The Great Sucking Sound

It’s only ten days into our Blue Hill summer delirium, but already, my suspicions have been confirmed. The Internet is ruining my life. Or at least is the force that slowly masticates, swishes around and forcibly swallows all of that free time that I am supposed to have since we don’t watch television.

I am always both tempted and repelled by the genre of self-help books with titles such as “Habits of Highly Effective People” mostly because I used to be effective and am loath to admit that I am no longer am, and my habits are not going to be extolled in any of these books sold at Kinkos and JFK. If I wasn’t always effective, I was at least efficient in certain ways at a younger point in my life. Stuff got done. I had lengthy, multi-faceted to-do lists that I would lay there slain at the end of each day. I could read and go for a run and spend time with friends while doing my job, be it a full-time student or a development assistant. Yes, this was before the days of Arden Penelope. But I think Arden Penelope is getting a bad rap. I think it’s the internet’s fault, man.

I didn’t have the internet in high school when I was accomplishing plenty of [silly] things. Nor did I have the internet in college (well, there was proto-email available in the basement of Firestone Library, and nascent surfing through Alta Vista etc., but I only used it for figuring out train schedules.). It’s only in my adult life that I feel generally overwhelmed and behind, and only in my adult life that I spend a great deal of time with my laptop, airport turned on, ready to distract and amuse and inform and facilitate and on and on and on. Perhaps someday my grandchildren will look at photos of me in my late 20s and early 30s, and mock me for the perma-present gigantic white slab on my lap. How archaic! And how responsible it might be for my lack of effectiveness!

In our Portland lives, (call it our city lives, small though Portland may be…) I bemoan how late we go to bed, how few books I read, how short the days seem to be. Here in the woods in Blue Hill, a stone’s toss to Morgan Bay, without the temptation to stare, overwhelmed, at my overflowing inbox of email, without the access to pertinent state of the world updates of NYT homepage (for better or worse), without the idea of strolling through the sale items on anthropologie.com, or zooming around on zillow trying to spy on my dream house, or looking at the up-to-the moment musings of my closest 500 friends facebook, I am on supposedly on vacation. Yet I am more effective.

Sure, there are other variables to disclose besides my un-wired status. This adorable little cottage is not my house. Unfortunately. But it means that I am not tempted to clean it. It’s not my stuff to organize or rearrange. We don’t even have laundry. All I can do to the house is cook in it, and if I’m feeling very generous, clean up after myself. I can’t get lost in organizing or addressing the piles of physical mail and all of the Williams Sonoma catalogues therein. And there is no way for me to accidentally run errands here, like I sometimes do in Portland. Any shopping here is deliberate, and the result of effort and mileage. And I believe that physical barriers to inadvertent shopping are a good way of preventing the collection of needless crap. (If you don’t know it’s out there, you won’t covet it.) I am passing no windows nor billboards, and I want for nothing. Since the internet is one big mall, the removal of that variable only further proves my point!

Here, I am watching an episode (minimum) of the Wire per night. I am reading books and not falling asleep after six pages. I am frequently in bed by 10:30. When Arden wakes up at dawn, though I still try to con her into believing it’s the middle of the night, I know that I can actually survive the morning because I’ve gotten at least six hours of sleep. “It can be like this!” I say to myself. Why is it that in our city lives, the days disappear like cool whip? Is it that I’m hitting the gym or going to yoga? Nope. Not that. Is it that I’m sucked into hours of episodic television? Not that either. It’s the world wide webs I tell you! Which brings me to the obvious question: if I can live without it, or if life is improved through its absence, or at least a more draconian limitation, why does it seem so radical to imagine turning on my wireless for a only a few hours per day? What am I so afraid of missing?

Would Thoreau have had wifi in his Simplified life? Maybe. It sure makes things easy. It’s hard to argue with online bill-pay. But though the world wide web brings the world swirling through your door, it can obscure, or distract from what is actually present. Here and now, on the other side of my door, is a still bay, some crickets, a light breeze in the trees, and as soon as I stop typing, a whole lot of silence. It’s 10:30. And instead of checking the weather forecast on accuweather.com, or perusing my netflix queue, or buying a new needed pair of tennis shoes on zappos, I’m off to read a book and try to commit to memory the face Arden made today while sitting in a kayak for the first time in Blue Hill Bay. And next time I have wireless, maybe I’ll post a picture on facebook. But what’s the rush?

The Promise of Summer

It's getting hot in here.

The last time I pecked on the keys of this blog was another time indeed. We were in the thick of a fierce, toothy winter. And now a few things have happened. I got good news from my team of doctors in NY, and the summer flipped on here like a hot griddle and wiped all memory of ever being cold, wearing mittens or looking in the bottom of the closet for close-toed shoes.

A nineteenth century map of Maine that hangs on the barn-wall at our favorite, cranky Blue Hill Country Inn boasts -in antiquated style- that this state is a place of extremes. This is apt, and also one of the things I appreciate most about living here. It's not just that we "have seasons" which is the frequent lament of west-coast bound New Englanders. Even in Los Angeles, there are seasons if you pay attention to the quality of the light, the size of the strawberries at the farmer’s markets, or the current line of women's footwear. Only here, in this upper right hand corner, it really is like Frosts' Fire and Ice, and one is lonely without the promise of the other.

This weekend, we took a ferry out to Peaks Island and watched sailboats meander around the harbor. We swam in the bay, watched Prometheus fetch seaweed, drank lemonade from a ten year old girls' lemonade and chocolate chip cookie stand, slathered ourselves in spf 30, chased after Arden's oft-falling hat for fear of freckling her perfectly alabaster baby skin. We were sweating in the shade, and leaping into the always fresh (read: euphemism) waters of the Atlantic to cool ourselves off. The gestalt of that day was repeated on Sunday at Crescent Beach in Cape Elizabeth where we looked across the bay to a rough green island that could have been floating off the coast of Ireland [disclaimer: I have only been to Ireland in my mind's eye], but splashed in waters that rivaled our forays into the sea in Aigua Blava, Spain in 2008. The thermometer teetered just under 90, but the thick, humid air that only felt refreshing if you were rushing through it on a ferry boat, made you feel like you someone was hugging you all the time, and you couldn’t kick off the covers. It was weather that begged you to eat ice cream or drink something with bubbles because only bubbles can make your average beverage actually seem colder. And this weekend hasn’t been an anomaly. It’s been like this all summer long; only with a.c. has the apartment been tolerable, but even as I use the word intolerable, I know I am being an unreliable narrator. I love to complain about the heat. Because it’s not even complaint really: it’s a respectful acknowledgment of heat. And just as I am sad when the power comes flickering back on after a storm, or when the snow storm peters out, I too feel a subtle let down when the heat wave breaks, and we go back to the standard 73 and sunny with a slight breeze, like it though I do. Hot summers remind me of childhood, when the only relief was sleeping naked on top of the sheets, a fan oscillating at the foot of the bed blasting you with only slightly cooler air. Hot summer nights aren't good for sleeping in, but they are great for being awake in. Though the days make me lazy, the nights are agitating enough to get the mind beetling and bouncing around.

And to think that my last few posts on this blog chronicled the vicious attack of the flesh if a piece of skin wasn't covered in sufficient layers of sheep-product. Maybe the extremes are so wonderful because it allows you in effect to move without moving. Even if you stay where you are, the landscape takes you to another place entirely. I can go from St. Barthes to Reykjavik without changing my address labels. For those of us who have both the appreciation for a peripatetic lifestyle, as well as the nesting instincts like I do, the meteorological extremes allow us to reinvent the visual texture of our lives without having to strip to one's skivvies for a TSA officer. If nothing looks the same season to season, we can actually see it again, as opposed to having it disappear from our field of consciousness.

I am sure there are good arguments out there for the temperate climate. You don't have to waste time buying clothes for all seasons. You can always dine al fresco. You never have to complain about digging your car out of a snowbank. It's hard to argue with "it's always beautiful." But I think I just did.

Growth & Memory

In the last week, my child has begun clapping, waving, feeding herself small pieces of food, and crawling, if one uses a very broad and generous definition of any of these activities. There was one day in which she was unable to grasp small chunks of pineapple between her thumb and pointer finger at breakfast. Three hours later, at lunch the same day, she had figured it out. The other night I tried switching my chopsticks to my left hand to see if I could still get that udon noodle where it needed to go, and I thought of what Arden must experience on a daily basis... the sense of bodily disconnect and frustration. And what a delight it must be to learn something so integral to survival. (eating, locomotion, self-congratulation etc.)

It strikes me how long it's been since I learned a new skill with such alacrity, or any new skill at all for that matter. Yes, the learning curve is steepest at the beginning, hence the wonders of infancy, but as a full-fledged adult now, I fear that as opposed to leveling off, I have perhaps started sliding back down the hill from whence I came. I am forgetting things at a more rapid clip than I am learning new things, and this net loss is unsettling. It is urgently making me want to re-read every book I have ever read. I want to revisit my college papers, though I'd probably be so underwhelmed by their lack of original thought, maybe it's best to leave those supposed intellectual glory days in the box of floppy disks where they are. I used to have muscle memory in my soccer feet, but it's been years since I could really dribble and land a good, accurate goal kick. I guess this is one of the benefits of creating spawn... as they follow in your footsteps, scholastic and otherwise, from Dickens to Trigonometry, from memorizing poetry to slide-tackling, you get to revitalize these regions of your brain that have been lying undisturbed for so long.

Sean once read somewhere that memory is like a pathway through grass. The more you walk down it, the more the neurons grow accustomed to making that trodden-down trail. If you walk someplace only once, and never revisit it, soon the grasses grow over, and it's as if you were never there. Thank goodness for photographs and journals which help mow narrow swaths through the overgrown meadow. But there have been times when I've found something so achingly beautiful, from a vista to a passage in book, to a bemused expression on my girl's face, that I've tried to order my brain to take the mental picture, to commemorate it instantly, to put florescent flags and breadcrumbs all along the pathway so that it would be impossible to lose the trail. Sometimes the act of remembering in advance is useful, but I tend to remember my desire for the perfect memory, rather than the thing itself. I can picture myself on the Pont des Arts - or was it the Pont au Change? - in Paris, with Sean in the summer of 2007, an electric and apocalyptic sunset raging to the west behind the turreted skyline, and wanting desperately to commit it to memory. A mere three years later, I don't know what it really looked like. But I do remember the desperation in wanting to. I can never remember what specific things have made me laugh to the point of tears. But I do remember laughing that hard. Nor will I necessarily remember the exact nature of Arden's otherworldly baby coos that make me wild with adoration for her. But I'll love her that madly because the deepest trenches in memory are the ones that are everywhere and nowhere... that are exponentially too big and too numerous for specific memories. Maybe this is why poets gave us the notion of the heart... because it seems unlikely that something that fails us so frequently as memory stored in the brain, could also be responsible for love. Thank goodness love isn't something that has to be remembered.

A Chill Ran Through

We attempted a family walk through Evergreen Cemetery over the weekend. It was maybe 18 degrees with a wind. The ground is still snow-covered though it's been at least a week since our last dusting. (I know I'm getting greedy, but I would like a fresh coat on a bi-weekly basis.) By the time we wrangled everyone's outerwear, changed poopy underwear, fed hungry gaping baby maws, and dressed short-haired doggies with polar fleece, we had lost the sun. Shadows from the gravestones ran long into the snow.

Arden was muckled onto Sean like a wayward koala who had drifted to Antarctica from Australia by mistake. She couldn't be convinced to wear mittens, such a naughty kitten, so Sean tried to cuddle her hands when they found their way outside his puffy down coat. Any exposed flesh was instantly flash-frozen, like the icy version of searing a cut of steak.

Prometheus bobbed and weaved through the stone memorials, chasing phantom squirrels, running away from the cold. A family with three children went tobogganing all on the same sled, on one steep pitch that gathered them so much momentum they had to put on the brakes at the end of the run. Many people walked their long-haired dogs, who were more appropriately dressed for the weather than Prometheus. Someone cut a fresh swath of two straight lines with his cross-country skiis.

I imagined that the dead who permanently inhabit this tree-filled, centuries' old burial ground appreciated the commotion on such a cold winter day. They, impervious to the bitterness of a Maine January, might laugh to remember what it felt like to lose the feelings in one's fingers, or to put your child's hand in your mouth to keep it from getting frost-bitten. Poor souls, they might say, watching us trying at all cost to squeeze enjoyment out of a day that might be better spent curled up next to a fire. Thanks for coming to visit, perhaps they'd say. We thought we'd be abandoned on an afternoon so much like death, but here you are with your sleds and your dogs and your LL Bean pluck.

We heard them laughing. Our adventure was short-lived. At Arden's first wail, we flipped the script and trod back to the car on the cross-country skiiers vectors. I turned on the ignition. Sean flipped on the heated seats. I nursed my baby and kissed her cold cheeks. As long as we have blood in our veins, what a treat to come in from the cold.

Great Expectations

The Unknown, capitals intended, has been on my mind as of late. How to handle periods of waiting when the answer you are waiting for is uncertain. Sure, the specifics of what is under the Christmas tree are technically unknown, unless lazy wrapping has occurred, but by and large, if it's wrapped, under a balsam fir which is growing in your living room, and you aren't allowed to shake it, you can hazard a guess: it's going to be good. Somebody thought you might like this. The undressing of this information will lead to delight, whether sincere or feigned. But how to handle periods of waiting when what you are waiting for isn't necessarily good news?

Sometimes we know we are waiting for a verdict, which puts us in a binary position: do we anticipate the best possible outcome, believing in the power of willing goodness to happen through positive thinking, but leaving our soft, white froggy bellies vulnerable to the fish-nibble of disappointment? Or do we brace ourselves for the absolute worst, thinking like a rational creature that our inner-most psychological musings don't actually have any influence on outcome, and just secretly harbor a desire to be relieved by good news if it eventually comes? Is this the fundamental difference between a pessimist and an optimist, or are both types of people capable of reacting to the unknown in either way?

I am curious which of these approaches is the most fair and humane and reasonably attainable to and for the self, and the people in one's orbit. If you always prepare for the worst, it places the burden on loved ones to buoy you up throughout the process of waiting. If you believe in jinxes, or are at least the type of person who touches wood now and again, this is painful. Anytime someone assures you all will be a-okay, the fear is that Murphy is listening, the rat phink with big-ears in the ether, and will rear up and play his little gag on you, right when you need it least. But if you believe that all is truly fine, and then it isn't, what a mess of pieces are scattered for your loved ones to not only collect, but reassemble, and alone too, because you are too undone to help!

The Buddha, who would make a very good if infuriating movie producer, or patient, or even parent, would agree with the cheeky bumper sticker "I'd Rather Be Here Now." He would realize the futility in anticipating, dreading, or even looking forward to anything. He might invite me to remember a few fundamental things: Here I am. This is good. This is all I've Got. Be Grateful. (I don't actually know much about the Buddha, but my version of the other fat man in my life, the first being Santa, is that he is terse and speaks declaratively, unlike a Yoda with his backwards subject/predicate thing). In some ways, I have boiled Buddha down to: "If you are feeling anything at all, it means you are still alive, so be happy for that." (Any students of Eastern Religion reading here, please feel free to expand my understanding. Though I kind of like it. Yes, I am having intestinal cramps, but how lucky I am to be having anything at all!)

Some people like roller coasters. I don't. And since I think of myself as a fun-loving person, I feel as though I should. I really enjoy other people on roller coasters. They look so terrified and happy. But on a daily basis, sometimes just silently in the conext of my own little brain, I ride the existential one. Up, up I go with expectation, and I either fly, fly away with elation, or down down I fall with dejection or rejection. Any jection. Maybe with age I'll find that there will be less relief to the topographical map of my expectations. Maybe I'll learn only to worry about a problem once it's actually presented itself to me, and to be celebrate things as they come without waiting for second shoes to drop.

In the meantime some good things to do while waiting, aside from the givens of reading engrossing books and watching fast-quippy dialogical movies:

1) Avoid checking your email every five minutes. (it's just another form of waiting - don't stuff bananas with bananas.)
2) Cook. Bake. Eat. Rolling pins are good. Chopping is even better.
3) Make small furry needle-felted animals. Very soothing! Prick prick prick!
4) Watch real-life animals. They are so talented in living in the present.
5) Rescue Remedy. Placebo effect? Bring it on!
6) Think of at least one thing you have control over, and do it. Like go to bed early if you said you were going to.

Prometheus: Living Happily in the Present

Edith Knight Moulton circa 1900, whose mirthful smile while shoveling in Victorian garb dictates that we all lose our right to complain about snow.

On second thought, do we think maybe Edith is posing for comic effect? That her husband or livery stableman actually hitched up the team of horses to a plow and spent the better half of a week moving all that snow? Is she making a joke? Always good to remember that just because this moment was captured 110 years ago didn't mean that the lady didn't have a wicked sense of humor. Maybe even a wicked good one. Edith, I love your face either way. Look at your shoulder poofs! How can you not be smiling!?

The Future is Here. And it's More Snow than Tin Foil.

We have yet to see the sun in 2010, but we've seen every type of snowflake they make. Currently we are collecting the wet, cartoon snowflakes that pummel Snoopy in Charlie Brown's Christmas special. When we get socked in by the relentless white fluff, I have certain and specific cravings, namely: turkey chili, hot chocolate, scented candles, the New York Times. I also start dreading the return of the sun, and the end of the storm. I welcome a sunny day after gray, lifeless rain, but I never revel in the end of a snowstorm. Just like there is always a bit of disappointment when the power comes back on after an outage (the adventure is over? already?), I like it when the snowstorms are epic, and I can fantasize about having to snowshoe to the foodstore to hunt and gather the chili fixings.

Today we took Arden for a tour on her wooden pull-sled on the eastern prom. Here are a few photos from her maiden voyage, earlier this weekend.