Sifting Through the Narrative

"Better and better, man. Would now St. Paul would come along that way, and to my breezelessness bring his breeze! O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies; not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind." ~ Herman Melville, Moby Dick 

Lulu's last day of fine arts camp was more than a week ago. Two weeks she'd been there; two weeks in which I thought I'd find an ocean of time to write. But I failed to get in the water. It was the sands, those turbinado-sugar-sands that were still on my mind, mind sands, dunes or desert, where grains of narrative filtered between my toes but failed to stick underfoot. Desert, beach, glass, quartz, black, garnet or volcanic for Chrissake—there was simply no semblance in the sands, and if there were, if by chance there may have been a granule of anecdote, this also sifted through the sieve-of-a-brain that is mine.  No narrative, no structure. Nothing doing. Undoing is what I did. Undoing packages that I'd neatly tied up many years ago. I don't know why I have this compulsion to return to old boxes, to open the lids of rust-covered dreams. A strategy perhaps. Fear of marching forward. Up the hill. For whom do I march, anyway? Up which hill shall I march? What will I find on the other side? (Assuming I actually make it over the summit and across to the other side.)

While Lu crafted and beat the steel drums Max often went down to the fishing hole that is Howard Pond. I had plenty of time to climb a hill. To climb a mountain. But I didn't. I don't know what I did. There's lots with which to fill a day. Filler. I could tell you about all kinds of minutial chores I performed throughout the day. Taxi here and there. Pack, unpack. (Well, I have been traveling, too.) Dishes. Clothes washing. My god, clothes washing! Minutiae fills. It also numbs the mind. And sucks gobs of time and energy into its black hole of domesticity. It allows for disengagement. It's enticing. Which is handy now and then.

Stop.

That path, that sandy, rosa rugosa lined path, is what I've been walking. Yes. Bodily present or not it's where I've been dredging my bare feet like some exotic ammophilous being. And I could tell you, also, that since leaving the turbinado-sugar-sands of Nantucket I'd been thinking about Herman Melville's Moby Dick and my own furling wave of melanomic monomania.  (A wave of which I rode for too long.) This is an unpredictable wave, or so I thought. However, if you drift with it, let the current pull you, you'll eventually be delivered back to the safety of the shore. Should you panic, let it collapse over you, you'll plunge into a delirious spin unto the murky seafloor. 

Wait. I've overdone the metaphor. 

Back to an epic story... 

(Which is what, I think, I should be telling.)

You know Melville's tale—the ship captain, Ahab, obsessed with destroying the great white sperm whale, the ferocious and cunning Moby Dick, to whom he lost his leg. Nantucket is from where Ahab's Pequod sailed. Melville wrote of Nantucket before he ever set foot on the "mere hillock, and elbow of sand."  He first visited the island only after Moby Dick was finished. But it didn't keep him from envisioning, from writing about the island, and its people who... 

... plant toadstools before their houses, to get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis, three blades in a day's walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes, something like Laplander snow-shoes; that they are so shut up, belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island of by the ocean, that to the very chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering as to the backs of sea turtles. But these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois.

Moby Dick is a book I never fully read. Until now, right here, online. And in each line, each carefully chosen word, I come to understand that I've spent this summer undoing because my story,  my Moby Dick, my Ulysses, hell, my Dick and Jane, is like Moby Dick himself: one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air. A portentous and mysterious monster. I thought I'd slay him this summer. Ha!

I am not Ishmael. I don't know where to begin. Somewhere, in the sand, I keep thinking. In the sand.

*    *    *

And speaking of envisioning, this man cut away at the stake, has to be one of the coolest literary images I've stumbled upon.

You can see more magic from Brian Joseph Davis here. 

*    *    *

I'm returning to the Cape in a couple of days. Out, above the elbow, along the National Seashore (where sharks, maybe whales too, are slinking about). I'll be  a week or so there. In the sand. The children return to school in less than twenty days... at which time I plan to return to this space fully engaged. 

Now, off to bring Max to soccer...

Hallo It Be Thy Ween

Goodbye October. Goodbye. The nor'easter took you out in fiery-lion fashion, and ushered in a little lamb of November. Oh, she's sweet and lemony today except for the shaded corner of the deck where, on the edge of the rooftop, the storm's evaporating snowy surplus hits the wood planks in a fury. We were powerless at the end—had, even, to temporarily move to Mother's place when temperatures dropped suddenly during the weekend's electrical outage. Monday morning I returned home to a chugging furnace and well lit kitchen. We were lucky, others still remain powerless.

Mother's is always a treat. She has Enrico Caruso 33 1/3 rpm vinyls stored in their original accordion case. But the children... well the children had to plug laptops and printers into real live sizzling outlets and crank out end-of-quarter schoolwork. Kids don't write longhand any longer, you know. Teachers prefer the typed word, which is an impossible endeavor in a candlelit house.  So we clanked the night away at Mother's. 

(I'll be back to Mother's for Caruso.)

I imagined that the kids would be too old for trick-or-treating this year, but there's the candy. There's the neighborhood where Tedy Bruschi lives (with real candy bars!), there's peer pressure and teen-All-Hallows-Eve worshippers who are in no way ready or willing to give up the quest. There's being on the streets, in the dark, void of parental oversight. 

Doors will be slammed in your faces! I said.

Ha, Mom, they love us!, the monsters replied.

Who loves you? I don't want to see six-foot tall teens at my door. Don't come to my door!

Besides, they hadn't costumes—I refused to buy them, refused to give in to the high commercialism of holidays and hallow days. Refused to believe that my little Lulu was too old for handmade costumes!

(And this is no way to depreciate the value of my two-year-old sewing machine.)

Mama, observed Lu, this isn't about store-bought costumes or me growing up. It's about you wanting to make another oversized ugly doll or an ice cream cone, isn't it?

The Ice Cream Cone 2010

The Ugly Doll 2009

Actually, my favorite was the floppy-eared hound dog with her litter. Come on, it's tradition, Lu.

All right, well maybe it is more about me and the machine and wizardry. But look, I do have to make my Singer Confidence pay for itself.

Last night, the monsters managed to piece together suitable outfits for the spooky occasion. Both came home with giant sacks of goodies. No one slammed doors in faces.

After school today, Lu announced that she'd reached her maximum fill of chocolate for the day (she'd snuck handfuls into her backpack), so I promised that I'd remind her of the same throughout the evening, that perhaps we should take the bonbon trough out of her room. Don't worry, Mom, she responded. It's NOT a temptation! It's under my bed and it's not like I'm going to get up in the middle of the night to eat a candy bar.

... Not a temptation.

... Not eating candy bars in the middle of the night.

Of course not. Mama shouldn't worry in the least.

I'm packing up the glow pumpkins, Draculas and rubber bats. Halloween has closed for another year, but its remnant confections shall remind us of the night for some time to come. At least they'd better.

Maybe it's time to start sewing up something for Christmas. (Poor, poor forgotten Thanksgiving.)

Lu & Max -- Halloween 2008

Friday Night Frolic — Moments of Ambiguous Limpidity

A rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something in nature seems to reveal all consciousness, cannot be explained at noon. Yet it is part of the day's unity.

~Charles Ives

Internet source unknown

Much of this week has been spent living in my head—spending the better part of the week cavorting with a new laptop, nursing my sick son, formulating few words, but thinking, thinking quite a bit I might add, about all my little daily delusions (triggered, in part, by seeing Laurie Anderson's brilliant and disturbing Delusion in Providence last weekend) like, per se, a new piece of technology improving my life—offering me not only the luxury of computing at greater speed, but also, peace and happiness. No?

I had another thought about my delusions. And then I lost it. I assumed: if I write and write and write, dammit, I will find it. But I haven't.

In its absence, I've come up with a new mantra for decision making and weeding—as in purging unnecessary anything from home and heart: How will this enhance my life?

An old, faded blouse that I no longer wear but can't part with because it's a designer pluck from Filene's Basement. How will this enhance my life?
Kid 1 asks if I'll help with a project. How will this enhance my life?
Kid 2 asks if I can drive him to a friend's house. How will this enhance my life?
Kid 1 asks if I would make some cookies for the bake sale. How will this enhance my life?

Ah! You see how deluded I am? I think my mantra will actually enhance my life. I think my mantra is something that can be realistically applied to everyday situations like it's the final word. Perhaps what I need to do is consider substitutes for the word enhance—like change, or stress, or screw-up or prolong or abbreviate—and then deal with the answer, wherever it falls. But of course, this means that I  manipulate the answer by sculpting the question in furtherance of my fantasy.

Today I am deluded. Yesterday I was too. And tomorrow, I shall be again.

I wonder, if I spend enough time drooling over this laptop, with no thought other than my sudden awareness of being overly deluded, will I write something shrewd and comprehensible? (Oh yes! and my children will sit straight in their chairs and behave like perfect little adults in restaurants, and my car will run endlessly without an oil change, and the real estate market will bounce back soon, and the ceramic pots on the deck will not crack if left out all winter long—which began, prematurely, overnight.)

It's like I've been humming a thin, discordant tune... its tinny truth aches. And more, it comforts.



Laurie Anderson is an American musician, artist, composer, poet, photographer and filmmaker. And something you may not know about her: she's NASA's first (and likely last) artist-in-residence, and is married to Lou Reed. Her work is at once provocative, humorous, jarring, thoughtful, creepy, intelligent and inspiring. Lately, she's been peeling away the layers of our collective misconceptions and scraping fatuous seeds from its core.

From her most recent album, Homeland:



And from her Big Science album:



You can read more about Anderson's multi-media show Delusion, here. And here, a short video about the show.