Children at the Beach - Milwaukee, 2010

We were driving out to Long Island this weekend and listening to Seamus Heaney's poem, "Railway Children," in an NPR podcast.  The Nobel laureate had passed away last week and we heard these words.  "We were small and thought we knew nothing worth knowing.  We thought words traveled the wires in the tiny pouches of raindrops."

These words brought me back to another poem about childhood, my favorite poem really in the English language, "Fern Hill," by Dylan Thomas.  It's a poem about a farm and what it means to be a child, living in the moment, and how we know nothing of time.

When I got home and was going through some pictures for other reasons, I came upon these.  A couple of years ago I went to Milwaukee to visit my mom.  She was very old and demented and it was depressing and sad to
see her.  I woke up one morning.  It was a beautiful summer's day and I couldn't resist a detour to the beach.  All my life I've gone to Lake Michigan whenever I could and this day was no exception.  I'd always found the lake restorative.

I put down my blanket, my book, a hat on my head and thought I'd relax.  But I hadn't been there long with a group of children came and started playing right in front of me.  I'm not sure why the rope is there.  I think it was corralling them in.  Anyway I couldn't resist.  I had my camera with me and I got a lot of pictures.  To me these children represent childhood and all its happy memories but especially those of the beach.  And the innocence of these children -
their ignorance to anything that might stand between them - touched me.  In many ways.

 I suppose these are sentimental snaps, but no apologies.  I loved these kids and for an hour or so they made me very happy.  I think about them now.

 They are older, walking, talking, in school.  Are they still playing together on the beach today?  I think of that wonderful story by Stephen Milhausseur - about the boy who doesn't want to go into the water for his first swim of the season because he senses that when he comes out of the water something - his childhood, his innocence - will be behind him.

I loved snapping pictures of these kids before they'd had that swim.  I believe it was Matisse who said that he had to grow up to be a child again.  Maybe that's really what an artist is.  Whatever.  I loved these kids and was happy taking pictures of them.

They brought back to the last lines of "Fern Hill" which some may find morbid or sad, but I find stunningly accurate - one of those truths about life that only the poets can put their finger on. "Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his time held me green and dying/though I sang in my chains like the sea."

With thanks to the poets.  And to these kids.  Wherever they may be.

A Balloon Takes A Walk

 

As Proust said, travel isn't about seeing new places but about looking with new eyes.  The other day we came upon this curious little fellow, out for a stroll.  We were out walking our dog when another dog began barking.  Approaching we saw what was disturbing him.  A small black balloon with pipe cleaner legs, was walking on Carroll Street.  We don't have big travel plans for the moment, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy all the odd things that life has to offer even if we're close to home.  In other words I guess I'd have to say that I'm always traveling - even if I'm two blocks from home.  Which brings me back to Proust.  You don't really have to go very far to see something new.  Maybe there's a little balloon following you.

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What I love about where I live.

Doesn't that old tune, "There's No Place like Home," have the refrain  "no matter where I travel, no matter how far I go, be it ever so humble....I've been all over the world, but I had to take a long bike ride through Brooklyn Bridge Park to fully appreciate what I have that's so close to home.

Sometimes we just have to look around us.

As my cousin Marianne reminded me, "You have always had the power to return to Kansas."  This was the message Dorothy receives from Gilda, the good witch, at the end of her journey.

This gorilla was at the end of mine.

"It was here in Big Sur...

 that I first learned to say 'Amen.' "

              -----Henry Miller

"Life in its jewel boxes is endless as sand." Pablo Neruda

The Faraway Nearby: On Watercolor Postcards

Rebecca Solnit titles her new book after a salutation that Georgia O'Keefe used.  O'Keefe while living in New Mexico missed her life in New York.  She'd sign off on her letters to friends and loved as from "the faraway nearby."  Meaning that even in distance we can remain close.

The faraway Nearby.  This has always been a bit of a struggle for me.  How do we bridge the distance when we or our loved ones are away.  Recently I've been trying to find new ways to connect in part because our daughter, Kate, now lives three thousand miles away in Los Angeles.  How can we stay close when we are far?  It has taken me a while to understand that of the things that can create distance between people geography can be the least significant.

While it may be difficult, or even impossible, to bridge emotional or ideological rifts (my father and I wrote a series of angry letters during the war in Vietnam), landscapes can be literally and figuratively linked.  The suspension bridge is not just a metaphor.   One solution I came up with was the idea of watercolor postcards.

I began doing watercolors in my journals a while ago.  I don't have much technique, but I love color and I enjoy doing these.  I only paint when I'm on the road - most often in my journals while sitting in cafes.  On most trips I carry with me a journal I like (unlined with sturdy paper), a travel watercolor kit, a pencil case with some watercolor crayons, brushes, waterproof pens for drawing.

But on this last trip to Spain I also brought with me some watercolor postcards (you can get them at any art supply store).  I decided to send them to four friends who I thought might appreciate something that's not just a generic postcard.   And so I painted and sent out a few. They were like little gifts.  Here are two of them.

People say to me all the time.  "Oh I can't draw.  I can't paint."  Well, honestly I can't either.  I have very few drawing skills.  I know a little about perspective and can do some things with a brush.  I like color but can't draw people.  Still...it brings me pleasure.  In The Rose Tattoo a woman holds up a landscape she's painted to Marlon Brando who stares at it blankly.  And the woman says, "I know they aren't very good, but I feel better when I do them."

Maybe herein lies the entire secret of art.  Whether it's good or bad, perhaps that doesn't matter at all.  What matters is that we feel better when we do them.  To me this is reason enough for putting pen or brush to paper.  And it is just an added bonus when it makes the person on the receiving end feel better as well.

What We Ate For Dinner at Censin da Bea, Borgomaro: More from Bella Liguria!!!!

Censin da Bea is an old mill (antico frantoio) that has been beautifully resorted into a simply gorgeous restaurant.  We arrived with a group of ten.  The restaurant serves family style, prix fix, and you don't know what you're getting until you get there.

And this is what we ate:  In order of appearance:
cheese, sausage, bread, sundried tomatoes, tiny olives, fried baby onions, foccacio with tomato and rosemary, foccacio with  garlicky sauce, one bowl of aoli made at the table by Pierre, most sauce for dipping, ravioli with sage, trumpet pasta with pesto and green beans, smoked sea trout, beef with arugala, fried frog legs, snails, grilled eggplant, tiramisu, panacotta, lemon sorbette, two grappas.

It was literally amazing.  At midnight we crawled home.  And paid for it a bit the next morning.  But it was a dinner that we'll always remember in one of the most beautiful and romantic places I've ever been.