and continues straight on through, till Labor Day weekend. Autumn dawns the season of the leaf peepers, the newlyweds, and the nearly deads. Harvest season begins, the cruise ships come to port almost everyday, two by two.


All season long they come all on their own adventures, with hopes of catching a glimpse of a moose or a whale, maybe to go hiking and biking, or to shop the streets of an old coastal town. Whatever their adventures may be, all these vacationers will soon grow hungry.

***

At some tables you can’t even get the words, “Good Morning” out of your mouth, and the transient diner barks for coffee. In the restaurant business, you just close your mouth, bow your head, and go fetch. But let it be know, servers are more than just vehicles to the nectar of the bean.

There are two creatures of the dining world:one
“I want two eggs, and toast.” The woman confirms. These are the kind you must pry for information.

Then there are the others:

“I want coffee black and my wife’s with cream and sugar. She will have blueberry pancakes, real maple syrup and bacon well done. I a spinach and goat cheese omelet, wheat toast dry, home fries crispy. Oh and we are on your bus tour of the park, and we need to board in thirty minutes.”

Meanwhile your standing there with one pot regular and one decafe and all you asked was, "Would ya like coffee?"

Transient diners also think that you are their tour guide as well as their server.They, too, will pry you for information, and lots of it.

They want to know, “Where is the closest Starbucks?”

Your answer, “Sixty miles inland.” (You came to Maine to go to Starbucks?)

“Inland? We’re on an island?”

Your answer, “Do you remember the bridge with the water on both sides?”

They want to know why they can’t check their email on their super-duper phones. “Don’t tell me you don’t have a 3G network?”

Your answer, “A 3 G, what? Welcome to Maine!”

This happens all amongst the clamoring and clanging of dishes, and those god damn coffee cups half empty begging to be warmed, the plates grow hotter the longer they sit there dying in the window,and then there is Andy cussing behind the line at all the orders that came in all at once.

When breakfast is all said and done, the upstairs dining room opens for lunch. They sit in the dining room and answer their cell phones and yell into the receiver, telling how they spent their day in Arcadia as they look over the menu. (When in fact they are in Acadia,on the other side of the country.) They see we offer a "Taste of Maine Special:" A boiled lobster dinner.

They want to know, “Well can’t I just have the tail?”

Your answer, “You’re in Maine maim, it’s a pound and a quarter lobster,shell and all!”

“I have to pick it myself?” Some say with disgust.

Your answer, “We offer a lazy man’s lobster, fresh picked lobster meat sautéed in butter or white wine.” (For an extra charge.)

They view of the bay can be seen through the dining room windows; the sand bar exposed at low tide, the Porcupine Islands, and the boats bobbing along in the water. They then want to know,

“What’s the name of the lake out there?”

Your answer, “The Atlantic.”

Then they want to know, “How do they get all the boats to park in the same
direction?”

Your answer, “Harbor Master, Charlie does valet parking.”

Interactions with the transient diners like this continue relentlessly throughout the day. The turning and burning of tables, passing dialogue, filled with questions on each side, repeated questions and repeated answers, and inflection in tone as patience thins either mine or theirs.

The kitchen doors swing open once more. Rushing around through all the chatter, the checks that need printing, the printer that needs paper, the voids, the separate checks, and the ten percenters.

Not all your comments got you as far as you wanted; the directions you gave, the full “Taste of Maine” you just served them, the big smile and flashy eyes. No, still they want more from you; they will pry you for personal information, like those old biddies bugging about babies.After clearing the plates and presenting the check, they want to know,

“What you do in the winter?”

Your answer: “Hibernate, and wait for spring.”

***

The season for a coastal tourist town is short lived; autumn exhales the life out of the town. The shops board up their fronts for winter, and the streets empty.The leaf peepers, the newlyweds and the nearly deads have all gone back to where they came from. They have explored this great northern state of New England with it's great outdoors and rugged coastline.

The peaks of the season come in waves. The harvest is over. That’s just the thing about Vacationland and the way life should be;
They go just as they came.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

"Heart Throbs"

Book Intro

Last fall I lost both my Grandmothers, five weeks from one another;

Weeks into November I dreamt of Grammie’s house when I was a child.

I dreamt I was staying the night in the old guest room, the blankets, the crisp sheets just as they always were. The bed made just like a nurse, the bottom and corners tucked in tight and taught so the toes cannot hang out from the edge of the bed. The only thing about this dream that wasn’t accurate was the built in bookshelf at the footboard.

Something about it made me curious, I crouched down to scan the titles and I saw one of my books there on this shelf. The title printed on the spine “Heart Throbs.”

A book that my grandmother had given to me….well actually, I think that she leant it to me.

***

(When I moved Downeast from up North, there are a lot of things that were left behind at the folks in between. My mother sorted and packed many of my things and put them “up overhead” as we call it. (The space built in the peaks of the garage.) )

When I awoke I instantly knew it must be there.

***

The first pages are about ready to free them-selves from the old binding. It was a gift given to my grandmother from her friend Olivia Beal. It was given to Olivia by Lynwood Foss, January 1, 1912. I know this for it is written and dated in cursive on the first blank page.

The next page, the title page reads:

Heart Throbs-The Old Scrap Book –
In prose and verse
Dear to the American People and by them contributed in the $10,000 Prize Contest initiated by the National Magazine 1904-1905
Grossett & Dunlap New York

And on the back of that page reads:

Limited copyright, 1905
The Chapple Publishing Company LTD. Boston, Mass.

All these words squarely margined inside text boxes, the pages yellow and consistent with it’s age, the font tiny, all enveloped in that old book smell.

The next pages include the foreword written by the editor of National Magazine describing the break down of the cash prizes and the content he expected to receive:

“Wholesome good cheer, humor, comfort, hope-those things that make dark days endurable and sunny days enduring. In this way I hope to get those priceless little gems which you have always looked for in your favorite periodical. –Heart throbs-yes, heart throbs of happiness, heart throbs of courage, heart throbs that make us feel better. “

Words like this continue for the next following page until Joe Mitchell Chapple ends this foreword by saying:

“It is certain that such sentiment and humor are dear to all Americans and that these heart throbs of the sons and the daughters of the people are the pulse of the nation.”

The next four-hundred and sixty nine pages are just that, moments that make the heart throb.

At the end of the book on the inside cover, written in cursive is my grandmother’s given name.

***

I took a trip up to the folks in search for that hundred and five year old book; and sure enough I found in packed away in a box up overhead.

The cover gray with dark blue lettering across the front and the spine, it’s ripped and tattered covering you can see right down to the binding, the gray cloth on the top layer, the second layer brown paper and the third looks almost like gauze.

Come to my surprise, I had booked marked a page with a piece of paper. On that paper I had marked all the pieces from the book with titles or relation to Mothers. Imagine that.

***

I keep it close now, sifting through its pages carefully, seeking out what she wants me to discover from this vintage scrap book. It rests on the bookshelf next to my grandfather’s New Testament Pocket Bible, a gift for me when he died many years before. Now they rest side by side, aged and sentimental, together as they should be.

Even if my Grandmother leant this book to me initially, the weeks following her death, she came to me in a dream and gave me this book; the old gray binding, the four-hundred and sixty nine yellow pages of wholesome good cheer, humor, comfort, hope- for I needed it to make those dark days endurable and sunny days enduring, I needed those heart throbs that make us feel better.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

The Assumption

You’ve just finished dinner with your darling, the dishes you washed up together, two cups, two plates, and two sets of silver, he washed, you dried. The pans left to soak as things get hotter in the kitchen over the last sips of wine you had saved for some special occasion. This quickly leads hands up skirts and upstairs bedroom. You’ve strip teased each others clothes off he lay on top of you and just about to…

“Knock knock knock” You hear on your bedroom door.
“Mommmmy…Daaaddddy……...I peed the bed.” Great! Your romantic evening with your darling is interrupted once again.

***

I don’t understand “The American Dream.”

Being a woman it is often assumed I will marry and have children. The subject comes up frequently working in the public, they are a nosey bunch; older ladies especially. I explain that I don’t want such things for my life.

Their usual responses assure me that I’ll change my mind later on. I am frowned upon; it be shameful to be a woman who ends up husbandless and without child.

I tend not to get into the details of why not. I mean I don’t go around asking strangers if they have children and why they do. So I politely change the topic.

***

But if I were to respond to that loaded question of why not:

Firstly, it would begin with the simple fact that it is assumed that because I am a woman, that these are the things I should strive for in my life. There is more to life than having babies and husbands and minivans. Little girls are conditioned to believe in such things.

They are given dolls to take care of, they are taught how to hold them and feed them. They watch stories that tell tall tales about princes and happily ever afters. They are given Barbie dolls to play with. They make Ken kiss Barbie at their wedding and then rub their parts together, thinking it will make a baby.

There are approximately 490,000 babies born everyday around the world. Aren’t there plenty of babies on this planet by now, plenty of birth control methods and education on the subject?

Secondly, I would address marriage.

Back in the day a marriage was a way to gain something from the union of daughters to sons, the blending of families to gain wealth, status, or materials. Women were commodities and marriages were arranged in logical fashions based upon social hierarchies. Husbands picked by fathers with the best for the majority in mind.

“Marriage” in the cultural understanding of the twenty first century means
“wedding,” And a ring.

When a woman gets engaged the first thing she does is flaunt her rock; her honey probably couldn’t afford and bought it anyhow. The first question asked to her:

“When’s the wedding?”

So the bride to be proceeds booking the caterers, the church, the reception and the honeymoon. Then first purchase, the dress; to worn one day, then stuffed in the closet as a souvenir that never returns on the investment.

A marriage only requires a license, a notary public and a witness. None of the fan-fair is needed to pronounce the union of man and wife.

Nowadays marriages gain debt. They are licenses, financial contracts, and ways to get tax cuts, (as are children.) Most newlyweds begin their life as husband and wife in debt.

A married woman no longer addresses her self as a woman or an individual, but as Mr. and Mrs. Or as Mr.’s Wife, her identity now associates her with a man. Not to mention that she drops the name of one man for another, and wears his ring to signify her ownership; for some resembles collar.

Thirdly, I would address the duties of a mother and the effects on a couple.

It starts at the crack of dawn, and ends past bedtime more or less. I hate to imagine spending my days listening to it all. The crying, the tantrums, and the toys relatives gave as gifts unapproved by you that flash and zing and rattle with noise. The screaming in the car as you pass the fake-food restaurant running errands in town, driving around in that god damn minivan.

I dread the thought of the cleaning; the spit up and the drool, the dirty diapers and the wippie dipes, the messes in the bedrooms and the bathrooms. The piles of laundry covered in who knows what. Is that poop?

The dishes in the sink and the milk crusted inside the straw attached to the bowl. How much time will it take to clean that out of there? Or the permanent marker Mr. Clean won’t take of the wall.

Think of the money on education, sports, extra curricular activities, Friday nights at the mall, the gas for the minivan. Birthdays, Christmas’, graduations.They say raising a child from birth to adulthood will cost 140,000. Think about that. Sounds like a farm house with a studio to me.

Think of the worry,on the mother, on the baby, on the father involved. The pregnancy,the doctors visits, the delivery room, the labor.

The changing of the body, the female figure widens, sags and is stretched with marks. The poor vagina no longer just a receiver, for it has given. They say most women are "less pleased" with their vagina's a year after giving birth.

***

“The American Dream?” It sounds like a nightmare to me.

Not really a response you can give while warming cups coffees for older ladies.

Which brings me back to hot nights in the kitchen long after dinner was over, those love birds could have just pounced on each other right there at the kitchen sink, if it weren’t for those kids tucked away peeing in their beds. I assure you, there is much more to life than babies and husbands and minivans.

Sunday, November 07, 2010

Vanishing Point

The distinct scent of oil paint lingers throughout the studio, my hands and forearms smeared in various color, with pallet and brush still in hand, I step back from the easel and stare with the deepest feelings of content at the freshly painted canvas.
The walls decorated in the frames of my life, the vivid images of painted seascapes, and landscapes, florals and plant life hang throughout the room.

We all have something that we are passionate about. Something that we use to express who we are, something we could not live without. What would happen to us if it were taken from us?

For me that would be my art and my ability to create. I often wondered what would happen if I lost my ability to use my left hand. So with that fear I have practiced for many years painting with the right was well. Some paintings I purposefully painted it’s entirety with the right hand. Then I wondered well what if I lost both hands? Well there are art societies of people who paint primarily with their mouth and with their feet.

I was never worried that I could lose my ability to see color, but I do have a slight fear that I could possible develop a degenerative eye condition through my family blood and go blind all together.

My grandmother on my mother’s side had this condition for most of her old age. She had to wear sunglasses inside, she wouldn’t recognize you, but would squint and follow your voice to try to identify the silhouette that she could see before her. She couldn’t sew, or nit, read recipes or her watch.

What if this happens to me? What about my paintings? If you go blind, does your memory keep that imagery for reference? Do you still dream in color?
How would I paint? Does muscle memory apply to painting blind, could you paint a flower by memory?

How would I measure my struggle to mastery? What means would I have to experiment, and discover? How would I reflect and share myself?

Then there’s the poor studio, the easels would stand purposeless with nothing to rest upon them. The pallets and brushes abandoned unused, the canvas’ still wrapped in their plastic. The scents of oils, acrylics and gesso no longer linger. The dust from the pastels swept away. How could I childishly make a mess, with nothing to play with? What would I get my hands dirty with?

My studio, my artistic nature hollowed out and emptied by a black abyss, left barren in a colorless world.

Or what if I continued to create art, but color didn’t matter. What if I began an art collection of abstract objects? Three dimensional sculptures or two dimensions paintings based upon texture. What if I then revolutionized the blind art world and opened a museum of touch? You could walk through and feel the pieces and do what you can not do at other museums.

Maybe being blind could enhance the spirituality by heightening the other senses; no longer distracted by the visual. Perhaps it would teach lessons in superficiality and could remove judgment from the mind and expand and transform the artistic nature into something else.

We all have something that we are passionate about, something that we use to express who we are. Let us take a moment, and celebrate those somethings we cherish, and let us hope that we never meet its vanishing point.

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Nothing Is Where It Should Be.

The bedroom cluttered with clothes of dance parties and summer days. Coat hangers all about and the mirrors glazed in dust. Short skirts and high heels, bikinis and flip flops strewn about the bedroom; outfits I wore for me, but also for him.

The room is dark as I stand at the end of the bed looking to the place I took sanctuary. I look to his pillow on his side of my bed, where he should be and where he is not.

Nothing is where it should be.

I look to the past through those lilac sheets stained in our sleepiness and our lustfulness and our passions of seasons spent lying there. The comforter blue and flowered twisted and wrapped with the fleece blanket, all of this bedrock smothered in his scent and in mine.

The bed must be striped and the sheets washed.

***

I look to the days before, it took place at the kitchen table, I sat in his lap kissing him, so happy he was there; but something was off, I knew it.I stiffened, and rose from his lap and sat in the other kitchen chair facing him. Calm and quiet, I conversed with him as the tears fell and my heart sunk further into my stomach. It was so sudden, so saddening and shocking. My chin quivered as I spoke.

“How could this be?”

“Differences.” He says.

He kissed me and those same tears that rolled before began again; his mind was made and he left me.

For most of the day I sopped tears from my face. The heavy kind, that roll uncontrollably from the eyes, the kind that require no blinking, the kind make your heart ache.

The reasons he gave me I can not accept. They are ludicrous and irrelevant to us.

My heart stayed in my stomach aching and nauseating as I began the torture of mulling over the moments of where things may have gone wrong, and began questioning myself and what I may have done to spoil the happiness.

Was it because I wanted to spend so much of my time with him? I was finally in love with a man that was good to me.

Could it be the little weight I gained over the winter and couldn’t fit into my size tiny anymore?

The things I have questioned about myself have expanded and been mulled over and over in my mind; till my thoughts extended from me, to him.

Is he a fool?

Is there another girl?

I didn’t want my head to wander with such thoughts, but it did.

***

I rose from the kitchen chair and headed to the closet with my swollen eyes and running nose to the shelf of his clothes; but the shelf was empty, all his shirts and shorts, boxers and puma socks, gone.

He knew this was coming.

There is nothing of his left for me to wrap myself in.

***

An explanation I have not.

Things are not what they seem.

Love is tricky; it gives just as it takes.

***

I climb onto the bed, tears fall continuously from my face. I begin to bunch the blankets into a pile, and pull at the fitted sheet. I hug this bundle of fabric, bury my face into it, lay on to it and breathe in his scent as I cry.

How do I wash these lilac sheets?

How do I rinse his scent from my king sized bedstead?

How do I let go of what was, and embrace what is now?

The bed must be striped and the sheets washed.

Nothing is where it should be.