Flash Of Beauty

This is the beach made famous in the novel Land of Love and Drowning. It is named Flash of Beauty. My son and I walked from the Big Bamboo restaurant and beach bar at the head of Loblolly Bay the full length of the bay to the point where Google will tell you that Table Bay begins and runs into Deep Bay. It's a .7M walk to that point. But on all the local maps the long stretch of beach beyond Loblolly Bay simple goes by one name: Flash of Beauty.

As I mentioned in my last post, the narrative in the novel is stitch together with mentions of this beach and it's supernatural powers. If you zoom in on the above and below pictures you may notice one of it's supernatural features: pink sand.

It's so fine it has the texture of talcum powder and feels like flower beneath your feet. Where my son is standing on the water line, you can see the true pink nature of the sand when wet. It comes from the crushed coral (white, red and black) and the pulverized shells (many of which are pink and or white). I found one pink, yellow and white shell deep in a crevice with the beak eating marks of an octopus. The shell was half chewed, with the interior critter removed, on top of a pile of other shells of various sizes and shapes. The sheen on this shell has not be buffed off, as I'm guess it was eaten a night or two before I found it (although, I wasn't lucky enough to find the satiated cephalopod).

The beach's barrier reef keeps the currents moderate, although on a full moon or during a storm snorkeling could be hazardous. But on a day like we had, the typical tropical tides were just a gentle current, like a lazy river. In the above picture you can see that beyond the barrier reef, an outer reef continues down the south eastern side of Anegada. There are not many people or buildings below this point and side of the island. The Atlantic starts to butt heads with the Caribbean as the reef encloses the bottom eastern side of the island. Spanish galleons, British warships and American privateers have wrecked upon those reefs for hundred of years. The local museum boasts over 200 wrecks on that side of the island alone.

The Arawaks, the larger of the two native Caribbean peoples before the northern european and north Americans slowly but steadily exterminated them, lived on Anegada for over a 1000 years. They remind me of the people of the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico. That pueblo is the longest inhabited town in North American, over a thousand years. It's a perfectly protected natural phenomena, too. A large 300' high butte surrounded by a valley and then a mesa that forms a perfect circle around the valley. The Arawaks benefited from the atoll of Anegada being hard to see from a distance (their lack of height vs the Acoma pueblo's advantage of height); both peoples benefitted by  the natural topography; big valley and big reef to protect them from outsider's attacks. Yet the people of the Acoma Pueblo still exist, while the Arawaks of Anegada, on an atoll only 30' above the sea at it's highest point, only exist in the evidence of conch shell pilings on the south east side of the island that formed ancient burial grounds.

This beach, Flash of Beauty, holds a quiet allure with it's sea grape trees, wild flowers, birds and fish. The same shellfish, that give the sand it's pink color, are eaten in the salt ponds in the center and south east of Anegada by the flamingos; yes, Pink Flamingos! The climate change is drying up the salt ponds. What I remember as a cloud of birds in a large pond, close to the bridge on the road to Loblolly Bay and Flash of Beauty beaches, is now just a small flock of a dozen of so flamingos on a much diminished and distant pond. The sense of a cloud of pink has faded like the dawn and dusk mares tail clouds. Yet at Flash of Beauty, the frigate birds soar, shore birds skip, and the sugar birds cackle.

I must reread the section of the novel that refers to the birds and fish and their shape shifting ways, as I've lost my train of thought reliving my time, exactly a week ago today, on the beach and hearing the crashing waves and caribe breezes in my inner ear.....

Good Night, Native Peoples and Supernaturals, G'night

Le Bonne Vie

As some of you may have noticed, I've been silent, electronically, since the start of April Break. Writing continued, and I'll enter the blogs (post-dated) over the weekend, but I was enjoying the old fashion nature of writing with a pen in my Shakespeare And Company Notebook which I purchased in Paris last fall, while sailing through the BVI.

Books onboard boats, reading and writing in them, is a part of the charm of sailing. Le Bonne Vie is a 50' Beneteau with 3 cabins and a roomy saloon. For 8 nights, I had the distinctly decadent pleasure of having one cabin all to my self. Above is a picture of the books I was consuming and into which I was creating on the night stand in my cabin. The cabin had three lights (one over head and two reading) and three portholes (great for catching the trade winds and viewing the stars). Never used the blanket and partially used the top sheet. Stacked my two pillows to read and write, then down to one to sleep. My one carry-on duffle bag worth of bathing suits, sundresses and sandals neatly stowed. The smell of diesel grease from the engine, combined with the warm salt air from under the panel by my pillow, just transported me back to living on the boat 33 years ago.

On my boat, the 48' ferro-cement cutter, we had a floor to deck bookshelf screwed to the bulkhead between the saloon and forward birth. On the opposite bulkhead on this Beneteau there is a single shelf designated to books (aside from the ones in the Capt.'s Chart Table). Most sailors are readers. Comes with the territory. In fact, most ports worth their salt, have a tradition of lending libraries, both formal and informal. The rule of thumb in most sailors laundromats is this; if you take a book, you'd better leave a book.

Many island restaurants or wharf rat bars, internationally, have the same policy. On this trip, I only noticed once such book exchange. It was at the Big Bamboo in Loblolly Bay on Anegada. There, screwed to the wall in the main dining area, is a glass bookcase full of books. Some are old and tattered, others recent bestsellers in hardcover. There were easily 7 shelves of books  inside the case. On the outside,  there was a not yet sun-faded sign: "You take one ~ You leave one." Fairly basic common civilized courtesy of people who live on a rock or in a harbor.

Anegada isn't even your typical tropical volcanic island. The name ins Spanish means "Drowned Land." It's really only an atoll made up of white sand from the Atlantic hitting the Caribbean waters over the reefs that surround the island (the reefs that have claimed sailing vessels for hundreds of years). This winter, knowing I'd been returning to Anegada after a 18 year absence, I read Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique. In it she writes about the beach around the point from Loblolly, Flash of Beauty. In it she shares the folklore and legends of the coral reefs that line the shores. She also creates a narrative thread throughout the novel that keeps tugging one back to that beach, like a selky to an irish sea shanty. The life of the mind is active when the tv, wi-fi, electricity and satellites may be not working. Some escape with rum, others with music and words.

Last night, or rather early this morning, I arrived home (1AM). Worked all day and diddley-squat tonight. Now I'm going to hold onto the books, images, sun, waves, wind, weather, conversations, and words I captured in the islands as I fall asleep on my bed, no longer my cabin bunk, that still feels like it's gently rocking at anchor......

Good Night, Book and Boat Lovers, G'night!

Checkin' Off ~

Yes, that sounds about right. I've been checking items off my list for close to 20 hours now. Never a dull moment as a single mom, High School English teacher, dog owner and trying to be healthy human.

I'm so tired that I don't have much to write tonight...

Frogs, cool breezes, buzzing in my ears, and the rapid key snap of my MacBook Air are all I can hear.

The light of my laptop, the reflection of the table lamp, the backlit keys and my blanket are all I can see.

The whisper of wind on my cheek, the square plastic keys, the warm cotton sheets and the bridge of my reading glasses on my nose are all I can feel.

My mind wanders towards vacation, my feet slide down towards the foot of the bed, my elbows relax and let my wrists decide it's time to call it a night.

And that is all...My 100th post on the Ides of April, no less.

Good Night, List Checkers, G'night!

Who is in Want of Whom....

Been teaching Pride & Prejudice for better part of a decade now, and each year I find a new nuance or subtlety that is lost on the current generation. But this year, they have missed the humor all together! When I try to explain to them that Jane Austen 200 years ago was the Tina Fey of her day, they come close to understanding the humor. When I show how it was a comedy of manners, much like Ms. Fey's Mean Girls, it rings a little more loudly in their consciousness. However, the women of Pride and Prejudice are not catty or conniving. In fact, a great deal of the appeal to me in this Austen novel is the dearth of catty details; those few exceptions are brought on by the single elderly woman, not one of the protagonist's peers.

The book, even as a romantic comedy was so ahead of its time. Having Lizzy speak her mind, challenge a suitor, reject a proposal and have the unconditional love of her father for acting that was, and remains, a solid feminist role model to introduce to young men and women alike. The joking, teasing banter between the Bennet parents is also wonderful and a sign of a happiness in their marriage that goes beyond mutual chance. They are aware of each other's strength and weaknesses and accepting of both.

It's hard to teach entailment to this generation; post-modern, post-feminist, modern primitive, post-marriage and taking classes with pregnant classmates. I have a PowerPoint I put together of the monarchy which shows the chain of succession via the entailment process. I've had to change it this term, as a new law took effect in Britain, an amendment to the Crown Act, which makes it possible for a daughter not to be skipped over as a possible primogenitor. Basically, a hundred years after entailment made it's way into the English Dictionary and just under 100 of women receiving the right to vote, gender is being removed as a royal roadblock. With the "baby-watch" for William and Kate's 2nd child upon us, the students could wrap their heads around this new, and historic, development.

What is interesting to me, is that for the first time some of the young men in my classes are anticipating that Darcy is being reserved, not arrogant. That he may have "been burned" in the past and has put up walls as a result. Again, not much sympathy to the humor, until it becomes borderline slapstick nearer the end. I think modern American teenage boys are feeling less like they hold the purse-strings or power in any romantic relationship and more like they have to be the supplicant and amiable beau. Today's men are more like Jane and women are more like Lizzie...

Yet many of us are still longing for a Darcy. Not to rescue us, but to mirror us. To be challenged and to challenge us. To spar wits and share the life of the mind while walking in dewy fields at sunrise.

I'm tired, no surprise, but as I teach this to yet another generation, it strikes me that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Good Night, Lizzys and Darcys everywhere, G'night!

Summer Breezes...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsHuV3Aj1os

When the title song, Summer Breeze, was released I was 10 years old. It was a pivotal year for me. I moved from the only home I'd ever known in a rural town, to a new home in the suburbs of Boston. After three years of summering in Maine with our new blended family, we bought a summer house on an island attached to the mainland by a causeway when I was 10. Both the suburban house and island house have become the two most constant places for me over the last, almost, 43 years.

My father built a house in Maine when I was a few years younger, and sold it a few years ago. So perhaps they are tied. In my most centered self it is the rural house and the summer house where I learned who I was and what makes me who I am now.

But the radio played in all these houses, and the cars that shuttled me between them. Music was a constant in my childhood. Rock, jazz, soul, classical and top-forty, which is what Seals & Crofts falls under in my mind. Just like I have a memory etched in my mind of riding in the front seat of my mother's green '67 Mustang convertible through the streets of Boston with the song Georgie Girl blaring from the dashboard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-GApOqzgWM. It seems that summer and melancholy wishes blowing in the breezes are a deep part of my psyche.

And yet it was on the island with the causeway, that one January, when I was 17, I met a man at a New Years Eve Party. He was 13 years my senior, and yet a half a year later we'd be dating and I'd move on board his yacht that summer and sail off into the sunset with him two years later! So some of the ideas of making hay while the sunshines so that you can reap what you sew stuck!

I could go on for hours with other 60's lyrics that were sewn into my mind and make up. How the band of Chicago, Frank Zappa, Eagles, Jackson Brown, The Who, The Stones, Beatles, Gordon Lightfoot, Joy of Cooking, Jefferson Airplane/Starship, Emmylou Harris, Billy Holiday, Steppenwolf, Bonnie Raitt, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, Ricki Lee Jones, The Pretenders, Denise Williams, Jonathan Edwards, Crosby & Stills & Nash & Young, James Taylor, BB King, Creedance Clearwater Rival, Otis Redding, The Smiths, James Brown, Elvis, Janis Joplin, The Doors, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, David Bowie, Patti Smith, Grace Jones, The Monkeys, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Bruce Springsteen, Marvin Gaye, Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Jimi Hendrix, Annie Lenox & Eurythmics, Weather Girls,  REM, U2, Madonna, Kate Bush and so many others shaped my sense of self. Then there were the Musicals. Ahh the musicals that our entire family would sing at dinner or in the car or in the woods at the top of our lungs: Hair, Jesus Christ Super Star, Oklahoma, Carousel, Pirates of Penzance, Iolanthe, and so many more. Then, of course, Fantasia! Where image met music in perfect harmony.

Music and seasons. I understand why some writers add playlists to their novels and memoirs. It makes sense to me, as I can hear the sound track of my life really clearly. I can also hear the music mentioned in memoirs, and it does inform the reader to another layer of the person's state of being in a given situation.

So tonight, Seals & Croft's Summer Breeze, with it's kids piano playing (it sounds just like the toy piano I gave my wasband as a first gift) is peregrinating though me while the temperate breeze blows through my window.

Good night, music and memory lovers, G'night!

Ryan's Magic Touch

My biggest indulgence is a monthly appointment with Ryan. When I first started going to see him, I'd just broken my wrist, was frustrated with how it had impacted my body, mood and ability to exercise. I'm some one who has to move every day, in multiple directions, or my body gets cranky. So being limited to walking, sitting, standing and laying about was reeking havoc on my sense of self.

He asked me all the usual questions a massage therapist asks, what do you want me to concentrate on, do you do a repetitive form of physical exercise or work, have you been injured or ill recently,  and so on. My wrist was just out of a cast. I'd been swimming in the waterproof cast, but no running, biking riding, hiking, kayaking, sailing or any of the other usual summer active adventures.

From when he first touched me, I saw things. I was very quiet at first and so was he. Then at some point I asked him if he'd even gone to Pow-Wows. His hands briefly stopped, fluttered and lighted again. He said, "Ah, so you're reading me, too." I asked what he had to do with Pow-Wow's and he said his husband was Native American and that is where they met and still attend them regularly. I asked him what he had been seeing in me. He said a friend of mine, he described her, was in trouble and needed to know she'd make it through the ordeal. I knew exactly who and he continued to describe her as if reading my mind. We went back to being quite after I told him I was actually going to call her later that night, and had already planned to do so, prior to my appointment.

Ryan is a great sports massage therapist, as he has competed in many races of various types and has studied the effects and remedies for injuries and over use of different muscle and tendon groups. He's wonderful at approaching it all holistically.

So in the 8 months I've been seeing him, once a month, we've continued to have this immediate and intimate relationship. Tonight was different though. We became one. Not sexually or physically, but spiritually. I was ragged when I arrived tonight. Been fighting off a flu that is going around, been playing taxi, running errands and the terms changed at work. Just mentally and physically running on fumes. He looked better than last time, as a bout of carpel-tunnel had been getting the best of him and he had to scale back his schedule for recovery.

Usually we talk while he goes over my limbs, back, extremities and neck. Briefly, intermittently and specifically about our common points of interest. But tonight, even before he'd re-entered the room, after I changed, I was practically asleep. We had discussed him doing some energy work on me the last time I'd visited, as he'd snuck some in and I'd felt the effects immediately. This time we'd agreed he'd go for it and I was along for the ride.

Colors. I saw lots of colors. Mostly Indigo and Gold. Alton colors. They swirled around my consciousness, while my eyes sank deeper into my sockets and my mind opened. Tunisian rooftops, and starbursts of light kept competing for my attention as he used pressure points, deep massage and healing touch to line up my chakras or whatever you call it.

I've only had this experience twice before. Once with a masseuse at the YWCA in Portland, ME in the 1980's and once during a massage while I was pregnant at a 5 Star Hotel in Maui in 2000. Colors, lightness of being and energy coursing through my veins hours after the massage has ended. This time it wasn't our emotional thoughts colliding through the air for the wellbeing (of others), but rather our spiritual energy swirling and blending together for my better health.

That is a gifted set of hands. Ryan the Rieki Master. I salute you and will see you next month, per usual!

Good night, Man with the Moon in his Hands, G'night!

A little night music...

This afternoon for the first time in 6 months, I heard peepers! Yes that lovely frog sound that starts just before dusk that lets you know that Spring has sprung and Summer is coming soon on its heels!

Growing up in Bolton, we had a little pond that was fed by a little brook. This time of year the woods could get swollen with vernal pools that are ripe for frog, salamander and toad eggs. The tree frogs could basically hibernate under logs or inside bark, mostly frozen, for the winter. But as soon as a big thaw came their music would sound.

First the males, who make a twangy-croak, randomly, usually in March. The winter has lasted so long and cold, that I'd only heard a few before tonight. Then, within days it seems the female frogs wake to the sound of the males warm overtures. Next thing you know, the night air is full of frog music and  eggs will soon be present in the vernal pools, round the edges of bogs and lodged on stick in a pond.

The babies are so cute with their pollywog tails still attached as they learn to climb. I've only seen that once in my life, when I was working at Drumlin Farm in Lincoln, as an Audubon Naturalist. That Spring I was monitoring the daily development of the population of tree frogs at the Farm and explaining the cycles to elementary school kids. It was that year that I saw some of the young frogs making the transition from water to land frogs, and one maturing frog starting to climb with it's tail still attached!

Now living in Acton, there is a 60 acre Arboretum three house lots from my door and attached to it, and stretching all the way to our street, is a great bog. The Arboretum has two ponds connected by a lively brook, as well as the bog and a sizable kettle pond, that appears to be spring fed. I taught my kids how to catch frogs, first with nets and then with their bare hands in the larger stream fed ponds. I'll never forget when they first caught them and could hold them long enough for the frogs to whine-croak to be let go. The kids thought it was hysterical!

The frogs are also a good snack for the Great Horned and Barred Owls that nest in the Arboretum. Usually they go for furry tidbits, like squirrels, chipmunks, moles, voles and shrews, but I've seen some funny looking bones in some owl pellets that I think were of the frog persuasion.

The frogs and bats keep my yard fairly free of bugs. I'm a no pesticide gardener. I love it when the tree frogs and ladybugs move into my tomato plants. A sure sign that everything is in balance!

So tonight, for the second night in a row, I'm going to sleep with the window open. Faint strains of Peeper's music at the periphery of the cool dark night air.

Good Night, Chorus Frog, G'night!