Cubist Self

        

                                                                    Parade, 1917 – music by Satie, décor by Picasso

       My self keeps shedding and shifting. My roles in life, like life itself, are transitory. I'm in the middle of several transitions and the uncertainty of where I will land and what role I will play there picks at my brain. I feel like "Nude Descending a Staircase" or the figure above dressed by Picasso! In my late 20's I started my own business, in my 30's I became a wife & mother, in my 40's I became a teacher, in my 50's I became a single mother, and now in my 60's, I'm retired, single, and nearly an empty-nester. 

        I'm trying to just be here now. Sounds easy. Except, I'm a planner and goal setter. I'm coming to realize that I need to put myself first. Spirit, Body, Mind, and the health of all three, must come first. I've retired earlier than I planned, by four and a half years. On the scales of finances vs freedom,  there was no contest. I had to set myself free. The world of education and trying to do your best professionally 24/7, and I don't know a teacher who isn't always managing work in their mind in some fashion, became untenable. Ask any teacher you know and they will have their own stressful horror stories to share. I could write all day on what is wrong with our system of education, but I don't want to relive it right now. 

        On the horizon, I must prepare another family house to sell. This one will be more painful than the last. I only lived in Lincoln for 6 years. I summered at Dingley for over 50 years and lived on it year round for a few years in a rental house. A lot of history, good and bad, lives on that island. I can show you the tree that lightening struck half way down the path to the dock. Mom and Zee had been having one of their marathon fights and it only ended because lightening struck the pine tree between them. I can show you the fisher cat's lair where I find beautifully cleaned bones and feathers.  I've swum around it so many times (perfect 5K) that I now all the nooks and crannies. I've circumnavigated Dingley in kayaks, sailboats, canoes,  while my children built a raft out of a pallet that made it very far , and back, out in the causeway cove. I could write a book about the Island, and maybe someday I will. 

        Planning short term and easily achievable goals seems the way to go now. Become well. I've had this dreaded head/chest cold since the night before David died, which was, yup, Valentine's. This is my second day without a fever, at last. Being sick always brings me down because how I take care of myself has much to do with mobility and being outside. When I'm sick I can't swim, hike, or even stay outside too long. So once I'm restored, I need to develop a routine beyond my daily dog walks. A regular rotation of yoga, swimming, kayaking, biking, hiking, mediation and weight lifting are the goals. Last year I went from healthy, to parasitic, to weak, to a popped rib, to school stress and hospice consuming any energy I'd regained. This year I vow to put my health (mental & physical) first and all other business second. Just trying to get my feet under me seems to be a challenge.

        I'm also not very patient. I feel like Fate is putting the breaks on my planning so that I may get into a slower pace of life for the stage I'm in now. When my son asked me how I was going to spend my retirement, I replied, "Work part-time, write, volunteer and be in Maine. Except during Mud Season, I'll take a vacation simewhere far away then each year." Sounds simple. But I have so much work to do to get there. Sell the Maine house, followed by selling the house I live in, and then finding house in ME.  I know, these are problems of the privilege.  I'm grateful and feel the weight of doing the right things. It just all consumes a great deal of time and energy to accomplish. Dingley is only half mine. My current house is all mine. The third house is a phantom or a jewel that I hope will present itself when the time comes. Again, I feel like Fate is telling me to just be steady as I go and the universe will take care of the rest when it's time. 

        I'm working on manifesting the selling of an old family home, finding a new home and new healthy habits/routines to carry my into this next stage of life with grace and grit. My gut says this transition will last at least the next 18 months or so. However, the biggest thing that makes me worry or feel impatient or a need to rush to action is the coming Presidential election.  

        If I were still a literary agent, it would be impossible to know what will sell 18 months to 4 years from now. Will we be living in a democracy, autocracy, or a dictatorship? What sells is fear and desire. As a teacher I tried to give my students tools to learn how to talk to each other. They can text all day, but have trouble, as many adults do, keeping a conversation going when they have a difference of opinion. I feel we all better become really facile with expressing our values, goals and concerns as a populace. If we all just duck and wish for the best, we won't get it. I'm sure I'll be pounding on doors in New Hampshire this fall for Biden. If I don't and Trump wins, it would haunt me. 

        For some reason Erik Satie's piano music has always calmed me. I'd bring it to my room and listen to it over and over while I wrote letters or in my journal for hours as a tween and young adult. It's both melancholy and bright. He and Debussy egged each other further than either would go alone, much like Picasso and Braque or Mozart and Salieri. Today as I wrote this I listened to the below album and I was transported to my girlhood bedroom, a studio in SF and to my former in-laws in Holland. At every stop I was who I am and I wasn't anymore. I feel like we spend the first half of our lives acquiring things and affects and the second half of our lives stripping down to only beautiful objects and our essential selves. Or at least I hope so!

3 Fever Dreams

 

 

        Fever dreams provide unconscious access to vulnerabilities.  They are the narratives that are motivated by fear and longing combined, with a no win or resolvable plot. In my waking mind, I try to stay powered by desire and belonging. But this last week, the fever dreams have crept in to my mind even when I'm awake. All except #3. Number Three was a fear and vulnerability dream that was prescient and it took places 6 years after all of New York Publishing rejected a book I represented , with an Intro by the former CIA Director, William Casey, and written by a Newsweek reporter and NPR  journalist on exactly how this could happen and way to circumvent it from happening.

        Dream1 : At a house party on the North Shore, I can smell the sea and see the bonfire on the beach. Most of the party is taking place in a brilliantly colored victorian in to which my mind can see, even though I'm on the rocks between the beach and house. Suddenly I'm in the house introducing an indistinct family member to Steve. Steve hasn't changed in the nearly four decades since I last saw him. We're crowded in a narrow hallway along the stairs and people are trying to get his attention. But he's as stunned to see me as I am him. 

        He looks sheepish. A good word as his wavy still chestnut hair bouncing while he twist and shouts over the raucous partiers. I fear he'll spill my inner most weakness, the ones I had at 25, as a green behind the ears girl in NYC. I fear he'll ask me to sing on the stage set up on the porch. I haven't sung regularly or in front of strangers in eons. In my dream he's still a blues signing and actor. I think of the times I got on stage at Wonderland, the Lone Star and China Club, at his urging, during my go-go 80's NYC time with him. Now I can't summon that younger self. She's trapped in a woman who hasn't written or sung or created work of significance, besides her two children.  Biology not fine tuned craft. Unless you count the made up lullabies and blues tunes she sang them as babies. My daughter now lives in NY and is age I was when I dated Steve. I felt so much older then, than she is  now.

        I'm in the kitchen - out on the beach - then back in the hallway. Steve hovers like a phantom at the edge of each shifting setting. As I go towards him, I hear him say he married the next woman, named Karen, he dated (true). That he moved to LA and he was in a Soap Opera for many years (true). He now lives on the North Shore of MA (true). That his singing is now a passion and no longer a dream (maybe).  He now teachers acting and does little showcases (true). Those last two admissions make me uncomfortable and sweaty, probably coughing in my sleep as my son says I've been doing all week. 

       Why? He has lived a good and happy life. Why should that make me uncomfortable? I only now notice my dream version of has Steve looking much like the stepfather I hated, Zee.  Does he? Did he? Creepy! Is it because it's a shared life with the other Karen and so much of my life has been and remains singular? Is that I'm still longing to allow myself to write, while he has spent these same four decades acting and singing? Is that I try to connect t and belong wherever go, and yet when asked where is home, there is no easy answer, other than New England? Is that I'm still partnerless after all these years?

        Steve wants to introduce me to Karen, but she keeps being held up by interested others. I want to leave and can't seem to make my way out of the house. I'm telescoping in time between my 25 year old self and my 61 year old self. Too many boyfriends and a husband spinning like kaleidoscope pieces in a funhouse chamber. I feel even more fearful and sick. I wake up. 

        Dream 2: The same fever dream I've had since I was a girl in Bolton, MA. I think they started after my parents separated (4-6). This dream always begins with me on a rooftop in Tunis. I'm running, and jumping over and between rooftops. I'm being chased by men in white robes. I can't seem to hide. I have no money. Don't know the language. Usually an animal ~ dog, camel, sheep~ tries to help me, but I have to get down to the street level to receive their help and I only made it close to the ground once or twice in over half a century. 

        The light is fading and casts long shadows. I feel that I'm in danger, but I don't know what caused this. I run, run, run. And jump. Nights that I'm getting over my fevers, like last night, I can also fly by jumping down stair cases. I've always wanted to go to Africa. My aunt is Ghanaian. Perhaps the gifts of skin drums and little gold weights that looks like demons, that my uncle sent to us when I was a little girl, infused my sleep. When I wake up after this dream I know my fever will be over 100. Every time!

        This is the my most persistent fever dream. I only learned it was Tunis as a teenager when I saw photographs and paintings like this. My mother hung one in the house at Dingley and I was glad it wasn't in the room where I slept. It was hung in our eldest sister/guest room.  I would look at in in the morning light and try to  imagine walking on the streets. How would it smell, sound, feel to actually walk those streets. 

Dream 3: I had the same feverish dream for the 5 nights leading up to 9/11/2001 *.

        I was on an elevated train, most likely in Brooklyn. I'm looking around and think something is off and then I realize there is no color. Usually my dreams are vivid in every way, right down to the colors. Additionally, I keep looking at the skyline of Manhattan that should be close and knowable. Only something is missing and my brain is upset because it can't figure out what it is. My stop finally comes, the door opens and I step onto the platform. No sooner do I do that than I notice it's snowing, only I know it's fall in my mind. So I bend at the waist, drag my right pointer finger through the "snow" only to realize that its warm and soft. I wake up in a cold sweat. 

        On the 5th morning I can't take it anymore. It's early, SF time, but I go down to make some coffee, as the kids are still asleep and Peter is in Europe on business. Maybe I can get some agency work done. No sooner do my feet hit the first floor, than my chosen brother, John Marsh, calls me on the land line.

        John, "Baa, turn on the tv. I know you have friends and family in NY. I love you. I can't talk more now. Call me later, if you can." 

        Friends and family in NY? Call if I can? I love you ~ what is this???

        I turn on the tv and see the replay of the first plane hitting the tower. As I watch, it become apparent that there are more planes "off course" and this isn't an accident. There is a clear blue, lovely sky over Manhattan. I watch this tragedy unfold while my children sleep upstairs and my husband is a continent away. 

        Then I see it. The wind has started to gently blow as the sun rises in the sky. After the second tower is hit, the wind is carrying the ash over the East River and into Brooklyn. The clear blue sky is now a blizzard of ash and horror as it slowly lifts and lands. 

        As the day progresses the sun is eclipsed by the ash. Color and lives have been stripped away. I watched those towers be built since I was a girl of 12. You could see them growing from the stoop of my godmother's apartment on Cornelia Street. I worried about her. All my publishing friends. My brother in Brooklyn, was he on tour? 

        John was right. It was impossible to get a hold of anyone via phone or the internet for quiet sometime. 

        That dream never came again, but it haunts me.

{* I've had premonition dreams - waking and sleeping- since I was a girl. This was just the worst one, it generated it's on fever during the dream and cooled when I awoke}

Day 2 of writing exercises

         In a second story flat on Frederick Street beside the railroad tracks and a stones throw from a Denny's in Portland, this album played in the kitchen while I wrote papers for college courses on my typewriter. It would be a year before I'd own my first Mac. Taking a break, I'd eat pinches of popcorn covered with brewer's yeast and tamari sauce. I'd drink copious cups of cheap caffeinated brews.

        During these popcorn and caffeine breaks, I'd turn from away from the table, and typewriter, and look out the leaky window that faced west. During the day you could watch planes land and launch from Portland's International Jet Port and occasional flying raccoons (seagulls) scavenging food from dumpster at Denny's and eat their finds on the neighbors roof. At night when I turned, it was usually when the street lights came on or when a train stormed by rattling the windows. Listening to this album, which might be classified now as Trance or Psychedelic or World or IndiPop (#12 on British Charts in '83), I thought it as meditation music. Muse music, if you will. 

        Yet whenever a train rambled by at night and I happened to have this album on, the trains would suddenly become a source of an internal game I played during my breaks. Basically as it rolled by I'd see if any of the train cars had their doors left open. If it did, I'd imagine that was an invitation to go traveling. Where was the train going? Where would I get off? How far could I take myself across country by simply playing this game from one rail yard to the next? Perhaps, I'd find a place I liked and stop and work there awhile, like I'd done with Ron on Pinion in sailing from Maine to St. Croix. This would be my solo odyssey across the US. Maybe I could write my own version of Travel's with Charlie and find a travel happy pet? In St. Croix I'd found a kitten in the rainforest. He earned his keep on the boat by eating cockroaches that snuck aboard in groceries no matter how many times we check the bags at the docks.

        Sheila Chandra is the vocalist for this album and many of the instruments used are native to India not England. This was the one and only album Monsoon made as a band*. Chandra had a solo career and later did vocals for the soundtrack for one of the Lord of the Rings films. Her otherworldly phrasing, tone and choices lead the listener to far away places and on fantastical meditative journeys. 

    My major had changed from Pre-Nursing to English during the year I bought the album. I started thinking of traveling to the UK and farther a field. I had two roommates, Meg a student at what was then called Portland School of Art, and Nan who was studying psychology at USM. Nan and I became chosen sisters then and remain so today. My acting teacher, Peter Frankham, would become a mentor and friend. He was starting the Maine Actor's Studio in Portland. Before that he'd founded Make a Circus in SF with Peter Coyote, among others. His family in England were "travelers." His mum and aunt were the first in their family to stop moving, to put down stakes. A year and half later, August '84, he'd be living in squat in South Kensington (I know a contradiction in terms, but it was the '80s, Thatcher's England, and many things were upside down). This time working towards collecting like-minded people to start yet another theater company. He invited me to come stay with the group (8 or so folks) and use it as a base for more travel and work. 

        When I stayed in London, Peter's roommates said, "You must stay, as the sun has been out since you arrived!" August in London can be like August in SF, to steal from Twain, "the coldest winter I've ever spent, was my summer in San Fransisco." I was happy to be the squats' sunny rabbit's foot. London. August. 1984. Large quantities of people were carrying packets or rolls of tin foil with them. Why? Heroin was easing the pain of a poor economy and social unrest. Strike after strike, year round. Cigarettes at parties were commonly laced with hashish, which meant trying not to get a contact high in cramped soirees near Hyde Park was damn near impossible. We ate out some, Indian mostly.  The music being played in these tiny shops included the tabla, swarmandel, cabasa, timbali, sitar, tambora and various stringed guitars. Monsoon would enter my brain while we were eating our curry and I realized how far I was from my typewriter on Frederick Street. 

        I did take a few day trips. A pilgrimage to Stratford-upon-Avon and Coventry. The latter to see the gigantic  Lady Godiva sculpture, not knowing that there were many such monuments of her scattered around the UK. Trains and busses carrying me through towns when poems, sonnets, plays, and entire masterpieces were created was a bit over whelming and hard to take in with my guide books, maps, notebook and traveling watercolor set for me at the age of 22. I made money at a dance studio, the Pineapple Dance Studio in Coventry Gardens in London. Not sure how I got the gig, but worked under the table. 

         Peter and I took the ferry to Paris, and we walked the streets for 24 hours, except when we fell asleep on a park bench in the Tuileries under the famous stand of manicured trees, only to be woken by some cranky Paris cops. Peter showed me "his" Paris, like everyone who has ever lived in a world class city shows your their city. Shakespeare and Company, stories of Sylvia Beach and Marcel Marceau with whom Peter had trained in his mime and Commedia Dell'arte days. We saw the business stoops being swept by their owners with twig brooms and buckets of water. We saw prostitutes meeting johns.  We ate mostly bread, cheese, chocolate and red wine (which we carried with us, ate in parks and no one cared--just like I'd do decades later on playgrounds in Amsterdam, only sans the vino). We had a long debate about whether legalized prostitution was better or worse for all involved. We finally found our way by train back to coast to catch a ferry. I'd have to check my journals, for it was either Boulogne or Dieppe, a walled seaside port either way, where we waited for the ferry. Much to our astonishment there was Roman vs Gaul competition happening in a festival that took over the old city! I felt like I'd stepped into the land of Asterix and Obelix. Yes, a magical and mystical journey,  and continued as we sipped calvados. Peter jokingly proposed to me. It was my first experience with the apple brandy, a proposal,  and my last year of drinking (I'd started a decade earlier, but that is another story). He said that if we could travel 24 hours with about as many dollars in our pockets, sleep soundly on park benches and only have one rough patch (really a thoughtful political debate), we were fated for each other. I agreed, but as same spirited friends not more than that!

{Another time: story on friend in Notting Hill and Roma Aunt and her "lodger" in Tunbridge Wells}

        My final week in London, we waited on line, twice, to get tickets to Dario Fo's one man performance of something like The History of the World or Man (?). I'm writing this all from head to keyboard, and don't want to open the rabbit hole that are my boxes of journals. Google is no help. Can't find a winning combination to find the exact name/date: Dario Fo. London. Notting Hill. 1984. One man show. Nada, zilch, goose egg.  

        The real take aways were two fold: 

            1) His one man performance of the history of us as "Beings" rivals that of Lily Tomlin (who I saw perform Search for Intelligent Life  in SF) and beyond anything Robin Williams capture on film in Being Human (and he bought boxes of books with my help from Green Apple to prepare for that role). Fo was a true silent magician. No gesture, posture, grimace or popped eye movement was wasted. The audience experienced him starting as a rock and traveling through time and space to London in '84. Every emotion was touched. Magical Mystery Tour, for sure. 

            2) The first day we were on que (British term for line) the show sold out. The next day Dario Fo again walked past the ticket line on his way into the theater. He turned around and saw that we were back, trying again to see him, (for non-theater or literary folks - he was banned in the US at the time, I was leaving soon, and he would win the Nobel Prize for Literature a decade +-later), and he stopped. 

        Dario Fo, "You two were here yesterday, did you not get in?"

        Peter, with his big Romani eyes and impish grin, "No, we didn't, so we're back!" 

        Dario Fo, "Well, today you shall!" And he brought us to the front of the line.

        The power of patience and mediation is greatly under valued in our society. That is why Buddhism, yoga, and meditative sports like kayaking, sailing, diving, snorkeling and, oh yes, the Big Kahuna, swimming are so important in my life. Running used to be. Started as a girl. But as a crone, my bones are too brittle to carry me. Perhaps I can change that with weights. 

        Finding music in the imports section of a record story on Congress Street carried me through writing and rewriting reams of papers to achieve my BA and kept me balanced. As did my runs with Nan, including the above mentioned album. Peter would find Thatcher's UK too depressed to rally support for a new Theater. He'd moved to Brooklyn to start again, he had a hard time staying in place. But he liked to build things wherever he went. When I began the  Radcliffe Publishing Course, in the summer of '87, they told the students  that there would be a job fair at the New Yorker and we'd be expected to find our own housing in NYC. Peter wrote to me saying he was moving to California and I could have his room in Brooklyn. Not quiet a squat in South Kensington, but rather a room in a Browstone in Boerum Hill with 6 others sharing the house. I took it. 

   Well, I've gone over my self-allotted writing time. Hope you enjoyed the today's jumble.

        

        

                        

* When I first heard Madonna's album, Ray of Light, I wondered if she'd found this album in record store in London ~similar sounds in many places, so a possible influence.

        I've taught writing for nearly 40 years, whether as an agent or a teacher. Colleagues, students, and a few writers would become peeved when I told them that in order "to make writing sing it has to flow while you read it aloud." Any singer, songwriter, poet, actor, or playwright can tell you that. Whether it's a college essay, a book proposal, or a show tune; that is what the reader is looking to hear without always knowing it. I also tried to teach my students that there are formulas and orders of execution like there are in Math and Science. That wasn't well received at first either, especially when I ask kids to tell me the "charges" of vocabulary words; positive +, negative - or neutral o. Then depending on which definition of a given word (I was always looking for the contextual definition), they would learn to trust their guts on which definition was correct (contextual) because the definition "fit" with the "charge" in the text when they read it aloud.

        The case for why the "green great dragon can't exist." It all started with a blogger named Mark Forsyth, and, yes, he's British. The blog was called Inky Fool and I believe it launched near the start of Facebook (at least that is where I first saw reference to him over a decade ago). He earned the eyeballs and clicks of many word nerds and it lead to several book deals. He had found a way to use the language of authors from Shakespeare to Katy Perry (remember it was over a decade ago) to inform native speakers and English language learners the proper and an "eloquent" way to speak and write. It's often the things in front of us that we take for granted that are the hardest to define. His "Elements of Eloquence" is this generations "Elements of Style." If you write  that "the green great dragon roamed the hills of Scotland evading being blighted by a young knight on quest" you mind would hear it as a Great Dragon that is green. You mind would pause and then adjust the meaning to fit the syntax. Thus it wouldn't flow nor sing.  The sentence is interrupted by the incorrect order. Yes, English takes many forms; Academic, Conversational, Idiomatic, Cultural, Standard (for any given era, usually meant, again in the writing of it), Ethnic, Regional and so on. But even with all these forms the order still matters. 

        Order is flow. When informing my students that the next book we were going to analyze was actually a play by Shakespeare, I was often met with groans and dagger glares. The second thing I'd say, to manage them before things ran amok, was this, "I'm going to teach you how Bad Bunny* is Shakespeare and Shakespeare is Bad Bunny!"  I'd remind them of the prologue to Romeo and Juliet. My classes were mostly made up of Juniors and Senior, while Romeo and Juliet was a Freshman core text. We analyzed the Prologue to refresh (or teach for the first time, as our student body is very transient) their knowledge of the terms iambic pentameter, stanzas, staves, Shakespearian sonnet rhyme scheme, quatrains and the concluding couple. By dissecting the prologue as a poem, they saw how the fourteen lines told the whole story of the two hour play! In reading it out loud together, after I did the first run through, they heard where I stopped (with the punctuation, not the end of the line) and saw where I paused for effect (my first lesson in acting, but they didn't register that yet). Many of them knew that I was the teacher that had her students perform acts from the plays, but I wasn't going to harp on that just yet. 

        In my tenure as teacher in two pubic high schools, one affluent suburban (3yrs) and the other underfunded urban (17.5yrs), I learned that all kids can perform Shakespeare, understand it, translate it into modern English, create stage directions and costumes that are justified to their characters and scenes and even, dare I say, enjoy it!  Nine times out of ten it would be the shy kid who would shine. Being given the words and actions to take the spotlight and enact a character that is "someone else," but within whom they can be bold or sneaky or both is a window of opportunity for them that they couldn't imagine when we started with the Prologue. LHS has 64 languages under it's roof and many kids speak multiple languages. Additionally many students miss school to be translators, babysitters, and caretakers for their families. But each of the three groups (8-10 students depending on the size of the class) assigned themselves roles and responsibilities knowing their school and family demands, and  that it was a 200 point project (Promptbook 100 and Performance 100). And, 95% of the time the performances were fantastic! 

         Most arts have the foundational requirements or classical cores one must master. Once one has done that they may improvise ~ abstract art, jazz, punk rock, Kathy Acker, virtual reality, or the Life of Pi. Students loved when I used math and π! Martell's, potentially, never ending story depending on how many ways you find the approach the narrative (circumference) by it's characters storyline(s) (diameter).

        There has been a lot of loss in my life since I first heard of Mark Forsyth. A marriage, a two year relationship, places, friends and most recently parents. This will be the first time in 21 years that I won't return from a February break and be readying my students for Shakespeare (Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, or Romeo & Juliet). A chosen loss, but a loss just the same. This will be the first Spring with two parents gone. Mom and David both wrote poetry. They helped each other with their poems. The order, space, phrasing, word choice, tone, charges, definitions, references, and flow mattered. They'd struggle for days, weeks, years, with certain order and flow.  It doesn't feel right to share their writing just now, but I'll share a poem from a book of poetry bought in NYC when I lived and worked there in the the 80's. The book is WITT by Patti Smith and the poem is entitled Conch:

        This one made us all laugh and smile when reading it on the porch, at Dingley, shortly after  Mom and David started dating in the 80's.   One can play with the pauses, charges, and phrasing which makes it a treat.

* When I first started teaching 20+ years ago, I only had to change the musical artists name every four or five years. When I finished teaching, thing were so fractured, that I would take an artist I knew was popular and ask them to provide me with one of their own favorite artists, so we could work my formula on them. Dances ceased in the school from 2012-2022 because students didn't all like the same music. I hosted the last one in February 2012 as the Black Heritage Club Advisor.  Finally the city hired a tutor who happened to be a DJ on the side and he but into rotation music that all the students liked. In 2022 he was hired for the Prom. He is also one of the few teachers that looks like the majority of our students.

        

        

Today I cried. Not a small tear out of the corner of your eye when a caught-off guard kind of cry. Rather a hyperventilating, spill the coffee you just bought,  can't eat the breakfast you just bought, and sit in your car and don't give a shit who sees you trying to catch your breath while tears stream down your face cry.

You see, I've experienced a lot of loss in the last decade; a marriage, a boyfriend, a life long love, two dogs and a future imagined self turned to dust. Today it was a house I'd inhabiting in my mind for the better part of a week. Yesterday I made an offer on it and today I discovered someone else bought it.

Gratitude for the people and advantages I possess buoyed through most of the above.
Fate has giving me a lesson plan I'm finding hard to follow ~ dancing as fast as I can while staying in place. Close to the definition of madness.
Heart and humor are all that sustain me now.
On days like today, I realize how alone I am on this path called life.
The ups and downs are mine alone.

Later today I'll be going to a memorial service, where I know I'll shed tears for a long and distinguished life ended. Mike Spock. There will be people to hug and stories to share.  A celebration of loss and a life well lived.

May that someday be my fate.

This was written in May 2019

Life, Loss, and Love

 The death of Ron Ouellette caused an all-consuming case of vertigo. The classroom spun, as I read between the lines of a Facebook post and then had my horror confirmed in a private message. He'd died in his sleep in the Colorado mountain house he'd recently bought with his ladylove, Marlene.

     I met Ron at a house party on New Year's Eve in Maine; I was 17, and halfway through my Senior year of High School, while Ron was 29 and halfway through building a ferro-cement sailboat. I was thunderstruck. On 17 January 1980, Ron turned 30. That May I graduated and in June moved to Maine. We met for a second time on the Fourth of July at a friend's house and went dancing. Afterward, we drove to the marina and rowed out to the boat under a star-filled sky. We began dating in earnest that night.

     For the next year, I spent more time on the boat than in the room I rented in the island house. The fal1 of '81, we sailed from Maine to St. Croix, through a hurricane that lasted six days, and set a mooring in Christanstead Harbor. He taught me how to scuba dive, free dive, spearfish, mend a sail, and art of cooking underway. He taught me that war follows you home, as he was a Vietnam Vet, and had "black moods" that made him go silent for days at a time. He suggested the maxim to do your best in any given moment, because those moments are what define you. He was humble, handsome and full of salty Yankee humor. We'd planned to sail and work our way around the world. However, I slowly realized that St. Croix had become the place he'd been working towards living while building that boat through all those cold winters and long days of dual jobs. Having reached his goal, he wasn't eager to set a new one.

     I left Ron and the boat, taking the same duffel bag of clothes I'd arrived with and a cat I found in the rainforest, in the late spring of  '82. I turned 20 in July in Portland and enrolled in college. My goal hadn't been to leave Ron, but rather to go to college. My stomach and heart ached for months. My mind compared every man to him throughout my twenties.  Ron would remain a touchstone in my life. He came to Maine most summers and we'd share a meal, even when I lived in NYC or San Francisco. We didn't coordinate our trips to Maine; we just happened to overlap.

     After college, 1987, I moved to NYC. Ron came to NYC via a boat delivery with a backgammon champion girlfriend from the Upper East Side. He found me at work, shortly after I'd moved there, to see if I'd sail around the world with him. It was a romantic declaration, an offering right out of French novel, which he knew I'd appreciate, and yet it deadened a piece of my heart to say, "no." My job at the oldest and largest literary agency in the world had just begun and I wanted to see where it would take me; a journey of the life of the mind. He understood and encouraged me to continue, but I saw the sadness in his eyes. His gait walking me back to Astor Place was not his usual dancer-like amble.

     That lunch date in Manhattan haunted me for years. Through mutual friends, I heard that he hadn't left St. Croix to circumnavigate the world, but rather married a woman named Robin. By this point, I had moved to San Francisco and had started my own agency. He didn't come to Maine in the summer as much during the marriage. More in winter to a mutual friend's apartment in my Dad's apartment building in Portland. I saw him once or twice for dinner in Brunswick. He complained about his wife and, at earlier points, a girlfriend. I was losing patience with him and took the women's side. This shook him a bit, but he heard me. The marriage and the girlfriends didn't last.

    I met my Dutch husband, Peter, in San Francisco. We married quickly and soon after learned we were pregnant, while on my father's sailboat in the Caribbean. Appropriately we discovered this when we were anchored at Jost Van Dyke, a former Dutch Island now a part of the BVI. We were sailing as crew for the first week of a two-week cruise.

     Unbeknownst to me, the couple sharing the boat,  who weren't my parents, and my brother and his wife on a sister boat, were all trying to conceive and failing. There were an inordinate number of warnings to "not get your hopes up before 12 weeks," as I was 35. Yet my brother went diving with me and that was the highlight of the trip.

     Ironically, the person who would be taking over our cabin when we docked in Tortola, would be Robin, Ron's ex-wife. We never met face to face, but it was odd to know that I'd just learned I was pregnant in that forward double bunk where she would now be sleeping. Robin divorced Ron because he wouldn't have a child with her. He'd had a vasectomy immediately after returning from Vietnam. I  never wanted to have kids, until I met my husband. Why Robin thought Ron would change his philosophy regarding becoming a father was beyond my comprehension.  Ron was no longer in St. Croix, having moved to Florida to be near his mother who was sick. His job as an ICU nurse gave him great mobility and flexibility that he treasured.

     Peter and I quickly had a second child. Ron met the whole group at a mutual friend's house for dinner one summer night in Maine in the early 2000's. It short-circuited my brain to have Ron and Peter in the same room; I kept calling them by the other's name. That was the second time my equilibrium was off in Ron's presence. Everyone noticed even my kids who thought it was funny. They had heard tales from the time when Mum lived on a cement sailboat, including their favorite about my octopus friend.

     They all, Peter included, knew that Ron had helped shape me into a fearless adventurer; teaching me to shoot a pistol in case of pirates and how to set a sea-anchor during a hurricane. They knew I loved him and had entrusted my life to him. They all accepted it. The following night my mother had a dinner for all of us and included Ron. It was the very same house where we had first attended the New Years Eve party nearly 30 years earlier. Ron gave a gushy toast stating how wonderful it was to be back at that house, sharing the food and company of longtime friends and family. He hadn't expected it. I told him that night, as I had many times, that if my family loves you, we never let you go.

    Even before we moved back to Massachusetts from California, our marriage was in trouble. Peter insisted on controlling the adventurer in me, including saying no to taking our family sailing with my parents. I decided to divorce him a month before I turned 50 in the summer of 2012. My friends and family threw a party for me at my mother's house in Maine. Ron just happened to have sailed a bright yellow catamaran he'd built up from Florida to Maine for a visit. I'd been sent out of the house so that everyone could decorate. I took a trail hike with my dog. Driving home, I saw a familiar silhouette riding a bicycle up a hilly peninsula.

     As I approached I slowed the car, rolled down the window and asked, "Do you want a ride?"

     Ron replied, "No, I need the exercise! I'll see you at the party."

    That party was amazing. Friends from childhood and college in Maine showed up. So did family from around state. Ron came with Chuck and Julie by car, having parked his bike at their house. Chuck was the man who first introduced us all those decades ago and who had rented me a room after high school. His daughter, Jennie, has been my best friend since we were 11 years old. She was in attendance, too.

    

Framework for Pinion 80-82

“The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man, it is to know that and to wonder at it.” – Jacques-Yves CousteauE]

17 January 1949 born in Lewiston, ME

22 May 2018 Ronald R Ouellette died peacefully in his sleep (heart trouble at altitude) in CO

I learned of his death 31 May 2018 on Facebook from a post by Marlene Sassamen

http://obituaries.pressherald.com/obituaries/mainetoday-pressherald/obituary.aspx?n=ronald-robert-ouellette&pid=189180000

Prologue: Marlene's FB post @ WTF https://sasseasails.com/2018/05/31/wtf/

I felt the whole world tilt as to be off-kitler forever.
Ron has been my touchstone for nearly 40 yrs. (from the age of 17 until almost 56).
Classroom lights brighter, school yard dogwood flower's eyes staring at me, particles of dust in the air making me feel connected to everything and nothing. Wanting to go to the sea, but knowing he's gone, from the mountains into an energy source beyond our ability to see.

I called Marlene. She had just finished his obituary and pushed send when I rang. She said the last sentence was the hardest to write because it made it real and final. I told her I was still in shock, as I'd only just learned (an hour earlier, but wanted to wait until a reasonable hour Mt Time, even though I knew she was an early bird). We both cried. Then we remembered him and compared notes and filled in a few holes.

What surprised me, and didn't, was her use of the word "suicide." When I asked if he had a heart condition and she immediately said yes, I felt that it was the altitude that killed him. It isn't kind to older sea-level souls. It had nearly killed my stepmother three times forcing her to leave New Mexico and return to Maine. Ironically, Ron's last career as an ICU Cardiac Care Nurse, did not mean that he followed the healthy heart protocol, according to Marlene. Which lead us to the discussion of suicide. She said, and I agree, that there are different ways to commit suicide. Most people think of the violent successes or the repeated cries for help. But there are also those who willfully do it over a great period of time and on their own terms. That is the kind Ron did.  Being a Cardiac Care Nurse he knew the required surgical procedure would be, the risks, the rehab and the limited reward.

I don't know how long he had the heart condition or how serious it was or how it was/wasn't being treated. I do know that he used to swim, bike, run and hike. That they had hiked together a great deal over the last 5 years in various national parks. It was the joy of those hikes and trips that lead them to the Rockies and away from the Gulf of Mexico.

Yet I did notice, that since landing in CO, Marlene mostly posted pix of solo hikes or hikes with new girlfriends. Ron wasn't hiking or skiing with her. That was the first tell. He loved to be outdoors and active. However the last picture she sent to me of him, was of him staining clapboards for a newly built shed ~ perhaps that is where he was putting his energies. One last creation.That is what he thrived on: creating and building.

Now I have to create and build this book to honor him, share with my children & students, and make sense of how much of him still lives through me now.

"Changes is Lattitude, Changes in Attitude" should not apply to Altitude. 

Does Jimmy Buffet write mountain songs? 

Pinion from 1980-1982

'79-80 New Years Eve on Dingley Island: Meet Ron w/Chuck & Jennie at their house. All walked down the road to the NYE party at Mom's house. Circulated with all the folks 10-25yrs older than J&I. Came away with a huge crush on Ron; his talk of building the cement boat by day and working at BIW by night. How he was going to launch her and then sail her down to the Virgin Islands where he had friends and work waiting for him. All so romantic and ideal. Especially to a girl who was deciding she wanted to build things with her hands and take physical adventures not go to college. School of Life vs Life of the Mind.

Spring 80: Traveled to the South w/Nancy. Get into Eisenhower ( absorbed in RIT) and decide to defer and move in with C,J,T after graduation.

June: I graduate and move to Maine three days later, so quickly that I was at Jennie's Graduation later that month. Drove home, high, with Tony and Chuck down the island road with no lights on, but a very full moon. (6/28/80 Saturday fullmoon?). Going through Yellow Pages for all cabinetmakers within a 25 mile radius (pre-Google). The person who answered the phone (pre-answer machines) and was interested in meeting me for an interview for a possible apprenticeship was Bruce Marcus (a former NY bookstore owner and now hand-tools only woodworking shop owner). We used to make fun of Thomas Moser for not allowing his woodworkers to work on the floor. 1854 Alna Road, Alna, ME 30 miles drive 4-seasons.

July 4th: Go up to Cooks Corner to dance at the Holiday Inn.  Zee, Maggie, Jennie, Chuck, Ron and I are there. Ron and I drives me home to the island. In 11 days, I turn 18 and we start going back to his boat.We sail on the weekends all summer. Hit a rock and pull out at Sebasco Estates.

Fall: we spend time on boat and barter a big wheel (from a tug?) from Bud Darling in the harbor.
Fall scenes of boats slowing leaving the moorings, birds and leaves changing and finally pulling up our mooring and moving over to a dock tied up to land. Driving up to Alna, the change of light, viewing the various tides in the marshes, rivers and coves. First snow fall and dodging lumber trucks in my tiny '78 Honda Civic Hatchback. My father bought it for me my Senior year and said I could have it painted any color I wanted. I chose drum set blue; middle range deep blue with metallic flecks in it.  He also installed a Bluapunkt radio cassette player in the glove box. It felt very swank!

Winter: move over to Oakhurst Is. I visit so often, Jennie jokes that I live there.
Jennie /Texas? Was that 81?  Coming home to Northern Lights and soapstones.
Frostfishing with Jennie and Mark. Skating on the pond. Swimming at the Bath YMCA
Movies at the Tontine Mall: Manhattan (not realizing the irony).

Spring:

When did we bring all of Beth and Kim's house supplies out to long Island and have the clambake in the hood of a car after we lugged it across and up? Think it was spring and took a full day from shore to shore.

Summer:

Decide to not go to college, but rather sail away with Ron into the Sunset. Ron attaches an Antique  Bureau to the bulkhead opposite the bathtub for me and my one duffle bag full of clothes when I move in. Dinner at the Baker's Table with Dad about this decision. "Rather be successful with my failures than  to regret no having attempted them".

Can't remember when the haulout at Robinhood was. It must have been late spring 81, because I remember fiddlehead ferns for dinner and swimming in the quarry down the road. Also lots of boats were still in the yard and not in the harbor.

Friendship haul out? Sebasco Estates haul out?
Hit rock in the center of Casco Bay and what was the other debacle? Was it the engine in Friendship?

Fall 81:

Harpswell, ME,  Gloucester, MA Montauk, NY,  New Haven, CT,  Oyster Bay, NY,  Sandy Hook Bay, NJ,  Willoughby Bay, VA Intracoastal Waterway, Beaufort NC, Buck Island, Christiansted Harbor, St. Croix USVI

Only other time we ran aground was in the Intracoastal Waterway, hit a sand bar where the channel shifted and had to hauls ourselves off with the main halyard and a the row boat?

I shot Ron's father's pilot's pistol there. I believe I did, as Ron wanted me to know how to fire it.

wCelestial navigation, sextant, with South Africans in the upstairs of a waterfront Bar in Beaufort, NC.

Didn't want to stay for Halloween Party. Left to make our Easting for the USVI and ran into these.

Category 1 hurricane (SSHWS)
Duration	November 3 – November 8
Peak intensity	85 mph (140 km/h) (1-min)  980 mbar (hPa)

Main article: Hurricane Katrina (1981)

A tropical depression formed on November 3 in the western Caribbean Sea about 150 miles (240 km) south of the Cayman Islands. The depression moved north, reaching tropical storm strength as it moved through the Caymans. Katrina continued to strengthen, reaching hurricane strength half a day before landfall in Cuba. A weakening Katrina moved across eastern Cuba on November 6. After emerging over water, the storm accelerated northeast through the Bahamas. Katrina's circulation fell apart, and the storm merged with a front on November 8.

Hurricane Katrina is reported to have killed two and caused widespread flood damage in Cuba's Camagüey province.^[1]

Subtropical Storm Three[edit]

Subtropical storm (SSHWS)
Duration	November 12 – November 17
Peak intensity	70 mph (110 km/h) (1-min)  978 mbar (hPa)

A frontal low over the warm waters of the Gulf Stream organized into a subtropical storm on November 12 while 400 miles (640 km) east of Jacksonville, Florida. After moving northeastward, it turned to the northwest, threatening the northeastern United States as an intensifying subtropical storm that was gradually developing tropical characteristics. A high-pressure system turned it to the northeast, and after peaking at 70 mph (110 km/h) it became extratropical near Nova Scotia on November 17. The storm produced significant beach erosion and coastal flooding.^[22]

I fell in love with the people and environment of Beaufort, NC. Everything was set up for sailors. An old truck that folks could borrow to drive to the Piggly Wiggly. Spanish Moss, tidal rivers, low french style houses, friendly folks, the South Africans on their homemade steel boat, who later taught us all who didn't have Lorans how to use a sextant and navigate by the stars in a upstairs dining room in a waterfront restaurant. We had homework and times where we had to do sightings and such.

Mad Hatter was a bar roughly a block away from the waterfront. Once they had an all you can shuck, you can eat oyster night which was wildly popular. The interior of the bar had the traditional sailor fair of dark boards, beer soaked floorboards, a U-shaped bar up against a wall, from behind which the bartender would change hats and accents every so half hour or so (just to keep the international sailing crowd engaged and buying drinks.

The oysters were fresh and delicious. I remember being there late with the South Africans and sitting on 10 gallon buckets in the patio/alley out back and shucking, eating and talking for hours one night. The SA men were tanned, with crisp smiled lines, Afrikaner accents and clothes that seemed worldly to a teenage girl from New England. They wore tailored cotton, in various earth tones and slicked back their hair. No preppy Izod or LL Bean or thrift shop fashions for them.

They knocked on our hull (the international live-aboard greeting) the first night we were in Beaufort. We, Ron and I, as Earl and Jake were ashore with the dingy (giving us some "alone" time) came up the companionway to greet them.



http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x50hlf0 The Greatest American Hero in St. Croix

Work out of Christiansted: 

Lisa's Sandal Shop/

Aubrey's Woodworking Shop/

Bret Gilliam Salvage Diving/

Booze Cruises

Summer 1982:

Return to Maine ~ turn 20 ~ enroll in Pre-Nursing Program

Summers with Ron visiting in Maine:

1985-2017

Spring with Ron visiting in New York:

1988


July 2012: My 50th birthday - Ron rode his bike from Chiquita to Chucks and then came in a car to Dingley. Need to find out where Chiquita was anchored. Near Peter LeBourdais?