summer melange
remember when the days/weeks leading up to your birthday tingled with expectation? i’ve always led up to it by counting the weeks. august 2, august 9, august 16, and there it is.
it’s been a helluva summer. not bad, except for a couple of soul-sucking days at mva. my nephew created some popular escape over the past month in los angeles. the most hellhole escape room would definitely be at the mva. a model of inefficiency, stress, and inscrutable process. perfect torture for sean to use in the bad place on “the good place.”
but that’s over. a small blip in my summer, which has been busy and so productive in many ways. art, home, kids, hockey, family. new tattoos on both inside wrists.
i’m writing this from the cape, where i didn’t expect to be at all this summer, but here i am. not regular chatham, though — wellfleet. different feeling here to be sure. but nice. with satch and julie and her mom and jules’s neighbor kid. we got here, and i thought i’d crash on the bed, but just had to go to the pond, and it is glorious. so beautiful and so perfect.
sean
marxe is a five hour drive away, melding into bard college. mo, 16 hours away, welcoming freshmen to warren wilson. thinking of them, and scott, yes. and toni morrison. and thurgood marshall. left from his airport monday. and carey, cause this is almost exactly where they lived for a year and spent many summers, some of them with us. and brenda smoak, who died of ovarian cancer a couple weeks ago. and abraham lincoln. and cavey mc caveman.
when i talked to sarah yesterday, she said ‘you’re in your happy place.’ and it is, but very different than previously. it’s the cape, perfect weather, total divorce from reality. but very different. just one kid instead of three or four or five or six. have to ride to the ocean, but only walk 100 steps to the pond. new shops, no chatham lighthouse. but it’s still wonderful. just different. yoga on the beach was an hour later and not as nice a beach, but a better instructor. and my left side got full-on sun.
so this summer. i’ve grown even more comfortable being on my own. went on some more dates, met some people, don’t need to see more of them. attended some shows. raconteurs were good, but didn’t feel like i needed to stay for the whole thing. brian ferry, though, oh man, what a great great show. played lots of old roxy stuff. he can’t hit the notes he used to, but he still breathes sex into them and the music stands on its own. saw ex hex a couple times, and the messthetics and the muslims (queer punk rock from durham) and hammered hulls at fort reno and jawbox. and mo and i saw hannah gadsby — she was really good. a few years (before scott died) since i’ve seen a comedian live. she, and the raconteurs, had ‘no-phone’ shows. phones locked in little pouches that you carry with you, and at the end of the night you get the magnetic thing taken off and open the pouch. or you can go outside the auditorium and take it out for a phone call, whatever. but before going back in, phones go away. neat. reminiscent of yesteryear, when we went to experience a show while they were giving it, not after.
took an encaustic workshop. it was fun, but that’s not my medium. made another few pieces in the campaign to evie-fy my house. and made another piece to enter but wasn’t accepted. glad i made it anyway. different for me.
but here i am on the cape. how many shades of green surround me now? the trees, bushes, moss on the roof, ivy vines, grass, plants, seaweed.
this morning, it was blue. at cahoun hollow beach, lifeguards said out of the water cause of great white shark sighting, but then, AMAZING — a group of humpback whales about 100 yards off the shore. so huge and deeply, entrancingly beautiful.
tomorrow, satch and i head to the p-town festival parade. always a great time.