July 1989
A hot day here in Etters, PA.
I've lost track of the days. I've gone through the beauracracy steps now I have no job and am on vacation until the middle of August.
I spent a week with the family at Diane and Bob's. Every body's gone back to their separate states and that is that.
I ran into a friend not long ago who has this problem. It's touchy and I feel funny writing about it here. But if not here then were? Let it out of the jumble of thoughts that are rolling around in my insides, yelling into each cell for help and resolution.
This friend, Mark, who I haven't seen for along time seems to be doing well from outward appearances. but as we talked I got the impression that he had something on his mind, something that was starting to work its way to the surface. He didn't seem to know how to handle it and asked if he could confide in me. I wasn't so sure I wanted to get into a heavy duty discussion. My resident assistant days were in my past and I wasn't sure I knew if I could successfully listen to someone.
I looked at the ground and then up to the sky just trying to buy time and figure out what was up and down. "Go ahead," I said almost daringly even a bit coldly.
"It's hard to start," he said. "I'm not sure how I got into this or why I want to get out."
"Into what?" I said.
"A relationship."
"That's a start."
"I love this person and we've spent three great years together."
"So, why are you questioning it?"
"First of all the other person is a guy."
"Oh."
"I'd like to say that I'm going through life to experience it. And now I'd like to move on. Sounds pretty cold and clinical."
"Well maybe that's true, but how does a negative label help you solve your problem? It doesn't. It just makes the problem harder to deal with."
"I guess I'm just afraid to deal with this. It's not the easiest thing to work through; another person's involved."
"Well if your unsatisfied with the way things are you owe it to yourself to spend some time working through it."
"You're right but I'm still kind of overwhelmed. We've tried to stop our being lovers and tried to focus on the friendship side, but sharing the same house makes it damn difficult to break out of old habits since neither of us is a real bar socializer - well at least not me."
"What does being a bar socializer have to do with this?"
"It's jumping a couple steps. If we don't go out how can either of us meet new people?"
"Hang on a second. I feel like I'm missing the point here. What's wrong with your relationship?"
"Nothing's really wrong with it. It's just that I don't want to believe that I'm gay. I don't think I am but if I'm having sex with someone of the same sex that means I'm gay. I don't want to be gay. So to not be gay you must go out with women."
July 11, 1989
ReplyDeleteThe pen is leaking. It wants to write. I want to write. Together we shall write. I enjoy this writing. My thoughts can be aired without others around me having to suffer the pain of listening to my endless babble. I'm not writing enough because to(o) many of my thoughts are coming out through my mouth. Something I'd like to avoid like Lyme's or AIDS.
Mom and I saw the "Dead Poet's Society" this afternoon. I get so in to talking about the move and wondering about Tom and Bob's relationship in the context of the movie that I didn't give Mom a chance to voice her thoughts.
This whole resignation business has been a bit egotistic. (I resigned from the Natural Resources Department because I had the understanding I'd be moved to help with creating/working at the Shellfish Hatchery in Montauk once the Shellfish Management Plan was complete. Increasingly Larry was using me to do Natural Resources work, flagging wetlands, observing test borings for wells/septics, collecting water samples, etc. I made a push to be used more at the hatchery which was declined, so I resigned.) Who doesn't like hearing themselves talk and I've had more than my chance to talk the past few weeks. I'd like to obtain a better handle on my indiscriminate talking. I should talk when only absolutely necessary. I hope that I'm not getting to the point where I talk just to hear my own voice. I'd like to control my actions. Not let them control me. Enough of this. It gets me nowhere.
Today was hot and humid but clear. Mom and I went for a walk around the golf course this morning, and then we had a breakfast of melon, her homemade granola and sticky buns from Market (West Shore Farmers Market). We sat and ate and talked.
I wrote some letters to get publications about wetlands and finally wrote a late Birthday card to Rich. When Rich wasn't around when it was my birthday I acted put off when Gary asked me what I thought about Rich not being there. Now the shoe's on the other foot and I feel petty for having felt the way I did. All though now it's hard for me to honestly admit what I was feeling back then.
Funny how the ego is selective in what it chooses to remember. Only the things that make it right are preserved in glowing and hollowed form. The rest, the other "stuff" is cast aside as inconsequential.
I'm reminding myself of this not to self flagellate, but to use as a tool for my honest education.
July 13, 1989
ReplyDeleteMom and I just finished watching "Gorillas in the Mist." Seeing that movie makes me want to do something meaningful like Diane Fossey.
But what?
There are so many walls to be climbed, rivers to be swam, mountains to climb, causes to fight for. Every time I see a movie or hear a lecture I get carried away. This is a problem.
I need to keep reminding myself of the long range goal. Surveying is one step along the way to my goal of independence, my own business of wetland flagging and habitat inventory. It is a terrific goal. One I feel proud to be headed toward. Get in to it and learn as much as you can. Don't let skeptics tell you "no." You can do this. People will want this service. And if they don't, move to a field where this information can be used. Don't identify so closely with it that you are hurt or bruised by others skepticism.
The rain started at about 10 p.m. yesterday and kept on heavily through the night and in to mid-morning. The trickle just below the house was a boiling, twisting torrent. The mouse and trap I threw out by the overflow path were gone. Maybe the heady waters carried them off.
I walked across the field through the chest high weeds. Poison ivy was being overgrown by a wild looking impatient. They look like impatients to me but I doubt they are. The poison ivy is thick in the understory of the woods south of the field. The creek in those woods was swollen with muddy water. To the east of the southward flowing creek, springs and runoff were making trickles toward the creek. Once the creek comes out of the woods it spreads itself out over the bottom between two humped and hilly fields. As you walk from one hill to the other your feet splash in water. As the distance between the two hills gets less all of a sudden the creek reappears. This creek should be more appropriately called a small stream because what it runs into is really a creek. Today the creek water was roaring along. An endless freight train speeding across the country stopping for no one or no thing. It's easy to hop aboard the train, but devilishly hard to ride since it bounces over rocks, careens into tree trunks, pounds into banks.
I followed the stream up to my usual vantage point. It was filled to the steep walls on either side. No rocks, stumps, ferns or grasses were to be seen between either of the ever distant banks today. My head whirled as I looked at the water sizzling and swirling by. Stand back. I'll loose my balance from the powerfulness of the water rushing by. An easy boarding; but alas a difficult ride.
Time and again these theme is repeated.
July 15th, 1989
ReplyDeleteIt's a little after six a.m. The Valencia orange is working its way skyward from the northeastern horizon. Night's heavy, cool breath is wrapped around the trees and house, it's laying in the dew on the grass. I am covered in a comforter as I sit and write here on the porch step. In the distance I hear the mourning dove: whowhe, who, who, who; whowhe, who, who, who. Other birds songs are sharp, shrill and cut through the morning's coolness.
Furter still, the echoes of land movers roll across the hills, my ear picks them up.
The leaves are completely still. Yellow locust leaves fall to the ground.
Another earth mover chimes in from another direction. Do the destroyers hear one another? Their mating calls are audible to me, positioned here in the little valley of home.
If they hear each other will they bulldoze to one another to mate? I wonder wht the courtship rituals of dozers is? Have they already mated? I think they are a species that is...I can't think of the word. Precocious. You know...born ready.
Essays and Books:
"Discourses" - Epictetus
"Self- Reliance" - Emerson
July 21, 1989
ReplyDeleteBack in Southampton. No work yet. But after returning on Monday and almost completely freaking out trying to think of a way to make money during these two weeks I have calmed down and am spending some of my time working on Kathy's table. (Kathryn Marsland Gordon neighbor from Sale, Australia. Her sister, Vicki, and I were in the same grade at St. Anne's and Gippsland Grammar School. We were reunited after learning of their Mom's suicide in (1987?). I went to her wedding to Cameron Gordon held in a Quaker Meeting House in Manhattan. After sharing that I worked for a cabinet maker, Kathryn was kind enough to give me a job repair a small table that took my way to long to repair for her.)
I'm not so worried now about trying to find work. I am learning to enjoy the mastering and ordering of my own days. That giddy, nervous feeling that awoke me before I left work is being brought under control.
Each moment as it comes, and all the rest will take care of themselves. Constantly that phrase needs to course through my thoughts.
Gary slipped off the seat and fell on to the boom Tuesday when he and I went out to pump out "Seasoned." (Wooden boats in general, and "Seasoned" in particular tend to "take on" water readily thus the need to pump her out on a regular basis.) Just after we had decided to go on a camping trip this weekend, the boom was broken in two.
Yesterday I glued the boom back together with Resourcinall. Here's hoping that all will work.
Wednesday, Chris (Zaloga) and I went for a sail on her boat in the afternoon. We were sailing along after a lot of awkward first starts she admitted that she was interested in me and was frustrated because all of her attempts showing me her interest were met with no response from me. Then it was my turn to feel awkward, but I resisted. I laughed and told that I enjoyed being with her, but that I really hadn't figured out what I wanted for myself since I stopped seeing Barb. I think I need to write a card and explain clearly that I enjoy our friendship, but that I need my independence from other people. I don't think she'll understand, but then I can't really expect her to. At least she'll know that I would like to just continue with our friendship. I am not embarrassed and I hope she's not for admitting her feelings.
July 23, 1989
ReplyDeleteSunday
Under the apple tree. A bird flies to the ground to check for insects or maybe worms.
This tree cuts out almost all of the light that rains down on it. Branches, thick with leaves, at many layers absorb the precious light.
A dog wanders through the yard huffing and puffing in it's heavy white coat.
The leaves flutter only slightly in this summer day's light airs.
Karen (Kroslowitz, graduated from Southapmpton College in 1987 and Rich's girlfried, Rich, Gary and I went floating rocking, flapping, sweating as we worked our way out to the Peconics - plus we had a tow to help us thorugh the outlet. Green flies with big green eyes crowded our boat ("Seasoned') but lightened up when we got out into the Peconic (Bay).
The wind lessened the longer we were out. Finally we dropped anchor and ate our lunch, swam, splashed about then floated and sailed back to the mooring. (After two years - 1987, 1988 - of mooring "Seasoned" at Skip Tuttle's, Shelter Island Marina, we moored her in Cow's Neck in Southampton during summer 1989.)
What should I do with my life: Draw, paint, write, farm, travel, grow clams, survey? Don't think. Just do it.
August 1, 1989
ReplyDeleteStill retired. I'm at Mom's sitting on the porch holding Sir K (guinea pig, one of a litter produced by Karen's guinea pigs, Lancelot and Gueneviere) on my lap as I write. A lot of driving on this retirement plan, and a lot of sites have been seen.
Last Thursday I started out from Southampton. I made it to Kathy's (Kathryn Marsland Gordon) new apartment in Northwestern Washington, D.C. near Adams-Morgan. It's in a beautiful 1920s building. Hard wood floors, stucco walls and three cats from New York. Kathy took me out to Fasika's, an Ethiopian restaurant in Adams-Morgan.
We sat on traditional chairs. Knee tables separated our chairs and in between the two square tables was a round cloth-covered stand which had a straw aht of different colored straw. This is where the round tray was placed that was home to our meal. We ordered beers and then our entrees: shrimp and a vegetarian combination with a little bit of several entrees with names like "Yat Lit," "Luk Lat." These names aren't exact but it gives an idea of what they sounded like.
I assumed our waitress was Ethiopian. She brought the tray with thin pancake pieces of floppy bread spread around it. The she spooned onto the pancakes the different entrees. Each in its own little area of the tray. She gave us a dish that had only the floppy pancake-like bread. Kathy told me that the bread was to be used as our eating utensils. "Just rip off a piece of bread and wrap it around whatever you'd like to try." So I did. It was great!
Spicy, mustard, curry, coriander. Lentils in different sauces. Potatoes with a red, tangy sauce. Terrific!
A thunderstorm made its appearance while we were eating. The rain/thunder and lightning kept up while we walked back to her apartment.
After walking to Dupont Circle with Kathy Friday morning I headed back to the car and got on the road to North Carolina at about 8:30 a.m.
August 1, 1989 entry continued....
ReplyDeleteAround Emporia, VA I got off I-95 and decided to take the back roads through North Carolina to Atlantic Beach.
Two lane roads carried me swiftly by acres of tobacco, corn and soybeans and into and out of small dot town on the map. Beautiful little old towns with late 1800s architecture in the core downtown. Typical architecture for North Carolina. The old Main Streets were not getting much use. Just like the small upstate New York towns about half of the commercial buildings were either boarded up or for sale.
It's sad to see the characters that housed the town's businesses standing empty. Off in the distance some mall beckons to the throngs taking away business from these little old towns.
While I'm at it I might as well go all the way. I notice now that all supermarkets are starting to look alike. Especially when it comes to the contents of the produce section. No matter where you go these days you find huge produce section with lots of colorful fruits and veggie. But when you walk up close and start looking for say nice peaches you see nothing but either small overripe and badly bruised ones or big green ones. No out of the ordinary vegetables in North Carolina compared with Pennsylvania or New York.
I had the best luck today driving from Mom's up to the land (Constableville, NY). On Rte 12, at least 4 or 6 roadside stands selling sweet corn, tomatoes, peaches - all home grown.
Maybe it's too hot in North Carolina for road stands, maybe all the good produce is past it's season. Maybe I was travelling at the wrong time - afternoon and all the produce places pack up and go home by that time. Maybe it's too quick of me to start ranting about the breakdown of true farming and business in America since I've only had such a limited number of observations. I'll stop then.
I got to the Beachwalk in Pine Knolls around 4:00 p.m. and Mom and Diane were on the 4th floor balcony waving. What a nice sight.
We went to the beach that afternoon and then Mom took us out to a seafood bar called T.W.'s, I think. (It's name is T & W's Oyster Bar.) The food was great. I had crabcakes and shrimp, French fries and cole slaw. Tasty!
Saturday morning after I had breakfast, Tom and I drove to Morehead to check out an outside market. By the time we got there ~10:30 they had already packed up and no one was left.
Dejectedly we headed the car to downtown Morehead to look at a Magazine and book shop. After Tom and I perused the classics section we went to a Flea Market (in Newport) that the woman behind the counter told us about.
The flea market was an "H" shaped affair (drawing with 2 cross bars) with roof and no side walls. This place had booths with people selling everything from phone cards, lace, antiques, sunglasses, toys to baked goods and veggies.
We were lucky to find a woman who was selling tomatoes and cantaloupes, beans and hot sauce. The tomatoes were excellent.
August 1, 1989 entry continued...at the land, Constableville, NY
ReplyDeleteThe few times I've visited the land before this it seemed the visit was just another scheduled activity to be crammed into an already hectic pace. Up one day, back the next. It was good to visit, but like so much of life lately - too quick.
The sun came out or at least the rain stopped once I got here. I unpacked the tent, my clothes, sleep materials, books and food for the rest of today and brought them down to the clearing. As I was putting up the tent I thought it felt hot so I took off all my clothes and finished putting up the tent - bare-assed-naked on my own property. The bugs were kind enough not to bit me as I dug a little drainage trench around the edge of the tent. I put on my socks and boots, picked up a towel and walked down the path to the "bath" (deep spot in the nearby stream). The water was nice and cold and felt good on my body.
After, I climbed up on top of one of the sunning rocks put my towel down and laid down to watch the leaves above. I like this place.
August 1, 1989 entry continued...at the land, Constableville, NY
ReplyDeleteNow it's raining again and I just remembered that I left the toilet paper outside. It's under trees and still wrapped so hopefully it won't get too wet.
A little more rain once I got back to the tent. The sky and air around was grey, darker grey, even darker gray and the last time I looked up from the flashlight-lit book, black. The only sound was that of the wind pushing the tops of the trees, and water droplets falling to the next layer.
Later I looked out and the sky was clear. Bright, sparkling planets and stars twinkling in the black sky.
I fell to sleep.
August 1, 1989 entry continued...at the land, Constableville, NY
ReplyDeleteToday the sky in the west is blue, east too. Small white clouds float by quickly. Dew soaped plants fill the clearing. Mosquitoes, flies, black biting flies and dragonflies fill the morning air with their comings and goings.
The dew is evaporating with the warm suns help and the winds tostle the leaves about. Sweat is building up in the creases of my bent abdomen.
Yesterday I heard the cadences of a far off snare drum. Over and over - someone's practicing. I act and think as though this land is the wilderness, just as, I suppose, the people from New York City view the East End. As I'm here though, I realize that this is a community of people too. The people are just further spaced. I'm coming to think that maybe there isn't any "wilderness" in the northeast. A hasty decision again. Relativeness enters.
August 1, 1989 entry continued...at the land, Constableville, NY
ReplyDeleteRain today. Thunderstorms move across the sky one every hour here. Not much time to dry clothes or air out the tent. Thunder and clouds move across the sky, wind too. I sit inside the tent. Now comes the rain. Light right now...and heavier. A flap about nine inches on the front door is open so I can see the rain coming down and feel the wind in my face. I'm a little nervous as I sit in this tent like an ant in a sandwich bag. Who knows if lightning, a foot, will mysteriously choose this sandwich bag to step on.
We'll see if my changing the tent's location on it's little raised island will keep water from running underneath. And sleep will tell me tonight if I successfully removed the pea from under my mattress.
I like this little tent that Mom bought me from Boscov's. It serves its purpose well.
Thunder has moved off to the east, the rain carried with it. Now only winds remain. I'll organize my stuff so that only necessary things remain this eve.
That one had a second round. Megalighting and a hell of a lot of rain.
I try to dry out rain cover but 10 minutes later drops start coming down. Put it back on, sit down to write an munch on a green pepper. All this nature boy stuff has got me wondering...what the fuck am I doing here surrounded by mosquitoes, black flies and biting flies. I mean what is it that I'm trying to prove?
Here comes the rain and thunder. Now the rain is heavy. Unbelievable. I guess that's just the way it goes. So much for the rainfly. I guess I messed it up by touching it and then not having enough time for it to dry before the rain started.
This is drier than being outside, but as the rains continue and more leaks develop inside....
The lightning and thunder don't just come and go. They come and go, a break, more comes and goes, another break, still more comes and goes, and on and on. I wonder how long this will last.
At least this is teaching me the value of dry, solid shelter. The lightning is unphased by the tent walls. It's as if I'm outside.
Is the gang coming up tonight or this weekend?
August 4, 1989
ReplyDeleteOr, is rain in the forecast going to keep them away? Time, indeed, will tell.
Monday, August 7, 1989
A hot, humid day in Southampton.
They made it up Friday night. Gary and Chris made it all the way to the tent at ~3:00 a.m. I was up because it had just stopped raining, and I was making use of the spell to liquidate the lake that had formed in the tent.
Rich and Karen slept in the car because they didn't want to hassle with the tent at such a late hour. Good idea. I don't think all five of us could have squeezed into the tent. It was tight enough with three.
On Friday when it stopped raining for a spell I drove in to C-ville to mail a postcard to Sue and then dropped by Constable Hall. The home of the people who purchased most of the surrounding area. A guided tour with just myself as tour group and a fair-skinned, brown-haired woman in her early twenties as tour guide. I enjoyed the tour. Andy questions that came in to my head I simply asked. After a short talk with the woman in the gift shop who helped me learn how to pronounce the names of Constableville and Lowville so as not to sound like a foreigner, I headed down to Boonville to check out their library and continue my search for topographical map of the area, particularly the land.
An unexpected treat in Boonville was the Post House Dairy Bar. I asked for a double scoop of chocolate mint chip ice cream and got a huge tower of ice cream on thee little cone for just $1.25. The trick was to eat it before it melted all over the cone and my hand. I succeeded though thanks to the shade of the maple tree in front of the library and my quick tongue.
Tuesday, August 8, 1989
ReplyDeleteAnother day in Southampton. I think that the noise from the welding party going on two doors north is making me think that I have to be more productive. They start in at 7:00 a.m. with loud generators, welders, trucks humming with life and activity as they put together the new virus-shaped water tower.
The air is crisp and bright today. The wind is strong.
Saturday, August 12, 1989
The sun is out today and haziness is in the air. A deluge cut our camping trip short at Cedar Point yesterday morning. (Karen Hardy and her friends Ann and Cheryl all going in to ~8th grade. Karen ended up breaking her ankle while doing cartwheels as she and her friends walked around the campground...but Uncle Craig didn't realize there was a problem until she returned home...) The rain was hard and heavy most of the day yesterday. Movies, games and eating filled most of yesterday's moments.
Now wind is blowing, sun is warming, train is honking, crickets are chirruping in an extended chorus. The sun feels good on my hairy bosom.
Sunday, August 20, 1989
ReplyDeleteChris (Zaloga) and I are sailing back from Montauk on her boat. Only she and I made it to Block Island yesterday, even though it was by ferry. The weather was too strong for our confidence levels and since fishing charter boats were coming in early because people were getting sick, plus small craft advisories. We felt justified in not trying to sail into the wind to Block.
We had excellent seats up top on the way over. Met Scott (McAskill) and Lisa on the dock and went for a sail out of Great Salt Marsh into Block Island Sound.
The boat ("Pegasus" ~50' wooden sailboat, I forget if it was schooner, ketch or yawl) is fantastic. Every detail is carefully thought out. Up front the deck is lower around the windlass area so that you don't have to mess with anchor locker doors. Plenty of space up there so that things aren't cramped. The ropes (lines) don't smell to high heaven. The decks are flat forward of the center cockpit - no stumbling around or bumbling over cabin top and associated accessories. Terrific!
Monday, 8-21-89
ReplyDeleteSailed from the Promised Land (Amagansett) all the way to Cold Spring Harbor. Chris' boat developed a lead by the time we got it back to (the mooring) behind her brother's. I'm curious if any more water came in once we pumped it out last evening. Chris was going to sleep on it just in case it needed more attention.
It must be water coming in as we were splashing through the waters west of Jessup's Neck.
Today is the first day at my working with George Walbridge Surveyors.
Thursday
ReplyDeleteThe house search continues.
Life continues.
Today is the last of August's days for 1989. Chris Pranis' last day working for East Hampton Town.
They're having a barbeque and softball game out in Montauk. I should've gone. It's not to often that you can get together with old friends. Especially now that we're heading off in different directions. Sometimes, most of the time, I treat people too casually as if it's no big deal missing out on one event because more will be sure to come later on down the road. It doesn't work out that way. These happenings are like a lunar eclipse. Not something to slough off because of ridiculous insecurity. (I'm no good at softball.) But, alas, anxieties get the better of me and I stick with my normal routine. Afraid to not do well in this or that particular event. Maybe I'll be wrong, no good, unaccepted. Life is like that - unpredictable. You can't plan for it all so hiding away like a frightened clam will do no good either. Not much growth that way, you know? I know.
Labor Day 9/4/89
ReplyDeleteA beautiful weekend. Clear blue skies, strong winds most of the time. Except on the return sail from Northwest Creek, Sunday.
Lots of time today to lounge in the hammock. Filled my mind with Don Quixote's adventures and excerpts from a book propounding famous simpletons of history - U.S.
Further realizing that a girl is missing from my life. Inconsistencies other than my own, rationalities that I can't grasp from a woman's point are missing. Too much masculine influence in my life - work, home. I need complimentarianism. Too much head butting in males.
I need someone to dance with. Someone to talk with. Partner with. Maybe you (I) can't partner with anyone, but I need to have this reinforced with a woman. I can't be partners with someone I can't dream ahead of sharing my future with. As much as I think I can, a few hours later I'm back to my old self. Thinking of myself as separate. DON'T THINK OF SELF SO MUCH!
All you think about is yourself. Well, if I don't time will go by and I won't be where I want.
I can learn from others, from everyone. I do and will continue.
9/13/89
ReplyDeleteSurveying. Located wetlands on a piece near Northwest Creek...that I had flagged. I should've flagged it to the edge. Seeing it today, there were substantial areas containing Sweet Pepper Bush, Tupelo, and Swamp Azalea that should have been flagged. This was a lot that the town should have purchased, if they were in to acquisition back when it was first flagged.
So far I've worked with Dave Weaver , and Andy Kime almost exclusively except for a few days with Ken. I enjoy working with Dave and Andy. We do a good bit of watching the ocean, driving along the ocean looking for schools of blues (bluefish). They look for a group of birds attacking the water. Usually under the gulls, the water's surface is boiling with blues ferociously feeding on smaller fish, menhaden, according to Karen (Krozlowitz). Other times when we're not looking for fish were on the look out for bikini clad girls, or better still bikini-less girls in the more remote areas like Napeague State Park. Then of course we do work, but it's mixed in at appropriate proportion.
Today I was able to finish homework that was assigned in Surveying class, during the prework period in the office and our morning break. Usually I'm able to do a bit of reading during the work day what with breaks, lunch and waiting between jobs.
"Don Quixote" is moving along well. I'm able to have continuity in reading. Sancho Panza is about ready to be sent off to govern his own island. Don Quixote is giving him some last minute philosophy to carry with him. Unfortunately Don Quixote's wise offerings are so extensive that one doubts whether Sancho will be able to remember them let alone keep them straight and unmixed.
October 6, 1989
ReplyDelete90% moved in to new digs. (Mary's Lane off of North Sea Road, North Sea area of Southampton. Three bedrooms, one bath plus small loft.). Gary (Seff), Greg (Seff), Rich (Muller) are my housemates for now.
Every day I go to work with conviction, every night before I go to bed doubting what I'm doing. I work for developers. Bottom line." If I don't, someone else will" is an easy but inadequate out.
A subdivision is made out of perhaps 50 to 60 acres of land in East Hampton. A road 50 feet wide is cut through oad/pine woodlands so that 32 second homes can be built. It's a process that goes on without thought for most people. It's a person's right in this country to own land and dispose of it how she sees fit. A constitutional right backed by our laws based on our election of representatives based on forefathers who left a country that derived them their rights. In the name of the environment some are taking the rights of others to do with their land as they see fit. I could agree that the whole system is a bit fucked up. Money as the essential ingredient. It's amiss. Property - land, trees, dirt, air, water, inreasing in value because a demand is high for them.
Sometimes I even think about going back to work for Larry. There is a better way to use my life's energies. The Town seems such a bumbling, inefficient, politically motivated mechanism. I don't know where to turn. I think about education: working on kids so they have a respect for life in all of its forms.
One approach is that it doesn't matter. But for me I think I'm more inclined towards the rights of the environment and a sustainable economy. Gone are the Henry David Thoreau surveyors. Surveyors are land planners. Today, as I was riding around, the idea came to me that I should stick with surveying until I can pay off the land in toto and then get into organic farming. Fukoka - style in upstate New York.
If too much time is spent worrying about things and trying to place them in some certain order, no time is left for enjoying the beauty that surrounds us.
Every
Saturday
ReplyDeleteToday I was officially told that I could not register for the Surveying Class. Four weeks of attendance to no avail. I'm not too crushed by this turn of events. I do think I would like to get into school again. I'm not sure for whay, but I have a desire to be there.
Teaching as an occupation flickers in the back of my mind, but I'm not sure if it's something I should humor. I have a funny way of going to a new job then after a few months thinking that I should be doing something else. More related to what I studied in school (Marine Sciences). After all I did choose Marine Bio for a reason, no? Part of this jumpiness could be a result of my not having to think much at work. What happend to my plans of getting tree books, wildflower books and identifying all the plants I come across in work? I make goals. Well, not really. I think about goals but never really accept them and am continually unresolved. Vacillating back and forth. Action, reaction, action, reaction. My drive is very limited. I say I'm going to do something, do it for a short while then think about doing something else. Stick with this surveying. Just because I've been kicked out of the class doesn't mean I have to stop reading the book or working on assigned homework. Let's go pick up some plant identification books. Don't be foiled. Keep chugging along and things will fall in to place.
This moring I awoke to the sound of rain drops showering the deck and dampening my almost dry clothes hung helter skelter off the railing and closeline. My head immediately became congested and the haze of attacking virus or bacteria enveloped my mood and thoughts.
I had just enough time to shower, fry two eggs and house them in pitas for my ride to school. After fidgeting in my seat for nearly two hours as we reviewed the homework assignment, and finding out my fate in the class I was free to roam the corner bookstore. I didn't protest nearly enough to Dean Conners partly because I was relieved of having the pinch of $200+ for the class. A sum of money which can be easily rerouted to the land account.
Monday, October 1989
ReplyDeleteColumbus Day - Commemorating the Italian Explorer's Discovery of North America. As if America didn't exist before Columbus came on the scene. What about the myrida tribes of indians spread all over the country? They didn't count since they weren't fighting the white man away. Teh red people were unhostile to the white men on their arrival.
Now we celebrate this day by heading out to the malls. A big shopping day, just like the Friday after Thanksgiving, or the day before Christmas, or the day after New Year's.
A mantra from the book, "The Only Dance There Is:" Om Mani Padme Hom. I've been thinking it over and over and over yesterday and on my walk today. It means "God in his unmanifest (unrevealed) form is like a jewel in the center of a lotus manifest (revealed) in my heart." I don't think I really understand that but I keep saying it because it keeps my mind from babbling uncontrollably. A consistent set of words around and around. There really is no need for me to have all the other thoughts. Those thoughts just get me emotional and use up otherwise available energy.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with just one step.
Tuesday, October 17th, 1989
ReplyDeleteMornings are dark now. I drove to Mom's for the weekend. Left here Friday night @ 5:30 and got in late. Time goes when I visit home. By the time we get our morning walk in and eat breakfast, the day's half over.
A good day at work yesterday. Using experience to work on myself. Did a survey for an older man in Montauk who did most of the work around his house himself. It looked it. But it had a workability. Of course he and the house reminded me a little bit of Dad.
Thursday, October 19th, 1989
ReplyDeleteBig earthquake in San Francisco/Oakland area Tuesday afternoon.
The mornings are darker and darker especially with the heavy rain clouds that are dampening the ground.
Last night I went to dinner at the Driver's Seat with the Seffs and Verners. Excellent meal, but like all Driver's Seat excursions...a bit expensive.
Work is going well. Not much news on that front. Calmness and consistency are key.
Rich left for Hawaii Tuesday morning. (He moved there.) Windy today, too. I wonder if work will be called early.
We had a fire in the fireplace after dinner last night. I have to organize the fireplace experience:
1. Wood needs to be cut and split into smaller pieces.
2. A sufficient amount of wood and kindling must be kept dry.
3. Foremost we need to have a delivery of wood.
Only trhee simple steps to a better fireplace experience.
Let's see if I can put what I read into a framework:
Man
Inherrent: Essence
Learned: Personality
Centers:
Intellectual: thoughts
Emotional: emotions
Instinctive:
1. functions of body, metabolism, etc.
2. feelings: taste, touch, smell, hearing, sight
3.
Moving: running, jumping, swimming
Sex
Self-consciousness: objective consciousness
Factors to observe: lying, imagining, talking
What causes sleep: identifying, considering
Saturday
ReplyDeletePlans to read, read, read and nothing else scrapped.
Went to Chris' (Zaloga) and hacked away at the bittersweet vines trying to overtake the privet bushes. Began to dig up privet bush in middle of garden but was stalled by chicken-wire buried around the base of the bush. Perhaps it was a border fence. Who knows? Lost my cool with it several times and questioned Chris, in my mind, for chosing this site for the garden, putting the chicken-wire there and not warning me about it. Basically blaming Chris for the fact that I couldn't calmly deal with the obstacle at hand. Finally I moved a few wheelbarrow fulls of dirt to Chris' bulb bed to calm down and worked on clearing roots away from the garden area. After the cooling off period I was able to handle the chicken-wire with much less hostility and even made some headway. I have the new home for the privet dug and all the chicken-wire rolled up as close as possible to the truck. Next round of attack with be to dig under the wire, roots, et al and transport the hedge to it's new home 15 feet away.
Today I'm drinking only water. My body could use a rest from digestion and my pockets needed a rest from my digging hands couring them clean of their money.
The money part of the fast hasn't worked so well. $50 of Chris's debt to me
Saturday continued...
ReplyDeletewas spent n record time. But it was put to good use: Birthday presents for Tom and Diane, door knob for the old house, a bow saw to increase the fire scene enjoyment, and dinner ingredients for tomorrow.
Many projects that have been in the back of my mind have been tackled and now I'm free to read and write.
And smell the smells.
Every restaurant and delicatessen that I passed in town today exuded smells that I recognized easily. Several times I almost forgot that I wasn't eating today. Carob covered rice cakes beware! "Oh, not today."
Pasta smells from Silver's Restaurant mesmerized my slovenly mind and almost brought me down to my knees. Now I'm sitting here at the table, arm encircled around a steaming cup of water. Emptiness fills my stomach. Tastlessness covers my tongue.
I split some cedar lumber that Gary picked up from a job. Cut it too, with the new bow saw; or as I call it, ox-bow saw, and brought it in to dry. Tonight a warm fire to read beside.
The sky is blue now. Clouds have thinned out or been pushed along by the fall winds.
Sunday, October 22nd, 1989
ReplyDeleteIt's past my normal bedtime but I can't sleep. Larry Liddle called and knocked my wishy-washy complacent center on it's ass. He rode me hard about my choice of jobs. It's good. I need that.
I got off the phone with him and registered for the Biology Special test of the GRE.
More and more I feel the urge to make a change. But why? I want to use my education to make a difference. UGH !!! But hoplessly enough there's no difference I can make. To think that I can is to hand myself a cynical old age view.
To sit back afraid to be wrong, afraid to go against what others think. That's not good either. If you think you want to teach, try it. Apply to Wallop's Island. Why keep putting it off? You've wrapped so many things around this decision that you've made it not humanly possible. Separate the issues!
Do it now. Don't wait for Spring, the end of the lease excuse after excuse after excuse. Apply to grad school. Do it all what the hell. All you can do is gain!
What I'm doing now is just not right. I've got to use what I know. Teach children about crabs, photosynthesis, winkler titrations, Eckman currents, salinity, secchi discs, scallops.
Tuesday Eve
ReplyDeleteNew I's come on to the scene. It's a funny thing how strong certain I's are at one time and then others are strong at another.
Today I ran in to Chris from "Green Dolphin." He told me about his trip south last winter. The funny thing is that "Chega" I's rushed to the scene. So the next day or two I suppose I'll be off on the sail "Chega" back from Exuma next October I's. The Grad School immediately I's have gone in to the background. Those sailing I's are a strong bunch. Of course I had to tell Chris Zaloga my aspirations with "Chega" as if telling people will force me to stick to it. We'll see. I'm sure after this weekend at the land that those I's will overtake all others. In faact they were working their way
Tuesday eve continued...
ReplyDelete...in to the picture this morning while I was working near a particularly beautiful pastoral scene. It's not enough that I'm in a beautiful place at the moment, I have a need to want to picture myself having that scene again. So willingly the corresponding I's crowd on to center stage. It's amazing, actually boring, how I am so asleep!
Sunday, November 5th, 1989
ReplyDeleteSomebody's birthday (James Edward Hassler) Happy day to you.
Sitting on a weathered, silver tree stump by the edge of Gardiner's Bay. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whole wheat. An apple for desert. Smells of drying Codium mix in my nose with the fresh smell of cool air off the bay. On my left side the sun warms, on my right side my body is chilled ever so slightly.
Gary and I sit, eat and talk about English teachers. He's reading a book about a 3rd grade teacher ("Among Schoolchildren" I think). He says the name of his favorite English teacher and I mine (Ms. Povendo at Red Land High School).
A spider moves, walks on the sand. Now it stops, now it moves around this beach grass at my feet.
The bay is almost glass a few puffs of air patter across. Rocks offshore move into and out of sight. Little noise but water receding from the rocks at the shoreline and returning.
The fish trap that Chris and I ran into (on our return sail from Montauk) stands a few hundred feet away. A monument to the bayman's skill.
November 7th, 1989
ReplyDeleteLocal elections today.
I chopped a 25 to 30 foot Cedar tree down. Right in the middle of the road for a 13 lot subdivision. My first large tree. "Progress" of humans doesn't stop for anything or anyone. Life goes on, but not for that Cedar. It had a purplish colored central core about an inch and a half to two inches in diameter. It smelled like cedar, of course. About neck-high it branched into two twin stems each heading straight toward the sky. It was a beautiful deep green color and had blue colored berries. The outline of the tree was teardrop shaped. A strong specimen. She will be sorely missed in her community of friends. No pleading, groveling, screaming. Not a sound but brush-hook thudding against her white wood. Chunks of wood flying out with each well-placed swing; about one for every 10 swings. All totaled it took more than eighty swings for me to fell that tree. How much energy I expended in the process is hard to say. Surely less than what the tree had stored up in over twenty-five years of photosynthesis.
It was suggested I take the tree (or a portion of it) home to decorate for Christmas. On one hand I think it a good idea so that I can be reminded of what I did. On the other hand it's not such a great idea because the tree should not be used as an ornament just for my whim. There's no answer. Maybe I will, maybe I won't.
Nov. 9th, 1989
ReplyDeleteThursday, today, rain filled the sky. Puddles covered the roads, leaves blocked the drains, wind blew the clouds quickly by and the waves crashed on the beaches. Not much surveying going on today. A funny thing. We've progressed so far with all our high-tech instruments that now when weather is inclement we can't do work. The rain will hurt the instruments!
We played "Risk" at Dave Saskis' house. Ate lunch in town, did an easy location job, checked a dune crest and went back to Dave's for an afternoon of Ping Pong. No wonder the U.S. is falling behind. People like me not doing any work and getting paid for it! I am the problem.
Only one solution. Get a new job!
Drastic you think? Well you know that's how I am. Liking a job one day, looking for a new one the next. Funny thing is I'll be there at the next job too. I just can't seem to get away from myself. The only reason I say this is because Aquaculture I's have been stimulated once again. Off and running since I talked to Chris (Pranis) about possible work at Blue Points. The "I want to do Marine Science" I's came pouring on to the scene. I've been engrossed in them today. Not being here, now. But somewhere else, later on.
When will I learn? Can I? Will I? People are all so different. I see it at work, food co-op, all over. That just serves to take attention away from observing myself. And then they've got me.
Wednesday, Nov. 17, 1989
ReplyDeleteTomorrow Congress votes on their pay raises. Less than a year after they were forced to vote an automatic 50% pay raise, a new bill representing a 35% increase is to be digested. People are adamant on both sides, although I think more people are opposed.
So many major events are sweeping across the world. Czechoslovakia is in its beginnings of change. East Germany I knocking holes in the Berlin Wall. Hungary has opened its borders to free travel to the west. Poland's Lech Walesa is travelling through the major cities of the U.S. looking for investors in Poland. Not handouts, charity, but work.
The evening news is shouting in the back room. So much news! On and on and on. AIDS, FDIC, Comprehensive Health Care. All this information is crowding my brain. What can I do about the homeless, landfills, nuclear plants, deforestation, children, crack addicted, prostituting, spreading AIDS, equal rights, right of choice for women?
December 2nd, 1989
ReplyDeleteGot my nose clipped last Sunday night talking to Mike Denson (also graduated from Southampton College, working at Blue Points Shellfish Hatchery). Very negative as could be expected considering I never called to let him know I wasn't going to take the job at Blue Points last time. Now out of the blue he hears from me again same story second time around. He gave it to me in specific terms. It was a good jolt to get me to put my head into work right now and study for the test (GRE). I felt ashamed that I had been so using of Mike and worse yet I didn't even have an inkling anything I did was wrong. A little dense on my part.
A good week at work. Each day I tried to do my best not thinking about the next day. Superficially though because as I read a newly arrived catalog from University of Maryland the little cogs started creaking and grinding forward. One teacher at the Eastern Shore Campus does research in closed-loop Tilapia culture! After spending the weekend with Jenn (Darling, she'd just returned from the Philippines working for the Peace Corps) the idea of working with this guy and learning/devising a system to export to third world countries to aid in their independence came to mind.
January 1, 1990
ReplyDeleteNoises. Drips, water pump, cars driving by, wind moving in the naked oak branches, oil furnace, hand sliding across paper as I write, refrigerator motor. All sounds of this quiet Monday morning.
The sky filled with clouds and grey holds the gulls as they pass from beach to bay or from field to landfill (North Sea landfill is located on other side of street beyond naked oak trees). Another day that's all really.
Many of us don't go to our jobs or school today. For me it is difficult activity-wise. I am free today. I am free every day but consider scheduled work an enslavement. An opposing thought. One that fills me with a longing not to work. But, work I must to pay for my food and shelter. To pay for clothes and land. For the most part work has caused me to have to do more to "live." I work so I must have a place to live. Not that not-working means I wouldn't need a place to live, but where I live could be a matter of choice. (Where I work can be, too.)
I'm writing this to further convince myself that moving to Washington to work at the Smithsonian is a good idea. Really, I don't need much convincing. I want to do it! I am ready.
Last Friday, after half a day at work and a rather quirky Christmas Party, I drove to Mom's. Saturday morning I visited Grandma and Aunt Doris and dropped off some small Christmas gifts, exchanged thoughts and returned to Mom's. Her car (1986 Ford Escort that Dad bought the April before he died May 7, 1986) wouldn't start so I jumped it with mine. The battery light was on the whole way down to Diane and Bob's. Once we got there and unpacked; the car, turned off, wouldn't start again. Various things were considered, but none were acted upon. I took the battery out Sunday and put it on a charger.
I noticed some negative emotions when Mom said we would be having dinner with the Schaer's once we got to Virginia. Marissa and Werner came over and a sandwich dinner was prepared. We sat in the living room by the roaring fire, ate our dinner and had enjoyable conversation.
There were several moments during the holiday that I experienced negative emotions. I also noticed that at times I could compound them by trying to change them because I thought they were inappropriate.
Jan 10, 1990
ReplyDeleteWhat a load of shit these pages hold. Dribblings and carrying on of an adult with a five to ten minute attention span. Some kind of oversensitive, pampered, completely out of touch with the "real" world, sissified, panty-waste. Rudderless, floating north when the wind blows from the south, and east when the wind blows from the west. I don't know how to overcome these feelings. I make a move to change my situation but feel the inertia trying to keep me in place. There's no room for me to move about. My own best friend is also my worst enemy; a critic of all my reasonings. I want to make this change. All things work out. I know they do. I think of Barb. Once I made my move and then cut our connection we were free. Free to move onto what we needed. Barb was married to Jim Ingram a little less than a year after I called it quits. Good for her and me. So as rough as this next move is t make I think it is what I want. The rest will happen.
January 15, 1990
ReplyDeleteMonday - A cold rainy, cloudy day. Surprisingly work wasn't called early. Andrew and I worked together all day and ended up working till 4:30 on a pool and addition location in the Bell Estate of Abraham's Landing Road. A wooded lot with beautiful beech trees of all sizes plus a few male-berry hollys. All morning was rainy but the clouds lifted a bit so the afternoon was brighter. The sun almost broke through for a guest appearance.
I had a brief battle with the blues on my way to work. Still thinking a good deal about the move to a new job and D.C. This morning I was less excited about the idea. Maybe I'm thinking too much about it. Still no word from Walter Adey (Director of the Marine Systems Lab at the Smithsonian, my future boss) yet. Sometimes I hope he decided that he didn't want me. Gary tells me I'm doing this move because I think things will be different/better elsewhere. What does he know what I think? Then sometimes I ask myself, "Is that why I'm gong to yet another job?"
"There's nothing wrong with going to another job." I tell myself. Deep down inside I know that. This situation will work out as it should. It's my adventure to adapt to the outcome.
January 16, 1990
ReplyDeleteMany words piled up today on my vocabulary sheet (studying for GRE's). I need to sit down with them and figure out the definitions. I have a rough time of it remembering definitions because I can't remember a few words that I've written down all other words are stopped. It's as if I have some disability when it comes to thinking of new ways of saying something. If I can't repeat a definition, for example, I'm lost. On the drive home I was thinking about this shortcoming - a less judgmental word would help. I was thinking about this area of creativity in my own life. There, that's better. Anyway, I have some type of mental block when it comes to creating new. I am able to copy, but to create from within myself. Ah, that's where I'm handicapped. I think about this and see if I can add to possible causes. Already I can think of a fear of failing, lack of creative stimulation growing up ie too much television.
Today was luxuriously warm for a mid-January day. I was sweating at our first job this morning. Until I cut down the layers I could have sworn it was summer. The sun felt warm on my cheeks as we staked building envelopes on a breath taking property in Montauk. The property has a view of Fort Pond, Fort Pond Bay, Benson Point, Culloden, Lake Montauk and in some spots the Atlantic Ocean. I'll admit I didn't feel good about my job today. Sentimental, soft as they may be I can't deny them. There were deer paths all over this eight acre piece of hilltop. Not only trails but bedding sites and lots of droppings. It troubles me to see wild habitat falling under the capriciousness of homeowner, subdivided and corralled, organized and improved in t someone's personal castle. Maybe I'm jealous because I could never afford property like that. That is how many people are brushed aside when they stand up in favor of preservation. It's beyond that, I know it is. Something's got to give and man's not going to be the one. Where will the breath taking, unspoiled unimproved vistas of the future lie?
January 20, 1989
ReplyDeleteSaturday morning, sitting in the car writing, eating bakery treats while I wait for my clothes. It's snowing now, but it's melting as soon as it touches earth bound surfaces. Everything about me: this car, the coffee, smell of smoke. I'm less dizzy but my kidneys must be fatigued from my demands. A Bud after work turned in to two then three then four then five, and then a thoughtless drive home as the yellow and white lines of the road guided my car miraculously to my driveway. Drinking beers with Tim, Sid and David (Walbridge Surveyors) made me laugh. The rough, rambunctious, raucous, smoke-drenched Sid became a gentle, soft-spoken loving husband as he talked to his wife about being home "a little late." Tim that farting, belching, spiting, sumo wrestler type with a pony tail, pregnant wife and two daughters transformed into a scholar, statesman and eloquent ambassador when his wife rang to hear if he'd be joining the family for meatloaf. Of course the charade was quickly put to rest when whoever wasn't in the bathroom peeing, shouted out, for the benefit of the loved one on the phone, that the nude dancing girls should be brought up to the front of the office!
My first lesson in bottle cap snapping was conducted in this drinking. Of course having the cap smack you soundly in the face was expected: part of the natural evolution of cap-snapping. Sid and the giant David were exceptional in speed and direction of their caps. Tim, I don't thin, has a long background in this profession as he has spent more time in the past year frivolously preparing for his surveyor's test. It's hard to imagine how one's priorities can be.... Thank god I have mind straight ! (?)
Snowflakes are building up on the windshield. They land and slide until they meet with the resistance of the pack that has gradually built from the bottom of the windshield up. The ground is turning white. My windows are opaque with snow and breath.
The head is clearer but pain is lingering in my lower back. The best of coffee, those last drops in the bottom of the Styrofoam cup where the sugar settled, is gone.
Another possible reason my creativity is withheld is because of my stifling sense that I must present ideas in a specific way. "Why bother" I say. Just keep them in your head.
Tuesday, January 23, 1990
ReplyDeleteI've diverted my desire away from stuffing my face with carbohydrates and sugar to make stew and sitting down to write. The pangs in my stomach will continue to remind me of my hunger. In this time of plenty it's so easy to take food for granted, and eat without thinking or worse yet appreciating. Some might say I'm crazy for denying my desires...
Phone rings, "Who is it?"
Why none other than Walter Adey offering me a job at the Smithsonian collecting in Florida and the Caribbean from February to August! I listened in disbelief as I heard my vocal chords, lips and tongue say that I am still available for the job and would be able to make it to D.C. in two and a half to three weeks. Just at a time when I was getting ready to scuttle the whole Smithsonian idea and start a vegetable crop this summer in Jenn Borkowski's farm. That can wait for now. If I stay with this I am in for some terrific experiences. Fate has finally called. And I have run it to grab it.
Wednesday
ReplyDeleteMore thinking. I tossed and turned thinking about what I should do. Now I don't feel so bad, I know what I want to do. It'll be the chance to get some traveling under my belt. Of course with this direction whole new eyes come flooding on to the scene. Teaching "I" rears its head, photography "I' says here's a great way to get into the art plus gain material for future teaching. Last night harmonica "I" said this is it's chace to be dredged up for those long trips to and from Florida, Georgia, et al. The Walkman "I" expressed itself. It's pretty funny ow all tis seemingly unrelated "I"s can come racing to the forefront. And how old unexpressed "I"s quietly take their place in the shadows until, of course, I'm tired of traveling, not having a real place to call my own, no regular routine, no friends or family because I'm never around. Well, that's not true. Friends and family will always be there. That's reassuring!
Worked with Dave Weaver today. Did the beginning of a wetland location. Batteries ran out of juice so we had to return to the office. Next on to Montauk and Benson Point to look for proposed observation wells so we can give elevations at each site. After lunch we checked some elevations at a job on Navy Road and ehaded back to East Hampton. Not a whole lot accomplished today, but I saw some beautiful views overlooking Fort Pond Bay and Fort Pond, and in the morning overlooking Wainscott Pond.
Thursday
ReplyDeleteRaindy day today. Now I've a mouthful of raisins and carob. This morning Dave Weaver, Barney and I were working together. Together, but not much working. It's good of the company to keep us around for the day even when we can't work. Dave explained their rationale when I asked at about 11:00 if I should take the rest of the day off.. Pretty progressive! He told me that employees couldn't afford bad weather if they laid them off during inclement conditions. They let us go around 2:00 today so I took the opportunity to check at the lab and visit with Sue and John. (John Aldred made a break from Natural Resources by making the case to the Town Board that the New York State grant to repurpose the lab into the shellfish hatchery would not get completed under Larry given his work load/things he was involved in/illness and was able to get Sue to help him, part-time I think after I resigned.)
The hatchery has come a long way since I saw it in July. A floor has been poured for the conical/setting area, a deck has been built out from the office wall to give access to the algae tanks upstairs. Heating and electricity is all in place.
My mind is filled with words of Ouspensky who talks of other words. A thought is in my head from reading "Solitude:" No one can ever know me. My soul cannot become one with another soul.
January/Friday 1989
ReplyDeleteLaura (Front Desk/receptionist at Walbridge Surveyors) was bouncing off the wallls today. Last night she and Bruce (her husband) went to a "Stop Smoking By Hypnosis" program at Gurney's. She doesn't want anyone in the office to know that she's trying to quit. So, if she fails she won't be ridiculed. Funny though; I think everyone in the office knows that she went to hypnosis. Even if they don't know she had hypnosis they'll see that she's not smoking. And her withdrawl: shaky hands, irritability, nutty moods and playfulness have to be a dead give away. Not to mention that today was another rain day: meaning that we'd be hanging around the office to notice the changes. Dream on dear Laura....
At 7:30 I was in the office much to Ray's surprise (Ray Kime was the owner of Walbridge Surveyors at this time). When he asked I let loose with my pre-prepared, although unintentional, speech about coming in early to talk about getting back into my field. I'm giving you tow weeks notice 'cause I have a job working at the Smithsonian. I'm positive he couldn't tell that I had tossed and turned all night trying not to think of how I would give him my notice. HA! It sounded like some over-rehearsed beaten to a pulp leave-taking. I kept trying to convice myself not to rehearse what I was going to say. I wanted to let the energy of the moment guide my words and actions. I didn't have the will because I wanted it to come out just right. But, not ad libbed. Come to think of it, I hated doing that for baritone solos. Fear of failure mainifest in many forms. Sometimes you have to not let fear rule because you can loose the opportunity of gaining new knowledge. Another idea from Ouspensky: "emotions are used to serve knowledge; however personal emotions often cloud and distort perception." Now I want to read some more Ouspensky.
I bought another of his books, "In Search of the Miraculous" at L.V.I.S. (Ladies Village Improvement Society in East Hampton)
January 30, 1990
ReplyDeleteFire working in the stove. I just pulled this book out of my room. It's cold.
I'm supposed to be relaxing but I'm irritable. Gary's talking business on the phone. Jenn is working on health insurance forms, W-2 and other initial paperwork that goes along with a new job. (Jenn Darling moved in to house and is beginning work for East Hampton Town Natural Resources Department.)
The faucet (kitchen sink) is leaking. Reminding me that I should write to Diana O'Hara (landlord) to tell her I'm moving, Jenn's moving in, I can't fix wall now, and prices for new burner have been acquired. A phone call will handle that though. The dripping faucet makes me think I should fix it. Jenn's voice is filling the air ever and anon. Sometimes I feel frustrated when Jenn talks because I hear her so much. Then other times I realize that the problem lies with me in not accepting Jenn as she is. I think I'm irritable because I come up against myself and don't like what I'm sensing.
February 2, 1990
ReplyDeleteThe creative juices are flowing like the Susquehanna River in Spring. Jenn's just about done knitting a cap. Gary just finished writing a letter to George Bush about the Capital Gains Tax reform.
Now easy listening music is caressing our ears. Confusing my already confused thoughts. This writing is atrocious.
Thou art that. Thou art that. Thou art that. Thou art that. Thou art that.
Thou art that. Thou art that. Thou art that. Thou art that. Thou art that.
Thou art that. Thou art that. Thou art that. Thou art that. Thou art that.
Thou art that. Thou art that. Thou art that. Thou art that. Thou art that.
Thou art that. Thou art that. Thou art that.
This music reminds me of spending the night with Barb in her room, 302 Brumbaugh Hall. Helping her study for Management tests. Sitting on her lounge chair upholstered in a dark blue velvety material - the kind that has a lighter color when you move your hand across it. Listening to her radio/cassette player, eating popcorn and preparing for upcoming classes. Time for bed. I would change into a pair of extra shorts he had on hand, while she was in the bathroom brushing her teeth.
I'd usually not plan on staying, but was easily coerced into it. I was, and really still am, so sexually out of touch with myself and Barb. I felt it was time for me to make love to a woman, but when I came up against Barb with her strong faith and belief in the Catholic way with all the associated dogma, well founded, no doubt, I was rather stumped. Instead of talking about my wants I internalized them and went along. After that a gradual back pedling seemed to take place. Convinced that our sexual feelings could only be brought out through intercourse, I didn't even try to explore other sexual avenues with Barb. I felt that our relationship reached a plateau, but I didn't talk to Barb about it.
How serious I was and still am about oh so many things of life. It all seems so ludicrous to me now. I have for so long passed aside my own desires and wants because fear of refusal has lurked in the back of my mind. Fear of failure, fear of self-knowledge. I am not self-less by any stretch of the imagination. I know what I want, but let others' opinions get into my head. I consider too much.
I know taking this new job is a step in the right direction. Yet I torment myself with trying to assure all that I'll be back in August and life will go on as always. Believe it or not, life will go on as always even while I'm gone. I'm really only fooling myself in my assurances to other. My strong protestations are revealing the degree to which I'm concerned with never moving back here.
This situation demands much less talk than has been given it on my part.
February 4, 1990
ReplyDeleteA grey, rainy, winter Sunday is upon us. My last Sunday in Southampton for awhile. Jenn and Gary are in town doing wash. I'm here at home listening to "The Best of Bob Dillon," writing and looking at pictures of times past. Kids small, now tall. Friends come, gone and back again. Dad alive. Summer, Winter, Spring, Fall. Walking with family on the beach. Launching "Seasoned" at Bullshead Bay. Visiting the muskrat den in mid-winter. A pear at the Long Wharf overlooking Northwest Harbor and Cedar Point. Sue, Seal and I on the beach.
Jenn, Gary and I now living together. Readjusting to one another. Sometimes I think Jenn and Gary are going to drive each other nuts, adn sometimes I think they'll become lovers. (They were while Jenn, Ilise, Greg and I shared a house on Halsey Street in Spring/Summer 1986 before my Dad and then Gary's Dad died.) Clinging to one another in the sea of life. It is amusing how life goes on.
February 4, 1990 continued...
ReplyDeleteWe live a lifetime behind one set of eyes thinking we know and understand. How unfairly life treats us. Living to make our mark through work, love. Thinking we are indeed the center of the sphere called life. But we die. Our body may be collected and burnt or pickled and stowed in a box to be buried in the earth. Our loved ones come to the sacred site where our physical pieces remain and decay, if they're lucky. The roots of grasses work their way into the crevices of our body, worms wiggle through our skull and come out our eye sockets. Is this so bad? What was that substance that made us live? Where does it go? Some might argue that chemical reactions are our stuff of life. Foolish folk I think they are.
Life is good. Life is bad. How we try to organize and prioritize. How we try to keep those things with us that give us happiness. Never wanting to let them go. In love with something that no longer is. Killing and destroying our love with love. The music has stopped now and the rain begins.
Feb 5, 1990
ReplyDeletePretty funny, man. I read all this shit about the fourth-dimension. Transcending, blah, blah, blah. I fall asleep not only after I read but during. Life is here in front of me now and I uncannily blow it. Precious moments tick by and, I, through all my hangups: feeling taken for granted, bored, unimportant, over-important, uninterested, frustrated, anxious, rushed, sulky, moody, miss out on excellent moments of observation.
Andrew and I worked on locating the last bits of wetlands on Warhol's today. As we drove down to our last spot near the blugg three deer ran out in front of us. Healthy light-brown coats covred their limitless muscles. I'd say that three had abnormally long white hankerchiefs for tails which they freely waved at us as they skipped over five foot high moorland shrubs. I saw two of the three again. One was trapped between us and the bluff. The other scampered behind a copse of wetland shrubs. I wanted to go to the bluff and look down to the rocky beach below just to make sure the third hadn't been frightened over teh edge. I thought that if there eas a deer laying down there I would put him in the back of Andrew's truck and take him to Gig's (Deli) to be butchererd. Waste not want not.. Then again that's all to clean. No doubt if he had fallen over the edge he wouldn't have been killed. And I would witness the writhing, squirming nature of life fighting death. A scene not often encountered by this child of the late twentieth century. A child who wished not to see deer and small game when he went hunting, those few times, with his Dad.
Feb 10, 1990
ReplyDeleteI toss and turn with ideas these past few days. 5 a.m. comes into being and I awake. I can't (or don't try) to control the waves of thought tht pull me from calm, uninterrupted sleep.
After talking to Chris about Blue Points earlier this week I was overtaken by I's saying I should go there. That I really like it here and don't want to leave this area, my home and security. But bottom line right now is Blue Points isn't hiring. If only I culd get a long term offer of being hired, say in March. I'd have something tangible to work with.
Before I talked to Chris, I heard from Lynn Ellington at the Smithsonian. It turns out that if I'm not (SCUBA) certified, I can't go on the Carribean collecting trip. This causes housing/money problems. Thus my renewed interest in staying put. Now that all my eyes are surfacing the "Chega" I's ae using this undirected approach to gain precious air time. Already the thought has crossed my mind to just take off to the Bahamas and sail that little girl back to Florida. How's that for realistic thought? Especially with dwindling money in my bank account. I even had the idea to drive to Florida, hand out in Fort Lauderdale or Key West and keep my eyes and ears out for boats headed to the Bahamas! That doesn't even sound like a far-fetched scheme to me. The more I think about it, the better it sounds. I could take my tent and camp out and work while I'm trying to find a boat! What a hair-brained idea, but yet that's what makes it so tantalizing. That's the spirit jsut cast everything to the wind. God only knows what disrepair "Chega" is in at this point considering my absent ownership and lack of payment to Cliff Dean. I sound like some raving madman with this idea.
March 1, 1990
ReplyDeleteHere in S.E. Washington, D.C. aboard the Smithsonian's (research) vessel "Marsys Resolute." The move has been made. I'm living and working aboard the ship.
I eat by myself these days. The majority of the time. I work longer hours too. Today I loosened the hatch latches for the port and starboard compainionways and the lazarette. Changed the oil in the steering case. Worked and checked over the two winches, one with Jim's (Merikel (sp?) first mate) help. And finished the seat alteration for the Coast Guard zodiac. The projects made me feel good. Tangible work with results. This week rolled by quickly. CPR and First Aid courses Tuesday and Wednesday morning. I passed and now will be able to help when and if a situation comes up. That was a good class. I just need to keep reviewing things in my mind so they don't vainish into thin brain cells.
Jim asked me to think about being the second-mate for the cruise. Walter mentioned it too at Tuesday's staff meeting. I'm resisting the desire to make a decision just yet because I keep hearing Blue Points in the distance, maybe just another week or so and they'll be hiring. Then at the same time other thoughts come onto the scene that say I should just go for it right here and once the end of the cruise rolls around head back to Southampton and take education courses this fall. Either is fine. Time, ultimately will decide or maybe the moon, stars, sun, the weather, who knows? Anything but me. Just enjoying the present and let things do as they wish.
Looks like goiing on the cruise will be a piece of cake. We're headed to Mayaguana, a little east of Great Exuma. Jim showed me on the chart where we would be heading. "Chega" I's resurface.
Jim tells me we can probably stop in to Georgetown. How funny life is. I laugh at myself a good deal as I get lost in the streets of D.C. I laugh at myself as I get lost in all my crazy ideas.
March 4, 1990
ReplyDeleteI talked to Jenn and Gary today. Talk about a pull on my heart strings. I talk to them and want to jump in the Nova and drive back to Southampton. While I'm working; though I can push my longing to go home into the background. The least amount of free time sends me hopelessly, aimlessly, dreamily yearning to get back with my two friends. and scenes of the land I left. I know I'm missing all of the new and beautiful lessons blossming before me here. I'm like a person who never learned how to swim and has jumped off an ocean liner to teach myself how.
I's soothingly, sonorously mesmerized me by their promises of new experiences, freedom from responsibility, the joys of living nearer family. I left Southampton at the last moment, realizing the shallowness of my decision. Just as my foot remained on the ocean liner's deck I realized this was not the way to swim. Alas, all is not lost. There is opportunity there. Timing is critical, but indeed ti can be worked around.
None of this can be explained. I can't try because it is arbitrary. Capricious. Nevertheless, it is what I feel. I can only hope that Diane will understand. I'm only human. I have my desires and longings as do others.
It is so funny. Sad too, that a grown man is so attatched to another. The slepp I squandered tossing and turning before I left Southampton. I'm a crazy man.
March 11, 1990
ReplyDeleteSunday afternoon. This weekend I'm visiting Mom. I started out Friday night after dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Washington's China Town with Diane, Bob, Karen and Tom. They met me at the ship and I gave them a tour before we went to dinner. they seemed to enjoy seeing "Marsys" but were probably grossed out by the smells of the galley since the reservoir for the sink emits some disgusting smells. Plus the sink was piled high with Chris and Jim's dishes. I didn't offer information on ownership 'cause that wuld have seemed pretty small of me.
As I think about leaving today I am strongly pulled to Southampton. I feel I could almost walk away from that job without giving any notice because I am so drawn to my old home and friends. I'm planning to go to Southampton next weekend. I feel Like I'm running out of breath at being away. My insides are all astir with anxiety. I've got to get control of this. For my own good. I can't seem to get away from myself.
Mom and I have had some good walks this weekend. We managed to visit Grandma, take in a movie and go out to dinner. Now comes the time for me to head back to work. I haven't felt this anxious about something since I was a schoolboy in Australia when I was signed up for track Saturday mornings. I didn't want to leave the security of family and normal routine. It was unknown to me. New people and I didn't want to be there so I decided not to do it anymore.
April 2nd, 1990
ReplyDeleteThe trip to Goodland, FL has come and gone in a flash. We (Chris Lucket, also a graduate of Southampton College, driving the eighteen wheeler tractor trailer truck from Washington, D.C. to Goodland and back) were pressed right up until the last moment with collecting for our Everglades mesocosm (located in a greenhouse at the National Arboretum), disposing of boats, piles of modules: some in pieces, some intact, cleaning out work trailer, packing up our trailer, loading the last collection bound for Arizona (Biosphere II).
What beautiful country those Everglades, diversity abound(s). I didn't take any pictures so I'll have to rely on the fleeting ones in my mind... Absolutely astounding: the flowers, birds, fish, frogs, crickets, spiders, plants, alligators. Who could imagine that so much nature could inhabit an area. Oh yeah, scorpions too. And let's not forget mosquitos.
A strong urge rose up in me when I was at the site throwing garbage into the dumpster and again when I got back to the boat ("Marsys Resolute") that I should leave immediately for Southampton. I've tamed it for now and am feeling strongly again about staying on until mid-July, sailing "Chega" back to Florida, selling her and returning to my home. I know I can do it.
April 7th, 1990
ReplyDeleteI feel wrung out. Bags under my eyes should have been checked through. A late night full blown party aboard the "Marsys Resolute" last night. I was picking up bottles and washing them out until about 2:30 this morning. After a normally unsound sleep, after uncounted drinks, I was up at 8:00 and finishing the dishes and throwing out the trash. At least I can feel I did my share. Funny thing though, I always do a considerable amount to feel like I've done my share. As if my time isn't as valuable as others?
Picked up Georgette at Dulles. She just returned from their old digs in Germany. Long wait at the airport because the plane was delayed 2 hours. I got shucked $25.00 from some Iranian woman who was claiming she is collecting money for Iranian families undr the present torturous regieme. Fast talking, turning pages quickly. Boy what a sucker I am to fall for such a ploy. AS if I owned her the money! I can't believe how rubbery I am. Money just floats away from me without any effort. It is truely amazing how asleep I am. Oh, spineless, tired, wonder of the white world.
April 9th, 1990
ReplyDelete0655
A weekend come and gone. The sun is rising as I sit for a moment. Diane, Bob, Karen and Tom have been dropped at National for tier flight to Tropic Islands and "Innisfree." The sun has just cleared the Navy Yard building that blocked it's orange juice rays from filling my retinas.
The Anacostia water is calm. That sweet, noxious air of rotting garbage delicately massages my nostrils as I step out of the van (Diane and Bob's, Dodge) onto the GSA yard bulkhead. Feeding fish ripple the water/film surface in what seems to me, random order.
Yesterday Georgette adn I went house hunting with Stan Levinson, realtor. All the words that man uses. I was beginning to sound like him at the end of the day. Much energy was tied up in negative emotions about this gentleman. Too busy associating and considering, and identifying with emotions about this man.
After a day of house hunting we came back to the Hardy household filled with Hardys, Mom, Bruno, and Guineas (pigs). A good sight. I can't get over the luck I have with such a fantastic family.
April 14, 1990
ReplyDeleteDay three of the cruise aboard the "Marsys Resolute." Engine detail has been good thus far. (While under weigh, I was given the assignment of Second Engineer assisting the First Engineer, Andy Finn, who worked at a DC Bicycle shop prior to coming aboard "Marsys" for the cruises. He had a great mechanical mind! He turned me on to identifying stars and constellations using a Curious George book. We made sure the twin diesels ran smoothly, fuel was located in appropriate tanks, generators and outboards were in working order.) I feel like I'm getting a hang of things. So far so good what with capable teachers like Andy and Matt (Finn. Andy's borther. Matt was already employed by the Marine Systems Lab when I was hired. He managed the Chesapeake Bay Mesocosm; 1,000 gallon live replica of the Chesapeake Bay Esturary housed in the basement of one of the Smithsonian's buildings using Walter's patented filtration system.) The days have been moderately demanding and very long. The division of my time and free timea re less clear. I do my engine checks and when other things come up between checks I help out. All the readying I thought I'd do hasn't been touched. But at least I finished my taxes and got them out today. This lack of time for my own activities is understandable though considering my newness to the engine room world. I'm sure, as time goes by, the routine will become established and I'll be able to tackle some books and pump out some letters. Andy has done a great job in getting me to understand the workings of engines: be they 2-cycle, 4-cycle or diesel.
We left the Potomac (River) less than an hour ago after a night anchored at the mouth of the Rappahanock. Land life is so far removed from me now. No papers, cars, radio, television. Water, shoreline-getting further away as we head south. What mechanical problems ahead? God only knows.
I am glad that I am here. I know the things that appeal to my I's. This is an impression at this moment in time which will miraculously disappers the moment some mechanical problem pops up and at that time I'll wish I wasn't here. Hopefully, I'll have the energy to be awake at that time so I can remember my fickle self.
We are plying along through the Nation's largest estuary - The Chesapeake. Bad weather is predicted for this afternoon. Battening down of hatches and lashing down of all moveables was undertaken before our departure. We'll see how good a job we made of it.
We've anchored in a bay off of the Rappahanock River. Bill and I went out for a little bit of Other (I spelled it Otter when I was working for East Hampton Town Natural Resources doing the predator surveys working with baymen.) No luck after five trawls. Three crabs, no fish and ample ctenophores, leaves and twigs.
April 14, 1990 continued...
ReplyDeleteThe night is waning. We monks sit in the lounge drinking beer and talking about nothing in particular. Only two women on board at present: Karen, Walter's wife adn Adie, our cook. More women would really round out the experience. Alas, we'll deal what is present and make the best of the situation. A strange thing regardless. Now a gan war is taking place in the lounge. Matt Smith vs. Adie Fialk. A minor scirmish at best, but nonetheless the varied interwevings are beginning to create a multicolored tapestry. Do silkworms know of the valuable fabric they produce through the energies of their daily activities? Do humans know the valuable fabric they produce through the energies of their daily activities? Food for the Gods. Energy for the moon or other planets? (Gurdieff and/or Ouspensky talk about the concept of our energy/activity being used by other planets...a book I was reading at the time)
The night air is warm and slightly humid. Clouds obscure the night's jewels. I think about sleeping on the fly bridge, but opt for my smelly, three peopled cabin. Why?
Tomorrow we stay here for the day and leave for Mobjack Bay, Monday. Easter Sudnay, manana. Adie and Howard, a trial cook, just finished dying Easter eggs.
4/14/90 Ware River, Mobjack Bay
Delete1630 hours, Salinity 17 ppt, T= 14 C
4/15/90 Rappahanock, Corrowtoman River
1230 hours. Salinity 14 ppt, T= 14 C
April 21st, 1990
ReplyDeleteThe day before Earth Day, 1990. The twentieth anniversary of the first Earth Day. I find a book about healing the earth, recycling and it's importance for sustaining life, as we know it (?) All things written in the 70's and 60's. People have probably been talking about thise things as they've/we've ridden our vehicle to its demise. But some things don't change, especially habits.
(Playing around with words/phrases written backwards/forwards and in different shapes over the pages:
Our perspective is changing.
Time losing its normal progression!
Intellectualize that humans nonchalantly gone screwy.
Sourcery, enraging, Needlessly yes subliming, towering, eloquent nowhere, competely, enticing, seemingly.
Words, Thoughts, Ideas, Emotions.
Break Out, Fall Into Your Own Scene.
Who has sentenced tomorrow?
Flowers speak to us in many different shades.
What am I doing in this scene? NADA!
April 27th, 1990
ReplyDeleteMobjack Bay....
Mail call today. A letter from Jenn plus mail she's collected for me. A letter from Diane plus mail that's accumulated at her place.
People's lives do indeed go on while I'm not around. All for the better...it makes letters worthwhile.
Diane tells me of her worries with Mom, Tom and Karen. "Thoughts" is a better word (than worries). I eat it up. They ground me and bring me in touch with the loved ones. What a good scene.
Jenn surprised me with her letter and Easter Bunny treats. Sounds like the Southampton family is growing, changing. I was wondering why I haven't heard anything from Gary. Maybe he's writing to the Florida address.
An interesting piece of mail: the score for my civil service test and a notice of interest in job with East Hampton Town! I'm going to send it back as interested. Why not? I'll need a job once I go back. I can't think of a better opportunity. The whole afternoon was filled with working for the Town again. Ironic. Yes, but the fact of the matter is, I'll need a job if I move back. More like, when I move back.
This boat scene is good. Hot, humid airs force me into the water fro cleansing swim.
Dean (Middleton, Quaker from Southern New Jersey) and I have moved into what was Richard's cabin - after some struggle and finally an order by Jim. An uncomfortable scene that was. Richard just returned from D.C with all our goodies and was quickly evicted from the much coveted two-bunk cabin. The sweat from humping shit out to the boat still on his forehead, his mouth dropped at the same time a pain-inspired whince crossed his face, as if he'd been stabbed in the back. too much for my weak stomach. I couldn't bring myself to make small talk with him for some time after that. I couldn't really even look him in the eyes. I felt so weasly.
I do like this new cabin. New people won't be coming and going.
Ink drawing of my eyes and eyebrows.
April 29th, 1990
ReplyDeleteTwo white sails, teeth on the water. Racing with the white caps on their way in from Mobjack Bay. A mixed sky of clouds. Blue patches, windswept wisps; low voluminous portending massive force of unconquerable elements. White, brilliant, mushroom tops turning grey to black on the undersides.
simple pen sketch of sailboat on water, trees in background, clouds above.
Clean line of atmosphere and water meet sealing off the beyond. Mobjack Bay. The view.
Weathering. Clouds and boat sail by. One to port, the other to starboard.
Winds roll the water's surface. What was two evenings ago motionless, undisturbed, quiet know bounces "Marsys" up and down. Not violent jerkings. No, more a cradle-rocking motion. The sound of wind passing antennae and supports for the crow's nest adds a chord to the ensemble of waves, blowers and anchor chain against chock.
My mouth has aftertase of sugary jelly beans. A joyous reminder of my sugar debauch.
I tried calling my friends, but they had gone out. I think the tide is ebbing. That's why the swells are swelling - the winds aren't forcing these wave heights.
I wonder how Chris' (Zaloga) Show (photography at Marymount College in Manhattan) went.
The friends should go out, they should become intimate, they should make love. Will they? Secretly, inside, down deep I hope they blossom and find one another's hearts and embrace. It is only natural. It is.
Do I believe that men loving men and women loving women is natural, unnatural, controllable, uncontrollable? I believe it is controllable. Is homosexuality an example of the work of centers (Gurdieff/Ouspensky talk about centers) being confused? It's not wrong. I think that the wrong work of centers; however, keeps a person in sleep.
I know I'm kidding myself by thinking that once this cruise is over I'll have rid myself of the urge to travel and will run back to Southampton and friend, work in whatever capacity, work on getting certified to teach and then live happily every after. I'm fooling myself. The problem lies more in my difficulty in this relationship not being as others have been. I've accepted this person more that I've accepted any other person.
Who knows? All this writing and blithering is nothing but a reaction to lack of mail from my partner. It will all be for naught once
Saturday, May 5th, 1990
ReplyDeleteI stand alone in the eternal sea. It washes over mine eyes. I do not see, nor have I ever seen.
I think of my meaninglessness but do not know it from within. Time passes me by and I squander it with trifles and meaningless endeavors.
I do but am really done to. Accidents of chance make up my life and will design my death. Constantly asleep I need a shock. New jobs, new surroundings, new people, but I am forever the same. Helplessly, hopelessly lost in a deep, deep sleep that makes me believe that I am awake. It does not end. No, it continues on. This charade of awareness and consciousness.
Wherever I go, foever dragging this personality that I can't excercise. Always at my side chattering endlessly. Will he ever shut up long enough for me to hear the silence? No. Doomed to this self-produced hell for a lifetime.
Dismay and change come and quiet for brief periods, but the chattering resumes. Into a corner he talks without reconcilliation.
Vanity and sloth are his chief features. He likes to hear his unoriginal, parroted ideas. His idleness is masked by busyness in going nowhere. He is insecure and foever daydreaming. He is me. He is my worst enemy. Kill hime, please. It is the only way for me to live. But, it won't happen. He's too firmly entrenched in my being that without him I would collapse and die. This would be better nonetheless.
Where do I go from here? This is not so soul shaking that night's sleep is kept at bay.
Wind blows through the screen in the porthole. The rubbing of the glass door shakes and bellows on the wall. I hear waves breaking on their discovery of this hard form in their path.
I am a pathetic, waisted piece of floatsom going nowhere. Daydreaming of home I left while I have a new, beautiful home. Planning and scheming to get back. Never ending. Restlessness. Once the restlessness stops my imagination and creativity will have veen succumbed.
Duality exists everywhere and in every thing for me. No sooner am I back then I'm leaving again!
5-8-90
ReplyDeleteTuesday
Times they are a changing.
The eve before our departure to West Palm Beach. The wheels begin to turn. I had a rough day and a half starting the weekend. Too much emotional center. Too many thoughts.
Tacate Cerveza is calming me to sleep.
Black pen sketch of a Tecate Beer I'm drinking.
Beer, compliments Dean (Middleton.)
Leaving Mobjack Bay 0600 hours, Wednesday, May 9th, 1990.
ReplyDeleteCaptain Steve (hired by Walter Adey to Captain "Marsys Resolute" to Ft. Lauderdale, FL since Walter was busy doing other things), Joe, Gurran and I are the first watch until 1200. Beautiful sunrise although mostly red. Remember sailor's warning. Hed to north Bay Bridge Tunnel entrance and continue south. Weather forecasted to be rainy Thursday, winds reaching 20-25 knots from the southwest. Motor along smoothly, sky is overcast by the end of my watch. Sleep fitfully for two hours on the flybridge. Unknown after sleeping my face and eyelids got good dose of UV rays.
Light dinner of lasagna after reading Dean's newsletter from Slippery Rock College, Permaculture organization and "In Search of the Miraculous." Weather gettig more intense as our evening watch moves forward. We pass Thimble Shoals lighthouse near end of watch. Bow of "Marsys" getting blue water. Head on into wind until we round Hatteras then quartering. Very uncomfortable even when taking wind and waves head on. I spend most of watch on stool by companionway to fly bridge, one foot on floor or rung of stool, the other foot on console by throttle levers. Good air coming donw from fly-bridge hatch as we pound into waves, go up and crash down. See moon breaking through the clouds one moment, see complete blackness of wave on bow then on p[ilot house windows the next.
I'm not at all talkative while Captain Steve and Dr. Joe chatter on about careers, blah, blah. Don't they feel even the least bit sick? How can they keep talking and talking. I stare at the moon, I stare at the frighteing blackness and listen to the crash of water o metal, and see whiteness spash on windows. Sometimes a fine mist wafs down through the hatch.
Finally after counting down the hurs from six p.m. to one a.m., the new watch surfaces. Coffee mug toting monsters, filling the humid, stale expired air of the cabin with odors of strong acrid black coffee. I'm at the point of no return. Teetering on the edge of sickness I fight the urge of my dilating throat. The urge passes, like a menacing but harmless wave. I go below with a plan for sleep. The PQ, Preferred Quarters usually a satire of the three bunks occupying what used to be the fish hold ("Marsys Resolute" was a 98' Tuna Trawler in her first incarnation before she became an R/V, Research Vessel.) Completely dark, sharing a wall with the engine room down deep in the bowels and aft. This night of uncontrolled rocking from side to side, leaking portholes and puking crewmates was knighted Sir PQ of Sleep. And straight away I went to fetch my trusted sleeping bag and pillow. Secure in the PQ, fan running, gentle lullabye rocking. I sleep. I dream. Of what, it leaves me?
My morning wake up call from Joe. I take care of odds and end (books thrown off the shelves onto the wet rug), wash my face, brush my teeth and head to the jalley to pick up an apple and orange for my shift. Down in the galley Addie, Tim and Joe are putting out breakfast: cereal, milk, fruit, coffee, as if the shift going on or coming of really cae for food. I, having secured my fruit head to the pilot house filled with amazement that these souls are going to much down bowls of cereal and buttered sweet muffins. "Yuk" I think to myself in disgust. The thought almost makes me sick to my stomach.
The night shift looks fuzzy around the edges. Dean is stetched out on the port setee. A green film covers his unfocused eyes. His face looks clamy. This boy needs some rest. I tell him the secrets of the PQ, and he is able to show a little emotion. Jim (Merikel, First-mate) is at the wheel. Unflagable that guy. Keeps on plowing through. He's like a tank. Forward, onward rolling. Nothing stops the Minnesotan. Capt. Steve napped for a few hours but spent the remaining four in the CHAIR (Captain's). He looks like he's been sweating bullets.
(After a day of motoring into wind and waves we decide to stop inside Beaufort Inlet to assess damages. At one point, the galley, a bulkhead separating it from the engine room, had water dripping from the ceiling due to water from waves coming down exhaust stacks from the diesels. We anchor near Fort Macon for the night to recover plus, thanks to my previous visits to Beaufort, get in touch with Captain Dick a friend who owns a B& B in Beaufort with his wife Rubbie and their daughter. Captain Dick was, I believe, the first pilot aboard a Pan Am 747 flying to the Orient. He recommends "No Name Pizza" drop zodiac into water and motor to Beaufort, catch a cab to No Name and bring the pizzas back to "Marsys.")
ReplyDeleteMay 1990 (After the first collecting trip to Mayaguana, Bahamas. Back in Fort Lauderdale, FL)
ReplyDeleteThis day sure flew by. Already it's early a.m. and I'm just showered from the day's marathon in the engine room. I think Andy just talked me out of some serious troubles. If it wasn't for him, I'd still be down there changing the centrifuge and trying to fill up the day tanks with fresh fuel. Diesel fuel needed to be run through the centrifuge to removed debris in the fuel and from the tanks before it went into the twin diesel engines. The centrifuge needed to be taken apart and cleaned on a regular basis to remove the residue.) Of course it wouldn't have flowed as smoothly as that sentence. There would have been many curses. Much energy blown off into the abyss. What a fantastic experience this is to be working with these people. They can teach me so much if only I can be quiet and listen. But it's a rare occasion when my internal genius isn't going on about this person and that person. Negating others and their views without much difficulty. I stumble along blindly when there are others who hold the clues to different parts of the puzzle.
Tomorrow we depart (trip 2 to Mayaguana, Bahamas). I'm excited. Now I'm tired.
Memorial Day 1990
ReplyDeleteLoop 2. Second Day out of West Palm Beach (on way to Mayaguana, Bahamas, I miss wrote by last post's date that we were in Lauderdale.)
Weather has been cloudy until this morning. Windy, but not enough to get anyone sick, although my stomach has felt unsettled.
Finished reading "The Yearling" this morning. Now I'm wrecked. Can't do much of anything after that ending. What a powerful story. I don't want to start reading anything else because I want the memory of Jody, Penny and Ory to linger on. Those words had as much texture as the words of "The Grapes of Wrath." This book ("The Yearling") might be my favorite. I think it is my favorite. The life those people lived on Baxter Island. And Penny, the Wise, not title of present-day man would do him. A man living in nature. Killing his own food, dressing, butchering and tanning hides, growing his own food. Humble, conserving, a man with vision for the long run. I doubt there are many like him today.
June 1, 1990
ReplyDeleteLoop 2 has had it's mechanical problem. Each Loop so far has had at least one. The first's was the centrifuge, a new bowl and plate assembly for $1,000 once we got back to West Palm took care of that. Today we had our problem for Loop 2. Hopefully the only major one for this loop. The nicest of our outboard boat fleet, the whaler, capsized. Tim, Jerry, a one loop pain in the ass, and Jim Pearl, a new volunteer, were collecting with Virginia (she was one of the international crew on the Space Biospheres Ventures, ferro cement hull, Chinese junk-rigged sailboat, "Herraclitus" moored in Mayaguana to help us with collecting) on the reef crest by the cut. The winds blowing out of the southeast, has been for 48 hours, they were loading their twelve lugs (containers 24" long, 18" wide, 12" deep for holding collections of broken coral covered with algae and filled with water) into the poor girl and lug ten aft of the steering console plus two people, Virginia and Jerry, on one side was more than she could handle.
Kathy, Addie, Marouf, Bert and I had returned from collecting at the high point (area of the reef. Like many islands in the tropic, the reef creating the harbor fringes the island off shore). We were futzing about after offloading our gread algae covered rocks, and Jim, Tim and Virginia rode up in the small zodiac. "That's stange," I thought. The next moment the two freshly cleaned and lug-loaded attendants, "Bahia" and "Bertha" (two more zodiacs), were enlisted to serve as salvage boats along with all of us dumbfounded collectors.
We roared out to the site with two bilge pumps and about eight people. We did remember to bring many ropes to tie to one side so we could right the upside-down vessel. With six of us standing on one side and hanging onto ropes attached to the other side, we managed to turn the little girl back over. Then Jim and I jumped inside her and got to work with bilge pumps (manual type) while Dean and Todd bailed with the bottom and top of a batter box. Unfortunately the center console was ripped off from the floor but managed to hang to the boat by the wires and cable that connected it to the motor.
While the four of us bailed the rest dove for equipment that sank to the bottom and secured lines to the whaler so she could be towed. After a lot of yelling, the whaler was pumped dry, well, more or less, and we towed the wreck home to mother "Marsys." Now I'm tired.
June 6th, 1990
ReplyDeleteLoop 3
A quick visit to West Palm. Not quick enough though. West Palm and surrounding blight of shopping plazas, condos and fast food restaurants make my head spin. Many people on board now. Capt. Pete, Jim, Dean, Andy, Addie, Paul, Jeniene, Sarah (Dean's girlfriend) Todd, Tim, Todd, Jim, plus three women from the "Heraclitus:" Christine (from Germany), Pascal (from Australia, I think), and Reka (from the former Yugoslavia). The ship's a bit crowded now. I've moved into a spare bunk in Andy's cabin since Reka is in my bunk. I doubt I'll move back as Sarah and Dean will want to share the cabin once Reka returns to the "Heraclitus."
I'm feeling a bit quirky about giving up my space because I had room to put my stuff. Now in Andy's cabin all space is filled with either Matt or Andy's belongings. (Truth be told, I had a bit of a crush on Dean. He was fun to hang out with. Funny, mellow, intelligent guy that he was...of course I couldn't admit that to myself then.)
Also making me feel quirky is a part-time job offer from John Aldred to work at the Hatchery. I think I'd like to do that. Here we go again, right?
I'll have to talk to Walter when he comes down for the next loop. What now?
June 12th, 1990
ReplyDeleteTuesday
I'm going to take John up on his offer of a job. This cruise hasn't gotten any better. Plagued by outboard steering problems, lack of my own space, too much time "engineering" and afraid for my hide, I'm ready to see land, rent a car, drive to airport and fly home. This is too much.
What's really sealed the lid on this decision for me is Monday morning's grouding on our way out of Abrahm's Bay. We're pretty well hung out after the tip-toe through the coral heads. Four good sized holes were caused by the ship pounding on the hard coralline rock. The holes are placed at the bottom of the keel. Unfortunately the cooling reservoir for the main engines and main generators lives at the bottom of the keel. Salt water was flowing through the cooling systems of the mains and the port generator for at least three hours.
We started out from anchor @ 0630. By 0730 we were hard aground. I can't say much about the scene above decks because I was on the 0300 to 0900 watch in the engine room. (I was in the engine room as we were leaving.) I felt some bumping and then more and more and it became obvious once I went to the pilot house that we were hard aground. Back to the engine room to keep an eye out for leaks, stalled engines, generator, gauges and anything else.
I spent a good deal of time between the two main engines watching the pulley housings to make sure the engines hadn't stalled. Once the did stall I'd press the start button to get them going. Andy and I alternated throughout the four hour effort. Sweat dripp9ing, roaring engines, smoke billowing out of the overtaxed mains, temperatures rising, hole in cooling pipe to keel. Zinc anode and Kupex through-hull knocked off by the hard coral- water spraying through stopped by my finger until someone could find a cork which I wrapped in duct tape to fill the little finger-sized hole. Starboard generator jumping, must be afraid.
All through this I promised myself that once we got back to Florida, I would pack my bags and head to New York. I will do it. Once I help offload the coral-filled boxes into the trucks, my next measure will be to off load myself into a rental car and head for the Page's (Aunt Dorie and Uncle George in Cocoa Beach, FL). Next stop; Orlando for my flight to Washington/Dulles to visit Diane and family, on to Mom's then back to good old Southampton four and a half months after my departure. My how time flys.
Shipyard for this vessel once the Sea Tow comes and pulls us back to Miami. Walter says four or five days in shipyard. Somehow I'll be surprised if that date is met. Just like all the other dates for departure for this or for that. It'll be miraculous indeed if we're back to Miami by this coming weekend.
June 12th, 1990 continued...
ReplyDeleteThe last piece of missing boat was discovered by Dean this afternoon. Hurrah, hurrah. He found the brass propeller embedded in a coral head about 300 yards off the bow. Yesterday we were able to locate the two rudders with the help of some of the "Heraclitus" crew. They've been a great help through this. Christina, Pascal and Eibes were here for most of yesterday and all of today. They guided us in patching with underwater epoxy, they helped us find our runaway rudders and set out our four anchors. Sasha, the Yugoslav doctor was here yesterday and today nursing our tow cripples, Jeniene with dislocated shoulder, and Paul with propeller cut foot. When will this shit end? No doubt in the sink of my latest abode, Jim's cabin. For some unknown reason shit has been filling the sink and overflowing in Jim's cabin. Good thing I just keep my bedding shoes and dirty clothes in there! I feel very sorry for Jim. That's his home and this ship has been his home for the last three years. I wonder what he's thinking.
Time to drag this salty, sweaty, pimple filled body to bed. Where is my bed? Tonight, maybe the galley.
June 14th, 1990
ReplyDeleteThursday
Calm weather has been on our side. This morning the "Moby Ruth" showed up at around 1000. Now we're moving along at about five knots (?) The radar and all navigation equipment are off. I wonder if they're all on the fried 32V battery system? Water is still pumping through the collections. Some of the Neogoniolithon (coral) lugs are a bit bleached on top but most of the rest look okay.
In a moment of weakness and frustration yesterday, I blurted out to Addie that I was leaving once we hit Miami. I'm disappointed in myself for such lack of control over my thoughts.
Tim is still singing songs and working away as if none of this phases him. A remarkable guy. Unlimited energy. His talking bothers me though sometimes. I wonder if anyone else is harboring the thought of leaving once we get to Florida? It was awkward leaving my friends on the "Heraclitus" today. I don't think I'll see them again. At least not aboard the "Marsys."
I should feel happy about this trip, but instead I am sad. I feel like a quitter. I can't seem to stay with anything more than a few months then I have to get away. Why? I'm lazy. Pure and simple.
Not so pure and simple. I want to leave because I have a bad feeling about his project. As soon as possible. I go over again and again how I'll talk to Walter about this.
June 15, 1990
ReplyDeleteRestless night's sleep. I can't remember when I've been more openly crabby. More ammunition for my leave the "Marsys" I's. Two more days to go. That's 48 hours and counting, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. I can use this time for self-observation. "Know thyself."
My head is fuzzy and cloudy this morning. The shadow of the fly-bridge reaches almost to the bow. It's a calm day. For now my niche is just forward of the rail in front of the pilothouse.
Little pieces of shit still lie in the basin in Jim's cabin. A test tube stopper fills the hole that provides the insulting brown liquid and sludge. As I walk aft to check the engine room, digested and released food smells lick my nostrils. These smells surround the aft head, now with it's door closed and a sign saying "Do not grind. Grinding floods Jim's sink." A sign that's been in place now since late Monday night or early Tuesday morning when Jim first noticed the unusual phenomena.
We're going back to Florida via an inside route - the Old Bahama Channel. Will pass close to Cuba on this route. I wonder if we'll be able to see land.
This experience is similar to a death. Each morning I wake up and the sad fact remains that we ran aground and did great damage to the ship. This is minor compared to losing Dad. It's still a wasted, empty feeling though.
June 24, 1990
ReplyDeleteI didn't leave the lab (Marine Systems Lab) when we got back to Miami. Now that the ship is in drydock, I'm out in Oracle, Arizona working on the ocean (1 million gallons, one of the biomes the Marine Systems Lab was contracted to install at Biosphere II) with Tim, Chris (Luckett) and Todd. After a bout with food poisoning yesterday night I'm back to my old self. Problem is the job at the Hatchery still awaits and I want to go as soon as possible.
Larry Penny (Director of the East Hampton Town Natural Resources Department) has been catastrophic sick leave for six months. The town employees are rejoicing. In the back of my mind though I think of "A Tale of Two Cities." Will there be a drastic swing in the other direction? Time will unfold. As for me, I wonder if my strong desire to leave is just my inability to work. Why do I torment myself with such silly notions. The problem is not an inability to work at all. That's brought into the scene to confuse me.
28 June 1990
ReplyDeleteThursday morning walk out to the low hills of North Rockcliffe Blvd. The road turns from asphalt into dirt. A lot of imagining going on in my head. What I'll do when I get back to New York most of the time. Here I am in the dessert southwest and I'm longing to return to Southampton. Five, even six, months ago I was longing/imagining what I would do once I moved to Washington and started a new job. This imagining or dreaming is an interesting phenomenon. I'm doing it constantly but am not aware of it.
I'm also noticing that my memory is not so good. I should say my memory for books and movies, to start. I think this forgetfulness is due to my identifying with certain characters in the movie or book. In identity, I see only one view and miss the whole larger picture. Carrying thousands of individual thread is much harder than carrying a weaving made of those thousands of threads.
Quail family moves to and fro on the gravel driveway. They're all out of sight now. Earlier four young were standing atop the gravel pile. The father ran up the hill and the young rand down the other side. The father sat on the hill, mountains in the distance.
Flies buzz around my feet from time to time. On the walk they were bothersome when I first came out but then they went away.
29 June 1990
ReplyDeleteAnother morning walk observed by imaginings of life back in Southampton. Herb farming with Jenn. Work on the acre before going to the job. Getting involved in the Food Co-op w/ Jenn's help. The last half of my walk didn't even exist. These imaginings kill me. More and more time is spent running my ideas than carrying them out. Once I get to where I was imagining about, something will come up that I didn't count on in my daydreaming and that will negate the possibility of doing what I set out to do. Then I'll begin to imagine myself in a new setting, teaching for example. I tell you the first moments inattention and I'm history. Sunk deep in the abyss not even realizing that darkness surrounds me.
The quiet here is without words. Although, now, sounds of cars and trucks on Highway 77 bring back, clearly, the fact that I live in an industrialized country. The sound of mulcher roll across the hills. My ears pick up the distant sound in between the hum and whir of a passing truck then a passing car. Dessert sounds are at times subtle especially as the day gets bright and hot. The cicadas fill the noontime air with their hot, dry, shrill sound of overhead sun.
I like the routine of scrubber-room (where Walter's patented water filtration system is installed in the bowels of Biosphere II) It's a pleasant task. I loose myself in it. And, not to imaginings of things to come. (The work entails cleaning algae off the plastic mesh that water from the ocean is pumped across. Halide lights above the mesh provide light for the algae to grow. The algae also move nutrients in the water for their growth, cleaning the water in the process.)
Saturday morning
ReplyDeleteNo morning walk today. Late night of billiards at the Oracle Inn with Chris an Todd. Again I'm struck by the desire to go home. Three weeks, maybe two, and counting.
Monday, July 2, 1990
Many problems at Biosphere II this weekend. Power failure for about an hour and a half Saturday afternoon. Tide too low (in the ocean) Saturday morning. No tide pump working.
Tide pump started Sunday but by afternoon off again because it's sucking water and filled up vacuum line all the way to automatic shut off sensor. Chris restarted but one chamber of pump doesn't seem to fill with water. Very strange. Minimal tide increase in Marsh - possibly 1 gallon per minute. Malone got misting fans started Sunday.
Went for the morning walk at 5:30 today. Once again my thoughts were streaking forward to taking classes this fall, farming the acre, farming anywhere, taking scientific illustration, imagining what it would be like to teach, thinking about Prince Edward Island (Gary mentioned a bicycling trip there when I get back), returning to Southampton, on and on and on and on. It's obvious how I got into trouble Spring a year ago. I was doing so many thiings that I had no time. Maybe it wasn't so bad that I had no time, it was just that I couldn't deal with it properly. I spent a lot of time with negative emotions as I drove to Whereman's Pond (where I was helping trap mud turtles and putting radio transmitters on them to help Jim Cavanaugh with a South Fork Natural History Society project), drove to work in East Hampton, came home and walked to Chris' for work on her house. It's not that doing those things was so bad. It was my attitude that was amiss. Instead of working through it, and just doing it, the internal dialogue (the eternal dialogue) was whining away about how it wanted to do this or that. It couldn't deal with what was happening in the present and how it should concentrate on the moment at hand. I could've worked through that, but since I had three things going in the present plus may in the future, I couldn't take it all. So here I am approaching another situation that looks pretty busy and already I'm thinking of beyond. The future is already here and gone and I'm planning beyond. Carpe diem. Her I am right now in Arizona. Be here at present. Watch the humming birds drink their sugar water, see the lizards snatching moths. Eat his breakfast, savor it. Feel the cool of the dry morning air and feel the breeze blow across your skin. Listen to the pitiful sound of water in the brass Yucca water fountain. Ah, that's good. Each moment in the present should give you strength, not tap you of it.
July 3, 1990
ReplyDeleteA day off tomorrow. I'm doing some hiking. I don't know where, but it's going to be without a lot of driving. Up, up and away.
I'm noticing negative emotions towards Todd. Lately, my shell is overly permeable to words from Todd. Obviously he's a lot like myself that's why I'm having a repulsion/revulsion towards him. It's good to observe this phenomenon. If I can only remember to observe.
July 4, 1990
ReplyDeleteThere's a cool breeze and a warm sun.
Independence Day. Time to watch parades and fireworks. Barbeque hot dogs, hamburgers, tofu with friends and family.
Clear air and sky fill the view and strike my still sleep-filled eyes. Ants carry moth winds and bodies from deep in the courtyard to the gate at he entrance of the courtyard.
My thoughts are slow to move this morning. The early morning dreams are still rattling around in my head.
A dream about being back on the "Marsys." She's newly painted throughout. Some old crew members, some new fill her stores. She's back in the water looking sharp as ever. I have a rough time of it when we're passing something up from the galley and all are turning and passing to the person behind them. I run the items up the steps and then back down for more. Later I find my old grey poncho from Peru laying in a pile of grease on a table. I run to where many people are and yell. Then realize the people I'm yelling at probably didn't put the poncho in the grease.
Another scene and I'm eating some Mexican meal with Chris and Todd and a third person who Chris met out here in Oracle. The meal is really just melted cheese over it's hard to remember, beans maybe. Anyway the man we're eating with is just stuffing his face with more and more cheese and it's stringy cheese.
The "Marsys" dream was a bit longer. I met Tim's wife. She was aboard so they could sort things out. I talked to Sarah. A woman came up to us from somewhere and for some reason I thought she was an old girlfriend of Dean. There was a scene where we, Dean and I, I think were diving under the boat and someone or something was shooting at the ship when we came to the surface. I remained between the ship and the pier she was tied up to so that I could catch a glimpse of the person or people doing the shooting. Then later I saw a Russian ship docked at the pier across the way and men were boarding her and going through all of their belongings. They were there for a long time.
I've thought, imagined, that when I get back to New York I'm going to call up the Gudjieff-Ouspensky Center in New York City to see if I can get into a group. More future imaginings, you see. Too much imagining and it'll never happen. As is true for so many of my imaginings.
The early morning fog of my mind is burning off, perhaps I'm falling back to sleep.
There go mamma and her four young down the gravel hill into the protection of grass. The secret of the ever-present quail family has been discovered. Judy (owner of the B & B where we're staying) has a clay trivet filled with water and a block of seed out front for the bird's eating and drinking pleasure. Thus the morning and evening marches up and over the gravel hill and across the driveway.
A sign I've noticed tow times on my morning expedition: ARABIAN HORSE'S FOR SALE. What? And last night at Falcone's Pizzeria home of the recyclable pizza, a sign that you could order a SALAME sandwich. Or maybe my eyes were playing tricks.
Rich's (Muller) birthday is coming up in three days. Greg Seff's in a week and Terry's in nine days.
"Marsys" is still in drydock. Andy thinks it'll cost up to $200,000 but the latest official price is $140,000. Walter, as of last Friday, said the work will probably take ten more days. Andy seems to think it'll take two more weeks from this Monday.
My departure from Miami, unless the boat has been repaired, is July 15th. The three week anniversary of my giving Walter notice. If she is ready to go before that, I tell myself and others that I'll make another loop. I really don't want to though. And, I hope that I can leave on the fifteenth. What a wimp. I'm really finished with this ship scene.
As word has it, next Tuesday I'll fly back to Miami to work on the ship....That'll be July 10th. Will she be ready to go back to sea by July 15th? Stay tuned.
July 6th, 1990
ReplyDeleteHad a bang up day at the Biosphere yesterday. Today, Everglades collections should be arriving. We left the project at 8:30 last evening. I was pretty tired and punchy as we ate dinner at the Oracle Inn talking and flirting with Victoria.
Many more charged emotions as I drove into Tucson yesterday with water samples to be mailed to Jill, dry ice to be packed up to keep the samples cool, finding the Federal Express office, dropping off an algae sample for S.B.V. (Space Biospheres Ventures) getting to the Home Depot to pick up PVC fittings and returning to the Biosphere site. The negative emotions relaxed once I started knocking off the stops.
Yesterday afternoon's drive reminded me of those crazy trips up to Stony Brook with the biweekly water samples. (One way drive from East Hampton to Stony Brook took 75 to 90 minutes.) Or even better the trip to Farmingville to drop off Larry's pictures for the conference, and then the return trip the next day to pick them up! Too much identity with the situation seemed the problem in that case. You know, ego or that Craig Hassler character saying "I spend four and a half years in college to do this, blah, blah, blah" and getting hotter and hotter about the fact which lead me to the road of, I must go do something where my every move is valued.
(Reading this now as I'm typing it into the blog, I'm seeing a pattern between negative, thoughts and emotions and long times in the car...at that time I didn't appreciate how being seated with major muscles of hips, glutes being flexed was requiring lots of oxygen and nutrients from my blood, plus not moving my legs meant reduced circulation so brain is being starved of oxygen and nutrients thus the negative thoughts...also makes sense in understanding my negative thoughts considering the amount of time I was sitting while underwheigh on "Marsys." Fortunately since I was second engineer, my watches consisted of half hourly checks on the engine room and then strolling around the ship visiting with folks, especially the crew at the helm on watch...thus I got more exercise moving and wasn't seated.)
July 6th, 1990 continued....
ReplyDeleteWhat an interesting phenomenon. Fortunately the die is already cast in this case, my ego knew this crazy Tucson scene wasn't going to occur too many more times so it moved on, albeit reluctantly. It's a crazy bottomed thing this Craig Hassler personality. Floating along restfully until the ground rises up quickly and demands quick response and really nothing else. This Hassler character can't seem to respond appropriately by moving quickly enough. No, he gets caught in changing gears, maybe even shifting gears or not knowing which gears to shift to. Thereby causing the crags of his personality to bump hard into the quickly rising and often times craggy landscape. But, instead of realizing that his crags have got themselves, somehow or other, attached to the landscape and that he should change his gears to lift off the impediment, he remains stuck in his preceding gear, thinking that it is not his ability to change gears that is causing the stuckness. It is really the problem of the landscape. But, of course, I know how hard it will be to move on with that Hassler character at the helm, grinding the gears. I must speak up more to the Hassler person, he's so used to dominating me that he's come to believe that he's the only one that exists. But more than half the time he's sleeping or running on cruise control and those are the moments I can seize. I can look out the window and observe our relationship to the landscape. I can learn how we can change to keep floating free.
Alas, that floating free is a long way off. If possible at all. It's frightening how far away that moment of being at the controls is for me. So much work has to be done in between. The first step is to sneak up to the window.
A major move, and highly unlikely. Considering that every time I try to get near the window, Hassler dreams even harder or imagines or considers or any one of those turbulence causing sleepy activities, it's no wonder I can never see out, let alone get to the window. It's uneasy how that as I get up and move towards the window the turbulence increases so dramatically that the seat belt lights come back on and I'm knocked to the floor. Forced to crawl back to my seat. He's a tricky pilot that Hassler boy. It's almost as if he has eyes in the back of his head and can see my movement towards the window. The he rocks the steering control with all his might in his next consideration, identification, imagination. Already he's trying to crowd me out of pen and paper. He's wanting to read and get back into his dialogue of dreamings, imaginings, considerings, identifyings.
Indeed, the first step will be to reach the window, undetected.
July 9, 1990
ReplyDeleteWho would think of rain for four days in a row in Arizona during mid-summer? Not I. I was all set to take a walk. My body needs some exercise - it's getting lazy and stiff. Raindrops make circles in the puddle of Judy's gravel driveway. Circles are made in the courtyard by the table. The sounds of steady, commuting traffic are ever present as I sit at the writing table. Humming bird comes to his feeder, undeterred by the rain. Over and over again my plan for leaving circulates, percolates through the brain cells. Over and over again, imagining, daydreaming. What is it about me that can't be here right now?
July 10, 1990
ReplyDeleteI just got off the phone with Walter. What a good guy he is. Completely understanding. Totally with the picture. I'm glad I called. For what he's been through, he still has a friendly, composed voice. The only thing that's unclear though is when he thinks I'm leaving. I'm sure, after our discussion that he's under the impression that I'll leave by next week some time. That'll get cleared next time we talk, I'm sure.
July 13, 1990
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday, Terry!
All is clear. I leave Tuesday, my final destination Washington (D.C.). From there I start paid work at the hatchery August 1. I think I'll volunteer a couple days before that just to get into the swing of swings. Feeling pretty lethargic right now. Can't figure why. The past few days have been minimally productive since Chris, Todd and I have been fighting some intestinal bug in varying degrees. We've managed the basic chores of harvesting the scrubbers, keeping R.O. (reverse osmosis) running, checking salinities and temperatures, keeping the greenhouse in order with waterings and tides, and netting the floating algae I the ocean. I guess that's not an insignificant amount of work. I still don't feel like I'm accomplishing anything though.
The rains have left us for a few days. Not a breath of air is moving now.
7-18-1990
ReplyDeleteWednesday. A trusting, foolish, naïve cheapskate am I. Caught finally and landed on the hard ground where "reality" is able to work its knobby hands through my rapidly thinning hair and into my small, fat-bound brain. Lessons such as these come with considerable monetary cost, fortunately!
I can laugh at my always present fallibility. I have enough fore thought to go to a travel agent to take care of my side trip to San Antonia. (I wanted to visit Ed, Georgette, Jeniene and Jim on my flight back to Washington, D.C. so thought I could simply get off the plane when it landed in San Antonio, go visit them overnight and then catch the next plan to Washington the next day,) All is worked out. A plan devised so that I give the first part of my ticket and first part of purchased ticket. No problem. Of course. But, lo and behold, the second part, the getting home part, is flawed. Terribly. These counter-reps are endowed with telepathy. My simple request to apply the remaining portion of my ticket to Miami to Dulles is ludicrous they tell me since "that ticket no longer has any value. You can't break up this ticket." This is America, you can't get away with that! You're a nothing, a puny little ant compared to the scale of our International Airlines. Giants like us step on disturbing ants like you! Ants beware! Caught unaware on your journey to the sugar bowl, you will get crushed if you rely on convenient and inexpensive accommodations being available to you for your travel.
You foolish ant. Thinking that by going to an agent your devious and insidious plan of getting from point a to point b via point c could be inexpensive (ie. less that $300). Of course that amount is mere pocket change to all the other American ants. You're just cheap. The irony of this sugary experience is that th travel agent that you were trying to give business to made out (made off) with the sugar bowl. Not only did she sell you your ticket to San Antonio for $138 - even though you couldn't use it because of restriction on your ticket - she managed to sell you another ticket for $205 to get back from Dallas. The cash register clangs twice on this gullible, money-burning-hole-in-the-pocket-ant. Not much can be said, but BEWARE. Beware of travel where you're not behind the handlebars, wheel, or tiller. Too much organization should also not be condoned. If I would've approached this in my normal, haphazard way, I'd be $343 dollars richer today. Alas that luxury is not allowed. What would I do with the goddamn green paper anyway? How unlike Grandma Hassler I am. She saving, saving, saving. Me blowing money to rag-headed women collecting for Iranian refugees; buying sailboats that I never use or that require continuous maintenance, getting tickets to everywhere to visit family for less than a day. Oh, yes, how wicked the money is in hands of a fool like me. The saying that "a fool and his money are soon parted" has never had a more proper assignee than Craig K. Hassler.
Will I ever learn? Most probably not. The manifestations of a fool and his money come in so many varied forms. You probably don't realize how many times it's beaten you over the head, dropped you to the ground and cleared your pockets of the green and papery along with the hard and shiny. How else could I learn, be educated if I don't pay? Something for nothing. Indeed your naivete is overwhelming.
July 22, 1990
ReplyDeleteHome. Mom's. Pennsylvania. Life goes on. Grandma continues her complaining, intimidating, games with Mom. Aunt Doris continues her complaining, and moaning about Grandma. Mom is found deeper in the quicksand of cynicism, isolation, frustration, anger, loss, loneliness, pessimism of the news and papers. I make the egocentric mistake, as usual, of telling Mom how she should handle them, what she should do to counteract them. Silly, idealistic boy that I am. Blowing in to town assessing the problems in a moment and blurting out my oversimplified solutions. What a fucking maroon. As if she doesn't have her own way of dealing with this oppressing, depressing, scene. Mortality. Her mother-in-law's inability to deal with her mortality. She talks about not being around much longer but she still carries grudges, makes shallow judgments. She's still perversly clutching her money and hoarding it. Her final touch of spite will be to give most of her estate to this side of the family. What is she trying to prove? If I had any guts I'd totally dissociate myself from her and Aunt Doris. What good would that really do? No need to react to stupidity and senselessness.
I think Mom is really having a hard time dealing with the situation in Camp Hill because Diane is moving to North Carolina. Her simple recharge of piling Bruno and Sir K (Mom adopted one of the guinea pigs produced by Sir Lancelot and Lady Gueneviere, Karen's guinea pigs.) and driving to Virginia is gone. Sure Georgette and Ed are moving closer, but it's not the same. The relaxed, caring atmosphere of Diane and Bob's is out of easy driving range. She's stuck with Grandma and Aunt Doris. Their constant, petty, childish contests, bickering and wars will continue on. Unabated by breaks to sanity in Virginia. Mom must face those oversensitive, demanding, obsessed, over-sized, monstrous children. A great sense of loss must be in her heart right now. And her I come, yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, yak.
Tuesday, July ?, 1990
ReplyDeleteMom notices that I use the words "you know" over and over again in conversation. I hadn't even noticed. Georgette noticed back in April. I was a bit ruffled by it. What's ruffling, or frustrating, is that I'm completely oblivious to my saying it! I try to think back to the conversation and can't remember a single instance. It's like a nervous tick or twitch. I've got to remember my words and self at all times. I wonder if I use "you know" to such a great extent in all my conversations. Or, is it just with certain people?
I'm anxious to move on. Diane and Bob's to help move. (They bought a house in Spooner's Creek, Morehead City, NC) Down to North Carolina and back, then up to New York. What's my rush? I want to get home and see my friends. Sometimes I think about being back in Southampton. Nothing has changed and I'm back to square one. A silly thought, yes. But really I'm still the same undirected person that I was when I left. I read an article in a magazine and am swept away. This doesn't change. It's as if I'm a drunk and can't help taking a drink. Then eight hours later, I wake up not remembering what happened between my first drink and now. My I's carry me along as if there's no doubt about my actually following through. I get worked up and excited and energy is blow out my stack totally without control. I am a stack at a refinery. Buring of the gas in the line. Wasted, spent energy. Never to be recovered. Gone. How do I get over this? More and more the answer is work on myself through a school. Just another faction of I's for now.
July 26, 1990
ReplyDeleteWaiting at the Vienna Station for Tom or Diane to pick me up. I just finished exit clearance with the lab (Marine Systems Lab at the Smithsonian) and am free once again. Not much can compare with the high feeling of leaving a job plus the high hopes and expectations of the upcoming work. I think I'm addicted. I wonder if I'll have these feelings for the end of a school year. Teaching should be a good job for someone like me who has this addiction. Each year I can have the feeling of ending the job. Then in a few months I can have the feeling of starting anew. It makes good sense. It should flow well with my circadian rhythms.
Washington is causing me no stress now that I'm leaving. The ride in this morning with Bob was effortless, probably because he was driving. I'd like to carry this good feeling I have now. But, it'll wane quick enough. Once the newness of the job wears off. Maybe it won't though since it's temporary to start. I should remind myself of that each day so that I can keep my level of excitement and interest flowing high. I think it's easy to leave jobs. You don't have to deal with the personality traits that you can't deal with. You don't have to accept the person as they are, including all "their" supposed idiosyncracies. The dreadful buffer is built up in moving so frequently. You become the good guy, the guy who does no wrong, the guy who is principled, the guy who is never wrong. Scary! The potential is there to create a monster.
Saturday, July 28, 1990
ReplyDeleteVienna, Virginia. My old car awaits in the parking lot as I wait for an eggplant and cheese sub. Today's drive is complete. (I drove back to Vienna, VA from Morehead City, NC after helping Diane and Bob move from Herndon, VA to MHC.) Tomorrow I'll be home. Home after four months of adventure.
Driving along the Dulles Toll road I thought about this my last drive west to Diane and Bob's house. All kinds of sentimental thoughts rolled into my mind. Not long ago I was racing along that same road on my way to visit after a day on the "Marsys." That seems like ages ago now.
I wonder what will happen now. How will Mom live in Pennsylvania with two crazed old women, determined to drive each other and anyone near crazy? I think I should move to NC in the future. When? Do I? AAKKKK! No need for thoughts and decision now. Observe this need I think I have to make some decisions to bring the family together. Observe in myself my unwillingness to accept. No better yet, the
July 31, 1990
ReplyDeleteAn observation: it is very easy to slip in to old ways of thought when you return to a place of your past. Beware! Slowly or ever so quickly you can become, once again, engulfed in what you thought you had outgrown.
Already the 10,001 voices are yaking away inside my head. Observe them and you will see. See what/ Just try to remember self........
August 1, 1990
ReplyDeleteA thunderstorm, no, more like just a heavy, short rain storm with a couple rumbles. That Hassler character sure was in a complaining mood yesterday. That voice just kept rattling of. Yak, yak, yak. It seems that lie anywhere for that Hassler person is a struggle. And, things are going well for him now to boot. I'd hate to hear him complain when thins weren't going well! I guess I heard some of it when we were on the ship. Sadly, when things are going along and even when they get rough all he does is complain or scheme to get out of the situation or both.
A letter by the back page of this journal:
ReplyDeleteDear Best Friend,
It's been a long time since I've written to you. As best friends go I see that over the years I've taken our friendship for granted. What a truly perfect relationship it has been. I'm embarrassed by my foolishness in not considering the good fortune of having a companion as straightforward, honest, caring, amusing and just plain fun to hang around as you, recently. At the very least I'm relearning a very valuable lesson about appreciating the people, places and things in my daily life. Beyond that I'm learning, for the first time, that my stupid thoughts about what others might think, whether family, friends, or strangers, are really inconsequential compared to the joys of the friendship.
Over the six years we've been friends you've taught me many lessons without preaching or making me feel bad. As funny as it sounds, you've taught me how to be a man. In a manly sort of way, of course! Your friendship gives me great strength and courage ad breaks me out of ruts that I'm so willing to make and cling to.
I am happy that your new relationship is progressing if that's what you really want. Yet at the same time I am saddened by the thoughts of what this signals for our relationship. I know it's only natural for you to pursue this new relationship and I know I've been giving positive feedback about the pursuit. Yet I'm wondering if this new relationship is due to my taking you for granted, ie. working like an asshole, not going to movies every week, not having money to go to concerts, not talking positively about our future together, not initiating, not fishing, sailing, clamming, vacationing, not working on the kayak, not helping you with your car more, and generally not communicating effectively among other things. What do you think?
I guess it's too late. Maybe it's not so good for men to have such a good friendship.
With love,
Craig
Also at the end of the journal on a piece of lined paper:
ReplyDeleteSummary of Land Payments, To Date, to Diane and Bob
Outstanding balance/Date of payment/Principal Due/Interest Due
16,000/December 1989/3200/1600
12,800/December 1990/3200/1280
9,600/December1991/3200/960
Principal Payments
Gary/Craig
1550/1650
1660/1540
1770/1430*
Interest payment
Gary
1600
1280
960
*Payment of only $470 made to you in 1991. The enclosed check #318 in the amount of $960 is to bring me up to date for the 1991 payment. The enclosed check #319 in the amount of $96 is an interest charge for the late payment.
If it won't be too confusing, I'd like to start making monthly payments of $500 beginning January 1993, for the 1992 and 1993 payments. I'll send a summary of payments with each check to help keep the accounting clear.
Gary put his savings into a down payment on a house and he'd like to make the 1992 land payment in June if that's all right.
(I paid Mom principal and interest on the $5,000 she contributed to our purchasing the land.)
Back cover of the journal:
ReplyDeleteJacob Needleman - "Money and the Meaning of Life."
Werner R. Hashagen - Architect, "How to Get it Built Better, Faster For Less."