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.

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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. 

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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...

Steadying the Sloop

http://www.mysticseaport.org

You'd think, given the tingly excitement I felt when I jumped into this affair, I wouldn't neglect or forget you (although, I suppose I didn't think a date, a number, all that significant). June 4th came and went like the front yard's magnolia, a quiet salvo of pale color that tottered off so quickly I barely noticed its blooms. I slept in. I got caught up with Puccini while poaching eggs. I sipped thick tomato juice to quell the reverberating oscillation of June 3rd's mojitos. There was the sun, who had me potting cilantro and lavender. And the breeze, who forced me to take a long walk. The day—the bruit—instigated me with its business.

Lately, each day's been the same—demands keeping me from sailing on an even keel. In truth, there is no keel. It's been yanked from it's hull, sending me spinning against the wind. The sails can't catch their breath. The boom's gone crazy, nearly knocking me off the sloop. It's a vertigo inducing course that's neither rational nor apparent.

To be honest, looking back at those early days with you is a bit embarrassing. I was intimidated. I had no idea what to do with you, which quiet place to rendezvous, where we might be going (had we a future?), or why I was tacking the waters with you. Yet you were a compulsion—an urgent need to fill and to get over XYZ. (Though I couldn't shut up about XYZ—constant blubbering.) Like XYZ ever cared about me! You were the rebound affair—a rescue fantasy—you threw the orange lifesaver at me and I grabbed hold of it, naively believing it would save me from the usual conflict and emotional crises of love affairs. Still, I was aware of the odds: only one-fourth of relationships that begin as affairs succeed. And I was nervous.

But to reduce our liaison to simply a rescue is to dilute the truth. I'd always wanted you. I would have swum across the ocean for you.

Somewhere along the stretch of our evolving relationship I began to feel less jittery, less uncertain, became comfortable with you, slowed things down to a more thoughtful pace, and began to trust you. Trust me. Hey, this might work out after all. It turns out, the affair proved to be more than a fling. But comfort breeds complacency, and I fear I've missed the buoy this time.

So please forgive me, dear blog, and kindly accept this post—my 128^th —as my belated Happy 1^st Anniversary wish to you. And it comes with a present from sweet Cheryl, of The Art of Being Conflicted, who writes of the many matters that keep us at odds. I think, however, that she is funnier than she is conflicted.

Thank you, Cheryl, for this award—perfect timing, don't you think?—and for helping us celebrate the one year anniversary of Suburban Soliloquy. Phew. You know the year's been fortunate when you can happily carry on the dalliance despite the bug smear across the screen. (Don't worry, I'll clean it later.)

They say the first year is the hardest, right?

(Now, if only the waters calmed and I could find my damn keel.)