I never want to leave this place.
Monday, September 22, 2014
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Poetry Corner Whenever-I-Feel-Like-It
Grace Note
Kevin Powers
It's time to take a break from all that now.
No use the artifacts
from which I've built the buried outline of a life,
no use the broken breath
which I recall from time to time
still rattles in my chest. Yes, we're due:
a break from everything, from use,
from breath, from artifacts, from life,
from death, from every unmoored memory
I've wasted all those hours upon
hoping someday something will make sense:
the old man underneath the corrugated plastic
awning of the porch, drunk and slightly
slipping off into the granite hills
of southeast Connecticut already, the hills sheaved off
and him sheaved off and saying
(in reply to what?) "Boy, that weren't nothing
but true facts about the world."
That was it. The thing I can't recall
was what I had been waiting for.
It likely won't come back again.
And I know better than to hope,
but one might wait
and pay attention
and rest awhile,
for we are more than figuring the odds.
Kevin Powers
It's time to take a break from all that now.
No use the artifacts
from which I've built the buried outline of a life,
no use the broken breath
which I recall from time to time
still rattles in my chest. Yes, we're due:
a break from everything, from use,
from breath, from artifacts, from life,
from death, from every unmoored memory
I've wasted all those hours upon
hoping someday something will make sense:
the old man underneath the corrugated plastic
awning of the porch, drunk and slightly
slipping off into the granite hills
of southeast Connecticut already, the hills sheaved off
and him sheaved off and saying
(in reply to what?) "Boy, that weren't nothing
but true facts about the world."
That was it. The thing I can't recall
was what I had been waiting for.
It likely won't come back again.
And I know better than to hope,
but one might wait
and pay attention
and rest awhile,
for we are more than figuring the odds.
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Where I'll Be
The other evening I went for a walk to the cemetery. From the top of the hillside you can see down into the valley, across acres of pasturelands with their grazing cows and August-thin creek beds. Though I want to be cremated when I die, if ever there was a graveyard that made me believe in belonging to one plot of earth for the rest of eternity this would be it. It is a quiet, humble place. Solo cups once full of wildflowers lie toppled, the water long evaporated, the brittle flowers fanned flat against the headstones like decks of cards. A scattering of American flags dot the stiff grass. Small pots of plastic roses and daises that won't ever wilt, won't ever decompose. I sat on a bench there for close to an hour, watching the sun scatter through pine needles and shift across the fields. I don't dwell much on my own death (which is odd, really, because I'm scared of such ridiculous things as banks and earwigs), but it's not something to which I'm particularly looking forward. This place, though, this hillside of the departed, makes death look peaceful and golden. It's an unexpected comfort.
After a while I made my way back to my apartment, stopping at the West Beach farm stand at the end of my road to pick out a bunch of basil and a zucchini for dinner. The air was warm and heavy with the scent of blackberries, and within minutes of arriving back home I was on my tiptoes in the shop yard, dropping the berries into a colander cradled in the crook of my arm. Penny was in the studio with the door open and I could hear her laughing at a book on tape. I walked up the driveway to Syd's house, checked to make sure I had no work in the shipping room, and headed up the basement stairs. When I opened the door, Syd was on her recliner watching the U.S. Open. She didn't ask what I needed, or even say "hey," which would have been an acknowledgment that I hadn't always been standing right there. She didn't look at me like I was rude for barging into her house unannounced. She simply turned away from the TV and said, "Come here, quick! This fifteen-year-old girl is about to beat Cibulkova!"As I write this I am lying on my bed with my window open, listening to Janet give a customer directions to the bakery. It strikes me how much I need this, the sound of her watering the roses as she explains that you take a right out of the driveway and then a left at the hardware store at the top of the hill. These are the sounds that I've come to know as a part of me. The bell-like clink of Syd stacking bowls straight from the kiln. The raven that perches in one of the firs outside my window and wakes me every morning, with its emphatic pitch, three minutes before my alarm is set to go off. How I pass through the studio one minute and Matt is trimming mugs to heavy metal, but ten minutes later he's switched to an episode of This American Life. It's amazing how much a sound can feel like home.
I miss my friends and my family, and I'm a shell of a person without my cat, but this place is my heartbeat. I have taken so much away from my years here--several days of bitter loneliness, yes, but also more happiness than I feel I deserve. There haven't been many times in my life when I've truly felt I belonged somewhere or to someone, but I belong here, to these people. No matter what happens to my physical body when I die, this is where I will remain forever.
Saturday, August 30, 2014
The Ups
August a terrible horrible no-good very bad month. Every year, without fail. Even knowing it's coming, and knowing that it'll be brutal when it does, does nothing to stanch the awful. These are the things to which I've clung desperately over the past four weeks:
 |
| This is Louis Lewis, the raccoon so nice I named him twice. (That and I couldn't decide how to spell it.) He got stuck in Syd's fig tree last night and spent most of today quivering on his perch while the dogs barked at him. Normally I'm petrified of raccoons, but that nose? Come on! |
 |
| This is the greatest place in all the land. |
 |
| My Library Fair haul. |
 |
| If I could just have this face here with me, I would stay on this island for the rest of my life. |
Saturday, August 16, 2014
What Survives
"Livvy," my mom said, "when you have a minute I have something to show you."
Last month my brother and his best friend flew to California to see friends from the family camp we'd attended every summer for the first sixteen years of my life. Growing up, it was the best place I knew, warm and safe and familiar; a constancy that allowed me to root myself. Camp was where I learned how to swim, where I made some of the deepest friendships of my life, where my brother (and then I) worked on staff and my mom taught pottery classes as an artist in residence. Almost exactly one year ago, it burned down.
"Adrian gave this to me," my brother told my mom when he got home, "but I want you to have it." Into her palm he pressed a round, jagged-edged object. It was blue at the edges, deepening to brown and black--and bubbling--at the center. It looked like it could have been a piece of sea glass so battered by grinding waves and sand that it had nearly turned to stone.
My mom led me into the kitchen where she'd leaned it up against the windowsill above the sink. "Pick it up," she said. It was heavy, its rough weight familiar to the daughter of a potter. "Flip it over."
I stared at my mom's signature, unblinking. Something sharp caught in my throat and I swallowed it down, all at once understanding and not understanding, knowing that this meant something but ashamed that I didn't know exactly what. Tears stung the corners of my eyes. We were silent for what felt like minutes but couldn't have been more than a few seconds, until my dad set aside his crossword and lay his pen on top of it. "Adrian found that," he said. "At camp."
Of all that was lost in those scorching, smoky hours last August--the circle of green chairs next to the dining hall, the bridge connecting main camp to Sun City across the river, the cabins and the rec hall and the camp store--what I held in my hand had survived.
I have lived my whole life knowing that no man-made object is permanent. I've accepted, albeit reluctantly, that believing our creations immune to natural or malevolent forces is naive, and that everything will, sooner or later, turn to dust. But here was something that didn't. Here was a three-inch pottery shard--the bottom of a coffee mug--that had merely bubbled when everything around it disintegrated. My mother's creation, the tangible product of our sixteen-year presence in the Sierra Nevadas, was stronger than fire. My mother was stronger than fire.
Last month my brother and his best friend flew to California to see friends from the family camp we'd attended every summer for the first sixteen years of my life. Growing up, it was the best place I knew, warm and safe and familiar; a constancy that allowed me to root myself. Camp was where I learned how to swim, where I made some of the deepest friendships of my life, where my brother (and then I) worked on staff and my mom taught pottery classes as an artist in residence. Almost exactly one year ago, it burned down.
"Adrian gave this to me," my brother told my mom when he got home, "but I want you to have it." Into her palm he pressed a round, jagged-edged object. It was blue at the edges, deepening to brown and black--and bubbling--at the center. It looked like it could have been a piece of sea glass so battered by grinding waves and sand that it had nearly turned to stone.
My mom led me into the kitchen where she'd leaned it up against the windowsill above the sink. "Pick it up," she said. It was heavy, its rough weight familiar to the daughter of a potter. "Flip it over."
I stared at my mom's signature, unblinking. Something sharp caught in my throat and I swallowed it down, all at once understanding and not understanding, knowing that this meant something but ashamed that I didn't know exactly what. Tears stung the corners of my eyes. We were silent for what felt like minutes but couldn't have been more than a few seconds, until my dad set aside his crossword and lay his pen on top of it. "Adrian found that," he said. "At camp."
Of all that was lost in those scorching, smoky hours last August--the circle of green chairs next to the dining hall, the bridge connecting main camp to Sun City across the river, the cabins and the rec hall and the camp store--what I held in my hand had survived.
I have lived my whole life knowing that no man-made object is permanent. I've accepted, albeit reluctantly, that believing our creations immune to natural or malevolent forces is naive, and that everything will, sooner or later, turn to dust. But here was something that didn't. Here was a three-inch pottery shard--the bottom of a coffee mug--that had merely bubbled when everything around it disintegrated. My mother's creation, the tangible product of our sixteen-year presence in the Sierra Nevadas, was stronger than fire. My mother was stronger than fire.
Monday, August 11, 2014
Why I Adore My Job
Sure, there are days when I wake up and would rather wedge bamboo shoots under my fingernails than go into the shop. There are days when I'm homesick-hollow, days when customers make me feel so small that even I don't quite believe I exist. But then my coworker calls to tell me about some pancakes she just made, or my boss walks in quoting Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and I recognize how lucky I am--that there is not a single place on this planet I would rather be than right where I am.
Several months back, Janet had to call a customer to tell her that her order was complete.
*The phone rings and a man picks up*
Man: Hello, Rosie?
Janet: No, this is Janet at Orcas Island Pottery.
Man: Well this is Ralphie!
Janet: I'm calling for Sonja.
I walked into the shop the other day directly after returning from the mainland. Janet was at the desk, slouched down over her book, and she practically jumped out of her seat when she saw me. "Oh!" she exclaimed, "I'm so glad you're home! I have to show you the worst decision I ever made!" She disappeared into the kitchen and returned with the latest issue of Kinfolk, a lifestyle magazine for "young food enthusiasts and adventure-seekers." "Have you seen this before?" Janet asked. With a look of disgust she plopped the magazine onto the table in front of me. I flipped through a few pages. There were a lot of photographs, some of them pretty decent, some recipes, articles with titles like "The Art of Weekend Drinking" and "Swimming Holes in Upstate New York." "I can't figure out who would find this interesting!" Janet said. "I mean, it's just ridiculous. Who reads this?" I'd rarely seen her so animated. "No," she added after a moment, "I'll tell you who this is for: young California beach computer." I truly have the best coworker in the whole wide world.
Janet: It's so hot.
Me: Take off a layer.
Janet: ...I don't do that.
*The phone rings*
Me (seeing Janet's name on the caller ID): Hello!
Janet: This heat.
Me: Yes.
Janet: It's like Hell.
Me: Yes.
Janet: Okay, that's all I had to say. Goodbye.
I walked into the shop one day after getting back from a bike ride into town. "So you went for a ride this morning," Janet said, a statement rather than a question. "And you went to the library." "How did you know I went to the library?" I asked. (It had been, as a matter of fact, the only place I went in town.) Janet laughed. "Because you always go to the library!"
*During a phone call with Janet*
Me: It's been so slow that I spent an entire uninterrupted hour picking blueberries this morning.
Janet: Oh, you sweetie.
Me: It was fun! I felt like I was living in an Anne of Green Gables novel.
Janet: Well aren't you a delicious little person to have around!
Janet: The bike group is here.
Me (looking around and seeing no one): They are?
Janet: I'm probably hallucinating. I think I have a brain tumor.
Ann: Or maybe they're just very small people.
*I sniff Janet's kombucha*
Janet: It tastes like fizzy orange juice. You should try some. Pour yourself...no, actually, don't--you may catch my brain tumor.
Me: A couple nights ago it was cold and I could snuggle under my comforter! It was lovely. But then last night it was hot and thick and gross again.
Janet: I've been thinking a lot about lamb stew.
"I've got a case of the Slows." -Syd
Classic Janet one-liners:
"I'm deficient. And I can't grow corn."
"I added tax when they were shipping. Then I was writing the wrong date on the receipts. Then I sprayed myself with water. You know what, it must be the brain tumor."
"Doing work makes me tired."
"It takes a lot of work to keep the woods in order."
*On the phone* "I bought cream to make peach maple ice cream. Oh, the rooster just walked into my house. Oh dear, and he just pooped."
Several months back, Janet had to call a customer to tell her that her order was complete.
*The phone rings and a man picks up*
Man: Hello, Rosie?
Janet: No, this is Janet at Orcas Island Pottery.
Man: Well this is Ralphie!
Janet: I'm calling for Sonja.
I walked into the shop the other day directly after returning from the mainland. Janet was at the desk, slouched down over her book, and she practically jumped out of her seat when she saw me. "Oh!" she exclaimed, "I'm so glad you're home! I have to show you the worst decision I ever made!" She disappeared into the kitchen and returned with the latest issue of Kinfolk, a lifestyle magazine for "young food enthusiasts and adventure-seekers." "Have you seen this before?" Janet asked. With a look of disgust she plopped the magazine onto the table in front of me. I flipped through a few pages. There were a lot of photographs, some of them pretty decent, some recipes, articles with titles like "The Art of Weekend Drinking" and "Swimming Holes in Upstate New York." "I can't figure out who would find this interesting!" Janet said. "I mean, it's just ridiculous. Who reads this?" I'd rarely seen her so animated. "No," she added after a moment, "I'll tell you who this is for: young California beach computer." I truly have the best coworker in the whole wide world.
Janet: It's so hot.
Me: Take off a layer.
Janet: ...I don't do that.
*The phone rings*
Me (seeing Janet's name on the caller ID): Hello!
Janet: This heat.
Me: Yes.
Janet: It's like Hell.
Me: Yes.
Janet: Okay, that's all I had to say. Goodbye.
I walked into the shop one day after getting back from a bike ride into town. "So you went for a ride this morning," Janet said, a statement rather than a question. "And you went to the library." "How did you know I went to the library?" I asked. (It had been, as a matter of fact, the only place I went in town.) Janet laughed. "Because you always go to the library!"
*During a phone call with Janet*
Me: It's been so slow that I spent an entire uninterrupted hour picking blueberries this morning.
Janet: Oh, you sweetie.
Me: It was fun! I felt like I was living in an Anne of Green Gables novel.
Janet: Well aren't you a delicious little person to have around!
Janet: The bike group is here.
Me (looking around and seeing no one): They are?
Janet: I'm probably hallucinating. I think I have a brain tumor.
Ann: Or maybe they're just very small people.
*I sniff Janet's kombucha*
Janet: It tastes like fizzy orange juice. You should try some. Pour yourself...no, actually, don't--you may catch my brain tumor.
Me: A couple nights ago it was cold and I could snuggle under my comforter! It was lovely. But then last night it was hot and thick and gross again.
Janet: I've been thinking a lot about lamb stew.
"I've got a case of the Slows." -Syd
Classic Janet one-liners:
"I'm deficient. And I can't grow corn."
"I added tax when they were shipping. Then I was writing the wrong date on the receipts. Then I sprayed myself with water. You know what, it must be the brain tumor."
"Doing work makes me tired."
"It takes a lot of work to keep the woods in order."
*On the phone* "I bought cream to make peach maple ice cream. Oh, the rooster just walked into my house. Oh dear, and he just pooped."
Thursday, August 7, 2014
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