Jan Chozen Bays says the mind "fritters away its energy" dwelling in the past or—even worse—in future worry or fantasy.
It's true, all that pain is like biting the fingernails too deeply, or smoking too many cigarettes too fast.
But on this warm October morning, I think of my Aunt Ada, 85, sitting in her rocker and fanning herself with a giant, homemade cardboard fan covered in thick contact paper printed to look like stained glass. Heavy as a frying pan, she waved it in front of her face and gave little pushes with her nylon-stockinged feet against the floor. The delicate smile behind her eyeglasses—twinkling, conspiratorial—was timeless.
Any moment she would slice up a peach, or write a letter.
The memory of it enriches me, still.
October 19, 2016
October 12, 2016
The Attic Star
I conceived a dislike for her when she told our agent she wouldn't sell us the front porch bench. Long and low under the tank-shaped front window, the short spindles of the back like piano keys, it seemed to define the house—as I had first seen it in photos.
Carrol with two r's had paid cash for the house in 2006, coming in from the exclusivity of Mt. Desert, sampling Ellsworth life like you might try a decaffeinated tea or a new hairstyle, her father funding everything with the transfer of some golden island property that must have made her purchase as easy as picking up wine. Somewhere, also, implied or guessed, there had been a successful divorce.
So that a decade later it had a full line of Swedish appliances. The farmish balustrade of the front porch, just a box of painted boards without ornamentation, was pulled away, leaving a theater stage with large, thickly-planted ferns for footlights. Now the posts were longer—sexier—as they met the floor planks. The kitchen was gentrified with hanging copper skillets and Le Creuset. Bowling balls of smooth Bar Harbor granite held the bedroom doors open. A gazebo was placed on the lawn.
She had agreed to Friday, September 16, then informed the team, about a week before, she would not be attending closing. Booked into a motel at the edge of town, I walked past the house the evening before fantasizing that I might see her in the driveway, stuffing the car with some last-minute boxes. Stepping a little bit up onto the driveway in the dusk, I would say "Well, you're cutting it close!" But the house was dark, and the curtains were drawn. I headed back out the Bucksport Road with my Gruyere and flagon of Cabernet in a plastic bag that knocked against my knee as I walked, no snappy introduction made.
Carrol with two r's had paid cash for the house in 2006, coming in from the exclusivity of Mt. Desert, sampling Ellsworth life like you might try a decaffeinated tea or a new hairstyle, her father funding everything with the transfer of some golden island property that must have made her purchase as easy as picking up wine. Somewhere, also, implied or guessed, there had been a successful divorce.
So that a decade later it had a full line of Swedish appliances. The farmish balustrade of the front porch, just a box of painted boards without ornamentation, was pulled away, leaving a theater stage with large, thickly-planted ferns for footlights. Now the posts were longer—sexier—as they met the floor planks. The kitchen was gentrified with hanging copper skillets and Le Creuset. Bowling balls of smooth Bar Harbor granite held the bedroom doors open. A gazebo was placed on the lawn.
She had agreed to Friday, September 16, then informed the team, about a week before, she would not be attending closing. Booked into a motel at the edge of town, I walked past the house the evening before fantasizing that I might see her in the driveway, stuffing the car with some last-minute boxes. Stepping a little bit up onto the driveway in the dusk, I would say "Well, you're cutting it close!" But the house was dark, and the curtains were drawn. I headed back out the Bucksport Road with my Gruyere and flagon of Cabernet in a plastic bag that knocked against my knee as I walked, no snappy introduction made.
September 3, 2016
Labor Day Weekend
On Saturday, the tropical storm comes closer, transforming the morning air into the ocean, blowing the leaves of the trees back and upright like little green sails.
A breeze furrows through the house like high tide.
The northwestern sky is periwinkle blue, but a bilge of dark gray is cutting through from the south. I keep the kitchen door open and the copper pans resound like gong buoys.
The barometer brings with it the first cool weather, flooding August off like an unreachable, insufferable island. Our noisy window units, on a rich diet of Kilowatts all month long, are silent.
Between the houses the light is patchy and changeable. August was monochromatic, motionless, run aground—but in these first days of September we lurch then ride a small current forward.
A lusty but casual relationship, summer took too long to end—I'm glad it's over.
But I think I'll remember one week in July—our cottage right on the bay, the lobster boats gliding on the flat aquamarine surface, the ice cold water splashing over my legs—for a long time yet.
A breeze furrows through the house like high tide.
The northwestern sky is periwinkle blue, but a bilge of dark gray is cutting through from the south. I keep the kitchen door open and the copper pans resound like gong buoys.
The barometer brings with it the first cool weather, flooding August off like an unreachable, insufferable island. Our noisy window units, on a rich diet of Kilowatts all month long, are silent.
Between the houses the light is patchy and changeable. August was monochromatic, motionless, run aground—but in these first days of September we lurch then ride a small current forward.
A lusty but casual relationship, summer took too long to end—I'm glad it's over.
But I think I'll remember one week in July—our cottage right on the bay, the lobster boats gliding on the flat aquamarine surface, the ice cold water splashing over my legs—for a long time yet.
August 4, 2016
Rumination While Pulling Weeds
Is there a part of life that lies beyond the apparent? Have I been wrong to persistently, bitterly deny it?
Are lives that ended still going on someplace, like the overpayment of a utility bill: money that finds its way back, an unexpected check in the day's mail—a beloved character, familiar energy, orphaned from its old form, randomizing the tides like the moon, putting the compass out of whack?
I am too hard on myself.
I prepared for loneliness and received it. And now life goes on like a party across the hall. I smell the beer and the onion dip.
Life asks for a certain generosity, a small down payment of faith. My flawless suspicion, a talent for mockery, didn't really come in handy, though I kept them laughing in college.
The best thing you can do for someone else is to believe him: "So-and-so was right about that" is the truest sort of fame. I think what we ask from the past is validation. Unfortunately, it isn't coming.
So we beat on with Fitzgerald, into this confusing, flawed middle age, a gallery of withholdings and hesitations—a chilly place.
A couple of old photographs will have to suffice for warming the heart, and perhaps the idea, gingerly conceived, that we will receive a little generosity, too.
Are lives that ended still going on someplace, like the overpayment of a utility bill: money that finds its way back, an unexpected check in the day's mail—a beloved character, familiar energy, orphaned from its old form, randomizing the tides like the moon, putting the compass out of whack?
I am too hard on myself.
I prepared for loneliness and received it. And now life goes on like a party across the hall. I smell the beer and the onion dip.
Life asks for a certain generosity, a small down payment of faith. My flawless suspicion, a talent for mockery, didn't really come in handy, though I kept them laughing in college.
The best thing you can do for someone else is to believe him: "So-and-so was right about that" is the truest sort of fame. I think what we ask from the past is validation. Unfortunately, it isn't coming.
So we beat on with Fitzgerald, into this confusing, flawed middle age, a gallery of withholdings and hesitations—a chilly place.
A couple of old photographs will have to suffice for warming the heart, and perhaps the idea, gingerly conceived, that we will receive a little generosity, too.
June 8, 2016
A Short Walk
Piney Branch is not an easy street to cross. I avoid it subconsciously, like not calling someone back. I keep west, in the diminishing 'V' of car-less blocks formed as Piney Branch runs southwest to meet mighty Georgia Avenue—a blue collar road in a white collar city, check cashing places and windowless clubs with dancers.
I wade forward in anonymity, dropping my pace and inhaling magnolia and English boxwood, atomized into the air by the afternoon sun. Children are in school. Everybody's at work.
Each 4,000-square-foot lot tells a different story. Some are ringed by a simple iron fence, but others are cribs of chain link, the climbing roses poking through the rhombus gaps like yellow breakfast buns.
At a large corner house, the weeds grow tall and the paint sags away from the concrete. The blinds in the windows belong to another time—eyelids shut with the dignity of well-earned rest.
Across the street a canary-colored compound of bay windows and walled, unseen gardens is polite but reserved. A dinner plate of mulch mounds up below each crape myrtle, and the grass behaves.
On a different block, a raised bed alongside steps puts armfuls of marigolds, cat mint, geraniums, lavender, asters, and Sedum at chest height, perfect for smelling. Along the curb, low branches of young trees brush you like dancers' arms. Up ahead, a single cat crosses.
Azalea time has come and gone, exhausting and overstimulating as a college romance, and the bushes have resumed their green composure. June is here.
My breaths are finally coming from deeper down, and my fingertips are purple and cool. I pick the mail up and unlock the door.
It was such a short walk.
I wade forward in anonymity, dropping my pace and inhaling magnolia and English boxwood, atomized into the air by the afternoon sun. Children are in school. Everybody's at work.
Each 4,000-square-foot lot tells a different story. Some are ringed by a simple iron fence, but others are cribs of chain link, the climbing roses poking through the rhombus gaps like yellow breakfast buns.
At a large corner house, the weeds grow tall and the paint sags away from the concrete. The blinds in the windows belong to another time—eyelids shut with the dignity of well-earned rest.
Across the street a canary-colored compound of bay windows and walled, unseen gardens is polite but reserved. A dinner plate of mulch mounds up below each crape myrtle, and the grass behaves.
On a different block, a raised bed alongside steps puts armfuls of marigolds, cat mint, geraniums, lavender, asters, and Sedum at chest height, perfect for smelling. Along the curb, low branches of young trees brush you like dancers' arms. Up ahead, a single cat crosses.
Azalea time has come and gone, exhausting and overstimulating as a college romance, and the bushes have resumed their green composure. June is here.
My breaths are finally coming from deeper down, and my fingertips are purple and cool. I pick the mail up and unlock the door.
It was such a short walk.
April 7, 2016
The House in the Middle of the Block
Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities.
—Frank Lloyd Wright
I.
I stand at the sink sorting blueberries, tossing the soft ones into the compost pail habitually.
We cannot keep the house.
I am fertilizing someone else's garden.
The idea seems obscene.
After we've left, I swear never to drive by.
II.
Houses are the physical manifestation of our dreams, partners whose high traffic areas and familiar kitchen window views have grown as invisible, and as profoundly comforting, as a spouse. The rooms are half public facade, half private chamber—stylish but cluttered, the mail always sitting out on the table, the pendulum clock on the mantle catching the light. Daily, we are exasperated and privileged, embarrassed and proud. Guiltily, contentedly, dishes pile up.January 19, 2016
First Month
Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey.
—John Updike
Gangs of sparrows choke the feeders just outside the windows, swinging them like censers in a barren sanctuary—or like the tall fire escape at the end of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
The neighbor's bathroom light goes on and off, meaningfully.
The mailman is suddenly on the porch, in mid-conversation, and the dogs go wild. Who talks to him all day, block by block?
I talk to myself all day.
I want to write the way Clara Ward sings "When the Saints Go Marching In," looking briefly skyward before impaling us with another perfect bar, flawless and confident. I want to make someone smile or cry without their wanting to, from deep within—as I smiled when, sitting alone in the row, I had my first take-off on a PanAm jet out of LaGuardia in 1986. As I cried on the first syllable of Gary's wedding vows.
They are moments when the water and air is squeezed out of life, when it is crushed and concentrated like grapes, and rhythm lures the mind from indolence or compromise.
Every hello and goodbye is pressed between two brass bookends, every late sunny weekend morning in bed with someone wonderful and heartless, gorgeous and long gone.
But gospel never fully translated into soul or pop, and its effect on us has just a single conduit, with an outdated premise. But like having a Sangria, we lift the fruit aside and swallow the contents.
I have no stories to tell this month, and I will not write about myself.
I look out the window at the birds, upside down, pecking at the seed.
Apparently His eye is on them.
But they're managing quite well on their own.
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