Monday, July 01, 2013

Bridgewater, Maine

Cat and dog love each other

Well, the rain beating down on my window pane
I got love for you and it’s all in vain
Brains in the pot, they’re beginning to boil
They’re dripping with garlic and olive oil
--Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee
It has been raining here almost constantly on the days when there are not deer flies buzzing around in the sun.  If that sounds like complaining it's because it is and also an excuse for everything that's not planted, everything that's not done.  The thing they don't tell you about farming (or maybe they do) is what hard work it is.  Maybe that's why everyone wanted to get out of it.

Which makes me--or maybe it's K.'s continuing adventure across the Atlantic, where he lost his rudder and two sails and ended up stranded adrift amid the gulf stream, essentially--more on that when I have more details--spend all day looking at Wharram catamarans on the internet.  Here.  I'll show you the one that made me fall in love, years ago:

I don't know why that particular photograph made me fall in love, but who can explain love?  And all my love for all of the Wharram cats in southeast Asia is all in vain, as Bob Dylan so elegantly quoted himself quoting Robert Johnson singing to Willie Mae.  My grandfather used to eat brains with garlic and olive oil, but I can't help thinking that the brains in a pot reference is to Macbeth, because everything comes back to Macbeth.  Brains with garlic and olive oil are what Greeks eat for Christmas.

Maybe I've been alone with my cat and dog and garlic scapes and boat searches and Dylan for too long.  I want the rain to stop.  I want to get on a train with a suitcase in my hand and ride and ride.  I want to find a catamaran and beach her amid ruins and then sail wing and wing away.

2 comments:

Red Sonia said...

It's working. I can comment! I love that you have a rhythm both for adventure and then eventually returning to a place (wherever that may be - your partner, land, your childhood home or maybe some day all at once?). I love that you are in the midst of dreaming big and that when I describe you it is my friend the adventurer, who has done the AT, lived on a boat, biked, etc and who is planning for what will come next, when the season and the vision and the itch are strong enough. I love this boat, all the boats and look forward to the ongoing incongruence of living where you are and where you long to go.

Melissa Jenks said...

Thanks, Sonia. Sometimes the rhythm feels erratic and confusing, and I don't know where I should be--an ongoing incongruence is a beautiful way to describe it.