April 7, 8
Almost ten & finally the light is fading, though the luminescence of the white peaks glows still under what appears to be a full moon. Tonight, thinking about the abstractions that govern me, how I am constellated by vagaries, intimations of conjured dreams. Solitude, or love, or prudence, or investigation of self, or truth & beauty. These auratic, nebulous things that I seek out, as if some overturned rock would reveal them, some cloud part or bough bend low enough. Forge into this furrow to find a longing that aches in me for none of these things, or rather for how these things adumbrate & finger out. Not the recollection of a smile, but the smile itself, fleeting, waning & wilting both at once. Not the joke but the sound of the laughter, the head tilted back, the nape, the jawline. & not the sadness but the tear hesitating upon the eyelash, pregnant globe. How many small dreams were captive in these minutiae, how many versions of my life have I hushed & foregone, that I might sit here in my solitude & write about beauty rather than behold its breath? How I’ve died a thousand times over, fallen into fears, headlong & thrashing. What I have taken from myself, self’s thieve, & cast aside for time’s slow erosions. I am nowhere in evidence. Is it safe, here, to say how caring burns at me, galls me, how a kind word floods me in quick shame? Imagine, a practiced denouement that convinces even me. I have nothing together. I am a quiet shipwreck.
***
A breed of fierce solitude in so many of these people. My landlord, a charter captain, has been away from his house only on one occasion, & then only for a couple of hours. A gentleman with a choice mustache at the general store whose eyes, though clear, were far away, as if focused on some just-discernible object on the horizon. He told me with no provocation in kind about the bark beetle epidemic along the peninsula, how it began after oil prospectors plumbed the shelf along the bay decades ago. He walked away in the middle of his sentence, trailing off as he went. Cautionary tales, these, of how it can confound & perplex. But I remind myself it is not solitude I seek primarily. A healthy portion of it, with a prescribed goal, & around that I will gather the ballast of community, I hope. Days unfold to tell.
Worked through the afternoon on Pete’s charter boat, helping apply a fresh coat of paint, scrubbing the props, oiling the flashers, all in a gusty & cloud-obscured shade, ash from the shrink-wrapping about the boatyard flying heavy. Afterwards, headed to the Salty Dawg, the infamous saloon of choice on the Spit for the fishermen. Had a cup of coffee while Pete downed a beer, the entire bar filled at three-thirty with leather-faced captains “working on their boats,” swilling whiskey & smoking cigarettes. Maybe my first time ever exiting a bar without having had a drink. Afterwards, ran along the beach with Wils, white-capped waves roiling in with the fierce wind, & bone-chilled headed back home for dinner. A good local day. I will be paid for my work in halibut, or more precisely, in the opportunity to catch my own on a charter day with an open reservation, once he puts in, after the beginning of May.
Found out Redoubt blew again, around noon, though it seems the ash likely blew north to Anchorage, our skies still crisp & clear. Tonight, some prefatory re-reading of Keats & Hopkins. They are quiet hours here. Even Willa, so accustomed to high alert, sinks into our time here, only stirring when the odd moose drifts past on the property leaving hulking bifurcate prints in the thawing mud, sprawling heaps of scat in the fireweed & grass. An acrobatic feat for me to reach a spruce to piss on without stepping in something. & so. Tonight the same drawn silence. Feeling, at least, less despondent than yesterday, though it is admittedly difficult to not find my brief episodes of productivity book-ended by a creeping sadness. How could it be otherwise? Well. Little song. Moonbright. A shivering bark. Tomorrow & tomorrow.
***
A breed of fierce solitude in so many of these people. My landlord, a charter captain, has been away from his house only on one occasion, & then only for a couple of hours. A gentleman with a choice mustache at the general store whose eyes, though clear, were far away, as if focused on some just-discernible object on the horizon. He told me with no provocation in kind about the bark beetle epidemic along the peninsula, how it began after oil prospectors plumbed the shelf along the bay decades ago. He walked away in the middle of his sentence, trailing off as he went. Cautionary tales, these, of how it can confound & perplex. But I remind myself it is not solitude I seek primarily. A healthy portion of it, with a prescribed goal, & around that I will gather the ballast of community, I hope. Days unfold to tell.
Worked through the afternoon on Pete’s charter boat, helping apply a fresh coat of paint, scrubbing the props, oiling the flashers, all in a gusty & cloud-obscured shade, ash from the shrink-wrapping about the boatyard flying heavy. Afterwards, headed to the Salty Dawg, the infamous saloon of choice on the Spit for the fishermen. Had a cup of coffee while Pete downed a beer, the entire bar filled at three-thirty with leather-faced captains “working on their boats,” swilling whiskey & smoking cigarettes. Maybe my first time ever exiting a bar without having had a drink. Afterwards, ran along the beach with Wils, white-capped waves roiling in with the fierce wind, & bone-chilled headed back home for dinner. A good local day. I will be paid for my work in halibut, or more precisely, in the opportunity to catch my own on a charter day with an open reservation, once he puts in, after the beginning of May.
Found out Redoubt blew again, around noon, though it seems the ash likely blew north to Anchorage, our skies still crisp & clear. Tonight, some prefatory re-reading of Keats & Hopkins. They are quiet hours here. Even Willa, so accustomed to high alert, sinks into our time here, only stirring when the odd moose drifts past on the property leaving hulking bifurcate prints in the thawing mud, sprawling heaps of scat in the fireweed & grass. An acrobatic feat for me to reach a spruce to piss on without stepping in something. & so. Tonight the same drawn silence. Feeling, at least, less despondent than yesterday, though it is admittedly difficult to not find my brief episodes of productivity book-ended by a creeping sadness. How could it be otherwise? Well. Little song. Moonbright. A shivering bark. Tomorrow & tomorrow.
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