Jan

Did I mention that Jan helped us out this spring? Once again, a non-family "family" member stepped up to the plate, and so we have another reprieve from financial collapse, another chance to outlast the selling of our house, the move to Rhode Island, the new job. I have a good feeling, but it is based upon the fact that it is spring. House sales happen now and there has been more interest. Also, there are more job openings, though I am not getting in the door to speak with anyone. Jan has helped her old friend Sally, and by extension, me while Clay has now helped his old friend Charlie, and by extension, Sally. I don't want to go any further into debt with friends; I don't know how much further we can go anyway, or how many others there are to help. Jan has done so very well in California with her jewelry business: who'd have guessed? Certainly not her former husband, the advertising creative type who loaned her a couple of thousand to cover start up costs many years ago, and off she went, never looking back.

So we are mired here and in South Salem. I have allowed this Time for Change to stall our progress, the house, the job, the family. How can I circumvent these clogs, if not clear them, and regain control, to move in a positive direction?

Weatha' in Can't Get ta theya from He-a Territory

Well. It may be Rhode Island, not Maine, but it is New England after all and the land of the Cabots and, in a former time, the Cod. So I have abundant license to remark upon the weatha down he-a. It is a soaker, wet, raining all day and probably most of the past night, too. Not cold, though. Just gusty from out of the east and southeast and, as I said, very wet. Dark and gloomy if you wish to find gloom. I did not seek it out today, so I saw the kind of brightness that surprises you on a light meter, the sort that pushes the needle nearly off the scale. The clouds and fogs refract an enormous quantity of light, much more than you realize. And looking up at Roger Williams Park, you can almost see the leaves unfurling in the treetops. The new face of spring covers the bare bones of winter past, soon relegating it to ancient memory.

There seem to be a set of spring type days. The template seen by far the most this spring has been fairly cold at night, down in the low 40s, 30s and a couple of times, the high 20s,warming up rapidly by day, turning the AM chill into clear, breezy and in the 50s. These days make you have to be outside; you make excuses to get there, after a winter under wraps. It has not been an April showers bring May flowers kind of month this time. It has been dry for a week at a stretch, twice. Then there are the raw days with driving wind and rain from the northeast, of which we had but one storm this April, and many deceptively fine, but breezy, sun-and-cloud days when you need to remember to wear an extra layer along with a windproof jacket. These days are tricky, if you don't. Exposed, the windchill sucks the fun right out of you in the garden. Another type of spring day, one with clouds, mist and no wind comes along when a gray mist cover lingers on for a day or two and the breeze, when it eventually fills in, comes in from the south or the southwest.

This being southern New England, these little "persnicitations" don't amount to a hill of beans to a Mainer, of course. Heck, Down East and back in the woods, there's still snow and the sap's probably not finished running, eitha'. Up at Tuckerman's, they'll be skiing down the headwall on Memorial Day, more or less. As far as I'm concerned for this year, anyway, I cain't get downa theya from he-a 'tall. Nope. So I'll categorize the easier variety we get around Naragansett Bay in the spring. Maybe next year?

Nobel Prize Laureate

I met John Nash yesterday. He won a Nobel Prize in economics and was the subject of the movie "A Beautiful Mind" several years ago, starring Russell Crowe. More important, I took Dad, who was a colleague of Nash's, first at Princeton, then in their first teaching jobs at Princeton, and next, at MIT. They are game theorists, students of Von Neumann and Oscar Morgenstern. Nash was sweeping the floor at the Institute for Advanced Study for thirty years, incapacitated by mental illness. He remains "out there" today. He also possesses that streak of intellectual arrogance that these types all arm themselves with in academe, or is it just this subset, I am not sure. He read his lecture verbatim from an overhead projector. The 600 or 700 hundred star-watchers had little clue about the subject, money, but it did not matter very much. It reminded me of the time when I went into London to see Noam Chomsky and hear him lecture about semantics. I have no clue about his subject, then or now. It was a scene. Dad seemed to need the break. We picked Sophie up after lacrosse practice and he came back with us to the apartment afterwards, drank a gin and tonic, ate a few pieces of smoked trout, looked at the NYT's crossword, and we went to dinner on Thayer Street. We drove him home, where the dogs, not Mary, greeted him. She was in bed, perhaps asleep, who knows. We let that sleeping dog lie.

Closures

Usually, when I see the word "closure" or hear it somewhere, the face or voice attached to it speaks about the end of a relationship, at a funeral service or refering to a personal relationship. Seeing a body at a wake or a coffin being lowered into the ground brings what we call "closure" to friends and family who have lost someone they love, it is the closing of a life. Or when a couple go their separate ways, there is usually pain, emotional wounds and as one confronts the change and comes to accept it over time or begins a new relationship, the wounds literaly heal, bringing "closure" and an end to the affair.

I guess there is also a "closing" when a house sells, when the title changes hands and money goes from buyer to seller. Or better put, the money goes from a buyer to a seller's community of debtors hovering nearby, had you asked me. For some subliminal reason, I often mix the words "opening" with "closing." I don't know. You may close the deal, but you open up a new relationship at the same time? There is probably something worth mining in my malapropism.

I have yet another definition of the word, from the garment manufacturing world where a closure is synonymous to the onomatopoetic zipper. Zippppppppp! It's closed. Zippppppp! It's open. Alledgedly, it comes from an executive in sales at Goodrich saying "Zip 'er up!" Button manfacturers played upon this universal sound as reason to avoid spec-ing zippers into combat gear. The sound of a soldier opening his fly to take a slash might give his whereabouts away and be his final 'out.' Quite the worse, if a zipper failed, a soldier's pants would fall down to his ankles, and he might have to hopscotch in a hostile environment, dodging lead. Zippers were too unreliable, once upon a time, or so the button people claimed.

Quite a few years ago I purchased millions of dollars of "closures, slide fasterner, coil..." for a company where I worked. I learned much more about them a few years later, when I worked with an expert team in a serious effort to reinvent the zipper, bringing together the major manufacturers, engineers and technicians in the business. We solved many of the known problems, earning a score of 99 out of one hundred for our efforts, but the government agency lacked funding at the time. Eventually, few years later, the proposal spawned several small contracts. My partner neglected to mention obtaining them after the initial effort stalled, I never asked him why, but through the vicissitudes of life, the matter resurfaced on the table, and I found myself writing a synopsis of the innovative research, summarizing the state of the art in the closure business one more time. Apparently it is open season on closures these days, a matter that will not stay closed. The new zipper makes no noise. Erica Jong, in her novel Fear of Flying, would have tossed it off as just another "zipless fuck."

Spring Jumping into Summer

There must be a law of physics that explains accelerating time. The past few weeks have flown ahead, the increasingy warm weather mirroring the transition of the season into summer. Plants have sprung forth in the flower beds--the tulips, daffodils, narcissus after the snowdrops and the crocii; peonies have speared the mulched earth and trees begin to unfurl their new leaves, their feathery red buds opening into tiny chartreuse parasols across most of southern New England. The weeping cherry is bursting into bloom in South Salem. Things are happening all around in a kind of crescendo that hides one development from the others around it, and then, almost by surprise, you wake up and the work in progress is in full bloom, a symphony, not a solo. We need resolution to our annis horribilis with regard to finances; the sale and consolidation of real estate; my quest for work; our plans for the summer; our living as a family under one roof, reducing the hissing sound of dollars going out of our acccounts. It is my find hope that the longterm sensibility of our thinking will prevail and prove its soundness, and that before Memorial Day, looking backwards, we will have the satisfaction of the past fall, winter and spring's tensions behind us. It is taking too long. The market is too uncertain for my taste. I am impatient to move, to be less dependent on its vagaries, and to accelerate with the new season.

A Nibble

A nibble comes from Brown. The bobber tugs, sending concentric circles, little rings away. I do not yank the rod tip to set the hook. I must prepare. They want a letter, a resume, writing samples. I need to set the hook, not let them chew too long, at least until they have something worth chewing. I need to refer back to the posting and respond. Communications Manager, Corporate & Foundation Relations. I know, it is just a nibble, you know. And as Jim Carey says in Dumb and Dumber, "One in a million! You mean I've got a chance?!" Let's see how far I can take this.

Man in Dog's Body

The cell phone rang on the porch. A sleeping dachshund lifted her head, suddenly alert, intent on the intruding noise. The phone rang several more times, eliciting the same reaction every time. You just know she understood someone important was calling. She barked enthusiastically, wondering why someone did not answer it.

Dogs are people reincarnated, human beings in hairy, zippered suits. If only we knew where the zipper was we could open it, and let the person dog inside, out. But being human, maybe we would not let the dog out of the bag. This reincarnation is a penalty for having been human and bad, or bad and human or moswt likely both is not to find the zipper. Big dogs once were little people, and shaggy dogs were once bald men. The punishment is in being the opposite in dog life, and occasionally a reward if the human happened to have been good. Dogs know the meaning of everything we say, even comprehending some of the multi-syllable words, like metempsychosis. And if they cannot respond or let us know how much they comprehend,or they will die. They are permitted to empathize only, to play and amuse and they mostly do, especially when hungry.

The dogs are coming to town. Get out the leashes, get out the doggie bags, the water bowl. The dogs are coming, and so is the wife.

Tomorrow, I Believe in Tomorrow!

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed far away! I had a plan, it was thought out with the expert counsel of others, but evidently, it was not cautious enough. It is never possible to be too conservative; others just want to make you feel good, or else they are sadistic and enjoy watching people founder. Advice is worth what we usually pay for it, that is, nothing.

It is spring. Last summer's plan is still on hold while we await an offer to buy our house. Yes, time for change is overdue. Not just change, but change for good, change for the better? How about a positive resolution? I am asking for what is normal, no more, no less. Yet time and time again, our expectations lower, we dare not hope. We look at cars, we look at houses. We think of places we might go, we think of pursue our interests, freed from the crushing mortgages and expenses of maintaining two old places in constant need of improvement. Instead the values plunge and the maintenance sucks everything out. Our dreams come to nought, while notions, sometimes good ones, only evaporate. We are nothing but flies to mean, "wanton boys, who kill us for sport."

For a year we owned two houses. We were on paper at least, better off than ever. Now, without an income the houses have become liabilities, their values undermined. In my mind's eye I envision the hideous Fall of the House of Usher, with everything caving into a giant hole in the ground. In our case, the house would probably cave into the septic field or else the stonepile will slide out from under us, leaving a house cantelevered on a cliff. Sell one, own one, we thought we would be much more stable and secure, but we have yet to rid ourselves of the asset. Our hands are tied.

What will we do about next year and Sophie? We have more than a half of the tuition from this year outstanding. Next year will be another year of expenses. How patient will the school be in the coming months? And then there are the credit lines, pushed to the limit, a personal loan from Clay, and we are out of cash again, just two months later. Who and where do we turn to next for help? As I read The Good Earth with its cycles of famine and fortune, the message so far is Wang Lung's rootedness to his land, the earth is good to him, it enriches him and anchors him. It lets him know who he is. The only times he loses himself are the times when he loses the connection, the times of famine and flood when starvation and boredom turn him away from his fields. I don't know how the book ends. Pearl Buck has sown many seeds of tragedy, and it remains for me to see how they will find resolution. There have been so many real life lessons in the story, lessons about tenacity and compromise, about duty and love, about human frailties and strengths. Even unfinished, it is an amazing novel, with a rare universality, even this long after it was written.

I don't know how we are going to come out of the situation we are in, only that we must come out. It is a potentially bitter, real-life lesson that I am learning, as are most lessons. Life is not a fairy-tale, but it must be a question of not giving in to cynicism or bitterness, of seeing things positively, through a rose-tinted glass, if necessary, and always looking forward to tomorrows, let alone better ones, ever thankful, ever sure.

How ironic it is to be perpetually locked into this cycle of fear, nearly always filled with worry, nearly always afraid. Do we invite it upon us? This must be the human condition, not just our problem, the way it often is. And if it is not, then I have had a spate of lousy deals, and it is about time we are dealt a good hand, even though the probability for each hand is just the same each time the cards are dealt. Nevertheless,it feels like when Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern flip a coin that always comes up "heads." Had they delivered their note from King Claudius, it would have been off with their heads. With luck such as theirs, they should have tucked tails between their legs and run!

Plumbing

A fine day to ruin with amateur plumbing. I hate the work; it baffles me most of the time and the little problems are such pains in the ass that there is never such a thing as a "good day" plumbing. I wanted to open up the house and I wanted to save money. If it is just the case that I hate to do it, I can get over the hurdle. It is spring, the danger of a hard freeze is past, although it goes into the twenties tonight. We will go down to the camp at the end of the week to clean up the winter's mess. Now the trip there will be compromised. The house looks forlorn, from the roof down, with its rotting shingles and bee's nest in the chimney cricket, a geyser of water in the crawl space beneath.

The plumbing went well enough, that is, until I turned the water on, the only moment of truth. And the truth hurt. After all of the care taken to put the place to bed last fall, there appears to be a bad leak under the house in an exterior crawl space. And the water did not go on at all on the north side of the house, I have no understanding why as yet. And as for that fat, law-unto-himself bastard plumber, I've had enough of him. In last fall's effort turning the water off, he exhibited the sort of inconsistant behavior that is why he will not remain our plumber. The kitchen faucet was taken apart to an absurd extreme, while the dishwasher connection was simply lost, cut off or taken away, again for no obvious reason, with the result that I could not reconnect the water hose at all. And the leak beneath the house exists because the bum forgot to open up one of the faucets, and the water burst the copper fittings, naturally, the break is in an almost impossible place to crawl.

In the future, I am going to open up and close the house down myself. I'll do a better job, and I'll be frustrated. I'll piss and moan, but it will happen on my own schedule without grovelling to have it done, without dealing with half-assed work, a half-assed attitude. A handful of plumbing projects need work before they break and leak; this plumber never attends to them until they break, ever in a hurry to be elsewhere. I guess he thinks it is better business, to charge us for emergency overtime and that sort of thing, but he is mistaken. He has no more business with me, so it backfired. It doesn't matter. My hands are cut an scratched a little bit. They are not as strong as they once were. They will be telling me I am a plumber for a week to come, no doubt.

Press on Regardless

John P. Meade used to order something he called a "Press On Regardless" at the Yacht Club bar after an afternoon racing sailboats on Long Island Sound. He did not want to drink booze, knowing himself and his shortcomings well. A stiff drink in the late afternoon, the pursuit of many others, almost surely would spell the end of all productivity, and it was a mystery as to whether he'd become caustic or mellow towards those around him. Meade's concoction was a simple combination of tonic water, angostura bitters and lime, served on the rocks in a highball glass by a bartender he had known for decades. It represented a 'welcome home' gesture of refreshing restraint after hours out in the sun and wind and salt, starkly contrasting with the rum and gin laced preference of most of the other sailors with their florid, sunburnt visages, looking more like lobsters than men, loud brawlers infamous for never knowing when to stop. Meade set a good example, living well below his means among a crowd whose hue and cry was closer to carpe diem.

A mental P.O.R. chit is coming due these days. I'm not at a bar, nor am I out on the water racing sailboats, but many long-considered, conservatively held, anticipated things are just not going my way. The house and work are not happening. The family is not together. The bank account resembles a farm's soil during a drought, parched and cracked, berefit of fruit. I fear for the future. The time for change will have unintended consequences, I'm afraid. When I read the news, my sense is that I am not alone, that there are many others like me, silent, fearful, poised on the verge of falling off a steep precipice. Analysts use the metaphor of a bubble about to burst to describe the real estate situation, and it is apt. The longer it takes for us to sell our house, for me to find new work and for the family to move on, the closer and longer we come to jeopardizing everything. I cannot overstate it: the balance is just that fragile. So even though this discussion may not be about life and death, it is about hope and future expectations, and thoughts of Job and patience, ill fortune and perseverance, past prodigality. A depression now prevails, predominating over clear and sunny thought. Inside, it is always a raw and wet gray day without a cloudbreak to steer for, a distant spot of light on the horizon.

So I steel myself and press on, knowing not how deep my reserve may be, regardless. I still have faith. I am not talking of religion, but faith in Darwin, faith in luck, faith that the strong survival will. It is about determination, not resignation, balls of steel, intestinal fortitude. It is the only way to fly. Chin up and carry on! Vive the Press on Regardless!

Really Scared

You know, this "Time for a Change" may seem kind of laid back, my personal observations, measured, all taken in tranquility, but I am worried. Really, really scared for the first time, as the sand runs through the glass. Nothing's happened, nothing is happening to make our house sell. Nobody is even coming through our doors, and the money's running out of them, rivers of it, month after month. And the bills. The bills! I can see how people panic; I feel panicky all the time, but I have promised myself to hang in on this responsibility of mine. I have walked along the edge for months and months this year, and another time, for a year and a half without health insurance, and another time, for over a year without paying a mortgage and through many rounds of unemployment. I am in one of those cycles now. No work. No prospects. It is time for the tough to hang tough. No flinching, no bailing out. Stay steady; solutions will follow. Take deep breaths. Breathe for Chrissakes. But there is a toll for all of this. It is called stress, and I do not like it very much.

Reasons Not to Try

In the beginning, there was Mom. She laughed at my singing and told me I would never be as good as my father. And my father was never going to be as good as her brother, and her father for that matter. My father named her brother "The Saint" for a while, later changing it to "The Pope" as His Eminence grayed. My father was a tall enough challenge for me, let alone handling the others. So thanks, Mom. This has been a problem over the years. In addition, a lot of 'university brats,' that is, faculty children who have to deal with an academically brilliant parent or two have a hill to climb academically. And there are more than a few unsatisfied, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfish" mothers, at least from my generation, personally unfulfilled, with aspirations lodged in their spouses and children. In my case, there are also a few generations of illustrious forebears to contend with. My conclusion was that it just wasn't possible to compete and win.

And then there were the girlfriends. There were two types in the end. Loyal and other than loyal. I thought maybe they would sift out as smart and pretty, and just pretty and rich. The latter were often wild in the waterbed, but loyal to themselves alone. The smart and pretty ones had what Fitzgerald identified as "white crook's eyes." That most of them were rich or had rich dadies was just a way to avoid having to deal with an unpleasant subject. These were sybaritic, uncommitted times. A couple of them might have married me, had I asked them, but I never did. And had I done so, I wasn't really; it never would have worked. In the end, I married my friend, neither quite as rich nor quite as pretty, but plenty smart, if not Princeton, and more creative. And most of all, loyal to me beyond the Fitzgerald girls. And trust is worth all the others, brined in a barrel. When you grow up undermined and stomped upon, having a steady friend is the most important. All the same, there is a fear that I settled for something reliable out of fear that I would be ripped apart again by all those crazy, selfish, cruel she-wolfish women. In a way, it amazes me that I still love them. Maybe they are reasons not to try, and I should get over it, hate them, and be free.

And then there are those who have been around me most of my life in the experiences falling into the category called "work." The past boss and mentors, the columnists in the newspapers and newsweeklies, the head of a publishing house, the writers, editors, photographers and artists, the medical doctors, lawyers, the real estate developers, the politicians, the designers. the shipping owner, a few of the relatives, too. I'll leave their names out, but I covet their successes, not begrudingly, but I just want a little piece, a modicum of approval, for myself as well. I see these people here and there on a weekly basis, while I sit contemplating my laptop, working within, yet severed from the world. The barriers are my many reasons never to try, for the distance between me and them now seems insurmountable. I sit here and wonder how to pay my bills.

Often, almost always, this little voice, nags at me, saying "You are not good enough" and "I think you can't, I think you can't." It says "shut up, you have nothing to say" and I shut it out, but it does not die. Sometimes it comes in written form or even out loud from others. "Don't write, never write. You are a terrible writer!" one said. The meat of the pile of rejection letters says "we're sorry" and "thank you for your application" and "so many candidates, but. . ." and "We regret to inform you..." and on and on.

One cannot allow oneself to listen to the auditorium filled with its nay votes and lack of confidence. One walks, punch-drunk from so many direct blows to the head, body punches to the gut, a kidney punch or two. Others may possess more fortitude and fortune, or simply better timing, at least that's what I think about it. One cannot listen to any of these reasons not to try, but I confess to feeling overwhelmed as oftentimes as not. When I see and read and hear so many without better insight or method of expression, it gives me hope. Newspapers, book stores, magazines and the television screen team with the mondain, so much dross among the talented few. The talented few are so dazzling, they are the thousand points of light. They'll tell you that it is all attitude and I want to believe them, to say that they are right, to believe, but in the end I don't. An emptiness of spirit, a small, dense, nuclear darkness within me that challenges acceptance or belief, that refuses the creeds of Christianity, the obeisance of the corporate world that will never allow me to come under the protective umbrella or tent. What is this unyielding that may keep me from full immersion, from fully trying? Is it a fear of not being good enough? It is a struggle between the devils and archangels, the bad and good, the wrong and right, the easy and hard choices, the cynic and idealist?

I sense there is a lifelong struggle within, the magma of my soul. In the rearview mirror, I view a series of roads not taken, of many taunts and tests. I am a fierce little fighter, guarding my personal spark. This force is necessary to stand up against the mass of people and the reasons not to try. This ember keeps me saying, "There is a reason for me to try, I'll show you! Just you wait and see." And I will because I recognize, even if I cannot grasp it, that I have that 'grun tu molani' of Saul Bellow's (who died the other day) Henderson, in Henderson The Rain King. In the long run, it will pull me through. Or as Sally once wrote, "in the long run, men hit only what they aim at."

Time Change

I've got that old, "spring forward, fall back" feeling again. I'm in flux. My body wants to stay up late, and it really does not appreciate the rude awakening by alarm clock an hour earlier than accustomed. Personally, I have no idea why we do this any longer, does anyone? Do we save energy or accomplish more work as a result of standar and savings times? The notion of daylight savings should have gone out with the industrialization of America a century ago, I would have thought. Or maybe I have not thought enough about the matter at all, and it just annoys me to change? I like noticing the earlier dawns, the later sunsets each day, and I resent it when the whole thing is bolixed up, manipulated for an obsolete, little understood reason. It is disorienting. It separates us from what we observe in nature, and that is a bad thing. It irritates me every spring for a couple of weeks while I must adjust to the change. And being that I am not growing any younger or more upbeat, how will I feel about this next year or ten years from now? Maybe I ought to time the spring time change with a trip somewhere else in the world? The fall is irrelevant, since it is relatively painless to gain an hour instead of losing one, and since waking up in the morning to discover it is earlier, not later may be eased into gently. Am I Andy "What I hate about. . ." Rooney? Who am I? Standard savings time stinks.

Tight, Like a Tiger

Goldmember, that "freaky deeky Dutchman" in the movie of the same name keeps saying things that a manly man is not supposed to say, noticing that Austen Powers is "tight like a tiger." Dr. Evil tells him that he is not supposed to be noticing such things at all, Noooooooo! It is perverted, man observing another man's sexuality, but he does anyway. Here I am, "tight like a tiger," pacing around this apartment.

Self-incarcerated, I have been inside all day long, missing out on a variably brisk spring day, organizing, emailing, organizing, emailing. Paying bills, trying to hunt down a new job. As I pace around and around and around, were you looking into my cage here, you would notice an animal, homo erectus [evil be he who think evil], acting something like a caged, crazed creature. You would observe a being in constant motion, moving around and and around, sitting down, getting up, looking out the windows, sitting down, standing up, walking to the kitchen to snack on something, frequent pit stops to the bathroom. Stopping here, pacing there, moving but pretty much alone with thoughts, rarely on the telephone, prowling. I am wondering, wandering. Reading, and writing and reading and writing, more pondering, more pacing, and so it goes. The daytime version of the sleepless night.

Amazingly or perhaps not, in this small place I go nowhere, but I guess I am not sedentary. You would think I might be fat. I could be thinner, but, I'm in the process of streamlining for summer, in change, in transition and filled with nervous energy, lean and mean. Were things in my life more settled, maybe I would pace less and metabolize more slowly? I have to fight entropy, fight my midriff's thickening genes as I age. I can visualize an aortic aneurism, enlarging as I age. No matter that this makes little medical sense. What I know is that I cannot eat without a drink. Food always traps itself in my esophagus without a lubricant to flush it down. A surgeon uncle warned me about his operation to prevent a rupture, and of how his brother died from one. He told me the the odds for surviving an aneurism are "one in twenty" and the odds from dying of preventive surgery are about the same. So I pace. I think. I write. Therefore I am. I look at the creeping clock. At times it postively crawls. Other times, I could not possibly wind it as fast as it flies, minutes like seconds, hours like minutes, round and round.

I am intermittantly manic, depressed. It is the plight of the artist, I accept, and the project of my genes. I must go out now, into the world. I must find my daughter as the schoolday, now turned into sports practice afternoon, draws to its end. I must figure out what's for dinner, whether to watch the mens' NCAA basketball championships tonight. Clearly, there are no forseeale big decisions for me today, beyond whether to drink wine or have a rum and lime and whatever's handy to cut the drink instead. I can watch the athletes, tight like tigers, leap and run and spin and heterosexual that I am, tomorrow I can watch the women play for their national championship, those tight, tawny tigresses, remark upon what I see without fear of Dr. Evil's censure. They are caged images inside my televison set and I am caged in my apartment and the seemingly limitless suite of rooms of my mind.

It's a War Out There!

The past month or two of winter took its toll on the summer house since my last visit. There was a great deal of water inside the house after the previous night's storm. Looking for the reason, I climbed the roof to learn that an animal had been clawing at the roof vent, ripping it open. I have no way to know if the mess of shingles a few feet away relates somehow to an animal looking for a sheltered place to live inside the roof, but the leak inside the dining room was the worst it has ever been.

I was up on the roof to begin the bee eviction process. There is no secret life for them anyone. I spray poison into the nest next to the chimney, knowing the hive is not accessible yet, just the entrance to it. I think it will take several assaults upon the hive to be rid of the problem. They've been there several times over the years and it must be a preferred piece of real estate. In a few days I will go back to see what I need to do next. The shingles just deteriorate underfoot when I walk on it and I am afraid I may fall through the roof if I am not extremely careful. We cannot hire a roofer to come and repair things until we sell our house in New York. Our finances and much else remain stalled as they have been for a year. Meanwhile, the roof rots, the taxes have yet to be paid. It is so very much the time for change! I cannot wait to say "GO!" on many projects now stalled. I saw cousin Jeff crossing the field above us and waved. One of Jeff's dogs got into it with a racoon, hiding in the stonewall. I saw the bundle of nastiness scuttle across the road, growling. It is an odd thing to see in the middle of the afternoon, and it usually indicates a sick or rabid animal, especially since racoons are nocturnal. I clobbered it with a stick, killing it. The blunt and violent act that made me feel a bit ashamed, but there was a purpose to it. I was glad to find no foaming at the mouth, leaving the carcass there for the crows. One thing is certain, we don't need another racoon on the premises. They can be devastating in an empty summer house. Perhaps this animal or one of its relatives was the one ripping the roof open? Is a vaccinated dog immune from getting rabies when bitten by a rabid animal? I hope so! There were a number of mouse nests in the garage, but the baits in the house appear untouched in several places I would have expected to find more rodent activity. Left to there own devices they make such a mess and are so destructive. We will connect the water in a few weeks and pull things together for the summer. A good vaccuuming and a scrubbing, and carpentering. The waves from the previous night's storm were tremendous, coming directly from the south, uninterrupted on their way up North from Bermuda. Here in this house below the hill above the sea, we are particularly in the combat zone between man and nature. there's a war going on out there.

Mortality in the Air?

It is spring, tra-la. The air warms, the sun has moxie, the sap rises, life returns in force, and yet death is in the air, on the news, all around. A woman on life support hangs in the balance of national conservative politics and those who believe the matter is a personal, family affair. An important southern Senator passes away without much notice, eclipsed by the drama of a federal court intervening in the outcome. The "tough man who made a tender chicken" died yesterday. Most of all, Pope John Paul lies near death Rome's Vatican. Were he to linger in a coma, sustained by all manner of medical, cardio-pulmonary aids, the Catholic church would be paralyzed, in a coma until he dies. This would be the same predicament the Florida woman remained in for fifteen years. It does not seem likely that he will be in such a state. A Cardinal will hit him on the head three times with a silver hammer when he dies. I guess this must come from the days when they worried about burying a man alive? Predictably, the weather is wet and cold, a raw weekend forecast for New England. What a shame for all creatures that have made it through the harshness and deprivations of the long winter season not to survive the summer cycle of the new, full year.

April Fool

We had an offer today for a million dollars in cash for our house. The buyer cannot wait to sit down, and plunk his money on the barrel head. I cannot believe it, after all these months of anxiety. Our first and last offer! Accepted! It's a deal! Hurrah! The closing will be in ten days. We will go on a trip somewhere delightful. I have thee not, and yet, I see thee still!

And on another front, I received a call from X.Y. & Zed this morning. They have an office, a desk, a computer, a salary and full benefit package reserved for me. I will work with my friend, the owner, alongside his wife. I am to set up a family foundation that will give away a tenth of their corporate profits per annum, beginning with $25 million in seed money. Their interests lie in the arts, in education, in Buddhism, in several private educational institutions, in mental health, and in yachting, land trust, conservation and the sea. It doesn't get any better than this! I am to work with the family to help set up and distribute short and longterm gifts. They rely upon my reputation for being fair and equitable, as well as judicious and imaginative.

My wife and daughter will join me this weekend to help find a new residence on College Hill and locate a studio-loft nearby. We will keep a small, Alerion class sloop moored at the dock near the office for sailing after work in Naragansett Bay, and for an occasional longer sail over southern New England waters, between the Cape, Martha's Vineyard and Long Island Sound. . .

"I read the news today, oh boy, about a lucky man who made the grade. . ." And "Richard Cory glittered. . ." so it is said, "when he walked." "Out on the main line. I heard that he died. Even Neil Young is having a bad day, lying in a burned out basement, thinking something about. . . what? April's Fools. They n'er saw Elba, nor the summer's bloom, their widows "used to sleep until the afternoon."