Conchs and Ten Bay

We asked the bartender at The Beach House for a suggestion of another beautiful spot we might enjoy and she suggested Ten Bay, which I thought she was saying 'Tam Bay,' but I was wrong. Her directions were a little unclear, and the way I transcribed the directions were even more troublesome. This led us to go down one long and bumpy road (most all roads in Eleuthera are long and bumpy) that ended in a loading ramp for boats and plenty of lime stone. It soon became clear that this was a spot where conch fishermen come in and separate the meaty conchy from its pink shell. This resulted in the whole area being littered with empty, slightly broken but still incredibly pretty shells.
I made friends with two of them.

I also took one back to the apartment but ultimately decided that it didn't deserve to find itself in Philadelphia forever. It deserved better than that.
So we didn't get lost exactly (it's hard to get lost on an island with only one main road), but we did struggle to find the turn off for Ten Bay. So we stopped at a little farm/plant store and took a look around before asking the woman manning the register what we were doing wrong.
With her guidance we successfully got to Ten Bay. In fact we had started going down the road that would have ultimately led us to the beach, but it was so bumpy and seemingly remote that we backed up and turned around. The lesson there is, of course, always drive to the end of the road; Lenny can take it. It was a very calm bay, shallow for what seemed like at least 3/4 of a mile, and clear blue waters for as far as you could care to look. There were two houses just feet away from the shore, which inspired a fierce jealousy in me. What a life that would be.


Jealousy.

There were a few others on the beach, but it was very low key and a great way to milk the rest of the day's sunny hours. I think I finished my book there. Family Fang, good book. Really, go read it. I'll wait.

Turkey Sandiwch and Porch Swing and Harry Potter Spoiler

The next morning I availed myself of a little of the leftover turkey and made myself a turkey, mayo, cranberry and croissant sandwich. I enjoyed it.
Later on B. and D.'s grandkids stopped by.
It was during this porch swing interlude that one of the twins with a very earnest expression asked me what happened at the end of Harry Potter. I made the ultimately flawed assumption that he was asking about the end of the last movie/book, which even for an adult could make more sense. So (SPOILER) I launch into how there's a part of Voldemort in Harry and the only way to get that out is to allow himself to be killed (that is the deal, right?). They also ask me if Harry will find his parents and the end of the book. Following this interchange it comes out that they have only watched or read the first book. So I have effectively told them the ending while also bringing up the concept of suicide. I always said I was a winner.
Still, on the whole I think they recovered pretty well.

A Different Point of View

M. and A.'s cabin came with its own dock and canoe, and was about fifteen minutes away from the main point of action. By 15 minutes I don't actually mean 15 minutes. It was more like a three minute drive or a ten minute walk. But if the lake were a clock and B. and W.'s house was 12, then the cabin was about fifteen minutes from that 12. I have no idea why I'm using such a shitty metaphor. Or wait, is that an analogy? In any case, on my last full day in the Adirondacks, I spent a good bit of my time on this mostly neglected by us dock, reading Gorky Park. Really wanted to finish the damn thing, and sequestered myself with every intention of doing so. Didn't succeed but the effort must count for something. The view was delicious.

Cafe au Lait and Montreal Bagel c/o St. Viateur

There were many potential things on our food list that simply weren't gotten to due to the limited time we were in the city. I had considered, at one point, whether it would be a harbinger of an eating disorder if I vomited in order to free up space for more meals ... but I really don't care for puking so that never got out of the 'idea' phase. In any case, Saturday morning we had our final Montreal meal at St. Viateur bagels, because you can't go to Montreal and not have a Montreal-style bagel. Or that's what I've been told. I love how cafe au laits can come in giant bowls. Love it.
We actually were both given one and a half bagels, which seemed generous. I wish I could say that I practiced self control and only ate one ... but self control, as anyone who knows me knows, is not one of my virtues. I went with the chive cream cheese, I think ... and it was good.
On the way back to the hotel to pack up our stuff we went into a used bookstore where most all the books were in French. I took some time looking at their collection of bird books. I think what I want is a tattoo of a chicken in a cross-style of Audobon and Japanese wood carvings. Or some other bird. Maybe a blue bird. Problem is, of course, that I have no artistic ability to draw like that, and I feel like most tattoo artists would want a little more to go on. Or maybe not. It's all very unclear to me.

Breakfast Bagel c/o Rybread

Another morning I didn't have to go into work til 10, but I was still up by 8 something, so I decided to go to Rybread and get myself coffee and a breakfast sandwich while finishing up Mockingjay (the third and final Hunger Games book). I sat at one of their two tables out front. The bagel didn't disappoint, though the coffee left something to be desired. I am persnickety about timing, and should have sat there and allowed myself to finish the book before getting to work, but I was convinced that I was going to be late. In the end I was 15 minutes early to work and 15 pages short of finishing the book. What's done is done. The book, for example, is now done. But I won't bother you with my thoughts on that. Just read it.

Beverages A'Plenty c/o Infusion

Last Sunday I had a lot to do. That is not really true. I had very little to do. Or maybe I did. I can't quite recall. In any case, on my agenda was finishing reading the second Suzanne Collins book after having devoured (figuratively) Hunger Games in a literal 24 hour period of time. Also on the 'to-do' list was visiting Infusion Coffee and Tea, which isn't really in my neighborhood. So I wended and wound my way up to Germantown/Mt. Airy to take a look at the place. I have a bit of an 'in' with the owners, which led to discounted (free) beverages. I had an iced hazelnut latte and then was offered an Earl Grey milkshake. Both drinks were delightful, though my taste buds thought the Earl Grey tasted more like peaches than anything else (this happens from time to time). I also finished the book. If you are a reader, just submit to the waves of people telling you to read the books. Just submit to it I tell you. They're far better than Twilight.

Jerk Chicken and Reading

There was a jerk chicken hut on the beach. It was amazing. You stood in a quick line, got a generous portion of freshly grilled jerk chicken and side sauces. You will see more of this chicken. I read three or four books while I was in Jamaica. The second Jack Spratt book by Jasper Fforde, which was just as delightful as all the other books that man has written. And The other Wes Moore, which is an interesting memoir/story about two African American men of similar age, both of whom with roots in Baltimore, and the radically different lives they ended up living. Wes Moore, the author, was careful to say that he wasn't making any conclusions about what it meant, but the recounting of both Wes' lives was interesting and well constructed and realized. And the author's father went to Bard, which I thought was kind of neat.
The one sauce, not the red one, was rather spicy in a good way. I mixed a little sweetness into it.
The skin. The magic. I ate this with my fingers unapologetically.

A Little

I've been struggling to engage with The God of Small Things. I know it's supposed to be a really good book, but I haven't really been sucked in as much as I have ploddingly continued reading. This morning, however, two lines really made me smile.

"He was like a flasher in a hedge. Enticing people with his nipples then forcing pictures of his son on them."

And.

"She arrived on the Bombay-Cochin flight. Hatted, bell-bottomed and Loved from the Beginning."

Book Round Up

It has been a while since my last meager attempt at recounting the books and movies and whatnots I consume for entertainment. Soooo, in no particular order, here's what I have been reading since the last time. I re-read Homecoming for the first time since I was probably ten or eleven. I feel like I read the book a number of times when I was younger, but a lot of the story and events were completely new to me. Now I want to read Dicey's Song again.
While I was at Cayuga Lake with A.S. I basically commandeered her mother's Stieg Larsson books. After originally doing this, I realized how rude it was and tried to take it back...but ended up reading both of them nonetheless. I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. The first one certainly has a good pace and the characters are better than your average mystery book's protagonists and villains...but I was somehow under the impression that these were more literary/fancy than they actually are.
Liked the second one too, but didn't power through it at quite the same pace as I did the first.
Somehow I missed reading The Giver as a kid. Now I have. What a weird little book for young adults. I mean. It's really a strange book. It struck me as somehow anti-communist/socialist but I couldn't really explain that in any depth. Well, I guess I could a little...I mean, the concept that everyone has the same things, that they don't pick their career path as much as the equivalent of government does, etc. etc. And that ending. Hmpf. I had issues with the book that I couldn't quite express to my coworkers. Maybe I'll have to read it again.
I've been in Tennessee for the last couple of days, and in my first three days I read three books. Among them was Judith Guest's The Tarnished Eye. I loved Ordinary People when I was a teenager. Loved it. Loved it. Loved it. I read it enough that I knew exactly which parts would make me cry and read them slowly to savor each tear. I read other books by Guest as well, all in the same vein of family fucked up ness and some kind of redemption. This book is more in the mystery end of the spectrum. It was good, but there were a few loose threads at the end that seemed like they wouldn't have been that difficult to wrap up. If you like Michigan and murder, you might like this book.
L. lent me her copy of Eat, Pray, Love. I didn't really have any interest in reading it, but she insisted. L. also said that the voice of Elizabeth Gilbert (the written voice, not the spoken one) reminded her of me. I think this was mainly because, at one point, Gilbert makes up a song that goes (she's in Bolgona, Italy) 'my Bologna has a first name, it's p-r-e-t-t-y.' It's definitely an interesting read. Most books about very successful people struggling to find themselves are, because they get to do it in so much style. I don't mean to be uncharitable, but it's true. I'm not a spiritual or religious person, so the large 'finding inner peace/God/yogic higher plane stuff' was interesting but not as compelling as I'm sure it would be if that was a path you were already on. It's a good book, but it didn't speak to me exactly. Some parts did. I'm not a completely unfeeling person incapable of self-reflection and growth...I'm just mainly that person. She did, however, make me want to live in Rome and Bali.
Last year I read Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle, which remains, to this day, one of the most messed up non-fiction accounts of a childhood I have ever read. I mean, seriously. So when I saw her new book lying around the parents' house I thought I'd take a look. She calls this a 'true life novel' because she writes in the first person, from the perspective of her maternal grandmother. I have no doubt that most of the events are not, however, fictional. It's good. It gives some insight into Walls' mother while also just recounting an interesting story, full of hardship and ranches and horses.
I re-read The Big Over Easy the other week just because I felt like it. Still quite clever, still quite funny. I heard Fforde has a new book out, I'll have to look into that. Just so we're clear: I really think everyone should read this man's books.

I read God of Animals a few days ago. I read it quickly and I liked it. This may possibly be because of the horse element. I used to ride. I was never super good, but I liked doing it and being part of that horse culture...though I always knew I wasn't quite a horse person in the official sense (there is an official sense). It's a story about struggle, and adolescence and family and grace...and a lack of grace. I don't know, it's pretty good...though there are some tropes (tropes?) that will seem awfully familiar.
Pat Barker. I read a book by her every now and again. Ghost Road was not my favorite. Though it gave me a little more information about shell shock during World War I and the culture of head hunters.

Fallen Swallow and Sandwich

The structure of the days at Cayuga Lake were quite up my alley. They went a little something like this: wake up, eat, go to the end of the dock, get in the water, get out of the water and read until you are hot, get back in the water, repeat a few times, lunch, reapply sunscreen, go back to the water and do more reading and floating, pack up, take a shower, have a beer, play a game, eat dinner, sit around a fire, go to sleep. Oh man. Seriously. While some people probably wouldn't be able to keep up this strenuous regime for more than a day, I'm pretty sure that I truly would be content to do this for my entire life. E., A.'s cousin, showed us a baby swallow they found in the water. It wasn't too surprising, the docks all have nests underneath them and swallows dive and swerve around them, and the water in general, throughout the day.
For lunch I made myself a turkey and salami sandwich and drank a cup of pink lemonade.

And then it was back to the lake and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Quotation

So, I should at some point do another reading round up. But for now I'm reading Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. I'm only in the second story, so I don't know how much I will like this book over the long haul, but this particular line is exactly how I feel about beautiful places. It reminded me of last summer's trip to the Adirondacks. It is:

"I did take a kind of comfort that all of this beauty was out here, persisting like mad, whether you hearkened to it or not."

Seattle Part I: Salt Lake City, Oyster-Heavy Lovely Lunch c/o Etta's and Bookstores

Last Tuesday I boarded an airplane headed to Salt Lake City. My final destination was Seattle and I didn't have a very long layover, so I didn't really get any feel for the actual city, but the view, even with airport as the forefront, was spectacular. I can't imagine living with that sort of landscape staring at your face. The Hudson Valley Region had a bit of that quality for me, a little: a sense of artistic urgency as a result of the beauty around me? That may be false, but the landscape, the country-ness, it did influence me. Still, the Salt Lake City airport and its views were, for the most part, quite spectacular. It was strange to see a smoking section in an airport. It has gone quite out of style, with good reason. Though it still can be the best place to have a conversation with a complete stranger.
M. picked me up from the airport and we drove to Pike Street, or its environs or something like that name but not?, and had lunch at Etta's. This was my first coffee of Seattle, and one of the few photographed, but there were many undocumented intakes of lattes.
We shared a dozen oysters, half of which were (if I recall correctly) of the Deep Cove Bay variety. But I may be making the name up.
One variety of oyster, whatever its name, had a real salty quality that grabbed me in and slightly caused my eyes to open for a moment; nothing major happened, but I perked up more after one oyster slurp than from the two cups of coffee.
They were having a $15 prix fixe menu for lunch, and one of the three choices for a first course was fried oysters with a green tomato remoulade. I went for the oyster 'two ways' and didn't regret it. Nicely breaded, but not overly so, each oyster maintained an excellent crispy to succulent ratio, still with its own distinct flavor bite (or three).
For my main course I ordered the shrimp-in-the-style-of-a-lobster roll-roll. I didn't love it. I found the shrimp to be better than many a restaurant's, but the flavoring wasn't quite right. It just wasn't for me. I have had a lobster roll or two in my life, and I always feel a little disappointed. I think I like the work and the ritual of sitting down and working your way through a whole lobster - or, to a lesser extent, a shrimp - and simply having the best parts in a roll, coated in even the best of mayonnaise and wrapped in a buttered roll from the best bakery, isn't as satisfying. I am also not a huge fan of dill, though I'm coming around to it a little. So a shrimp roll is equally a let down. I love me my mayonnaise, don't get me wrong...but this wasn't quite it.
My third course was an oatmeal ice cream sandwich. I liked the cookie part of the dish and was surprised to learn that M. preferred the ice cream. After lunch M. took me to see a few of her favorite bookstores. They were quite lovely. One was very into activism, another had a great selection of art books and a fair variety of fiction for such a small space.
We also saw fish, none of which were thrown.

I Spend My Life Consuming Stories

More than a month ago A. recommended (and lent me) Anne Michaels' The Winter Vault. It took me a while to get into the characters and story. I read it in bursts and that may have impacted how I related to and understood the plot. The principle relationship in the book is between a husband, Avery, and a wife, Jean. The story opens along the Nile, in Egypt, in 1962 (
1964?) and ends in Canada, with a number of other locations, Poland for example, heavily explored. There were a lot - a lot, a lot, a lot - of scenes with two people being in bed sharing long conversations about their past, stories of Warsaw's destruction and reconstruction through the eyes of a Jewish boy who grows up to be an artist living in Toronto and knowledge of plants comes into play. There are beautiful lines in this book and small moments that pack a punch, but there is also just a lot of remembering. It's funny that I feel this way about reading memories, since memory and nostalgia is a theme on which I like to touch in whatever little creative thing I have going on, but reading characters' rememberances for pages at a time became tiresome. It may just be as simple as my thinking that the nature of the conversations couldn't possibly be that meaningful and heavy all the time. There were very few moments of joy, and when they happened they were very quiet somehow. This line set up, simple as it is, was lovely to me:

"Jean led Avery a small way up the slope. They stood by a scattering of stones. Standing next to him, looking down at the river flowing in the white light of the generators she said: This very place we stand is where you first learned we will have a child. And she smiled at Avery's astonished face."
One of the reasons my progress on Winter Vault was so slow was due to my also deciding to re-read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I noticed Rowling's tendency to use people's hair as characterizations of their personality/inner life and thought it lazy. Still loved it. Kind of thinking about reading it again, but I'll hold back and try to read another grown up book.
A. also lent me the first season of Gossip Girl. What a ridiculous show. Chuck Bass continues to amaze me.
I watched the first two thirds of Wendy and Lucy and then the disc started skipping. I wanted to know what happened but I haven't actually asked for a replacement disc. Definitely on the bleak realism side.
I really enjoyed The Visitor. All the actors were really good and it wasn't overtly a political statement about the U.S. policies on illegal immigrants. The characters really stuck with me.
I'm jumping on The Mighty Boosh Bandwagon. It's funny and absurd and I laugh and laugh.
I watched the first season of This American Life as well. Though I haven't lived in a house with Showtime in pretty much ever, I found that I had seen a number of the episodes, or fragments of the episodes, at some earlier time. That night, my dreams were narrated by Ira Glass. I remember feeling comforted by this.
I also watched Demetri Martin's Comedy Centeral show. I laughed and laughed. I mean, not every jooke is super funny but the funny is right there often enough.
And that's all I've watched or read.