The Grasping Hands of Primates are an Adaptation to Life in the Trees

Posted on May 10, 2024 by pacienciapaciencia

There was the first spring, when the roses bloomed in February – or perhaps it was even January – I have forgotten. In the front of the garden lay the double pink and the yellow roses, standing stalwart against the North wind. A late February ice storm beat them back to the ground; I almost thought they were lost, but no, roses are strong.

The second spring came similarly; why were all the storms so strong now, as if sending us a message from on high, something we were supposed to notice? There was the hail storm that felt as if someone was pouring golf-ball size hail from the roof amidst a green sky like one of a tornado. The tornado came later, and we all learned that the scariest parts of tornados is that they are invisibly powerful as they tear off your roof.

My roof remained unscathed; my friend sent me a photo of the tornado traveling just above our house on its way out of town where it wrecked a fine line of homes and barns in a path of destruction.

The changes happen slowly; perhaps we should have known this. I should have known this, as an armchair scientist and teacher of critical thinking, discernment. How could it be fast like in so many stories? It was slow.

I often wonder about princesses in carriages; gazing out the windows at the landscape. What did they think about? Were they in conflict with their material possessions in contrast with the lives of their people? My doctor said to me two weeks ago: we all had gotten way too used to all the Amazon, click-a-button and have it shit, it was time for a change.

A change is here; I feel it settling around me and I am trying to choose how to respond. I keep planting trees. I have planted six so far. My husband said last night, “I will be working in the garden on the day they blow the world apart”.

Could it be? Every day I go into a classroom and turn on lights, log into the internet, kids come in and go and get breakfast and later, lunch. We walk up a green hillside dotted with dandelions and if we have time, go into the woods to walk the trails. Children are friends, get mad at each other, stare into their phone screens, cry, laugh, and make fun of me. I love it. The children everywhere are the best part of the gig. I think every day about children in Israel, Gaza, Yemen, Ukraine, Russia, the Congo, the Sudan, etc. and I wonder do they get to walk into a classroom?

I remember teaching in Philly 12 years ago and how surprised I was at the world within the world I was then a part of. The other day there was an article about that same neighborhood in the New York Times and it made me so sad. Why? I think because I know now that it is worse than it was when I was there, and that fact is so shocking to me. I remember walking to the Dominican restaurant down the block to get lunch or to the little shops under the El to get candy or cookies for kids. There were no homeless people sick from drugs then; there were simply drug markets selling the drugs that would then populate all the blocks, all the corners. I remember taking a photo of a vacant lot with a hurricane fence, overgrown with weeds and wondering why there were no trees there.

For me, peace is coming in tiny moments and I have to actively pursue them. Dusting furniture, looking at the ocean, cooking dinner, planting a tree, refilling a bird feeder; all are tiny moments that are expanding into a greater peace. I look at the pine boughs in late afternoon sun and the way clouds look early in the morning and remember that we are all so tiny in this cosmos, and it will continue long after we are gone, whether through simple mortality or grave human error.

During the eclipse, I watched with awe the power of the Sun, and thought, without that one thing, all is lost! How amazing. We used to think that we were so powerful, before. Now we understand that nothing is certain, clear, or real. Perhaps it is time to jump into the unknown? Perhaps it is time to recognize that our hands are empty, but when we reach out to grasp another, the grasp and the hand are real.

Good night.

Heart Shapes

Posted on July 27, 2016 by pacienciapaciencia

I have been being a snoop today. I like being a snoop, and am one of those people who is guilty of looking in peoples’ medicine cabinets and awkwardly moving around homes at parties gazing intently at curios and especially, photographs.

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“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”
― Brené Brown

This is what I did today; in the somewhat vain attempt at unpacking, I found myself snooping in one of Cody’s boxes that is full of old photo albums. Two baby books filled with sweet notes from his mother and photos in that classic 1970s sienna tone. The photos are of a blonde baby who looks remarkably like two of his nephews, Paul and Dominic. There is also a scrapbook of his first three years, filled with more photos and birthday cards. Then there are a few more photo albums. Two are of old family photos that range from baby Cody to teenage Cody, photos of his parents and grandparents. His mom had brown hair then, blonde now, cut in that poofy 70s/80s style that I think all of our moms wore. There are photos of his father cradling him as a newborn, in the exact same way that he later cradled his own son when River was born in 2004. In those photos, you actually couldn’t tell but for the age of the photographs that the man in the frame is his father and not Cody, for when River was born, Cody cut his hair short and clean in the same style as his father’s when he was born. Little Cody peeks out of photos, holding fish on fishing lines, dressed up in terrible Halloween costumes, sitting next to his father and mother and grandmother, posing on the trunk of a very old, silver Honda Civic. His father so young, and Cody so small: the family resemblance between the two is so strong. They share brows and shoulders, height and lankiness. Later, Teenage Cody begins to look as he does now: very tall, thin, with long-lashed eyes. Those long lashes show up in one photo from when he must have been about two.

There are also photo albums from later life, from when he moved to Austin in 1998. Cody out with friends, on the road to Albuquerque and Amarillo, and photos of the highways in between. Photos of him in Amsterdam with an old girlfriend who looks very sweet and very 90s in her baggy pants and oversized t-shirts. There is a photo of Cody from when he was building his first tattoo shop, when he was 25, and he looks almost exactly as he does today: glasses, beard and mustache, t-shirt, jeans, tattoos from tip to tail.

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Living with someone versus dating them and spending nights at each other’s houses is so different: all the cards are out on the table. All of each other’s strange little behaviors are on full display for each other to eke out over time; learn to tolerate, appreciate, and love. Cody puts a paper towel under the french press every morning while he makes coffee and it makes me crazy because it makes no sense. He apologizes almost constantly, seemingly just for moving around. I keep telling him he doesn’t have to do that. I wonder what things he notices about me that bug him, but he appreciates because they are mine, all the same.

In a set of the photographs, I saw the houses he lived in a tpwn in rural Louisiana, when he was learning to tattoo. There are photos of his first tattoo on an orange. There are photos of his Uncle and Aunt’s house, surrounded by potted plants and 5 gallon buckets of soil. This photo shows me why he collects so many plants and 5-gallon buckets of soil. This behavior of his ties back to the past, gives him some sense of continuity of time, perhaps. There is a photo of him in front of the school bus he lived in during his time in Louisiana, dressed up in the same leather coat he wears when it is cold, in front of a cook-fire. Cody loves cooking on an open fire. There are photos of his grandparents camp house in Center, Texas: an old, white trailer with a deck in the front. There are photos of the back porch with his mom and dad and grandmother. Little did I know that by looking at those photos on a quiet, rainy day in July (thanks be for the rain!) that I would learn so much about the man who I thought I knew the most about: the man who has become my best friend and my companion in this life.

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A few years ago, during the time when I was at the beginning of my “nervy b”, as I like to call it, I culled through hundreds of photos, scanning some and throwing away the rest. I used to have two photo albums but I don’t know where they are anymore. In some ways, during that time, I chose, albeit with a frame of mind that had a distinct lack of clarity, to literally throw out much of my past evidence. Today, I realized the sadness in that is that not that the things are gone, and neither the memories, but the signposts are no longer. Perhaps we hold on to objects not just because they are precious but because they help us re-establish that continuity of time in our own lives. Perhaps if I still had those photographs, I could remember better the times in my young life when I was friends with a boy named Eric, son of my mom’s best friend Pat. We used to do things all the time, dress up, ride horses, be really silly. Eric now has schizophrenia and lives in Florida: I wonder if he remembers anything from that time, at all?

I got rid of almost everything I owned, sold it to strangers and left it on a street in Philadelphia to be combed over by neighbors from countries near and far. I used to have a bag of my great-grandmother’s hand-made lace. Where is it now? Not that it matters much, really. I suppose I am mulling over my own rejection of my continuity of time. At that moment, in the years between 2012-2014, I was so ashamed of myself and my decisions that I threw all evidence of it away. No wedding photos, and all evidence of Steve is gone except a box from China his father once gave to me. Even my wedding ring is gone, and I stuffed my wedding dress into a trash can on the back porch of that house in Philadelphia.

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Here I am, today, in 2016, going through boxes of my own and of Cody’s, as we piece together a new life in a funky house in Dripping Springs, Texas. I grew really sad during my perusal of photographs today, realizing that whatever I had that was like these objects before me, I had destroyed in mad, sad intention. It’s true that my parents have a treasure trove of photographs, so I need not really worry about that specifically, but it’s like I am looking back at these last few years and wondering about putting together the events in a chain that makes sense and represents my memories. I suppose that is what this writing project is all about: a memoir, the establishment of the story after many years have passed.

I love Cody for many reasons, but one of the main ones is his ability to recognize his own painful life events and hold on the positives. He has a very good sense of perspective and being present. He isn’t perfect, and neither am I. This morning I hung a bamboo shade of his on the window in the living room. It has a giant batik of butterflies on it, and it used to hang in the front window of his first tattoo shop on Burleson Road in south Austin. I remember staring at it during the hours of talking and tattooing that were the beginning of our long-standing friendship. And now it hangs in our house: the home we are building together, doing our best, muddling through, baring it all to each other, every day, and every night.

“What happens when people open their hearts?”
“They get better.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

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Let’s All Try to Help Each Other Make Decisions

Posted on July 1, 2015 by pacienciapaciencia

If everything is temporary, then why do we have to make decisions that sometimes negatively effect some while positively effecting others, or the self?

We have to make decisions because the oxygen mask must be placed on our own faces first: without self-love, self-respect, goals, and an attitude of cheerfulness, we are no good to anyone else.

I have a hard time advocating for myself: perhaps some of you share this. I find it difficult because it means confrontation and the risk that someone may be disappointed, hurt, or upset. Pre-recent times, I did a really good job of practicing my strategy of Avoidance. Avoidance is a magical strategy that someone taught me when I was little; they taught be to look calm, speak intelligently, dress nicely, be incredibly selfish, and when backed into a corner, leap out, run away, and disappear. It is a terrible and sad way to go through a life and this is something that I realized about three years ago, when I moved to Maine.

At that time, I had narrowly escaped a very dangerous relationship with another person, with myself, and with a city that seemed to have Bad Luck for Patience written all over it. But even my very presence in that city and the choices that led up to that move were the effects of that age old Strategy of Avoidance, and its brother (in my case), Rushing Through Life at Warp Speed. I had decided that I didn’t want to deal with the repercussions of divorce in Austin, and so I created a path to reinvention that has taken me here, there and everywhere, finally resulting in coming back to Earth and making some hard, but important decisions.

When I returned to Austin, I interviewed for the job that I was just recently offered. I interviewed twice, and was very encouraged by the interviews. I really liked the school and its students and was excited to be part of such a dynamic and forward-thinking place. After I interviewed and was able to substitute teach for a few days, I was confronted with Avoidance again. When Avoidance walks in, the conversation is usually the same. In my mind, Avoidance says, “but what about your freedom? Do you really want this? This is going to be hard.” And I used to say, as long as it was nothing to do with the heart or my personal life, “well yes, I do, and how hard can it be? I am a very capable person who is good at making plans and carrying them out.” In this specific case, Avoidance said: “but you haven’t been a classroom teacher in three years. It’s going to take a lot. And you aren’t even sure if you want this, anyway.” And I said back, “you know….you are right.”

I was filled with doubts: doubts about what I wanted, and what my abilities were. My doubts were confirmed when I did not hear from the school regarding a position for a very, very long time. I remember one evening when Avoidance was pushed aside by Pragmatism and Peace, who both said to me, “you know, if this is what you get to do, then you are doing something right.” And I said back, “you know….you are right.”

And then I sat, and waited. I wrote a couple of emails. I waited. I came to the realization that maybe Avoidance had let me tarry too long and I had done something wrong either in my Life, or in one of the interviews, or that this just wasn’t meant to be. I sat with that for awhile, and eventually learned to let it go. At this time, I was very nervous about jobs and money being that I have been working at a bakery part-time and not making as much jewelry as before. I felt I was losing my way, somehow, and that even though everything felt right and ok, I hadn’t found my place yet and I was worried about that. In ran Rush Through Life and said, “you have to do SOMETHING. This isn’t going to work.” I debated the options, the pros and cons, of what to do: whether to return to Maine and work for the summer, knowing that at least I would have a nest egg of some sort for fall. I thought about leaving Austin just as it was coming to feel normal, and uprooting myself again. I thought about trusting the Universe that the right thing would open up in my heart and hands. I made the decision that Maine at least made sense financially, and that since I had no other options, it was the best one to do: I knew the ins and outs, and could predict (basically) the path of the summer, and that it would be great to see friends and be in the party-party atmosphere of MDI in the summertime. I decided to go, and leave just after my immigration appointment on June 26th.

A few days passed, and I was beginning to plan how to get to Maine, and the plan for returning in the fall with the remainder of my belongings and some cash in my pocket. I realized there were good reasons to go, despite friends and family, and that I could continue to grow my career in the direction of jewelry and jewelry making. I realized that if I were to open my own space here in Austin, that I had more to learn and connections to make. So, I was going, and soon. And then there was a phone call.

The phone call was an apology and a request to come in to meet the following Monday. Early on that Monday morning, I had a conversation with Avoidance and Fear of Commitment. I thought, in that moment, that I was going to be asked to teach an entirely different class, one I was not 100% behind or necessarily skilled to teach. I sat in the parking lot for a minute, thought about going in with confidence and calm and communicating what I felt, and to Sashay Away. It was in this meeting that the administrators of the school offered me my teaching position of my pedagogical dreams: art-science-engineering. I sat in an uncomfortable chair, bewildered and laughing. I asked them if they were really going to hire me to do what I want to do, and what I have wanted to do for years. They said yes.

I realized, over the next few days, that this point in life is not only a turning point, but it is also a new chapter, and that fundamental changes are taking place. Yes, I made the choice to return in those early days of April, but I wouldn’t have guessed the changes that are here, that were here, and that would begin to happen in my own life. I wondered if other people think of their life in terms of chapters, or matrix points on the crazy flowchart of life. I realized that had I not gone to Maine and worked on all the myriad projects I had worked on, that I would not have been offered this opportunity. I realized that it is a priceless one, and that not only its potential but its long-term application was worth more to me than, well, in truth, any other career-related opportunity that I had ever been given. So I smiled and I took it.

Avoidance, though, being a tricky character, came back in and I delayed in sharing the news, due to wishing to not hurt anyone in Maine that I wasn’t going to come back. It took me a long time, too long, to be honest about that, and that is because not only do I care about all my friends and family up on that beautiful island, but it was also the place where I found myself, where I was truer to myself and grew to understand myself in ways I don’t think I ever would had I stayed here all along. I did what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it, and most of the time, was happier for the experience. Occasionally I still felt pent in by my own feelings: especially in the winter. But I worked on understanding the temporary nature of day to day life, I grew to appreciate establishing a sense of calm and equanimity, and I truly began to detach from things and learn to love people and experiences. It is tremendously hard to not go back to Maine for these reasons and others that include comfort and quiet and that special place of peace that we all find on MDI, which is one of the reasons why those of us who know it love it so.

However, I had to make a decision about my Life, and about what was important to me and what would serve me best in the future. I had to acknowledge the changes that were happening and understand their level of gravity and importance. In other words, I had to grow up and learn that I could leave for the summer and let Avoidance take me on another journey, albeit a short-term one, or I could stand on my own two feet, look at the path my life has taken, acknowledge its rewards and its trials, and be here now. I feel like I am being given great gifts at this present moment, and I intend to stay grateful and present with them. I want to not run away from what is scary: commitment, success, long-term friendships, closeness, responsibilities. Despite my fear of that list of Scary Ideas, and I know there are others that I am not including for different reasons, I feel like I am at a time and place in my life to accept my choices, celebrate where I can, and continue to learn from every step along the road that I am lucky enough to pay attention to.

Although it is hard for me to write this, I am very proud of the last few years. Despite the emotional shifts and the intense ups and downs and the instability, the experiences of Philly and Maine made me a stronger, more grounded, and more understanding person of myself. This means that the selfishness is still there, but perhaps that old adage of awareness being half the battle is true. Maybe also is that one about what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Avoidance and Rushing Through Life are still there: perhaps they will be, in some ways, there forever. But part of my subconscious-level new commitments since returning to Austin are to work on those aspects of my life and really try to examine why they are there so that I can be a more content person than I have been. My return to Austin has been full of learning how to commit, be in the present and not the past, and how to share. I feel like it is time to be at home; I don’t want to run away again.

The Veil

Posted on March 15, 2015 by pacienciapaciencia

It was a pack of cards with optical illusions printed on both sides, it was a stamp of a skeleton, it was a book about a mysterious girl with a colorful cover, it was a gilded leather jewelry box. It was memories: the memories of times gone past, of another life, of being oh so much younger. Held onto for years, they were tucked in the corners of old trunks and the shelves of bookcases.

Moving, packing, sorting, organizing: de-possessing. Communing with all of the things in this cabin in the woods: holding each item in my hand and examining where it came from, who brought it, what it meant over the passing of time and asking myself, honestly, whether it had a place in the house anymore. For most things, surprisingly, the answer was yes. Over the past few years, I have done a really good job of shedding the errata, the flotsam of life defined as possessions.

What does it mean to let it go? It is a phrase that we often utter ourselves or hear others utter in terms of life and its myriad experiences. Let it go, we say, not really knowing what that may mean to others or to ourselves. This week is the beginning of spring, although you wouldn’t know it here on the coast of Maine where snow seems firmly planted in our landscape everywhere you look, but nonetheless, Friday is the spring equinox and the beginning of the sun’s warmth beckoning the living things back out from under the ground, under the snow. Shortly, Persephone returns to us and her mother will celebrate by giving us flowers and leaves again. Shortly, the days will become much longer and we will be able to celebrate the feeling of the warm air on our shoulders.

Let it go….let go all of the stuff that is holding growth, feeling, evolution back. That pack of cards went into the fire, that stamp went to the growing free pile, the book went to the library. Such magpies are we: holding on to shiny objects, putting them up on shelves or in drawers to be gazed upon during the dark moments. What does it mean to really glean from our lives those items that have meaning and purpose, and to slough off that which doesn’t? Does it mean we are losing or gaining ourselves? Does it mean that we are better at the growth, or worse at the remembering? Does it mean we shall find ourselves at some future date wondering where that bit or bob went? Possibly, but after all, it is just stuff. You can’t take it with you, as the other popular saying says.

Spring is a natural time of cleaning, sorting, and developing better habits for the warmer days. It is a time of reckoning with oneself and with the earth as we witness the huge shift that is happening beneath our feet and around our heads. It is an antsy time: a time of intense preparation, hesitation, and promise.

Where are we all going on this tiny blue planet hurtling through space? What will happen to us in this new year, after the beginnings of it have been so slow and so cold and so dark? The only thing I know is that I don’t know: I feel like I know less as I learn more about this game of life we all are lucky enough to play.

Lately, I have been trying to appreciate something about the place in which I live each day: mostly I notice the mountains that I can see from my front garden: the dooryard, as it is called here. In front of me each morning is a line of graceful, arced mountains that are dotted with trees that appear black and stand out of a uniform field of white. Behind them, during the day, the sky is either white with snow or blue with sun. At sunset, the sky transforms into a pink-purple-salmon wonderland that casts the roll of those mountaintops in beautiful relief. The lake at their base is beginning to melt: the ice is going out, again, as they say here.

As we all make this grand transition, again, as our axis posits us in greater exposure to our central star, my goal is to remember something simple, something about being in the present moment, something that goes something like this:

“Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.”

Frida Kahlo

Amidst the Blizzard

Posted on January 28, 2015 by pacienciapaciencia

Here we are, about 22 hours into a blizzard, with warnings of more to come tomorrow. I am shocked by the amount of snow outside and also dismayed that my epic shoveling attempts have now been completely covered over by more and more snow. After a walk in 40 mph gusts, staring at the snow flurries blowing over my desolate stretch of highway, it is natural that my heart and mind start….wandering.

I spent this evening making artwork for a restaurant in Bar Harbor, a place I truly love and for which I have been given carte blanche this season. During this process, I began researching hobo poems.

This was my favorite:

I’m wondering son with the nervous feet,
That never were meant for a steady beat,
I’ve had many a job for a little while,
I’ve been on the bum and I’ve lived in style;
And there was the road, stretchin’ mile after mile,
And nothing to do but go.

Good words to think about: ideas to ponder whilst one is stuck inside, listening to the whistling wind and wondering what is in store for us tomorrow…

Racing and Hunting

Posted on September 12, 2014 by pacienciapaciencia

Early on a late September morning: foggy, damp, warm but a slight chill lingers. A very quiet town: also very dark. Slowly a few cars creep along the streets: coming, going, searching, watching. It is the time when everyone and everything is calming down and people don’t seem to know what to do with themselves. Rushing here, running there, overexerting energies to fill now empty spaces.

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The five colors blind the eye.

The five tones deafen the ear.

The five flavors dull the taste.

Racing and hunting madden the mind.

Precious things lead one astray.

Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees.

He lets go of that and chooses this.

Endings and Beginnings

Posted on February 15, 2014 by pacienciapaciencia

“I keep turning over new leaves, and spoiling them, as I used to spoil my copybooks; and I make so many beginnings there never will be an end. “

– Jo March in Little Women

A year and four months ago, I moved to the small town of Northeast Harbor after a month-long trip around the country. In two weeks, I will leave Northeast Harbor for the much larger town of Bar Harbor. Twenty minutes away and boasting a population of almost 1000, my new town is the big city of these parts.

I am conflicted about leaving this little town, because I love its quirks and characters. I love its beauty and its quiet. I met several great friends here who have since moved out, too, and soon I will go and move into an old house and still be able to see the ocean. But my new ocean will be facing north, while this one faces south.

New directions and opportunities have to be the themes of 2014 based on all the tumult and tumbling going on. For Valentine’s Day this year, I made flags spray-painted with red hearts. There are ten of them, and I installed them on snow mountain: the pile of dirty snow that sits beside my house in the parking lot. The snow plow guys scoot all the snow over here during every snowstorm, of which there have been many this winter. The flags were flipped and flapped all day yesterday by gale force winds, but maintain. This morning they wave more gently in the winter sunshine.

Tonight another snowstorm descends upon us, another 12-18 inches of the white stuff will drop downward onto the ground and into the branches of trees. My friend just told me that she has never seen anything like this winter, and I have to agree. In moments it is beautiful and inspiring and scary with its stark nature, and in other moments, it is somewhat defeating. The winter is so powerful here, just like the summer was in Texas. The difference is that the summer in Texas was just hot. Winter in Maine is dark, cold, snowy, icy, windy, and very, very long.

I am trying to motivate myself to take care of business, but have a case of the Februarys. This is why I made the flags over the last couple of weeks, when I was working on two Valentine’s Day commissions for clients. I learned today that one of the pieces that I made with an old typewriter ball was met with tears and love, because said typewriter ball was found in my friend’s mom’s house shortly after she passed away. I love that there is so much love in the things that are important to us, even if those of us who transitionally handle those things don’t know the back story.

The flags to me mean love for Valentine’s Day for everyone in my town: they are a prayer of sorts. The town seems to be changing but no one can see what the changes will look like. As the year round population shrinks again, as I move and a few others do as well, this town needs love and brightness. The flags mean appreciation for my friends here, for the family that I have found. They also mean gratitude for the safety of the four of us who were in the accident two weeks ago. The flags also mean focusing on endings and beginnings and being aware of the give and take of transitional times. I, historically, do not like change and have a hard time accepting that endings actually exist. I try and try and try to keep energy flowing in my spheres of influence so that life is a creative process rather than a destructive one, even though I acknowledge that creation and destruction, like the sides of a coin, are a yin-yang of sorts; you cannot have one without the other.

Right now I am sitting in my bedroom, my favorite space in this little house. This room reminds me of a train car due to its size, cramped nature, and lack of windows (there is only one). My house is steadily being taken over by boxes. The funny thing about moving out of a tiny house is that there is nowhere to put the things you are packing. The tiniest of houses begins to feel absolutely small when stacks of boxes are pushed up against any nook or cranny of (non-existent) extra space.

When I look out my front window, I see those small flags coursing in the wind: red against the white and blue and green of their surroundings. I remember moving here two autumns ago, when I knew nothing of living here or of its people. Now, I know more, and am beginning to understand life here. But just beginning.

How Summer Ends…

Posted on August 17, 2013 by pacienciapaciencia

Leaves beginning to disintegrate in the waning sunlight…

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. “

Natalie Babbitt

And here we are, again, another ending to another season: summer.

Morning glories on parade!

Tonight I walked out of the restaurant with another week of summer under my belt. Summer, to me, has meant non-stop working: smiling, helping, bringing, doing, aquiesceing to peoples’ desires. Summer is a season of wants, sometimes fulfilled. Summer is a season when the population explodes: when your always sleepy town is transformed by people strolling in pistachio green or salmon pink trousers, people stopping in their cars or at least driving ever so slowly, as if creeping along a new road that has yet to be discovered.

Hidden views from Rockefeller Gardens

Whilst driving home, I noticed the outdoor temperature was 49 degrees: 49 degrees! Ever so cold for August; ever so cold for a girl who lived most of her life in a place when if it was less than 100 degrees in August, those types of low temperatures were considered a reprieve.

End of summer sunset from the Islesford dock

I have been writing here for almost a year: so much has happened over the last ten months. Most of the discoveries of the last almost-year have been reflective in nature: never before did I give myself the latitude of place to have time to think. This morning, when I woke, I noticed that the sun that daily streams through my front windows has bleached out my rendering of Shel Silverstein’s “Hector the Collector”, which is written in my slanting hand on the inside of a greeting card with the blazing emblem of “Let’s Get Drunk and Eat Waffles” on its cover.

Even lilies become caught in late afternoon misty rainstorms

My little house, so filled with light and creative projects, has been transformed from the tiny cottage it was when I moved in, to a jewelry studio with a small kitchen and bedroom. Everywhere, every surface indicates that an active artist lives here. The floor, messy, is covered with bits and bobs, the kitchen table-now-work-station is covered with silver wire, stones, pliers and projects halfway completed. On the counter lie Queen Anne’s Lace blossoms, drying in the salty air. On the floor below is a skateboard-cribbage board, now decorated with insects from the 1800s. In the window hangs an Egon Schiele print, some prisms, a steel block or two, a slide from a Magic Lantern, tins filled with magical objects of a lost art, a sea urchin skeleton, and some antique steel components that once belonged on the drawers or in the doors of someone, somewhere far away.

Stucco rusting, dripping, disintegrating

To the right is a tiny antique shelf from Germany, or maybe England, although its rendering of wildflowers makes me think of Heidi, up there in the mountains of Europe. On the shelf lies a strand of ivory: Indian, not African, brought to me by my father when I was a little girl, before ivory was entirely illegalized. Within the curves of the ivory necklace is a stone box, with a magnetic clasp. Inside the box is the surprise of cicada exoskeletons, their bodies green and wings a plastic, black, threaded delight of perfect cells, and the dessicated body of a hummingbird who once flew into the windows of the school in which I taught. He flew into the glass, hit his little head, and fell to the ground, dead. I put him in a tin of salt, and after a time, he became what he is now: an artifact, a beautiful, scary thing that will stay for all time. His feathers shine green and black and grey and brown: a miracle of suspended iridescence.

Gateway in the rain

One of the things to appreciate in this grand scheme of turning time, this period of peace and quiet and loneliness, for it is that to be sure, are the stars. Glorious and reaching, they spread from horizon to horizon on nights like this. Wherever you look, there are stars, and the backbone-like fuzz of another arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. A galaxy so far, far away, yet we are a part of it and see only the tiny fraction of what is ours, what is our own neighborhood, here from the surface of planet Earth. Tomorrow when I awake, again it will be sunny and the sunshine will glitter like shimmering pellets on the water’s surface. Again the water will be deep blue, and the sunshine gold upon it. Again will I wonder at the beauty of this place, the stillness coupled with unfathomable dynamism: this place of daily change, of growth, of beauty, of solitude, of trees, water, and earth.

Sleepy Lisianthus, reflecting cloud cover and covered with an afternoon dew

Time

Posted on July 23, 2013 by pacienciapaciencia

Gone are my long, wistful days of winter-spring when all I had to do was work a little bit and play alot, traipsing through my tiny town in my black Bean boots, staring at the wind and the sun’s movements across the landscape.

Now it is summer and there are flowers everywhere and the grass is green! The air is hot, sometimes, the sun shines bright, and the days fly by. Tomorrow is July 23rd? How is this true? It seems only yesterday it was the beginning of May.

A couple of hours ago, I walked out of the restaurant in which I work, into the darkness of almost-midnight, and felt a chill upon the air. Realizing, in that moment, that summer is halfway over, and that the chill is slowly returning,will be slowly returning as the light begins to leave us again, made me think of how strange it is to live in a place where the weather is so dynamic that as soon as you get used to one feeling in the air, it will change into something completely different.

My days, at the moment, are spent working at one of three places. I feel so behind on making jewelry!! I feel like time is just slipping out of my hands: there is not enough of it! But oh well, such is the way of the summer. Yesterday I went to an amazing part at the 10 Spot Labs on Islesford and spent the afternoon with friends, sitting in the sunshine and under the shade of fir trees. I walked through a door that was floating in between two trees, I watched a girl skinny-dip in the ocean, I stared at strange fertility sculptures that decorated the hallway leading to a bathroom, I received a lovely compliment from the Compliment Booth, I laid down on a dock in the late evening and fell asleep, surrounded by friends.

Despite its pace, summer is a lovely time, isn’t it?

Another Rainy Day…

Posted on June 11, 2013 by pacienciapaciencia

“If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.”

– Daphne du Maurier in Rebecca

Let’s talk about rain; Maine is truly a rainy state. After spending most of my adult life in Austin, Texas, land of almost desert-like plants and a serious lack of rain due to a ten year drought, when I moved away from Texas and to Philadelphia I had forgotten that these things called umbrellas existed. The first few times it rained, I was trapped outside sans-protection, and became soaked. Since living in Philly, I’ve adjusted and now have my own umbrella, striped with color, naturally, that, hopefully, travels with me on rainy days, protecting my head.

I moved to Maine almost a year ago, in the midst of a bold and warm and sunny summer. I lived in a giant tent built in the basement of my parents’ house and spent most of my days there as I was very ill with shingles. Sometimes, I ventured out into the garden or down the road to the lake to swim. The summer was golden and light and even the breeze off the ocean was warm.

This year, however, is a rather wet year. As I sit here, at this moment, in the morning, having finished one cup of coffee and needing to get to work, I am listening to the rain fall, again, on the deck, off the picnic table, off the eaves. I am wondering if my plants will ever grow big and bushy with all this rain, all this lack of sunshine. I have to say that the consistent rain, interrupted here and there by sun, is rather similar to the wintertime darkness and absence of my favorite star.

People say here that you must take Vitamin D to deal with the lack of light, and I think they are right. It is hard for me to understand how the sun can come out so few and far between; this is a place in which you feel so lucky and excited about sunny days that it’s as if everyone is outside all day long, soaking in sunshine with the knowledge that tomorrow, it may be grey and windy, rainy and cool again. Like today.

Yesterday was one of those days and I spent the whole day outside building a fence of peabrush. I am in the midst of a garden transformation, taking the blank slate which is the yard of my little house, and building an outdoor sitting space and green screens and veggie patches and flowerbeds. After all day in the sunshine, my shoulders and back were bright red and warm, I felt the strange chill of sunburn, I sat outside on the deck at night and looked at the few stars peeking through the thin, wispy nighttime clouds.

The parking lot next to my house is large and full of spaces demarcated by white lines. There is a yellow painted path, newly dubbed the Yellow Brick Road, that shows you how to walk down the steps to the water. At night, there are no streetlights and if you stand in the middle of the lot, staring upward through the power lines and beyond the trees, a whole world, a patchwork quilt of stars opens up before your eyes, each and every night. To the Northeast are mountains, silhouetted slightly against the nighttime sky, and everywhere you turn your head are more stars, clustered together and far apart, shining, twinkling brightly. Over the ocean rises the Moon, when we are lucky enough to have her, and she sits happily in the eastern sky as the nighttime passes.

Last night, I lay about in my bed, curled up under a down comforter, flannel sheets and a woolen blanket, reading Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and imagining the scene set in the book, the scene of Manderley and its grounds and its epic loneliness, emptiness, romantic desolation, as set here, in Northeast Harbor, amidst the mansions of old wealthy families, the cold hallways set with beautiful artworks and conservative wooden furniture upholstered in salmon and off white silk, the kitchens larger than most houses I have lived in, empty for months, populated only for weeks. In the winter, I can pretend they are mine, or partly mine, anyway, and now have to realize that, just as the de Winters in the book, in the summer, the houses, and their ghosts, must awake. Are there creatures like Mrs Danvers in the houses in Northeast Harbor? Are there skeletons in closets and banshees wailing at the gates? As old rock walls begin to pitch and break apart, as pink paint peels off walls and old sinks rust, what happens to the families within? The people…who knows all the stories?

Such a spookiness and a subtle fascination, this rainy place full, now, almost, of its summer population, its summer people, summer not residents. Soon, the streets will be filled with people, Billionaire’s Island in full swing, mostly hidden behind heavy wooden doors, and behind leaded glass windows. Sometimes, I can see a glimpse of this old-fashioned life out of a mid-century novel, by catering parties in those beautiful kitchens, holding delicate antique china, staring out at the ocean from the patio, but most of the time, the wonder comes at night, under the covers, thinking about what it would be like to really live in a house like Manderley.

Paciencia, Paciencia

Have patience, Patience

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