Herzog For Halloween Week. Do You Have A Soul?

One day, not too long ago, I posted feelings of love for a plant on Facebook. Here’s what I did. I wrote about the Montauk Daisy, (Nipponanthemum nipponicum), which grows in my dooryard and my gardens. I described the plant as a “happy late bloomer” thus identifying my own humanity with the plant and, furthermore, employing the plant’s bright white, daisy-like flowers as an arousal agent for human emotion.

This sentimental slash romantic behavior stirred up a cyberspace snake pit—that vale of venomous angst where contemporary culture gathers to unlock, and brutally judge, the mysteries of human existence. Before long I felt the sink of snarky fangs slicing through to my bones and calling me out—in the public theater of social media—for being a romanticized, sentimental dweeb. The pointy fangs punctured a few rowdy endorphins that flow like champagne bubbles through my blood whenever a shot of botanical bling makes my heart way too plump. Pop!

I considered that if I wanted to survive the bite and reduce the stings of humiliation, perhaps I ought to come up with a clever response or those fangs might sink as deep as the taproot on a bloom of winter depression. Alternatively, I could open a bottle of champagne and drink up. But a killing frost was in the forecast for New England and I still had more than 50 potted shrubs and perennials to settle into the soils of my pleasure grounds, aka My Gardens—the breeding environs, of course, for radical romanticism.

So instead of wrestling with snarky snakes, I escaped into the hours of the day’s late afternoon and went to work finding places in the garden for as many of the potted plants as I could. I also wrenched gnarly clumps of Lily of the Valley, Convallaria mojalis, out of the Earth for division and reinsertion into my little part of the Earth’s ecosystem. I did the polka with a nest of bumble bees, Bombus terrestris, while trying to place some Royal Ferns, Osmunda regalia, over those bumblers’ hideout. And when the setting sun lit up the colors of autumn on every growing thing wherever I looked, I halted my obsessive work and did my own kind of calling out:

Da mi basia mille, deinde centum, dein mille altera, dein secunda centum!

(Give me a thousand kisses, then another hundred, then another thousand, then a hundred more!)

Struck happy by a soulful rush of satisfaction with my own little world, I concluded there would be no rehab for my sentimentalism or my romanticism. I carry the propensities for mush from at least an 8-year-old self. She is such an awkward self, yet remains a dependable friend. I see her again, (the delirium of my labors has done it), and she is hiding under a tree, reading a book. She is most likely in love with the tree and is sure the tree loves her too.

The book my 8-year-old self is reading, (under a tree I have decided to remember as an apple tree that must have been planted by the folk hero John Chapman), is entitled George Washington Carver, A Great American. It’s about an American-born slave—traded as an infant for a horse—who conquers adversity to become a botanist, scientist, inventor, artist, and teacher. Carver also believed that flowers planted in the dooryard and bright colors painted on the interior of an otherwise dreary cabin, could lift the spirits. (Both of these practices have become life habits for me. I plant flowers in my dooryard and I paint the walls and doors and ceilings of my home with bright colors and cheerful pictures.) After my young self is done reading about George Washington Carver, she climbs into the tree. (Surely it must have been an apple tree. They were the best for climbing.)

I had discovered the kiddy-lit biography about George Washington Carver on the shelves of a Bookmobile that visited my Indiana neighborhood during summertime. In those days I’d wake up early on Tuesday mornings and leave home to wait for the Bookmobile. I’d press my butt up against the butts of every other kid crouched onto the stubby curb of our cul-de-sac, where the Bookmobile parked and stayed for a few morning hours. We all wanted to be first on board the big white van and although we’d come to attention and stand in line politely when the Bookmobile arrived, it was only because we’d already scraped each other’s grimy faces over the pavement, in the gladiator arena of that cul-de-sac, for curb positions.

The Bookmobile days marked a time in American history when every butt on every kid was small, and summer reading was a free-choice act, (there were no required summer reading lists where I lived), that led to the fulfillment of at least one unalienable right: the pursuit of happiness.

I remember how the interior of the Bookmobile smelled as sweet as a Garden of Eden.

It was not a snake pit. It was a quiet sanctuary.

Nobody bothered anybody else in that mobile monastery.

The librarian was nice to romantic dweebs.

********

Alone at home, later, after the day of the Facebook snake bite, I turn on the television. I click into the movie, Almost Famous, about a young kid who wants to write about rock music. There’s Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs (the legendary writer and critic) talking to his adolescent mentee, William, on the telephone. William is despairing about his life. Bangs breathes out a sobering declaration for William, but his voice drifts from TV land and fills the quiet chamber of my empty house:

“We. Are uncool,” he sighs.

William tells Lester Bangs how glad he is that Bangs is at home to take an SOS call.

Bangs smirks: “I’m always home. I’m uncool.”

The scene about “cool” in Almost Famous is a great one. It comes after William’s euphoric rise as a neophyte rock-and-roll journalist ends in profound heartbreak. And, let’s face it, if you’re home alone clicking into that scene—a scene featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman as the inimitable Lester Bangs—after examining your failures as a sentimentalist, you’re bound to experience a disturbing attack of dweeb doom, slamming like a rogue wave into your gut, and tossing you to the carpet into a pitiful heap of smoldering defeat.

I was so home alone listening to the character of Lester Bangs define cool on television, something I rarely watch, even though earlier in the evening I had gone out for a brief excursion. My excursion delivered me to a leftover bookstore because I wanted to buy Patti Smith’s newest book M Train. When I couldn’t find the book on any of the display tables, I asked a doe-eyed young woman standing behind the help desk about the book. The young woman had cool, long, blond hair. She wore cool boots. She had a cool scarf, cool jewelry, and cool make-up. Back when bookstores were cool, the people who worked in them could talk cool about books.

“Tell me the name of the book again?” The young woman said to me.

“M Train.”

“And tell me the author again?”

“Patti Smith.”

The young woman tapped her cool fingernails onto a computer, consulting cyberspace. She had cool painted fingernails. “It’s shelved in our music section,” she said.

We went to the music section.

“Tell me the author’s name once more,” she said.

“Smith. Patti Smith.”

I found the book. There were three copies.

“Here it is,” I said to her, “thanks for your help.”

The young woman told me she had never heard of Patti Smith.

Wow. I thought. That’s kind of cool.

********

Just about anyone can related to this line from the first pages of M Train: “It’s not so easy writing about nothing.” (Word, Patti.)

And from Almost Famous I soon locked into another great line, delivered by the character of Lester Bangs, as acted out by Philip Seymour Hoffman, via the screenplay by Cameron Crowe:

“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.”

I thought: Sharing. In cyberspace. It’s what we do nowadays: Cats. Dogs. Bunnies. Horses. Food. Art. Kids. Lovers. Boozy late nights. Landscapes. Good times. Flowers. Music. Articles. Events. Epic trips. Holidays. Crafts. Births. Deaths. Illnesses. Fund raisers. Videos. Political bullshit. Tricks. Deep thoughts. Rants. Raves. Blog posts. Selfies.

********

Later, later, later into the night, I exchanged some text messages with my son about Werner Herzog, the filmmaker. My son told me to check out Herzog’s documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams about the Chauvet Cave in France which contains the oldest known paintings created by human beings.

So I did.

It’s a romantic film. You might not believe in the human soul or the soul of flowers. You might not even be sure if you have a soul. Herzog will help you answer some of these questions. It is his goal to arouse your imaginings and seduce you into believing that about thirty-two thousand years ago, something magnificent happened in the history of evolution: The awakening of the modern human soul.

So since it’s Halloween week, why not watch Cave of Forgotten Dreams and consider the human soul? (It’s easy to watch online.) The music, composed and performed by Ernst Reijseger on cello with Harmen Fraanje on piano and the voices of the Kettwiger Bach-Ensemble, will evoke the hauntings of a Poe short story, the sleeping quarters of a dark, damp, and cold medieval cathedral, and the conjuring of the human soul from the great beyond!

Let Herzog guide you into the Chauvet Cave.

Allow your imagination to become unleashed. Free your rational mind.

You will find yourself in the spirit world—where trees can speak, man can become an animal, an animal can become a man, and the spirit world controls the hand of the artist.

You will believe the walls of the cave can talk, while killing you softly if you linger too long.

You will think of leaving this life to enter the world of the spirits and you will not doubt that the spirits exit their world to exist in ours. Indeed, even the scientific minds that have laser scanned every nook and cranny of the Chauvet Cave have admitted to being overcome by irrational feelings of “eyes upon us” when they have been inside the cave—eyes from humankind that lived more than thirty thousand years ago. And perhaps never died. (A chilling historical point of reference: The last glaciers melted away just twelve thousand years ago.)

As Herzog guides the viewer on a strange pilgrimage into the lives of humans so vastly long gone, he asks: Did they dream? Did they cry at night? What were their hopes, their families?

The ending became, for me, deeply unsettling and spooky. I felt the familiar ghosts of romanticism and sentimentalism wrapping their arms around my shoulders and taking control of my hands and my heart, growing my soul.

For many viewers, the ending won’t be unsettling or spooky at all. They’ll think it’s mushy.

The film is only spooky, and wonderful, if you have a soul.

********

You Are Not Real.

Maybe some homemade oatmeal will help.

Keep the oats out. Make cookies later. People need real cookies.

Use real drugs.

Five minutes to cook, three minutes to rest, covered.

Tea, brewing in cup made by daughter.

Pad of paper. Pen.

One drawing.

Bowl of raisins and maple syrup on hot oatmeal.

Ready to work outside in the cold and in the rain.

Stay up into the night baking.

Summer Shorts.

A worn paperback discovered

leaning against the dusty window of a used-book store on Vinalhaven Island, Maine.

One of my favorite personal artifacts.

Purchased after a day of hiking and biking on the island,

and swimming in the island’s abandoned quarries.

The year was 2004.

My children were young. Base camp was Camden Hills State Park.

********

I am driving. It is late September and it comes to my attention that summer is officially over.

I stare into the rear view mirror and notice the setting sun. Badlands (Springsteen) is playing on an ancient CD in my dash. The CD is partially cracked—sliced clean through—but Badlands still works. A sports car rockets from the edge of the horizon, like a spark leaping off the sun. It is closer than it appears, aimed for my road space. The car is white and after it dusts all 160,000 lumbering miles of my old volvo tank, its hind end sneers back at me—like a mean monster’s face. Red taillights with beady red eyeballs. Frowning mouth with gaping, thin lips. Shiny, loud teeth—inhaling my exhausted sighs and getting me high. It’s an F-Type Jaguar. I want to be the driver of that car. The one living that life. Somewhere in the repertoire of all the lives I dreamed of living, I never thought to envision myself as the owner of a fast, well-engineered, beautifully-designed car.

********

In August, my mother survived the ravages of a stroke. She remains hospitalized, paralyzed on her left side. In fact, anything to the left of her field of vision is a total blank. She has no concept of a world beyond that zone. We are supposed to speak to her and visit with her from the left side, so that she will learn to scan the world “from all the way left.” When I am in her zero zone, I am not of her world.

I remember the early days after Mom’s stroke, when it seemed she could not possibly live another morning, or afternoon, or evening. My husband arrived for a visit. “Hi Mom,” he said, bringing a fresh smile into her somber world, “don’t get up.”

Mom slurred out two words, “I won’t.” And then she tried to smile, too.

Now, Mom can smile a real smile almost all the way through both cheeks and she can laugh. She can sit in a wheelchair. It is so wonderful, one almost feels as greedy as a self-proclaimed king when one continues to pray that she will soon walk into her own kitchen and have the use of her left arm to make an ice cream cake, while checking in on the stock market.

Not long after my mother was struck down, my husband’s mother slipped on the floor where she lives alone near Syracuse, New York. She broke her arm and her hip.

I drive back and forth to Connecticut.

My husband drives back and forth to Syracuse.

We drive back and forth to Connecticut and Syracuse.

We drive back and forth to places where we pretend the world can never find us.

********

There are stories and films and theater productions, and songs and poems, and drunken rants, and perfectly lucid rants,

about hitting the roads of America—summer being the preferred season for taking on the gypsy life.

Maybe the road wanderer is going in search of a worthy cliff over which every parasitic load of grief that has ever chewed venom into the heart can be cast away. (A never-ending quest.)

Or maybe the wanderer wants to find America and the meanings of life. (The meanings are all out there.)

Or maybe the wanderer needs to escape the confines of adulthood. (For a gypsy, life is better on the road.)

Or maybe the wanderer seeks to connect with their one true self. (You meet a lot of true selfs on the road.)

Or maybe the wanderer hates their one true self and wants to frankenstein a new self,

or fabricate a branded self,

or become reborn as some other self they can present to the community for applause and a prize

and for membership in the kinds of contemporary cultural groupings that promise the security of lifelong enrichment

through network friendships. (The road can be so under appreciated if you need to be connected to a network.)

If the road is good to you, and you find yourself freed

—beyond the menacing tentacles of any network—

don’t be a stranger to yourself. (My son said this to me recently when I was feeling bereft and unable to excite the pleasure centers of my brain.)

Learn to believe it when you think life is short.

Summers are even shorter.

********

Summers, indeed, are too short for finding the time to read all the road-trip stories and watch all the movies and play out all the dream excursions, driving fast—or slow—over paths well traveled. I have been finding the time, though, to listen to a lot of the road-trip songs while heading out to visit my mom. I drive parallel patterns running north and south, on roads that are perpetually under construction and increasingly under siege. Trucks, hauling road trains of useless stuff from faraway places to nearby shopping centers, knead road surfaces into landscapes of the moon—cratered and rutted and barren of life.

Plasticity bears in on me.

I know there isn’t one thing, aboard any truck, on any route gouged into American soil, that I need.

But I do need the road.

I am dazed and disarrayed. Glossy-eyed, not sleepy. Annoyed by every little thing. Hurtling my old car 75 mph over paved highways, lane to lane, sun rising, sun setting, stars throbbing.

I am thinking. Over thinking. Using up blank space. Never getting it back. Wishing the leaves would stop changing colors.

My husband and I rendezvous at home and look at each other over the dinner table. We start out sharing a beer. Then we drink wine. Then we sit around pretending we aren’t waiting for the telephone to blow up. Then we rumble the roads again somewhere between Syracuse and Connecticut.

If you set personal-life drama to music—folk songs, rock songs, lullaby songs—you can become your dreamer self again. Especially if you were born during the 60’s and had a pair of headphones and a turntable and a babysitting job and a lawn mowing job, (to fund the purchase of albums), and an established dominion in the corner of an overcrowded bedroom where you could tip your head back, stare up at the ceiling, and listen to the noise.

Louder plays the music, in your memory and in your car. You don’t just love the groove, you love the lyrics. You love the rock stars. You are going to be free forever someday. Still. You will be your own true self and you will never need anyone else except for all the other people who are their own true selves, too.

My mother is her own true self.

********

En route to home after visiting Mom on the day I noticed summer was over, the road delivered me into the parking lot of a New England farm stand near my house. I got out, all grown up, cooing Badlands, using it as a lullaby salve for my shaky little soul, which I prefer to keep protected behind a hard-working heart.

Artfully stacked pyramids of fresh-picked apples and haphazard piles of just-harvested pumpkins stroked longings for the spirit of the Great Pumpkin to carve me up into a happy face. The summer’s long days and nights were being woven into the shorter days of autumn. They hung like a tattered curtain, shredded by the rush of remembering a full summer of road trips that shook me up from Alabama and through the southern states, bound for the north to everywhere in New England to Ohio to Canada to New York State and to still trying to find home. The curtain is lowering over the stage of one set and preparing to rise from the stage of another. Its parts and pieces flap in that in-between space of life like this and the shift.

When the winds grow calm, I can’t breathe.

Time slows to the length of one, precious, prayed-for heartbeat.

One, precious, flutter of an eyelid.

One, precious, electric particle of the universe, to connect the brain to the body,

And a prayer to a promise.

********

At the farm stand, I want one true apple.

But I choose three—a ginger gold, a macintosh, and a golden delicious.

I slice off a taste of each. The ginger gold tastes best. But the macintosh will part the dark clouds when I slice it into wedges and zap it in the microwave with cinnamon on top. The golden delicious, meh.

I resolve to take a road trip to Scott Farm, Kipling Road in Dummerston, Vermont. There, they display their collection of orchard-grown apples like great wine in a wine shop, like cigars in a cigar shop. Wooden boxes, filled with fruits in varying shapes, sizes, and colors, are arranged together, like shelves in a library. Little descriptive phrasings on labels describe how each apple tastes, what kinds of fragrances they emit, and how they will save your tongue and your inner being from the sadness of plasticity arriving on big trucks from Timbuktu and wifi networks infiltrating the Peace of The Road.

********

It was a short summer. It always is. But there was enough sunshine to grow the apples and the pumpkins for sale along the roadsides of New England. Maybe the fall season will be a glorious one.

Maybe the Great Pumpkin will, at last, rise from the pumpkin patch. Maybe Lucy will let Charlie Brown kick the football. Maybe Charlie Brown will get some candy in his Tricks or Treats bag, instead of rocks.

I never expected any of those things would ever happen.

But I always dream, whenever I become my dreamer self, that they might.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

It was a hot August day, midsummer, when just before sunset a big bug (our motorhome) landed in a meadow at the edge of an enchanted forest somewhere along the Hudson River.

The bug’s roomy belly contained sleeping quarters for human beings.

********

The big bug didn’t make a sound after landing, even as the insects in the meadow sang the loudest love song of all time,

Is Anybody Out There?

In spite of the noise going on in the meadow, and a dream that left me dancing with the saints, I fell fast asleep within the big bug’s belly.

The next morning, a brilliant sunrise awakened me.

I put on a dress and went leaping into a field of flowers. Filled with wonder, I gathered up the edges of my dress and offered a prayerful bow to the Meadow Makers. It was a heartfelt, and—the deeper I dipped—dizzying curtsy. Oh! I winced—for I felt the world taking the curves a little too fast—my poor fragile mind! Perhaps I am still a little bit drunk!

Upon righting myself among the flowers, and swatting away the stars flashing like fireflies over the surface of my eyeballs, a smile blossomed from the corners of my lips all the way up to where raindrops, no matter what the season, begin life as snowflakes. I pinched myself.

Methinks I’ve been bewitched, said I.

And after I said it, the flowers in the meadows swayed.

********

It all started at sunset the night before when a merry troupe of wandering musicians, summoned to tease and tantalize tango dancers of the Hudson Valley, sprang from behind the trees in the enchanted forest. Tadpoles in nearby ponds reacted to the fairy-dust-spangled revelry by tucking their tails inside their ears and covering their eyes with each the other’s tongue. Squirrels ran down rabbit holes and rabbits ate the beards off frightened hobbits. Roosters barked, birds honked, and plump woodchucks dangled upside down inside hickory nuts.

Tango dancers emerged from hideouts throughout the valley, ready to follow the merry wanderers to a tent in the heart of the enchanted forest. The tent sparkled with stained glass and gleaming chandeliers. Golden fringe hung from red velvet walls and ceilings. Glossy wooden dance floors shimmered.

Indeed, the shimmy to come would shatter the traditions of tango.

The elite society of tango dancers donned their special shoes, lowered their sexy eyes, and parted their lips just enough to capture herds of forest dust mites, cast aswirl by the rising heat. Then, writhing around inside their sweaty bodies, the dancers slumped up against each other—squeezing the life out of their very own dreams—preparing to dance the way they’ve always danced, the way they were taught, the way everyone expected them to dribble their toes across the floor.

Until the troupe of merry wanderers began to play.

The goblins and elves and leprechauns on stage, snake charmed their harmonicas, pianos, violins, stand-up basses, guitars, and drums. Their joyful music-making answered all the insects, in all the meadows, in all the world.

Is anybody out there?

The replies kept coming in melodious, mesmerizing doses. Hypnotic states of joy ensued and the dancers felt their hearts being rescued from sheltered cages. They watched as every willing heart was set afloat on the midsummer night’s breeze. Their spirits liberated, the dancers tangoed like freshly-kissed toads in the arms of legendary lovers.

The merry wanderers had done it.

And when the merry wanderers flew from the stage, the dancers—a little boozed up and overly excited—tried to make the merry wanderers stay forever.

But it was all a dream.

The troupe had never played together before, some had never played tango, and they had only come upon each other that very night in the enchanted forest.

In fact, they barely had a moment to enjoy a bite to eat in the belly of the big bug before they disappeared into the woods.

********

Later in the evening, a dancer discovered that I might have been the mother of one of the merry wanderers. She said, “You must have been a wonderful mother! They are all so talented and they play so well together and I hear they didn’t even have a chance to rehearse!”

Sometimes I was and sometimes I wasn’t a wonderful mother.

But if there’s one thing all wonderful mothers know, it is this: when you have a child, you give birth to dreams. But your dreams aren’t the ones that come to life.

Wonderful mothers learn that trying to trap lightning in a jar is a waste of energy.

Once, my merry wandering child dreamed that he could make people feel happy, inspired, and brand new by playing music. He dedicated his heart and soul and body and mind to the quest.

On a midsummer’s night, I experienced his dreams coming true.

It felt wonderful to be his mother.

An Earnest Request.

One week ago on Wednesday evening.

It was July the 29th.

On a day the sun burned hot enough to melt the heart of every cold-blooded, icy-veined, cruel god that ever schemed to wreck the world.

********

When summer was deep into the days of joy.

********

This does not make any sense.

********

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

********

On Thursday morning, last week.

I did not answer calls from my sister.

I typed, instead, a what’s up is everything okay? text message to her. I was on a Habitat for Humanity job site—installing gardens, unloading heavy bags of mulch, plants, tools. Coaching volunteers.

I did not hit the send button for the what’s up text before I noticed my sister calling again.

Something is up. I took the call.

********

I’m going to try to write about this.

********

Here’s a texted image I got from my son a few days before my sister’s call last week:

He saw it somewhere in New York City and sent it to me. It’s the last line from the poem, The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver, which is wood burned into our bathroom door. Whenever my son or his sister or his dad or anyone else, uses the small bathroom on our first floor, (so small that I painted it to look like an outhouse), they are confronted with the poem.

It took me a long time to wood burn that poem into the door.

Sorta, kinda, goofy, girlie mom art.

I love being a mom more than I ever thought I could love being a mom mom art.

I love being married and devoted to my family mom art.

Let’s love and live like there’s no tomorrow mom art.

********

On Thursday morning, last week—A DAY THE MERCILESS SUN BURNED HOT ENOUGH TO MELT THE HEART OF EVERY STONE-COLD-CRUEL GOD THAT EVER WRECKED THE WORLD—my sister called to tell me that her friend, Joe Trustey, and his daughter, Anna, had been killed in a fiery plane crash. They were traveling together to look at colleges.

Less than a year ago, the family had buried their only son and brother, AJ.

********

Last winter, my sister and her husband and a group of friends had flown on the Trustey’s private jet to their house in Utah for a ski weekend. The group has shared a special bond ever since they attended Harvard Business School together a long time ago.

As the years went by, I ran into this group of friends at gatherings at my sister’s house. Small talk kept me updated about each family’s milestones, challenges, and accomplishments. They’re a lively bunch, defined by hard work, unlimited ambition, and upbeat dreams. They are, like many of us, blessed with bright spirits.

Undoubtedly, the biggest personality in the group was Joe Trustey, the man killed with his daughter, Anna, when his plane went down one week ago, on Wednesday.

Tributes to his life and his daughter’s promising future abound on the Internet.

How is it that one man accomplished so much in his life? I think for Joe Trustey, much of the answer had to do with his remarkable religious faith—he and his entire family were devout Catholics. He extended the powers of faith into his own being and had a strong faith in himself. He believed God had blessed him and, with God as his strength, he never let fear disrupt his aspirations.

********

Today Joe Trustey and his daughter Anna will be buried. If all they believed about God is true, then they have joined their son and brother, AJ, in a better place.

********

More than twenty years ago, my husband and I showed up at my sister’s house to celebrate a baptism for her firstborn daughter. I had been asked to be my neice’s godmother. The grand day arrived only a few weeks after our second son had been stillborn, full term. My husband and I must have been transported to that party on the wings of angels, because in those days, we could not find our way anywhere, nor could we remember how to speak or how to appear happy.

I recall how we dreaded that party because we knew the gathering would include my sister’s Harvard Business School friends. I didn’t know how I would make it through the day. I was self-conscious of the fact that others would prefer to avoid us because our baby had died and worse than that were my conflicted fears about my own emotions of envy for the young families I knew would be in attendance—all of them with wonderful futures before them. I hated the feelings of bitterness that might exhaust me on a day of joy for my sister, her husband, and my precious niece.

The morning before the baptism, I remember helping my husband get dressed.

And thinking how lonely it is for a man to lose a newborn.

Joe Trustey was the one man at the party that day who bravely and kindly entered into the private world of our grief. He greeted my husband with generous friendship. He did not turn away; he did not pretend all was well. He simply spoke from his heart and expressed his sincere sympathy for what had happened to us. “I am so sorry to hear about your loss…” He said.

And he spoke of our son by his name. He remembered our son’s name.

********

We think of Joe Trustey as quite the high achiever. We hear tales of his great humor and endless acts of philanthropy. Long before his own life turned dark when his firstborn son, AJ, died less than a year ago, he felt a calling to care about others. Joe honored his Catholic faith by being brave, and kind, and generous.

Today will be excruciating for the Trustey’s and all of their family and friends. I am so sorry they have all lost their beloved Joe and Anna.

From The Book of Revelation, King James Bible, 14:13—

And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works so follow them.

********

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

In the spirit of Joe Trustey, and his beautiful daughter, may your great good works—the big ones and the small ones—follow and nurture you all the days of your life,

and may they live on to inspire others, from far beyond the grave, when your life on Earth is ended.

Lemon Sweet Sunshine.

Daylily Days!

Squish a lime into an ice-cold bottle of Corona beer.

Cut fresh flowers for a vase in the guest room.

What’s for dessert?

My daughter was home for a few days and we had company coming. She enjoys baking and we all enjoy preparing the house for company. I showed her my dog-eared pages in the new magazine Sift I bought back in early spring. We couldn’t decide what to make! She chose Lemon Meringue Bars. A great choice—refreshing and light, colored yellow and white.

There’s a quote from Julia Child in the magazine: A party without cake is just a meeting.

And dinner without dessert is just no fun.

********

LEMON MERINGUE BARS: (From the premier issue of Sift, a King Arthur Flour publication.)

CRUST:

1 1/2 c. King Arthur Unbleached All Purpose Flour

1/4 t. salt

1/4 t. baking powder

1/2 c. (1 stick) unsalted butter

1/2 c. sugar

3 large egg yolks (save the whites for the meringue)

FILLING:

1 can sweetened condensed milk

Grated zest from 2 lemons

1/2 c. fresh-squeezed lemon juice (We needed 4-5 lemons)

TOPPING:

3 large egg whites

1/2 t. fresh lemon juice

1/2 c. sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease 9″x13″ pan; line with parchment paper—the edges going up the sides.

For the crust: Whisk together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Cream the butter and sugar together in a separate bowl. Mix half of the dry ingredients into the butter/sugar mixture, then add the egg yolks. Blend gently, then add the remaining dry ingredients, mixing only until the dough comes together. Pat dough into the prepared pan. Bake for 15 minutes, until golden. Remove from oven to let cool.

For the filling: Blend condensed milk, lemon zest, and lemon juice until the mixture thickens slightly. Spread over the cooled crust and set aside.

For the meringue topping: In a clean bowl with clean beaters, beat the egg whites with the lemon juice until foamy. As the mixer is running, sprinkle in the sugar and beat until thick enough to hold a medium peak. Spread the meringue over the filling—pulling up little peaks. Return the dessert to the oven to bake for another 15 minutes, or until the meringue is golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool for half an hour.

Use the parchment lining to gently pull the dessert straight up and out of the pan and onto a cutting surface. Cut into squares.

One of my friends delivered fresh-picked berries from her gardens

on the same afternoon my daughter was baking. My daughter arranged them with

the lemon squares on a simple white plate.

********

The Slow Art of Finding Peace and True North.

Sebastian Smee is an art critic. He writes for the Boston Globe and he has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

In the Boston Globe this week, there was an article written by Smee about the Maine Art Museum Trail. I looked forward to reading it, but by the end of the opening paragraph, I found myself terribly concerned for all the people who might read the same first lines and decide to anchor themselves forever to southerly, and most-convenient-to-Boston, regions of New England.

Smee had written: “There are two museums on the Maine Art Museum Trail that have so far eluded me: The University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor and the Monhegan Museum of Art and History. The first—sorry Bangor—is too far north of Boston. The second is on an island—and that’s just inconvenient.”

********

THROW OFF THE BOWLINES! SAIL AWAY FROM THE SAFE HARBOR! (Mark Twain, I think.)

********

Bangor is not too far north. I promise. There is, as mentioned in Smee’s article, The University of Maine Art Museum to see up there. But there’s more. For instance, if you want to visit many of the places that inspired the art all along The Maine Art Museum Trail, keep driving down east to the coastline beyond Bangor. You’ll find Acadia National Park plus a culturally distinct region of the world.

All you have to do is turn off the GPS and follow your nose. The scent of the sea, or at least the marvelous stink of a dramatically displaced low tide, will lead you to unexpected life-changing experiences such as the pleasures of being a spectator for the Women’s Skillet Toss at the Blue Hill Fair. This rowdy event fills the grandstands and it’s authentic Maine through and through, so even though you risk getting walloped upside the head by an errant iron skillet, you are not required to wear a helmet in order to attend the show. Women competitors are classified as Kittens and Cougars. They fling iron skillets as far, and as straight, as possible. Some of them can send those old iron workhorses sailing further than a soldier’s dream for a home-cooked meal! The Blue Hill Fair pleased E.B. White so much, it inspired many of the story lines and settings for one of the world’s (and my family’s) all-time favorite books, Charlotte’s Web.

As for Smee claiming Monhegan Island is just too inconvenient to visit, allow me to transform the idea of such a journey into something desirable, convenient, and perhaps necessary to your passage through life here on Earth.

********

Let’s start with a time warp…the year is 2007…Labor Day weekend…I am Mother to a 15-year-old son beginning his junior year in high school and a 12-year-old daughter ready for college instead of middle school…both children are willful, independent rapscallions…we are bound for a campout on the coast of Maine and plan to take a day trip to Monhegan Island…Raffi music in the camper has been taken over by Hendrix…it is painfully inconvenient for my husband and me to travel with our teenagers…it is more painfully inconvenient for said teenagers to travel with us.

Places like Monhegan Island help counterbalance the laws of nature and the laws of technology in our tense and complicated modern world. You might not be suffering through the throes of parenting (or any other situation of nature-determined, unconditional love), but perhaps you are afflicted with the side effects of Blindsided-TechAlien Abduction. In other words, there’s a chance you’ve been abducted by technology aliens and don’t know it. The aliens are so charming and so invisible, you haven’t noticed how conveniently they have settled into your life. They eat with you, sleep with you, make decisions for you, and then they steal your identity, your attention span, your creative impulses, your freedom, and your ability to look UP and OUT.

Monhegan Island is small—only about one mile from end to end and side to side. There are no paved roads and not many cars. You ride a ferry boat to get there. Travel by foot prevails once you are upon the island.

Here’s what happened when our modern family went to Monhegan Island, as recorded–by hand–in my unedited travel journals:

Sunday, September 2, 2007. En route to Monhegan Island. At last. We won’t have a lot of time there. Two porpoises leapt along our port side as we left Boothbay Harbor. Best snack in the pack today was made by the kids: graham crackers with nutella, peanut butter, and 2 squares of Hershey’s. I read Checkhov’s short story, The Lady with the Dog, during the ferry cruise.

We made landfall at 11:05. Our crossing cut through calm seas under outrageous summery-blue skies. Stopped at The Barnacle after getting off the boat to find out what the local shop had to eat. We got two cups of clam chowder (with extra crackers) and one blueberry scone.

We sat under a stand of sunflowers to eat the chowder while bees flew orbital patterns around and around and around.

We set out walking. Burnthead Trail to Cliff Trail and then lost our way a bit to Cathedral Pines. Breathtaking views. You can see all the way out to where the water falls off the edge of the earth. The perches on this little island’s cliffs are not so little. I don’t know how high up we were, but it was high enough–rugged and rocky–and I didn’t like when the kids chose to stand close to the edges. They are hiking barefooted. I read the warning in the Visitor’s Guide out loud to my family. It sounded more like a work of dramatic fiction or an ancient myth, though. Rather than encouraging caution, I think my reading inspired a heroic contest of becoming a sole survivor:

“Don’t try to swim or wade at Lobster Cove or any area on the back side of the island. Undertows there are unpredictable and dangerous, and high surf can sweep you away if you’re too close to the seas. No one has been saved who has gone overboard on the south or east sides of the island. Always keep a bulwark between you and the sea whenever viewing the surf.”

Picnicked in a stunning setting where the world could not be more scenic, nor life more idyllic. This is true even for a family filled with angst that can barely talk to each other.

I was happy to move away from the cliffs and enter the safe and soundless pretty moss woods at the Cathedral Pines trail. The moss must have felt dreamy to my barefooted hikers. Christmas trees adorn the trail as do the infamous neighborhoods of fairy houses constructed throughout the woodlands. We stopped to admire the imaginative handwork. Some houses had tables set with dinner in acorn bowls.

We walked on and on until we found ourselves busily pressing little sticks into the ground and balancing dried leaves atop them. My daughter built a fairy house next to a stream. My son built a fairy house perched perfectly in the crooks of roots at the base of a big tree. I built a small hut in between the two. My husband traveled from house to house to help with the fun. We concentrated intently and quietly at our works of art for a long time in the cool and bug-free forest.

After we were satisfied with our fairylands, we walked back to the wharf, passing the island schoolhouse where there is a peace pole with the words, May Peace Prevail on Earth, written in several languages. A big wish from such a small island.

Before the loud blast from the ferry sounded a warning for departure, we had time for one more stop at The Barnacle. We got root beer, ice cream, and a fruit smoothie.

Returned to camp by 7PM. Both kids were good and dirty from hiking barefoot all day. Everyone cleaned up for the campfire. My husband and my son played guitar. Before bed, another camper stopped by our site to thank us for the music. She said it reminded her of her father and how he used to play guitar during her childhood campouts.

********

One way to get to Monhegan Island is to take the ferry from Boothbay Harbor, Maine. A great place to stay is Southport Island, which is just beyond Boothbay Harbor, over a swing bridge. If you want to camp, there’s a campground there called Gray Homestead. If you want to rent a cottage, I recommend “An Tigin”, which you can find on VRBO or HomeAway. “Cheerful Southport Island Waterfront Cottage” might come up in an Internet search for “An Tigin.” The cottage is quaint and clean with good vibes of hard-working history and devoted love.

The Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens are nearby for another day trip. The best children’s garden is there–it is designed to encourage fascinating and fabulous fun. It succeeds famously.

Just down the road from the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, there is another swing bridge at the Trevett Country Store and Post Office. This swing bridge is operated by hand! According to my husband, the Trevett Country Store has the best lobster rolls. Southport Island has a country store, too, and their lobster rolls are good. So are their cupcakes! They also have a good selection of wine.

The Southport Public Library has a pretty cool butterfly collection. And the Hendrick’s House Museum has a letter written in perfect penmanship by a woman to her husband while he was serving in the Civil War. Not only did he receive the letter, but the letter survived the war. The survival of perfect penmanship has not fared so well.

Nevertheless, the slow art of finding peace does survive in places like Monhegan Island where leaving behind the conveniences of life—the car, the technology, the scheduled activities—isn’t inconvenient at all.

In fact, it’s restorative.

Slow days bring us one step closer to finding, and believing in, our own true norths.

********

July’s Garden and the Feast of the First Tomato.

Now grows July’s garden like a wild child. She is ten years old. She exists in the trance of summer’s ancient charms. She leaves home for the day and goes everywhere—into the meadows, the forests, over to the creekside, up into the trees. She returns home wild with superpowers. She can bloom, fruit, set seed, and seek love. All through the wild days, the birds follow her. She runs barefoot through clover fields and, alas, disturbs a very busy honey bee. The honey bee drills its barbed-edge stinger into her foot, then dies. The wild child limps home, weeping. Her mother concocts a salve with baking soda and water, paints it onto her wounded foot, and reminds the wild child to keep her shoes on whenever she is running away from home.

July’s garden resurrects the wild child.

She is older now, but nevertheless dons her play clothes early in the morning and leaves home for the day, slipping yonder out the old back door and into the garden. She begins with a plan, but then her shoes come off. She knows her superpowers are no match for the Eden she has muscled out of the dirt.

July’s garden remembers love at first sight.

July’s garden persuades recklessness to overrule order.

July’s garden teases, with perfume-scented dangers. If the wild gardener survives her broken back, poisoned skin, and woodchuck-tattered will, serenity seeps in—so sympathetic—and replenishes the rain barrels, the bird baths, and the wine cellar.

July’s garden blinds the wild gardener with full-on sunshine.

Flowery aromas, suspended in the steamy heat, wait for the beat of a butterfly’s wings to disperse memories of heaven to wherever the gardener is at work heaving and hoeing. This is real aromatherapy. Fragrances penetrate the wild gardener’s weak sensibilities, reducing them to a soothing salve of unfettered romantic longings. The gardener paints her world with the sweetly-scented cure, healing loneliness, failures, sorrows, and fear.

July’s garden sings only love songs, and the gardener, barefoot and pregnant with too many dreams, closes her eyes to listen. Her fingertips replace her eyes as she reaches out, finding her way using her hands and her tongue and her nose. The gardener stumbles to the melodies of love—hands a-sway, her nose in the air. Such a snob indeed she has become, expecting her garden to attract the favor of the gods.

July’s garden calls the devoted gardener to kneel next to the tomatoes and keep a vigil—for it is bad luck to grow them and not be the first to eat them. The Feast of the First Tomato is never scheduled. When the time comes, the wild gardener plucks the chosen fruit, adores it, and then eats it.

The Feast of the First Tomato unravels the wild gardener’s soul.

She builds a blueberry-beaded rosary, anoints every berry with her sweat, and prays for everlasting sunshine. Then she collects the blueberry prayer beads into a bowl and feeds them to her family.

July’s garden responds to the wild gardener, emoting and inspiring more primal desires through performances of sultry, blooming, botanical ballets. The show won’t go on forever. But the wild gardener is smitten and chooses to spend the rest of her life believing it might.

This is how the gardener ended up married.

This is how she ended up with children.

This is how she learned she would never find the inside passage to Eden,

without first running around outside—barefoot—

through clover fields, buzzing with bees.

Shining Island Nights.

I am alone in a cottage on Southport Island, Maine.

The tide is up, the sun has gone down, and the moon is growing full.

I arrived a day ago amid surly, stormy winds that pushed my car into drunken-man swaggers making it impossible for me to drive a straight line along the center lane of the Maine turnpike. Though the wind came in bold bursts, the rain did not. It fell with vertical and horizontal determination, saturating the airspace between Heaven and Earth in the surround sound of snapping patter that was never accompanied by pitter. Temperatures stayed in the 50’s—chilly enough to get a fire going in the wood stove of the little cottage I’ve rented for one week.

I am here to immerse myself in the studies of Myth, Magic, and Medicinals at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. My one-week course is entitled: Drawing and Painting Medicinal Plants of the Physic Garden. Every summer, I pack up my books, pencils, pens, paintbrushes and pads of paper, and retreat to summer school, somewhere. This year, I am pretending to be a monk with a little stall in a cathedral that overlooks gardens I am in charge of tending, studying, and drawing for the rest of my life.

On my way to this summer’s brain and body summer camp, I stopped in Brunswick, Maine to view the Bowdoin Art Museum’s new show, Night Vision: Nocturnes in American Art 1860-1960. The show opened as I was driving by and runs through October. Such indulgent moodiness possessed me as I dashed through the gloomy rain, descended into the basement of the museum, and commenced falling under the spells of American artists who were crazy, brilliant, multi-talented, hard working, and passionate.

Night Vision is superb. It leads the psyche, via art, through darkness, illumination, electricity, romance, and altered perceptions. The range of featured artists and media is stellar. The history is broadly and surprisingly revelatory. This will probably be my favorite art show of the year and for anyone motoring back and forth on Coastal Route 1 in Maine this summer, a stop to see the show will be a highlight (or bright nightlight!) of summer. Free admission for non-stop thrills and chills and fainting spells.

********

It is now twilight, as I write, after my first day of summer school and I should have studied and practiced what I learned in class today. But summer’s sun composed symphonies upon the sea and inside the forests all around me, and I found myself out walking instead.

There was a wooden bridge at the end of my street beckoning me.

There were charming gardens beside the cottage begging for admiration.

And, of course, I noticed how well suited I am for sitting still in the final light of summer’s last Monday in June. There was something else on my mind, too—three years ago on this date, my beloved father-in-law died. Thirty years ago, he would have awakened us at dawn, filled the thermos with hot coffee, revved up the motorboats, and off we would have gone to prowl the lakes of Maine for fish. I didn’t care so much about catching fish. It was enough to catch the break of day, and the quiet that ushers it in, with him and my husband and Uncle Herb and cousin Mark. We liked letting the first thoughts of the day commingle with the soft lapping of lake water rocking up against our boats. Aunt Margie and Mom Bertz welcomed us back to shore and the rest of the day was given over to talk about how great it was to be together, in Maine.

********

Moonlit tranquility is arising at last to finish off day one of my summer school. The gentle drones of a distant foghorn sound like sighs of romance as I prepare to go to bed and sink my head into the pillow. But for anyone sleeping alone in a small cottage by the sea in Maine, a foghorn, before long, takes on the sounds of a moaning madman. The neighborhood, soon after, becomes Stephen King’s. And the doors—are they locked?

And the sweet little cottage, does it have a basement?

Louder, louder, louder groans the foghorn. Redrum. Redrum. REDRUM.

And the gardens around the cottage—the hedges—is the moon bright enough?

For the art-class-lady to ever find her way out?

Will she ever learn to draw and paint and name every plant on Earth?

I already like my teacher. She told me that if all I do, all week, is spend time learning how to draw a leaf, then that’s just fine. I can be a crazy leaf lady. She also said that when you are drawing, both hands must be at work advancing the cause of art—as soon as she sees one hand being used to cradle a slumping head, she comes in for a rescue.

And before we can begin to draw any plant, we have to write about the plant’s history and its healing properties. We have to write about how and where the plant grows. We have to write and write and write, using any words at all that come to our own minds, about every part of the plant, in every possible way.

I am so bewitched by the shine of my midsummer night’s dreams.

My cauldron boil-eth over.

********

Views from my cottage and a wooden bridge.

********

Ralph Albert Blakelock’s A Waterfall, Moonlight 1886

On display in the show at the Bowdoin Art Museum, Night Vision

Blakelock was a self-taught original. He studied the styles of the Hudson River School. A madman, a genius—some saw him as a prophet of the styles of abstraction to come. This painting was one of my favorites in the show, borrowed from the MET in New York.

AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENED in my very own little cove of the world the next night!!!

Myth, magic, and the medicinal madness of island nights.

Gypsy.

I am going to Alabama. My husband has sent a deposit of faith and cash to a man in Montgomery who is selling a used motor home we would like to buy. We’ll arrive by airplane, exchange pleasantries, and then, if everything is as it should be, we’ll toss our bags into that particular recreational vehicle, climb aboard, and drive home to New England.

We plan to stop in Atlanta to see friends. Then mosey on down the road to Asheville, to see Asheville. And after that, we’ll share 900 miles of come what may.

I texted my son and daughter: We are going to Alabama. Dad bought a luxury motor home. An adventure! Like the first time we got one. I’m sure there will be room in the compartments for your tents and boogie boards. The road is my home.

*****

When I was a ninth-grader in Arizona, I took a school bus Monday through Friday from the foothills of the Santa Rita Mountains, just north of the Mexican border, to my regional high school, just south of Tucson. The commute was one hour, each way, no AC. On a typical non-winter’s day in the Sonoran Desert, the interior temp of the bus, at rest under the unobstructed rays of the sun, could rise to over 120 degrees. Once we got going, though, hot air blasted through the open windows and cooled our ride to a blessed 115 degrees. It was one, big, yellow convection oven.

Our bus driver was a large Italian man, who learned about patience in New York City where he had lived until he retired with his family to the borderland boondocks of Arizona. No funny stuff on his bus. After the godfather of bus drivers delivered us to school and drove out of sight, I’d walk with a few friends back to the highway—a major trucking route. There, we’d space ourselves out along the breakdown lane, and hitchhike to Tucson. We didn’t have cell phones in our pockets, only our doled out lunch money which we used to buy Big Gulps all day, chasing them back with strips of beef jerky.

We’d hitchhike back to school in time to ride the school bus to nowheresville again, our bodily fluids replenished for the sweltering journey home.

Once, a big truck stopped to give me a ride. I felt all Janis Joplin, as if my once-in-a-lifetime chance to light out for the territories had arrived. I was ready to put flowers in my hair, embroider peace signs onto my bell-bottomed hip huggers, learn how to sing the blues, and proclaim the road as my home.

I was fourteen. Old enough.

Eventually, I got nabbed for chronic truancy and was sentenced to the wastelands of after-school detention where my drifter/dreamer habits of mind were to begin the long process of reformation.

It was too late. I’d arrived in Arizona from Indiana in a convoy of two station wagons with one break down in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

I loved America and I wanted to be a cowboy.

******

I’m supposed to be packing up some things we might need for our road trip from Alabama to New England and it’s making me think about my honeymoon almost 30 years ago. We packed some things back then—a tent and sleeping bags at least—and flew to New Mexico where we got a car and drove around Colorado, Utah, Arizona and back to New Mexico. Everything we needed fit into the trunk of our rental car.

Monument Valley, circa 1988, and our first road house.

This time we don’t need the tent, or the compact backpack stove. And it’s rattling my brain—the way driving on a pot-holed, frost-heaved highway rattles my brain—to know we need cell phones, computers, chargers, and some money.

So far, I’ve purchased a brand new, big, clumsy-paged Rand-McNally Road Atlas. Published and printed in the U.S.A.

Every page in that grand picture book looks to me like a slice of my brain.

*******

The motor home lifestyle was always my husband’s big idea. He presented the plan to me when our children were toddlers and they used to crawl all over us in our tent, all night long, on every camping trip.

I didn’t really know anything about motor homes.

But after we got one, our weekends together as a family began to last forever. Time slowed down. There was live music and storytelling and great food and crackling campfires. Life smelled like fresh-cooked bacon and damp books and bug spray.

American and Canadian blacktops became strewn with flower petals,

as our windshield got smattered with bug guts.

We called our rig the family camper and gave the kids their own tents when they could throw an axe, with precision, while blindfolded, through the center of a television screen.

Indeed, after I texted the kids about the motor home, my son sent a text: That’s badass! Hopefully you got one with a lot of exterior tvs.

My reply: Of course. And the satellite dish converts to a hot tub.

This one looks to me like it might be a Las Vegas Lounge Glamper.

But I am crazy for the driver because he is fun, so I’m on board with whatever he wants to do

and wherever we end up going.

********

The last family road house, circa 2012, Lime Rock Race Park

The dad on the roof, watching the son learn how to be a race car driver.

Excursions

The Gypsy Apprentice

Author Archives: theresajohnsonbertz

Herzog For Halloween Week. Do You Have A Soul?

You Are Not Real.

Summer Shorts.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

An Earnest Request.

Lemon Sweet Sunshine.

The Slow Art of Finding Peace and True North.

July’s Garden and the Feast of the First Tomato.

Shining Island Nights.

Gypsy.