August slip sliding away

 

 

Bringing black back into play was a shock. A little of that shit goes a long way. There may be some real mudhens in this batch.

Summer has turned her face and looked over her shoulder at us coyly. "I'm almost done with you, peasants." 

Mid-nineties during the day and mid-sixties at night, and after a few days of neglect, the pool has taken on that green tinge that won't be turned back.  It's my fault for buying one last tub of chlorine tabs. 

 

The hours

The western light at Jake's is fey. There is no capturing what appears to the naked eye. It's much warmer and more resonant than this; the greenery skulks. As you watch, the colors change, and a cow out there in the pasture moans and groans.  

Jake's two cats read the invisible messages from my furred posse at great length.  The same thing happens in reverse when I get home. Mine are all over and in the bag smelling what cat life is like in a strange place days away.

At home I have a catnip plant growing out on the high deck. I brought a fistful of stalks and leaves for Nibbler and Milo. Much hilarity ensued. The silliness followed by delicious naps.

 

Charlie is enjoying seventh grade. He seems to take it all in stride. 
 

Then

 

A way of seeing.

 Memory markers. 

Several friends, both in the flesh and the vaporous sort, have put me in mind of keeping my mind. I have never had a good memory for names, and a large part of that was being lazy because I was married to a walking cultural database. The man read the TV guide. He knew the names of the studio musicians on most albums. He always knew the names of supporting actors in movies. And what book the movie was made from. Why should I stress? 

Now I'm reminded that those blank spaces need attending to. Connecting the face and the action with a name or title. Puzzling it out, even if it takes five steps to get there. I'm not a big fan of physical exercise, but brainwork gives me instant payoff.

 I've also recently started wearing hearing aids. Taking an active part in conversations is really nice. 

The purple box is a relic of Spring 1967. I took the train alone to interview for the School of Visual Arts. Here's how my memory works: keep the good stuff, leave the trash behind. 

I remember nothing of the interview at all. Wherever my brain was at the time, whatever nonsense came out of my mouth, they bought my story. I don't even recall what was in my portfolio. Zero!

What I do remember. Taking these pictures in a booth in Grand Central Station before I hailed my first cab. I can still smell the acrid chemicals that lingered on the filmstrip as it dropped into the hopper. 

~Grand Central was and remains overwhelming. It's a portal into history. The track I came and went on, 49, faced the Oyster Bar that I never set foot inside. It never seemed to be open during the daytime. A vampire hangout. 

~The newsstand was a marvel! I took one of every free paper. The East Village Other, the Village Voice and a copy of the NY Post because my Dad always bitched about not being able to get it in the 'burbs.

~The relief I felt when the interview was over and I stepped out the double doors onto 23rd street and I still had an entire day with no one to account to, some cash in my pocket and, best of all, no one knew who I was. I could be anyone, least of all an aspiring artist. It was a magical feeling of invisibility despite the chrome yellow felt hat. 

Takashimaya was right in midtown. I bought a kit with a Chinese ink stick, stone, and brush for calligraphy. About ten of those colored acrylic boxes for keeping everything. A striping brush that I used for eye makeup.  

Somehow I made my way to the East Village. As if time and tide could have stopped me. I bought beads and incense, and feathers, and brass glasses with round green prisms for lenses. I bought JOB rolling papers just to say I had them. 

Somewhere in my clutch of important papers there's a transcript . First year? Second? Without looking for it I can tell you that the art grades came in a pale second to a literature and language course. 

I wish had taken a bigger bite of the Apple at the time. 

Fair warning. No filter.

 

taking the waters

 

It looks like this right now, except for a few stray leaves from the storm last night. I found and patched the slight leak. The pump is running even if the filter stopped working years ago. The little chlorine ducks wander, keeping things drinkable come Armageddon. I brushed the inside down, a good upper body workout.

The past few days have been pool-perfect. mid-90s. high, drunken sheep clouds, the occasional whisper of a breeze. I dog paddle in a circle, snagging leaves and tucking them over the railing. Then I drift for a while in a seat that suspends me so gently it would be easy to fall asleep and get scorched, except the balance point for me and the sling suspended on a bent pool noodle is critical and must be maintained by shifts as simple as a deep breath. The least amount of effort needed to keep from being tipped out.

This is the sensation that makes all the trouble worthwhile. Floating. Flipping the bird at gravity and all the trouble it wreaks on my old frame. My fractured and compressed vertebrae come off one another and relax while I float. 

I can close my eyes and remember the sensation of surrender that I felt the first time I was allowed into the pond away from my mother's reach. I can remember falling face down and coming up sputtering to see my father laughing at my amazement and lack of fear. He crouched on the verge, in his shiny wingtips, bowling shirt and brilliantined hair. Going somewhere.

My mother sat in the water in her ruched two-piece, passed her lipstick-stained cigarette back to him on the off chance that I might need catching. I did not. I stood up in water chest-deep when I had not yet walked on dry land I was so fat. I stepped back and away from her and felt the freedom of buoyancy. It felt like wings.

Rosie was ready to lunge, the look on her face both proud and apprehensive. My dad applauded and laughed again. The water cradled and held me. Loved me, rubber pants and all. I remember everything. My mother took this picture, her best friend Ezara, holding me upright. I wouldn't be one until mid-October.

                                                                                🌊🌊🌊

These days, I have a small Bluetooth speaker that connects to music in my phone, zipped into a sandwich bag. I put my back to the house and dream into the woods. The water is a perfect (for me) 80 degrees. Some herb would be nice, but not necessary.

Yesterday, there was work to do. A hard assessment. We bought the pool, and Jim built the deck in 1998.  Twenty-eight years ago and that's the same pool liner and infrastructure. The decking hasn't fared as well, but it's only wood and has had little to no maintenance. You can only pressure wash wood so many times.

While I drifted, I counted the boards, measured by eye, and did the math. 1800 dollars, give or take,just in lumber. Colin can do the labor. The supporting framing is still solid - Jim always overbuilt structures, bless him. 

A central steel support column on the main deck -the dye deck- needs to be replaced because someone has been letting salt leach down through the boards for years. The wood is pickled, but the steel corroded through. 

That task out of the way, I switched over to the big tube with the mesh bottom and drink holders so I could take up notebook and pen for a while with my sombrero giving me just enough shade to scribble. I sometimes get pages and pages which usually boil down to one or two lines of dialogue or an incident. Something to move the story along. 

Yes, I am brown and wrinkled, and the story will wrap up at an abandoned beachfront cottage. Any day now, but that would require hours with the laptop and it's going to be another beautiful summer day. 

Taking risks

I've been scavenging cards from the Goddess Tarot for years now. Mostly they become bookmarks, never to return to the deck. 

Since I never used the deck for Tarot, it felt better to just make the individual cards useful. I also don't feel bad if I accidentally leave one in a library book. This is the first time I've cut one up. Painless.

The Page of Wands learns by taking risks. I helped him along. 

These spherical elements are helping the whole piece along.

I was listening to a ball game and working on this one well past dark. When I finally stopped and snapped off the lamp, the view up to the grove was breathtaking. I didn't know the new streetlight (I called in the request to have it fixed when the bulb burned out) was so bright.