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844. NuPlanetOne - 3/9/2008 5:26:07 PM “What if some others come through the brush?” Linda asked looking back at the waving wall of grass and bayberry shrubs behind us. Linda was beautiful. She had a clear, light olive complexion and pitch black eyes that had a gleam of seduction always glistening just near the center. Maria said she had never bought an ounce of makeup in her life and those were the teeth she was born with. I didn’t know if that was significant but I often just stared at her like everyone else. “The others? No. They didn’t see our escape. They might come, but not soon,” I said as I thought her worried look made her seem more beautiful. She looked at me and half smiled and I forgot what I was thinking. “The plan,” Tracy said as she threw my hat in the air and we all watched it land softly upside-down next to her feet. “Oh. The plan. Right.” I told them we could take the boat around the sand bar and come out on the other side near the mansion. “The whaaahhhaaat?” Daniel drawled oddly like his words suddenly fell into another current that flowed along side the rest of us. “The mansion, the museum,” I assured him. “That’s where we started. Remember?” Everyone stopped looking at other things and each other and looked at me. The Stuart Mansion had belonged to the Crane family I was thinking, they named the beach after them, but didn’t say it because it looked like they all started to remember. “O.K.,” I went on. “We need to get down to the boat. You guys ready?” There were nervous vibrations and squinting and no one seemed inclined to move. And there was the drone and the blink. The drone was getting more sinister, it seemed, and was starting to have an actual location. Which was good. “It’s getting louder,” Maria said. I noticed she was sitting in front of Tracy now square legged and they were holding hands at arm’s length. “You can hear it, too?” I said with some relief. “Yes,” said Richard as he stretched his head up toward the moon. It looked like his neck was unusually long. “There,” he said as he pulled his head back to normal. “It is moving out along the water.” I rubbed my neck and asked him if the cheese was fresh in Italian. He zeroed in and just nodded. Then he looked past me at the swale before the rise and flinched like he saw something unpleasant. I turned my head and looked over my shoulder and it did appear that several bushes in the beach grass kind of all had menacing faces. I checked the moon then turned to him and he waited for an explanation. “You alright?” I asked. “Comes and goes.” He said. “Me too,” I assured him. 845. NuPlanetOne - 3/9/2008 5:26:36 PM It might have been the moonlight but the whole area seemed nicely lit like a bright summer’s day. Everyone had tossed their jackets and it was actually quite warm and comfortable. Shivering would have been a disaster. There is nothing worse than cold on one of these trips, especially if someone were to go overboard. I searched the scene near the water and realized the blink was now clearly visible offshore and I remembered it was the beacon that marked the outer shoal on this side of the lagoon. Little glimmering lights now moved gradually through the steel blue of the seascape carrying with it the drone of some kind of engine. We didn’t like that and hoped it would move away soon. Arthur sat head in his lap making a series of groaning guttural harmonies that sang in tune with the drone. That was a good sign. He was having fun now. I told him again to go check out the boat. His head came up like he was surprised there were others with him, then he slowly got up and began his way down. Linda followed and I watched them as they both touched the bow together and put their heads inside. For a second I thought the boat had taken them, but soon they stood facing us and waved and nodded steadily. I stood up and waited for things to level off then headed down the sand to join them. Suddenly I was there and was holding Tracy’s hand and realized she was with me. I was right. There would be plenty of room and it was big enough to crunch down inside to brace against any treacherous seas. The sand felt like it was pulling hard on my feet and the occasional slap of waves made it seem like we had been transported to another location.
It appeared the boat was lower at one end, so Tracy and I got in. Some kind of port hole toward the bow gave me a clear view of what would be in front of us and the bench seats were all intact with oars beneath them. There was some water at the bottom and sand but we could bail it easily and Tracy said there was a raised berth at the bow all dry with a cushioned seat. She sat on it facing me and I told her that when we launch she would have to sit aft with me. She laughed hysterically then went quiet. She said she loved that word, aft. She told me she was going to rest her head a moment on the port bow then laughed all over again and said she will remain aft. Arthur and Linda squeezed by me and joined Tracy on the bow seat. I climbed back out and called to the others. I thought something moved through the swale but I decided it was probably just a piece of trash blown by the wind. My shadow surprised me and I felt it wasn’t really obeying my movements but I kept waving and calling until they all stopped what they were doing and looked down at me.
846. NuPlanetOne - 3/9/2008 5:27:12 PM It’s a good boat I yelled at them. Come on down. Maria was draped over Daniel’s back and they began wrestling in the sand but sat up quickly after I yelled their names. Debbie was standing over Richard singing something and slowly moving her arms. Richard was looking at me the whole time but I wasn’t sure if he knew what I was saying. I never liked Debbie, or any of Richard’s girlfriends, but he was my best friend, and at least Debbie wasn’t threatened by that. She was actually very bright, but I had caught her lying about several things and Richard was stuck on her. That diminished my advice and she knew it. I hoped she wouldn’t be a problem on this trip. She finally stopped singing and Richard stood and after a long embrace they started down. I felt a squeeze around my mid section and Tracy’s face was looking up at me from my right hip. She slid up and in front of me and kissed me and it seemed to go on for a long time. She slid down and back into the boat and Maria was there. She was looking at me like she wanted to say something but Daniel pulled her by the hand and they stepped aboard the boat.
Richard tapped my shoulder and asked me in Italian to eat the clump of seaweed he was holding. It looked like a wet mass of tangled wires and I just took it and shook water all over him and Debbie. They didn’t notice and just climbed clumsily on board near the bow. I stepped back in and took my place on the bench furthest aft. I told them we need to balance the craft and sit two to a bench. “I shall come astern Captain, oh my Capeetan!” Tracy bellowed and zig-zagged down to me as the others got two to a bench. Maria grabbed her leg as she went by and Tracy looked down and her mane of brown hair slapped across Maria’s face. They smiled a weird smile at each other and Maria put her arm across Daniel’s shoulder and sat quietly looking forward. “O.K., that’s good,” I told them. I told Arthur who sat in front of me to grab an oar and pass it back. “Will we go now?” Linda asked from the bow cushion where she had hopped up to face us. I had a flash of a vision that she would be connected to the bow like a colorful and wood carved mermaid and would rise and fall as we bounded through the waves. It looked like she was reaching into the vision as she spoke and now everyone was staring at her too. And it got quiet. The drone was audible but only slightly and the port hole off Linda’s right shoulder allowed the blink to filter in and lit her hair aglow at the same intervals. A wave hit the hull and we felt it ride down the sides of the boat and made it shake a bit. We fell back into our private world modes like back up on the sand and it was getting comfortable and safe again. Tracy was telling Arthur about the time she got lost all by herself during the camping trip early in the summer but Arthur was busy guiding Linda over to his bench using one of the other oars. “Remember that, Captain?” She asked me now and added, “That wasn’t a fun trip for me. But this is good. I won’t get lost.” I told her no one gets lost when I organize a trip. She took Linda’s other hand and helped her down to the bench.
847. NuPlanetOne - 3/9/2008 5:27:46 PM Now it was good. Daniel had lit one of his pocket candles and stuck it up on the bow seat. It gave the boat the aura of an amphitheatre. The moon was gone behind a marvelous thickening of darkish clouds and I wondered what they called clouds at night. Beams of light didn’t seep out like in day time but actually seemed to seep in. And while I was watching, a sudden flash behind it all made it swell like someone had blown an enormous breath at it. Strange, I thought. Excellent sight. Daniel was leaning on his elbow at the bow seat and Maria did the same and watched the candle. A bigger wave hit the bow and rushed quicker along the sides and crashed further behind us. “I’m going to push off,” I said and took the oar and stuck it in the sand behind the boat. There was water over the sand. I felt another wave and everything was flowing by me toward the shore. It felt that now we were moving and I sat back down and told Richard to man his starboard oar and for Daniel to watch the port side. Daniel spun and looked over the port bow and said all was well. Richard looked confused so Tracy reached down and brought up his oar. It looked jagged but he took it and laid it at his feet. I leaned over my port side and saw the beacon. I would keep it there I thought and navigate to the right of it. Debbie said she thought someone up on the beach was waving at us. “I knew they would come,” Linda said. “They will ruin everything.” I said forget about the others, we will sail over to the mansion and be there before they get back. “You think so?” She said surprised. “How far is it?” She was getting a panicky tone to her voice. “Oh, I love you Linda!” Tracy said as she reached over and pulled Linda onto our bench. She rubbed her head and said soothing things. Linda looked up at her and said she was fine. I was watching the beacon and a sudden crack of light snapped out of the darkish hole near the moon. Everyone jerked and look over the port bow. “Whooooaaaa, I mean whoaaaaa!” said Arthur. “A storm.”
I thought, we couldn’t have gotten too far. Then the rain was upon us. And a shattering boom then flashes. Things had an intermittent orange red outline, and the whiteness in the light bursts was like someone was taking snapshots with some bizarre omnipresent flashbulb. But the rain was warm. And there was the intense smell of pure ocean and each time a wave hit the hull the sides of the boat rattled yet the bottom remained solid and fixed.
848. NuPlanetOne - 3/9/2008 5:28:19 PM Maria was yelling but it was hard to understand her through the commotion and the harder I tried to hear her, the more distant the sound became. Arthur slid from side to side on his bench swinging his oar into the sea on each side of the boat. He had a wild look on his face and a jubilant smile and I knew he wouldn’t let me down this time. He would keep the boat steady, and Tracy had Linda. But I was worried about Maria. I waited for Arthur to stop as his side to side motions and through the slanted rain made out Maria leaning over the starboard bow looking into the water. No sign of Daniel. I searched my side for the beacon and could only see rain pelting the water like little bombs hitting the surface of a violent whirlpool. It was something to see and I got lost in it for an eternity and wanted to stay there, but I needed to find Daniel, or at least get Maria aft to safety. I pulled my head to look her way and saw a wind tossed spray of surf plummet out of the hull and felt a huge wall of water go whooshing down the length of the craft. Maria was turned my way now and holding fast to the top edge of the boat. She was drenched and I moved slowly along the starboard wall until I reached her. “I lost Daniel somewhere,” she said. “I think he went over.” I pulled her onto the bench in front of Richard and Debbie who were just sitting in a clench under Richard’s sweat shirt and they were singing a muffled version of ‘All Along the Watch Tower.’ Maria buried her head under my chin and held on fast. I turned and poked Richard and asked about Daniel and he pushed at me with his hand without saying anything. That was it, Daniel was gone. I spun around holding Maria tight and Arthur was still busy keeping the boat from spinning out of control. I screamed his name and felt Maria dig her nails into my sides as the noise came out of me. Arthur stopped briefly, looked toward shore, then at the sky, and laughed like an amused lunatic and said, “aye aye, Captain, on course, on course!”
So I sat. Then, after a long time, it seemed, the rain stopped suddenly. And like the vacuum after a retreating evil invasion, the confusion and intensity that got sucked out with it, made the memory of it seem a bit ridiculous. Maria purred like a kitten as if she were a bundle left in my arms by a distraught and desperate mother. And through the port hole I caught sight of the beacon as it pounded like a heart restored to full vigor after a grueling attempt to save a dying heart attack victim. At least the boat stayed the course, I thought. But I knew we must have been further away from the shoal than I had thought. We might have to abandon ship and just swim back to shore. If Daniel had dared it, I knew it was safe. He was not one to risk anything, and that meant it was still a short swim. And it was calm now, as a balmy wind was already drying my hair and the shoulders of my shirt. The choppiness and slams were gone from the water and although the boat was still intact, turning it seemed somehow impossible. I explained to the others what we must do and they nodded. Arthur said he would test the waters and went off the back without hesitation. Tracy and Linda popped up and hung like puppies on the aft wall and watched. Maria’s head came up and watched them over my shoulder then she put her face in my face and smiled. We kissed and everything went warm.
“He says it is easy,” Linda said as she went over and into the water. Tracy looked at me and Maria with a puzzled look and stared, then went over following Linda. Debbie was standing now in front of Richard shaking her hair and they were talking intently about the colors in the flashes during the storm. I hated to admit it, but they really enjoyed each others company. I wanted to tell Maria about what I saw when the rain was hitting the whirlpool, but I knew she wouldn’t get it. She said it was a massacre.
Back on the beach, I awoke first. Richard and Debbie were locked comfortably in what looked like an old fishing net. Maria’s head was wrapped in her sweater and I got loose and walked to the edge of the surf. The boat seemed a lot closer, stuck there in the flats. Richard came up behind me. “You O.K.?” He said. “I’m fine, what was that shit?” I asked not really talking to him but wondering in general. “Orange Sunshine,” he said after a chin rubbing pause. Then added, “The storm fucked it up.” Daniel was wandering our way from the swale. Richard asked him what happened to him. “I’m done tripping,” he said and looked pale and tired. “Let’s go.” “Bad cheese,” I said in Italian.
849. webfeet - 5/22/2008 3:07:38 PM Cuckoo.
I'd like to point out how immensely entertaining (and gratifying-awful pun) all the last posts following my Lewinsky confession were to read. Lovely to hear from you, too, banks but I must correct you--I don't have a contract yet. I have an agent who is reviewing my first manuscript as part of a 2- book contract now and I am hotly working on a second and even a third.
I have to deliberately compartmentalize my life or else I will never get anything done. I am too easily distracted.
And now, wish that I could read more of the Crane Beach Massacre (I think I have actually been there. Mass no>?), but I have to go to the dentist, an awful appropriate punchline (delivered three months late) for my blowjob post.
And, jen, thanks for the post of les hûitres, a nice accompaniment to the fictive orgy.
850. webfeet - 10/14/2008 3:37:29 PM Where are the clowns? 851. NuPlanetOne - 10/22/2008 5:44:59 AM Well, been months since I reread the Massacre. I need to polish the ending and part of the middle. I’m so lazy and fiction is such work. Anyway, since you popped in here too Web, what is your connection to Crane Beach? Was that you waving to us from the swale? 852. wabbit - 11/13/2008 3:28:38 AM Oh.Mon.Dieu.
Not Mote fiction, but this is how I imagine our own webfeet must have been as a child, and how I imagine her own children will be. Wonderful.
Once upon a time... from Capucha on Vimeo. 853. alistairconnor - 12/1/2008 8:19:17 PM So how about some soap opera.
He's a good kid. A bit scary sometimes.
His mother and I have been in a love cocoon for a couple of weeks, preparing for separation : she was to have two weeks with her family, then the day after her return, my kids and I take off to see my family, for a month.
I was all set to take her to the airport, Friday at lunchtime. But on Friday morning she called me in tears : the trip is cancelled. He's been thrown out of his high school.
This is a Catholic boarding school. In the final term of last year, we had to beg and plead to get them to keep him : three times he had been caught smoking, or with tobacco. Three strikes. You're out. They kept him, on probation. But this time, it wasn't tobacco they found in his pockets.
Panic stations. We repaired to my country estate for the weekend. The immediate question is to get this highly influenceable fifteen year old away from his hoodies. That's why we sent him to boarding school in the first place : it's out of the question to send him back to school in the city. (During the last school holidays, he sneaked out after midnight and broke some wing mirrors with his gang : they ended up in the cop shop overnight.)
Thankfully, my daughters are pretty cool and accepting about the whole commotion, and go out of their way to be inclusive and accepting with him. (We didn't tell them what they found in his pockets, but they probably guessed.)
I take him for a walk in the woods. He talks to me readily enough. So, where does he buy this shit? When he tells me about borrowing brass knuckles and a can of teargas to go talk to his dealer, I feel I'm out of my depth. It was all so much nicer in my day. Anyway, he's scared too, which is a good thing. Except that he doesn't seem to be resolved to cut out the adolescent risk-taking behaviour.
It seems unlikely that another boarding school will take him. We enviseage sending him to the public high school in the little country town, where my daughter goes. They would be in the same year, quite likely in the same class. (She's four years younger than him. They get on pretty well together.)
His mother is on the phone all weekend with her parents, brother, sister, everyone cries, the boy is furious with her for telling on him. She's supposed to lie to protect him. I talk to him a lot about what family is, how it works. How they love you, but you have to take care not to do things that reflect badly on them. He has no self-confidence, and a negative self-image, a lot of this comes from his status as a bastard. A well-loved bastard, but a bastard nevertheless. (This is technically incorrect, his mother divorced his father shortly after his birth, for good reason, but for her family, the father never really counted anyway, because he was a foreigner.)
[...] 854. alistairconnor - 12/1/2008 8:19:34 PM So she explains to her mother that she's thinking of moving out of the city, of moving in with me permanently, for the good of the boy. That sounds sensible, says her mother; but of course you'll have to marry the gentleman.
As it happens, I've been pestering her about this for a year or so. It's nice to have an ally. And who wouldn't want a Jewish mother in law? 855. wonkers2 - 12/2/2008 12:54:00 AM Tough situation, ali. We had a similar but much less serious problem with one of our three children--skipping class, drinking, not doing his homework, getting poor marks. He finally woke up when he realized he wasn't going to get into the college where his great grandfather was a professor and both his maternal grandparents studied. He went somewhere else for two years, got good grades and transferred to his first choice university and did very well. Now he's a successful lawyer. 856. webfeet - 12/19/2008 6:28:46 PM But France doesn't work that way, wonkers. Pas de tolerance for bad students, even those with promise who are going through a virulent crise d'adolescence. However, Alistair as a beau pere gives hope.
I have to go make sablés, put them in the oven for my art class. I'm doing an unpaid atelier for my children's school on french impressionists and I actually love it. All those clichés about working with children (provided they are not your own) are, in fact, true. And that little raconteuse in the video, alistair, has a stunning imagination. Enchanting moment. Thank you.
I'll write more later. Really.
857. webfeet - 12/22/2008 7:56:58 PM It's a golden time for books, it is. With the publishing world half extinct and book sellers begging to give titles away--I've never seen so many markdowns as sales plummet, and yet there are still one or two reasons why it still feels good to collapse at the end of the night with a text in your hands, as opposed to squinting at the screen.
Jonah Lehrer's "Proust was a Neuroscientist" is one such work; it's a collection of essays that credit various artists such as Elliot, Proust or Cezanne with discovering truths about the mind before neuroscience. I have only begun to read Proust and the infallibility of memory but each essayis promising -Igor Stravinksky, Elliot and Positivism, Escoffier and the discovery of umami. This is an enlightening, thought-provoking work that illuminates some of the mysteries of creativity through an exploration of art and its contribution to science.
So take your little B&N 20% sticker and give it to someone for the holidays. I can't think of a better gift. 858. webfeet - 12/22/2008 8:05:01 PM My daughter recently learned how to write two words: the and me. Then she put them together, and invented a secret club called The Me (since I wasn't allowed to join, I don't really know anything more about it except that she is, naturally, the only member). Sometimes I feel like The Me when i post here.
Now I have to bake Christmas cookies again. These are not great. These are not even inspiring. These are Martha's silly thumb prints from her eezy peezy holiday issue. I'm going to smear some hershey kisses inside a blob of dough and call it a day.
What sort of lovely holiday offerings have people made?(Webfeet's attempt at Not being The Me)
I was a hit (of course) at a Hanukkah party saturday after bringing Jewish Egyptian food writer Claudia Roden's Clementine Cake (as adopted by one Nigella Lawson). one word: divine.
859. alistairconnor - 12/24/2008 2:33:04 PM Well I got a $25 book voucher from Whitcoulls today. Unfortunately those are $NZ so it's only worth one book.
"The Me" is a good theme. My theme is coming to terms with the adolescence of one's daughter. Luckily NZ boys are hopeless so there is nothing to fear.
My offering to the family feast (buffet for 25 or so, indoor/outdoor if it doesn't rain) is some French delicacies : pate, fromage, fois gras etc : and a shitload of smoked fish of the finer varieties, which is what I miss most in France. 860. judithathome - 12/24/2008 4:13:57 PM This me and her husband are going to deliver gifts to the neighbors tonight...I'm so happy to include Steven, the "little" boy next door who grew up, joined the Army, and arrived home for 2 weeks leave before shipping out the Afghanistan.
Our gift boxes are filled with dark chocolate pomegranate, almonds, milk chocolate raisins, cinnimon encrusted macadamias, and hulled, salted pistachios. 861. webfeet - 12/31/2008 3:56:02 AM Welcome back to 'the me' with your host, webfeet.
tonight, i am unfortunately out of wine and feel too lazy and irky (is that a word) from not being able to write well this afternoon. this, in fact, is better for the bad writer, not to be able to drink anything. The choices are either Goya cooking wine or St. Germain, a heady liquor made from (WINK WINK) elderflower, that is like the Elysian fields of booze. Neither fits my mood. And i don't have any prosecco which is just as well because I should be reaching for a homely tea bag of twinings and pining into my laptop sober.
Today I went to Whole Foods market at the Time Warner Building to shop for New Year's Eve and felt like I was entering a church. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling. The Time Warner building is like the vatican of malls; it's huge, and feels a little austere and there are whole families of europeans walking around with cameras. and there are probably pigeons outside in the plaza. Gimmicky and over-priced, everywhere in WF there are jumbo boxes of gumdrops and peppermint marshmallows, and there is something sour and unfestive about an underground market in New York City. And then I went off on this whole loose tangent about missing New York of the eighties and wished I'd see homeless people with brightly colored ski hats--instead of screechy touristas who literally heckled me with 'la la' when i reprimanded them in the fitting room of bloomingdales to stop moving from cabin to cabin leaving behind clothes, like gypsies, on the floor and banquettes. And then, actually, when I went to complain, the sales woman was tone deaf. No, literally tone deaf, in that she was literally a mute and started to do LA LA back to me, only it was louder and I think her tongue was forked and no-one except the small, disinterested que was even listening to me. so i left, still wishing i could find new york of the eighties. I'm never going to find it. I did find, however, a gory hunk of bleu d'auvergne which is the best thing in the world.
So, I take it, alistair, that you didn't strangle the geese yourself, like michel's now deceased pauvre tante emilie, so tell us, where do you buy your foie gras? and from what region?
I praise you for your classic good taste, Judith. It isn't really the holidays until someone sends you one of those.
862. Jenerator - 1/1/2009 11:56:41 PM I have missed you Webfeet! 863. webfeet - 1/2/2009 2:17:51 AM And I you, Jenerator. I told you I liked the oyster shots. I think that was, sadly, like a year ago. I must have a different sense of time because that doesn't feel that long to me.
Not that anyone cares (except perhaps fans of The Me) but I will be posting more frequently as opposed to let's say letting gaps of six months go by at a time before I lure myself out of the brillo pad of my thoughts and post here. I'm fond of this site, after all. Perhaps I have reached the age where things that are constant take on a greater meaning. Oh, who knows? Isn't that boring to analyse it?
In anticipation of your next question, Jen, The Me has generously offered to conduct a brief tell-all interview.
The Me: So, webfeet, why don't you have a book contract yet?
webfeet: [Caresses her throat, as if swallowing a lozenge.] Is attempted to reply in convoluted french parce que..and then stops. The truth is so much funnier. I mean, it wasn't funny. Not back in June, at least. My agent decided to go vampire. Fantasy, pornotica, romantica, all these new genres that ended in the letter 'a' took precedence over my manuscript (which, as you know, you know nothing about deliberately). And she asked to see my manuscript, after launching a racy romance on-line venture, in January. Now, had I known she was going to be the boogie night's agent, I would never have queried her. And, rather than wait, I decided to plow on, depressed and saddened at having come so close at having missed the chance to be able to brag at my h.s. reunion, and played the field instead, and am now waiting for a callback. When you snag an agent on only the second query, things really are too good to be true. That is the lesson I learned.
The Me: [nods sympathetically] how did you cope with this, this setback?
webfeet: I crammed myself with cakes this summer in the south of france. and worked. and worked. and worked. And that's where you find me now...
The Me: A mess?
webfeet: No, I like to say wisened, no longer a vierge. Well, time's up The Me. I have to finish my calvados and go running on this arctic night with my husband and celebrate the last teeny weeny seconds of that fleeting, depressingly ethereal feeling called the holidays by looking at my parents' neighbors Christmas lights. It's been great.
The Me: Anytime.
Stay tuned for our next segment of The Me when webfeet, smarmy now at having lost her innocence in the world of publishing, namedrops that she actually had lunch with someone who was close friends with Harold Pinter. In Paris.
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