Snippet
The day is clear, the water smooth. I have rented a Kayak. The kayak has a rudder that you maneuver with two foot-pedals, kind of like driving a stickshift. Press the right peddle, the kayak moves right; push left/move left. Port and Starboard.

I follow along the right-hand side of the inner harbor, and I push my upper body to get into the turn right and left flow of paddling. Under and past the footbridge, high-tide marked on the pilings with a line of snails and barnacles, sunlight shining in shafts through the planks above; past the wooden cabin cruisers, the fiberglass hulls of skiffs and yachts, the floats loaded with lobster-traps; past styrofoam buoys.

When the harbor opens up, the sea becomes a little more choppy but this version of the kayak is effortless to manage and it easily cuts through the swells. When the water splashes I can taste the salt. Past an island reportedly owned or once-owned by a 50's B-actor and past another island with a stubby lighthouse, my focus is a private island lined on its periphery with summer cottages that I can tell even from a distance are already emptied and boarded for the season. In a notch between two homes, turquoise and pearl surf crashes silently onto a white-sand beach that shines in the sun. I aim the kayak for that.

As I push towards the beach, many of the boats in the inner harbor are underway behind and alongside at the other side of the widening bay. Small motorboats shoot past larger single or double-masted schooners with sails not yet unfurled chugging out under motor power, seemingly racing against a single line of clouds.

With one final push, I ride the crest of one wave and beach the kayak, jumping out to pull it up onto the salty dry section. The summer houses stare in shocked silence with empty window sockets. Wild grass tosses in the wind. I have the beach to myself.

I have a clear view of an expanse of the bay. I watch one low-riding navy-colored yacht with grey sails sail by and begin to navigate a turn. As it turns in profile, the sails flutter like a confused fish and hang for a slow second; but in another second, the wind catches and around the bend it goes.

I don't notice an classic tugboat painted green with gleaming wood and loaded with flags until there a puff of grey smoke comes from it, floating and dissipating in a slow and perfect cigar smoke circle. The sound of a rifle shot comes across a moment later.

On the sailing vessel closest, a figure frantically pulls at rope attached to pulleys. A huge crimson front-sail begins unfurling, too fast for the wind to catch -- the sail momentarily sags and dips into the water. But as the top triangle shoots up, up to the tip of the mast, a hesitant shadow moves through the sail; the wind then catches and it snaps to. The sound, clean like sheets on a clothes-line, follows. The boat is already tipping out to the horizon.

Where the boats had been circling like a school of sharks, there is sudden order. The motored boats have slowed; the schooners with sails are lining up. Again and again, there are puffs of smoke and front-sails grandly unveiled like tablecloths at a picnic. Most rigs appear large compared to the motor and fishing boats swarming around them like flies, but one behomoth dwarfs them all, its steel masts reach beyond the sun. Its red white and blue front-sail, unveiled in a shadow across the water, is large enough to be a country and has a pattern resembling a scandanavian nation.

I sit on the beach alternately watching and reading a book.

---

What I read:
Sex, Art and American Culture, Essays by Camille Paglia, c. 1991.
Solitude: A Return to the Self, by Anthony Storr, 1988.

Two philosophy books long standing on my 'to read' pile.

It's been awhile. I haven't lost interest. In fact, I think about this and my other blog and their lack of posts of late a lot (no doubt another sign of neurosis).

During my week, almost two, of vacation, I thought to myself "I've been depressed for a long time now, for at least the last few months" and wouldn't that explain a lack of appropriate motivation in writing?

But now on my return, I say to myself "bring out the violins" and cut all the self-pitying crap. It's not like I live in New Orleans.

On vacation, I would be somewhere and I'd be thinking "Oh this would make for a nice blog entry" and I would start composing one in my head. Now, the immediacy is lost. I can't recreate that moment even if I tried. It's too bad.

Well, I will try.

I will preface snippets of the vacation by telling you that it was in Maine and it was with my family. My family does things a certain way which, because I'm my parents' son and my sister's brother, is maybe similar to how I might do things if I were by myself.

But I'm not by myself; I'm with them. For most of the 24 hours in 10 days I was with them.

Snippet Number One
My nephew, now just over three years old, already speaks with an advanced vocabulary. He lisps, not sounding out r's and l's, but he uses 2 and 3 syllable words and correctly. "Oh, he is so smart!" says Mom and I agree -- he's smart. "How did he pick that up?" she exclaims after Nephew uses another big word.

He repeats what he hears. I hear him doing it softly, to himself, while the adult conversation continues around him. Last summer at this time, when he spoke no more than isolated words, he did the same thing -- but then it was mimicking the up and down voice-noises. He had it down pat.

Nephew and I are sitting in the back seat of the minivan.

"Hugshyhermit? I have something to tell you."
"Yes?"
"What I want to say is bullary moophie googer nouthhy."
"Oh? That's very interesting. I thought maybe wutoo dippy goomoo bitillat."

Nephew shrieks in laughter.

"No! Sooly teru mibby keralipop!"
"Webba nobo hibba quertyiop!"

Brother-in-Law is not amused: "Hugshyhermit, Nephew needs to calm down for bed soon and it becomes difficult with him wound up."

"Ok," I say. "Sure thing." I look out the window.

Snippet Number Two
Sister and Brother-in-Law believe in explaining everything to a growing child. It means telling the truth when asked a question; it means reasoning a child out of difficult behavior. Brother-in-Law says "As a child learns and grows, there are so many things to be afraid of. We encourage the successes, no matter how small they are, so that a child will learn to not be afraid and to succeed."

Nephew has been throwing his toys. Sister intervenes, "OK, I told you that wasn't nice to do and so you can't play with those anymore."
Brother-in-Law also intervenes, "I'm sure he didn't mean that, I'm sure those fell over."
"No, I saw him throw them."
"I'm sure he didn't intend to." Brother-in-Law speaks in a soft, sing-song voice that he uses in front of Nephew. When he has something to say directly to Nephew, his soft sing-songy voice comes perilously close to an imitation of Nephew's speach, even dropping the l's and r's. "Would you like it if someone threw something at you?" (Wood you wike it if someone thwew something at youw?) "Not everyone likes throwing and when someone asks you nicely to not throw something, it's polite to do what it is they are asking of you."
Sitting in a chair nearby and looking up from her book, Mom rolls her eyes and pulls a face.

Snippet Number Three
Mom and I take walks first thing in the morning. We have the dirt roads to ourselves. As we walk, I can listen to the gentle breeze rustling the leaves quietly. I can breathe in the sea air.

"Nephew is so smart." (step step)
"But he said something to me the other morning that really hurt my feelings." (step step)
"He looked at me and he said, 'I don't like you.'" (step step)
"'I don't like you and you don't like me.' Oh, it really hurt my feelings."
(step step)
"What did you do then?"
"I didn't know what to say. So I said: 'Well, I love you.'"
"Good, Mom, I think that was the right thing. I don't think he meant it."
(step step)
"Well it really hurt my feelings."

Snippet Number Four
Parents purchased the house in Maine in the early 1980s. At the time it seemed to be a lot of money but it was bought for well under $100,000 then and there is nothing like that available now.

It's an Adirondack-style log cabin built in the 1920s sitting directly on the bay, with a wide front porch. Hidden in the trees as it is and away from the neighbors, it has been a refuge of peace for me throughout these years. Mom says: "I love this place; I always am so energized after spending time here. Even though I am having trouble getting up and down the hill, I will never sell it."

Five years ago, the year-round house next door came on the market when the husband died and his widow moved to a retirement home. It is not on a hill and has a garage. Parents bought it, furnished.

And not just furniture. Despite four summers of renting it out, cabinets and trunks from the former owners remained unopened in the garage; in the attic crawl space; in a separate locked bunkhouse on the property; in drawers and closets throughout the house. It is this summer's project to clean.

Excerpts from a speech discovered in a suitcase in the garage, delivered by FHD, Service Supervisor, New Jersey Bell, Hackensack region:

Now that I am standing here to talk to you, I can fully appreciate how other speakers must feel, and I certainly wish I were sitting out there with all of you!

I am going to speak about one important phase of our Telephone Business, and that is "Production". Our aim in the Hackensack District for 1959, will be to attain a .70 Production figure by the end of the year.

I suppose the Foremen in this District are raising their eye-brows at this figure, but I believe it can be done. In looking over the records from April of last year and through into the Fall, we were in the 70's all the way. The shortage of man-power may have affected us the rest of the time, so, why shouldn't we do it?

Basically, Installation work is a one man job! Two individuals working alone will normally produce more than two functioning as part of a team. Two men can satisfy two customers. Most customers seem to prefer having only man on a job rather than the two. Inactivity, on the part of one man, can be construed as inefficiency by the customer.

* * *

In closing, I'd like to include a subject very important to me; the morale of my men.

Some Supervisors will go out into the field looking only for something to be wrong. They should be there to help wherever needed, and any constructive criticism will always be gratefully accepted. To constantly "beat a man over the head", so to speak, is the wrong tactic to use on any human being. Praise for a job well done should be given as easily as a cirticfism. Every employee, regardless os his status, needas a "pat on the back" occasionally.

To me, a contented man is both a happy and productive one. Who is to gain by all of this? Each and everyone in the Bell System!

Other things discovered: Boxes and boxes of christmas decorations; two artifical trees. Boxes of curtains. Boxes of blankets and embroidered cushion covers. Everything reeks of mold.

There are boxes of kitchen and personal care products from the 1960s and 1970s, often in their original packaging. "Oh my. From the days of Big Hair," says Mom, opening a curling-iron in a pink box and containing instructions with Bouffant-coiffed woman. "We should try e-bay," I say, but Sister shakes her head, "I did e-bay. More trouble than it's worth." The curling iron in its original packaging gets tossed into the 'dump' file.

We salvage boxes of original games against Mom's desire to throw it to the dump. "What are we going to do with this stuff?" I particularly like the wood badminton set, also in its original box, complete with instructions on how to play ('American Badminton Association'- approved 1939). There's a scrabble-like game (forgot the name)(original packaging 1970s kids), and a table-hockey game (1950s kids on the original packaging).

Next stop: Antiques Roadshow?

Mom imitates a participant: "You mean to tell me that this, this, hair-curler that I found just lying in a box in the garage, is a Classic Design worth How Much?"