amStrandHebdo(roads3)crossing story drifts
(our story thus far:
some nice, moody fog patches off laguna tortuguero made me wish I’d gotten
off
th expreso sooner- saved fifty cents toll- & taken th road around th
western,
manatí side of th lagoon- I love fog…i’m just now beginning to realize
that @ some time,
th cibuco river estuary & mangrove forest were most likely joined by th
marshes in th area
(-& channels? drainage creeks?) to laguna tortuguero in one big network of
wetlands…)
if i remember right, this beachhouse was built either in ‘60 or ‘61- when i
was around six
or seven. to this day, dr.dad likes to brag about how he ‘made this house
w/ a mason,
a plumber, an electrician & two peons…’
before then, we spent a few summers in ‘la casa d abuela ana’ which @ some
point i remember
piling into to share w/ my cousins tate, eduard & analí…must have been
maybe that last
summer while our own future beach house was under construction, because i
remember having
a copy of ‘mad’ magazine in english…w/ a bonus cardboard record on which
‘alfred e. neuman’ belched his way through a rocknroll tune…were we all
really staying together? hmmm…
maybe we just hung out…? maybe it was a later summer while some further
work was being done closing up th ground floor, up to that point an open
terrace & a kitchen?
-during th cooler months, as we neared th end of our usual friday evening
ride from san juan,
my brothers & i wd be rousd out of our drowsy discomfort in th back seat of
dr.dad’s vw beetle
by th spectacle of gossamer strands of fog that wd swirl & pile into small
but thick banks…
my love of fog found a home on cape cod in th late fall & winter of ‘83.
i was head-over-heels (madly??) in love w/ a certain greek woman (daughter
of th former
head of th orthodox parish in queens) but otherwise pretty much burnt out
on nyc.
david rosenmiller, whom i knew from contact improvisation jams while
visiting boston, was
doing an internship @ th new alchemy institute, actually helping survey th
property in falmouth.
i probably owe what sanity i have learnd to hang on to, such as it may be,
to david’s
putting in a good word towards my working as a volunteer @ th alchemy farm.
one of- if not
*the* most healing, balancing experience in my life.
i began my volunteer stint as everybody did: shoveling manure & working on
th compost heaps
-was it steve tracy i was working under? i also helped spread mulching
straw, & generally
put th gardens to bed for winter…they were hard, those first couple of
weeks-
shedding my urban night owl habits, borrowing a rain slicker from one
housemate or another
as i headed out, late again, to join in th assigned tasks.
at first, i roomed w/ doug dahl, david rosenmiller & david lowell to become
david #3
under th roof of a summer cabin facing what i learnd was calld long pond.
doug was th only
other coffee drinker, & i crawled on my knees to him for my morning fix…
on slow days, i got a chance to hang around th house & informally count th
migrating
black duck population gathered on th pond while i tried to write poems to
seduce my love, christalia, away from th big, bad city.
(continuará…d=(8{>)