fewer words.

you took apart the alphabet letter by letter

The other day someone asked me if I miss New York. What kind of a question is that? It’s a bad question to ask.

I was reminded of all the times I came home to Maine for holidays and people asked me if I liked New York. Miss and like are not verbs you can apply to New York with any degree of accuracy. They can’t possibly contain all the contradictory fragments that make up a full-fledged answer.

I’ve started coming up with an easy list of things I can say to queries like this, pat responses like “I miss my friends” and “I miss the all-night delis” and “I miss being able to deposit my paycheck anywhere, anytime, without walking through a stupid TD Banknorth drive-through ATM.” I keep these bits of near-honesty in my pockets and I always feel guilty when I pull them out. You deserve better. It’s just a longer conversation than I know you want to have. It’s only polite to keep the talk small, especially in a bar, on the street, and we haven’t known each other long.

Last night the broken WordPress install on maryps.com got fixed, finally, so I’m going to finish the project I started there. It’s a zine, sort of, a zine-mixtape (or the internet version thereof). I suppose there’s something (possibly something disparaging) to be said about the fact that I’m 31 and still my favorite method of marking transitions is by making a zine (or the internet version thereof) (or another tattoo).

There are worse habits, maybe.

Speaking of habits, this evening I took a break from work to look at other people’s photos online. I saw a picture taken from the inside of a van, at night, going through something that looked very much like the Holland Tunnel. It made me remember that feeling, very viscerally, as if I were there in the Holland Tunnel again, even as it made me feel as if the Holland Tunnel is 3,000 miles away.

The next time you ask me if I miss New York, please forgive me if it takes a moment to get an answer. There are a lot of gaps I can’t explain.

travelogue

Places I Have Been and Would Like to Go Again

• Chaplin, Saskatchewan
• Krakow, Poland
• Chicago, Illinois (The last time I went I was still a vegetarian, and therefore missed out on about 65% of the reasons why you go to Chicago.)
• Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan
• North Adams, Massachusetts
• North Rustico, Prince Edward Island
• Quebec City, Quebec

Places I Have Been and Do Not Ever Want to Go Again

• Houston, Texas
• New Bern, North Carolina
• The Cincinnati airport
• Germany

Places I Have Never Been and Don’t Ever Want to Go

• Disney World
• Disneyland
• Las Vegas
• Atlantic City
• The Hamptons
• Cape Cod/Martha’s Vineyard/Nantucket (Or are these all kind of the same thing? I have no idea, and I’m a native New Englander. For shame.)

Places I Have Never Been and Really Want to Go

• Dollywood
• Nashville
• Wales
• Nova Scotia
• Tassajara
• Iceland
• Nunavut

tagged: mary list

what's red and blue and cold all over?

Most mornings I spend an hour or so clicking through national politics blogs and news sites, searching for bloody morsels on which to feast. (Also, let’s be honest here: a little OCD!) I rarely, if ever, see any mention of Maine’s political to-dos, because we are way up here in the foreign country of Canada, living in our lighthouses.

So imagine my surprise when our very own Senator Susan Collins appeared on the front page of Talking Points Memo. Seems she got a bit chatty on a local radio show! And, oops, someone was videotaping the whole thing…

Collins Watch: Collins: Edwards Is the Father

Jake Tapper picked up the story, prompting this comment from someone calling him- or herself “depravedmaniac”:

Why do you people in Maine elect two congressman [sic] both Democrats a Democrat as Gouvnor [sic] then turn around and elect two Republicans to the Senate to block any legislagion your two Democrat congressmen vote for, thats grid lock [sic sic] and plain stupid.

Gee, depravedmaniac, I don’t know. Maybe the hypothermia has gotten to us? Also we recently passed legislation that gives moose voting rights.

Nah, who am I kidding? It’s all the Allen’s we drink. Freakish bipartisanship is a known side effect. As is talkativeness… I’m just saying.

tagged: mary welcome to maine politics

there's a metaphor in here somewhere

Ever since I started biking around Portland, I’ve been afraid of biking down Congress Street’s steep eastern slope, also known as The Hill. It seemed too big, the drop too sharp, the traffic too busy.

Today I pedaled after Bryan on our way downtown, and it was only after we sailed past the observatory that I realized: we’re going down the hill.

And, well, it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Actually, it was easier than one of the “practice hills” I’ve been practicing on.

There you go.

solid ground

In the car on the drive north I tried to explain why I feel at home even in the remote points that take hours to reach. It’s a tricky thing to explain. After a while I stopped trying and we let the radio run on scan while the landscape made my points for me.

If there is anything in this world that is constant, it is a patch of Maine woods near a lake. And it’s the rolling hills and trees interrupted by towns, or the other way around: farm, field, river, post office, fast food, junkyard, junction, repeat. In Monson one resident had taken it upon him- or herself to paint a plywood sign decrying the local selectmen for discriminating against the handicapped. I had no idea what that was about, but I am sure every resident of Monson knew exactly what it meant.

The day after we set up camp on the shore of Moosehead Lake we drove down the road to Greenville, which pays homage to Henry David Thoreau in more ways than you might expect, considering the size of Greenville. There’s Thoreau Park by the boat dock, and the statue inscribed with HDT’s famous reason for going to the woods. There’s also the Moosehead Historical Society, which had a special exhibit of Bert Call’s North Woods photos, each paired with an appropriate passage from The Maine Woods. I thought for a long while about this:

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars.” (Henry David Thoreau, from Walden)

…and how the sandy - or pebbly - bottoms of lakes and streams do more than serve as depth markers, because they are also your anchor when you’ve blundered too far, the place your feet always try to find.

After a while I stopped thinking and we went to the Dairy Bar.

That night for supper I had leftovers I’d made a few days before. It tasted particularly good in the context of dusk and tall trees and campfire smoke. This is how I made it; you could do it differently, if you wanted.

Camp Quinoa

1 c. quinoa, rinsed if you don’t have the pre-rinsed kind

1/2 bunch kale

1/4 large red onion, minced

1/2 package sliced portobello mushrooms

A leftover cooked ear of corn, kernels sliced off

A red bell pepper, diced

A yellow summer squash, diced

1 can beans (I used pink beans, chickpeas would be good too)

1 lemon

A spoonful of capers, drained

Olive oil

Salt, pepper, thyme to taste

Cook the quinoa according to the package directions. I use the “energy saving method,” where you put the quinoa and water in the pot, boil hard for five minutes, and then turn off the heat and let it sit for 15 minutes or so.

Tear the kale into bite-size pieces. Rinse. Throw in a large skillet, wok, or pot, and cook with the onion and a little olive oil. It takes a while to get tender, at least 15 minutes or so. Throw in the pepper and squash and a pinch of salt, and cook until they start to soften. Add the mushrooms last. By the time all the vegetables are cooked the quinoa should be ready.

Drain and rinse the beans. Toss the cooked quinoa, beans, and vegetables in a large bowl. Stir in the corn kernels, capers, a drizzle or two of olive oil and the juice of one lemon. Add salt, pepper, and thyme to taste. Lemon thyme would be great but I didn’t have any.

This tastes better the next day, or even the next, outdoors.

driving in circles

I need to tell you about this. I wish I had something else to tell you about but I keep circling back to this, even after immersing myself in the city for five years and moving closer but not too close. It’s stuck to me. I’d rather talk about something else, maybe, something easier or funnier or more accessible, but it doesn’t give me much choice. It hangs there in the background and it hums.

I need to tell you about the stumbledrunks outside the Bob-Inn on a Saturday night, the broken glass and the jalopy cabs lined up waiting. I need to tell you about the buildings that built lives and communities and our existence, and I need to tell you why they are being carved up and closed down, and what is going to become of them. I need to tell you about the smokestack across the river and how it used to send clouds of yellow egg-smelling sulfur over Main Street. I need to tell you about the weird weedy corners where people go about their business with shopping carts and truck parts and garbage bags full of bottles. I need to tell you about buying mousetraps at Wal-Mart on a Sunday night. I need to tell you about the day in spring when the water starts running under the ice along the dirt shoulders.

I need to tell you about la Beauce and the long trip on foot from Canada, taken not by ancient ghosts but by my classmates’ grandparents, and the French ghetto in the South End where men and women wore down their hands to build something respectable. And I need to tell you where they went and why their houses are faded and leaning. I need to tell you about the Lebanese, who came out of nowhere it seemed, to rise up in vast clans of Josephs and Georges. I need to parse out this thing that is neither rural nor urban, but something in between, something that is trying to make peace with protectionist instincts and the inevitable demands of economic growth.

I need to tell you about the new church out on Kennedy Memorial Drive, on the Oakland town line. It’s called something like the Old Pentecostal Bought by Blood Church of God. It is a vinyl-sided structure across the street from the ATV dealer. I need to tell you about the way we need to relate ourselves to ourselves, how any conversation turns into an elaborate linking act: Do you know X? She went to school with Y. Oh, the Y family on Z road. Yes. I know W. Oh, of course, she’s married to Q, my mother knows them. I need to tell you how this nothing little place sinks its hooks in people, not just me - I swear it isn’t just me - and I need to figure out why we can’t ever walk away, not completely, and why so many of us are compelled to orbit back, as close as we can, like moths to a flashlight.

I need to tell you about all this, but I’m not sure why, and I’m definitely not sure how.

tagged: mary maine who's not blogging now? stuff to think about

crash bang boom

A whopper of a storm rolled through town yesterday, starting from approx. the time I took a quick lunch break to go for a run along the Eastern Prom. I made it half a mile before the sky split open; I could see vertical streaks of lightning toward the south, headed toward downtown. There was rain and there was also hail. Yes, hail. Not as big as the “nickel-sized” pieces promised by public radio earlier in the day, but big enough to notice, especially when they were striking my face. Because, of course, I kept running, because there reaches a point in the downpour when you’re just not going to get any wetter, so you might as well keep going, especially when it’s July and not that cold and you’re running along by the ocean and everything smells salty and fishy and fresh.

Later in the evening things got a little less pleasant with the second round of storms: I closed my computer for the day, mustered my courage (it takes some mustering), and set out for the wilds of South Portland to find a bathing suit in the middle of the summer (a time when most local stores are out of bathing suits). I was on 295 south when the avalanche of water (that’s not meteorologically correct!) hit, and traffic slowed from 50 mph to about 15 mph, and the winds were pulling my little blue Subaru to the left and then the right, aided and abetted by the sheets of water sluicing under the tires. I could see nothing beyond the taillights of the car directly in front of me.

Ladies and gentlemen, I very nearly did a thing I’ve never done: pulled over to the side of the road to wait out the bad weather. I probably should have. It’s been a long time since I’ve driven regularly, let alone on an semi-unfamiliar major highway in extreme weather. What can I say? I felt bold, and public radio was interviewing John Turturro at MIFF, which felt soothing somehow. I made it through the storm, crawling at 15 mph and braking gently at intersections, and by the time I parked it felt like a geniune victory.

Trying to deal with ladies’ clothing stores was a whole ‘nother matter.

tagged: mary who's not blogging now? cars weather