Nomads

Maine fulfilled its promise. It was a safe and comfortable place to land. It was where we got our bearings. In Camden, there is a library on a hill overlooking the harbor, where I first imagined being a mother walking with a small girl, that place turned out to be more than fantasy. I lived a dream, which has never happened before. I believed in a life before I saw it, I had faith and that faith was a prophecy come true. Hand in hand. We are building it, we are making it real. And now, here we go again. again-again. We're off. To the West. To pursue. To earn and achieve and make one last stab at adventure. Before the next time we do it all over again.

I've been more tired and more afraid. I am ready to go in the most American direction of destiny. To sift through chaos and have the unknown become familiar territory. Which isn't to say I no longer want roots. A house with a garden, a room of my own. Every time we move I have to create that space all over again. Seek out the best place to write and work and make each house a home. A home, there's no place like home. There's a Wizard of Oz exhibit at The Farnsworth. A collection of the movie's memorabilia. Behind the museum a replica of Dorothy's house as it looked when it landed. Disheveled, having been through a twister and murdered a witch. I know how it feels. I have been that Kansas house in Munchkin Land.

California, here we come. Away we go to Lotus Land.

Two Worlds

Malcolm recently observed that in The Way, Way Back the young protagonist moves from one world of crazy adults into another, in order to gain insight. You must return to the world of you birth. You have to go but you can't stay. There is knowledge to be gained outside the walls of your ken. Is this the heroic archetype? Plato's cave?

Other movies that fit this model include:
Girl Most Likely
The Lifeguard
The Kings of Summer
The Wizard of Oz
Alice in Wonderland

Does every film work this way? Are they all quest stories?

A Utopian Moment And The Age of Imitation

Sixty degrees, the twenty-third of October in Rockland, Maine, at noon. Fewer than a dozen very young children and their parents on the playground under a wispy, filtered sky. The mostly-gone leaves are orange and crackling with the end of their energy cycle. It is neither warm nor cold. The children are all scrambling up walls and down slides, swinging and hiding. The parents are following, seeking, laughing with their own and others and each other. Some join the group and some go. Everyone is wearing sweaters. It feels like a village. When I realized what was happening I tried to live down deep inside it and save it in my memory forever. It was ideal happiness. A moment of perfect bliss.

Syllogism

God is love.
Violet is love.
Violet is God.

I see so clearly in her, my child,
that every single one of us carries the chip, the shard,
the piece of the puzzle that makes up the nameless name of God.
By definition always moving, shifting, in constant flux
and creation. It is movement. God is going, coming, gone.We are each this. We are all this.
love

Edited Sentences

Mid-Coast, between artsy-foodie Portland and the barren
nether-region of the northern counties. People here fish for a living.
Winters are long. Grange halls feed communities pancake breakfasts and
bean suppers.

Morning/Light/Water

She says:

All the world's water is sacred
because it is the beginning of all life

The Hindu have their Ganges
and Christians the baptismal font

but as I watch this child drink tap water
from a metal bowl
holding it with both hands
in the strong eastern morning light

I see it so clearly,
as arising from the same source

Shanti Shanti Shanti
Amen Hallelujah

The Spinners

There are ladies who sit at their wheels like Fates, spinning carded wool into yarn.

Busily their feet tap the pedals as their hands thread the simple machine that changes the wool into yarn

They chatter in a circle, as you would expect, with great straw bags beside them overflowing

They work to keep up with the universal mind

and in the summer demonstrate their craft at fairs