October 20, 2005 Email Shows Recipe Calendar Archives
Last weekend we went south to the beach. I had never been to Ogunquit; we stayed there two nights and walked the beach which is a long sand bar and the Marginal Way, a path along the rocks on the edge of the ocean. How unusual that a strip of property along the ocean was preserved for public use. The town owns the 3.5 mile beach and protects it from development.
Calming reality checks: (1)lie outside at night and look up at the stars from your planet going around your star, and (2) walk on the beach and look at the ocean stretching into the distance, listen to the rhythm of the waves and observe how fierce but fleeting are the waves.

Marsh grasses turn colors just like the leaves. This patch was along the Ogunquit River, which runs between the sand bar beach and the land.

I made up for all the calming stuff by stopping at Bean's and buying a few cool gadgets: a clip watch with a tiny flash light for reading the thermostats at the theater in the dark; a windup radio with shortwave for scrolling through the whole dial to see if I can catch a scratchy playback from space of Billy Cannon running back a punt 95 yards against Ole Miss; a wee leatherman tool; all gadgets in green.

Years ago I kept private journals, but now I only write here in this public space with its unpredictable audience. There is no point to writing without a reader, and yet there are so many ways to offend, and so many untouchable subjects. Even now, I'm doing public penance in town for referring to the Rotary silent auction offerings as trashy crap. Mea culpa.
I want to leave a record of selected events for myself, but don't want to write a tedious history of the personal. (One form of journaling I do is a monthly mix of music selected from stuff I'm listening to, especially new stuff. It leaves a record of when I first heard a piece. ) So often I must write about Nothing, and fortunately it pleases me to write about Nothing. Nothing is what you write on a postcard so that the mail man can't understand it.
My sister Ingrid sent me a book of poems by Ted Kooser. Here is one of them.

Telescope

This is the pipe that pierces the dam
that holds back the universe,

that takes off some of the pressure,
keeping the weight of the unknown

from breaking through
and washing us all down the valley.

Because of this small tube,
through which a cold light rushes

from the bottom of time,
the depth of the stars stays always constant

and we are able to sleep, at least for now,
beneath the straining wall of darkness.

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