Memoirous

The first of the new year there is always so much hope. Then the days turn gloomy and dreary and the sweets are all gone. As it happened, I had four days off (slow season at bike shops) and my daughter didn’t need me to babysit, so I hopped a train to Chicago. I knew from living there that Chicago is just as dreary and gloomy, but the museums are mostly free. The visit was sandwiched with meeting friends at coffee shops and sitting for long hours chatting. Yesss!! I had so many conversations and meeting up with friends broken up by trips to area museums. There’s nothing quite like the slow feel of the Art Institute on a Monday winter afternoon. No one is in a hurry. There was no crowd around Hopper’s Nighthawks. The painting was just as lonely and isolated as the figures framed within. Surprisingly there were new additions to the galleries. I had the feeling that during the pandemic someone rooted around in the vaults and brought some new stuff to light. It appeared there were mo...

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 ...

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...

For memoir, and I've said this in my blog more than once, it really doesn't matter what REALLY happened, what matters is what YOU think happened, because ultimately all people want is a story. I've been thinking a lot lately about myth and personal myth-making. It could also be called campfire inspiration. When primitive man sat around the campfire did he ask himself--should I tell what really happened or just the juicy parts? Of course, in order to hook his listeners he told about the exciting hunt, the danger, the heroics. He knew that much and he was a Neanderthal. Not to diss Neanderthals too much. When Bob Dylan suddenly got big, when he made it and people wanted to know all about Bob Dylan and the publicist from Columbia wanted to put out press about him, they interviewed him to get his story. Bob told them exactly what they wanted to hear, because Bob Dylan was a storyteller. From his Chronicles I read that he told them he was orphaned or some such bullcrap and ...