Memoirous

These bright and shining days I read Mary Oliver and remember my little shack at the tip of Cape Cod, the dancing surf, and the plovers diving and darting, skittering across the sand. And NPS signs warning me to keep away from their nesting grounds. All hail the power to mate and love. All hail the powers that be. It is resolved. That all marriages are equal. She Wakes Early, Thirst, and A Thousand Mornings. Wide windows looking out upon the world. Thank you God. Thank you God. Thank you God. Thank you all those who have gone before me, leaving a trail of bread crumbs. Thalassa

I know I left you dear reader(s) hanging. I was having a bit of a breakdown in my shack by the sea all alone. But, that weary dreary day broke this writer wide open. After that I began to write. And write. Write write writewritewritewrtite. I filled notebook after notebook. Split it at the seam and used the other side of the paper. Front and back. I wrote into the center of many questions, looking for answers. Dateline: Thursday at Thalassa Well a pretty good day. Yesterday I went into town. It took me 20 minutes to get out, Must be a record. Once I got to the road I took my time and in half an hour was to town and ate a sandwich outside thelibrary where I spent 2 hours reading e-mail and charging devices. Gave me some wiggle room with the phone, though battery juice will probably be low by Saturday morning when I leave. Also extravagant with the I-Pod, listening to news and music. All these little restrictions I've put on myself are coming off--all the counting of bread sli...

Notes from Thalassa, Tuesday, after being there 3 days Just want to say that here I see real geese. Not those sidewalk crappers down by the lake that eat hamburger buns out of the garbage, but sleek Canadian geese with accents. Not the fakers by the Montrose Harbor Yacht Club who wouldn’t know Ontario from Ontario Street. Here they fly over like stealth drones, fit and in shape. No waddling. They catch fish to eat, call out to mates, and at sunset line up in V formation for night maneuvers. The geese by us in uptown wouldn’t know they were silly gooses even if you told them. They’d hiss and keep pecking in the grass for grubs or cigarette butts. They need to be secretly renditioned and turned into foie gras before it goes off the menu again in Chicago ** Wind from the north, White caps today. During the night I could sense a change, a shift. Items on the deck skittered into corners, a window not latched banged, until I removed the screen and pulled it in ...

Notes from Thalassa   It feels so great to Laze about In basic beauty   . . . And hope I have something to write about. I would not have imagined this 3 weeks ago! I brought with me a diet that resembles Into the Wild — And we all know how that turned out. I feel like a Jumblie (Edward Lear) set out to sea. I see now why artists paint it—because it is beyond words. Colors rendered in indigo, sienna, oxide from the earth, ashes to ashes, seed back to seed. The sky a Hopper blue, the dunes mutes, variegated by shades of green, rust, rosa rugosa like a Marsden Hartley painting. I took a picture. It was all grays with a line across the middle —or, depending upon the day, hour, minute hues of blue, sometimes dotted like an exclamation point with a sail way out there, motionless on the horizon. I have a vegetative splinter in the palm of my hand from where I fell down running over the sand to the outhouse. It hurts like arthritis in the mor...

Thalassa is a Greek word, meaning a sea goddess. Yup,that's me. Off to write flash in a small cabin by the sea and possibly the ghosts of those who have gone on before me (Eugene O'Neil, Edward Hopper) will inhabit me and inspire me.

Last night was a momentous occasion—and I neglected to get a new outfit for it. Nevertheless, we had a great time at this: Goreyesque . As you can see from the details, my daughter, Grace Hertenstein, was a featured reader, reading her creepy short story (completely in the Goreyesque vein) “The New Arrival.” She was second to last before Joe Meno, whose work The Office Girl I loved. Anyway the reading gala gave us free access to the exhibit, where coincidentally one of the first display cases I visited made mention of Gorey illustrating V.R. Lang’s memoirs. The name rang a bell, but could it be . . . ? Bunny? What triggered this question was the fact that Gorey in 1949 was at Harvard and was initiated into drama poetry—this was exactly what happened to Frank O’Hara, AND one his muses was Bunny Lang. He would often return to Cambridge to write and perform in the Poet’s Theater. Gorey said of Poets’ Theater, “I was connected with this thing called the Poets’ T...

Here is some information about the Dune Shacks in Cape Cod ( see my previous post!) . The shacks were originally built to house life-saving personnel or serve as shelter for shipwrecked seafarers. I believe there is a bit of the seafarer in me, one who has lost her way and needs a place of respite. The structures were built in the 19 th century and today there are only 18 left—most incorporated into the National Park Service, part of the Cape Cod National Seashore. They are weather-beaten and storm battered. The boards like bleached bones. Airy, mice-ridden, more open to the elements than protecting from them. None has electricity, running water, or toilets. You come to commune with nature or find your muse amongst the sand or the saints who have gone on before. Apparently the playwright Eugene O’Neill, who spent many summers there with his wife, Agnes Boulton. O’Neill wrote Anna Christie (1920) and The Hairy Ape (1921) while living in his shack. My shack has a name...

So on my way back from the Festival of Faith and Writing I got a phone call. But, first I have to tell you about coming back from Grand Rapids. If you read part one of this post, I’d alluded to my fragile sense of mortality. This past winter had snowed me, the cold wore me down. What I considered part of my mental and emotional psyche had been buried under what meteorologists were calling a mini-ice age. I felt like a giant ground sloth.   from Field Museum So I cooked up a plan. I was going to ride my bike back from Grand Rapids to Chicago. Of course I came up with this idea back in the warmth of December. I did research and booked tickets on Greyhound because I could bring my boxed bike, re-assemble and be good to go. Sort of. I unpacked the bike at the GR bus station to discover I’d left the front wheel back in Chicago. One snafu behind me. I had my husband UPS the wheel and borrowed a bike to get to the conference the first day. By day 2 and 3 I was using my ...