AnimaMundi

Mid February

Though Garrison Keillor's voice is soporific, I do enjoy some of the readings and quotes from authors.

From today's The Writer's Almanac:

It is the birthday of Miranda July, born 1974 Barre, Vermont, who said:

"We humans are here because nothing can be perfect. There always have to be some living things that are unsatisfied, itchy, trying too hard. If it was all just animals and rocks and lettuce, the gods wouldn't feel like they had enough to do."

As I finished Pa ul Theroux's short story "Losers Win", I thought of what I heard from The Writer's Almanac on the car radio at 10:30 this morning. 

Thanksgiving and Living Between The Ticks Of The Clock

I do not want to sound unthankful. I am thankful to have reasonably good psychic and physical health, friends, a home, food, heat, wine, music, Aldo, our French bulldog and, of course, many other things, tangible or not. Thanksgiving, as a holiday, for me, has always been a thanks for being given what? Life? What I have and what others have not? What I have regardless of what other people have or have not? 

Be thankful quickly though, because the Christmas frenzy has already started. One day to give thanks. That's it. Mark Twain, whose autobiography is currently clocking in at #1 at Amazon , was right on the money here, again, America. What about the other 364 days of the year? 

The Sea, The Sea

  

  

 

 

 

 

"Music is the expression of the movement of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes." - Claude Debussy

 

"By getting to the root of present problems in family background, we hope to understand what is going on, and in that understanding we hope to find a cure. But care of the soul doesn't require fixing the family or becoming free of it or interpreting its pathology. We may need simply to recover soul by reflecting deeply on the soul events that have taken place in the crucible of the family." - Thomas Moore

Back to the Sea. The sun's light off the sea, the breeze on my face, the salt air filling my nostrils and lungs with the smell of aeons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I walked around the parking lot where a few people had come to the sea for whatever reason. Some come to re-member, some to forget, some for no reason. I come for the way the sea makes me feel. I can not put it into words. If I were a poet, maybe a metaphor, but even then, how can one describe it. It is a mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascinans. From dawn to noon on the sea, the play of the waves, the dialogue between the wind and the sea, the Golden Ratio palpable, an immense living enigma, miraculous.

One gentleman with the license plate "scalop" on his Mercedes convertible told me how he had built fishing vessels and how he bought and sold multi-$million fishing boats. The sea has been good to him. Her bounty has made him materially wealthy. Very wealthy. The night before I had dinner in Pawcatuck CT and had sweet Nantucket scallops. He told me that his seafood business supplies that particular eatery with scallops caught off the Stonington coast. So I could have had scallops that his boats brought back to terra firma. I wonder if he goes to the sea to thank the sea. He told me that he had had a heart attack and can no longer do the things that he enjoyed doing, like building boats. He spoke with a touch of melancholy. But he was also feisty and railed on about how our country wastes billions of dollars on wars that produce body counts and highways named for dead young people who died in places whose names most people can't pronounce.

"Grounds for an unusually intense fear of death are now nowadays not far to seek: they are obvious enough, the more so as all life that is senselessly wasted and misdirected means death too. This may account for the unnatural intensification of the fear of death in our time, when life has lost its deeper meaning for so many people, forcing them to exchange the life-preserving rhythm of the aeons for the dread ticking of the clock." - Carl Jung

Later that morning, I arrived at Saint Sebastian cemetery just as the people attending my aunt's burial had departed. The green tent was still up over the open grave and as I walked by I looked down six feet onto the casket sprinkled with flowers. The young gravediggers were still there. I joked with them about my uncle Angelo, my aunt Rose's husband who died in 1987. He was a gambler. I told the gravediggers of the tale of the sizable crap game in White Rock RI, right down the street from where my parents first rented an apartment right after I was born. Things and bets were humming along when a gang of hooded and armed men entered and quickly relieved everyone of their cash and pants. My uncle Angelo never learned how to drive a car. He didn't need to. His friends would always pick him up to go work part time in the kitchen at The Elm Tree Inn in Pawcatuck (he was friends with the owner), to the Narragansett Racetrack , the dog tracks or some crap game. He was a true character and was full of stories, many of which if he told me then he would have had to kill me. The wife-beater undershirt and Lucky Strike cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth.

I am sure that my aunt Rose's immediate family was relieved that she is finally at rest. It has been a long drawn out strain on some of them to see her in that condition for so many years. She was my cousin Peter John's favorite aunt and he said to me that her death closed a certain generational chapter of the family, at least for him. For me it was the death of my uncle Cosimo, his father. The old have lived and then die. When they die, they make room for the new. 

"The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid."

"From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life." 

- Carl Jung

One morning I drove to Little Compton. We had been years ago. It is a pastoral place that is now the home to the waspy elite. Home prices or even rentals are ridiculous. It would be nice if one could park one's car and walk to the sea. They don't make it easy. Why should they, the rich? I stopped at a farm stand there and talked to some young down-to-earth people who were running it. Their families had been there for generations and had witnessed the inevitable craziness of real estate prices. I stopped for fried clams at Evelyn's in Tiverton. The modest seafood house is on the water. The caviar of the sea was exceptional. Briny, sweet, succulent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

On my way back, I stopped for gas. The petite young woman at the register was soft spoken, wore a headband and had a few tatoos. I bought a lottery ticket and told her if I hit maybe I could afford a quonset hut in Little Compton. She told me that she lives in a tent year round just down the road. Maybe you could rent a room to me she said as I left. I replied that I would and at reasonable price.

Another day the sea beckoned again and I answered the call. Conanicut Island and Beaver Tail Park was my destination. Jamestown is a small village that has lots of traditional New England character. You can park your car there without feeding a meter and walk around the town and back streets. I then headed out to Beaver Tail Park. This is a special place open to the Atlantic and is luckily free to the public. There are three or four parking lots where you get out da' car to walk along the rocky cliffs down to the sea or sit on ancient rock and look out to the expanse of La Mer.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frankie Q., owner Universal Grocery in Noank CT, is someone I have known since grade school through friends of friends. He inherited the business from his uncle. Frankie stocks fresh produce, excellent meats, some seafood, bread, jarred condiments and prepares sandwiches and pizza. He is the only person I know who can tell me something about the people we grew up with. Of course, Frankie knows a hell of a lot more people than I can ever remember. Frankie is another character of note. He has a great sense of humor and a work ethic that I admire. Frankie is also generous, asking me to sample his latest sheet pizza (a riff on Vocatura's famed sheet pizza) and lemonade from The Farmers Cow. Frankie wanted feedback and I gave it to him. He's close on the sheet pizza, but would do well to lighten up on the toppings some. Vocatura's Bakery started on Pierce Street in the North End of Westerly, RI. While my parents worked, I spent many a day at my grandmother's home at 20 Pearl Street, just down the street from the original Vocatura's Bakery that sat right behind the family's home. For me and many others, the first stop at wedding receptions was their pizza. The crust was chewy and crispy. The tomato sauce and cheese just right. 

I came away from Westerly with a warm heart once more, along with a few dozen littlenecks and scallops. It was enjoyable to breathe in the salt air that is part of me. I felt restored. The soundings reverberated within. Where is home? Some say where the heart is. I would add the soul to that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

All the while, this Brazilian Girls' song kept running through my head.

06 Long

 

One Of These Mornings You Going To Rise Up Singing

Excuse me for a moment. Hot, humid, dew point dripping from a hazy sky. My mind wanders, back into eddies long forgotten covered in dust. Insouciant, lazy. Lazy river runs through everything. "One does not find baptism at the river; one finds the river in baptism." Baptism by fire and water. Flowing and burning. 

01 Theme from 'A Summer Place'

Nine weeks @ No.1 on Billboards Top Pop Singles chart spring 1960.

 

With that heat-induced meta-intro out of the way, I got into my car last week and headed for the sea, the sea. Claude La Mer Debussy couldn't compose at the sea. He had to get away from it. I can and cannot understand that. With Oliver N'Goma and cadence-zouk from Guadeloupe pumping on the cd player, I drove at a healthy clip across the Berkshires down through the Pioneer Valley to the insurance capital of Hartford where Wallace Stevens worked and wrote poetry. Then on Route 2 to the flat coastal plain where the sky is suddenly pierced almost like a mirage by the blue-green topped towers of Foxwoods Casino and the MGM Grand Palace south of Norwich. Hotels now line much of Route 2, once a two lane road that runs through pretty New England countryside. There's a La Quinta just a few hundred yards from where my parents lived in White Rock after I was born. Behind the hotel is a small bridge across the Pawcatuck River to which I reportedly wandered off one day to look at the small flowing river. My mother was frantic because she didn't know where I had gone. I believe that my godfather and uncle George is the person who found me standing on the bridge. He still looks after me, God bless him.

08 Summertime

I arrived at my cousin Peter's home in the early afternoon, unloaded and made a beeline for East Matunuck. Destination Cap'n Jacks.  Quahog.org has it down as one of the best fried clam shacks in RI. They are right. Whole belly clams are dear but worth every penny. There is nothing that tastes like a briney whole belly fried clam. A bit of salt maybe and NO tartar sauce. Fries are superfluous, at least with clams this good. After wards I made my way to Jim's Dock in Jerusalem to eye my next fried clam destination. In search of the holy grail of clams in the biblically named fishing villages of Jerusalem and Galilee, RI. My walk around the Point Judith lighthouse was soul restoring. The sea, sun, sky and the breeze on my cheeks. Peace. No chatterboxes, no phones, no electronic beeps. This is why I keep returning. For these precious moments. My inner rigamarole silenced before the sea's sparkling diamonds. I can take this back with me. A souvenir, a mermaid memento.  

 

 

 02 Estaté

The sea turn did not take long to remind me from where I came. Where my ancestors stood on the earth and fished in the sea on both sides of the Atlantic. Later that afternoon I went back to my cousin's home. The house is now somewhat bare and quiet. My Uncle Cosimo, the last of the story tellers in my family, and his wife Ann are gone. My cousin Joann has moved to Figi.  

Peter John (he dropped his surname of Chiaradio a number of years ago, since he did not want to be identified with any one family) is the only person in the large two story house. He told me that he has never been this alone in his whole life, but he added that he is not lonely.  He was in Liberia with The Peace Corps in the late 60's. He told me some interestting tales about his experiences there. He then taught at a technical institution at La Guardia in NYC and lived on Elizabeth Street on the LES. He also taught and lived in New Haven, CT for a time before returning home to Westerly. Peter, who reminds of a cross between Jon Voight and Christopher Walken, is somewhat of an ascetic hermit. He has friends but spends most of his time alone. In the summer, he tends the lawns and grounds of about 10 different homes in Westerly. He lives a simple life, a vegetarian for the past few years, although he could not give up shrimp. He is a devoted cinema buff and would continually allude to films that I had never heard of in our conversations that ranged from family, food, wine, women, consumerism, religion, gardening, psychology et al. I enjoyed them for the most part. Peter tends to belabor points sometimes and I have to try to move on politely, sometimes a little more forcefully. I brought him several pounds of caciocavallo cheese which he calls the cheese of cheeses and I have to agree as it is my favorite. Peter usually drinks only his own wine that he makes with Barbera grapes. It is good but a little thin for my tastes. I brought down some Provencal rosés and whites from Italy, Spain and Portugal that he enjoyed and wound up drinking rather than his preferred home made red. The only problem with the house is that the air was suffocating given the heat and humidity. Peter did not seem phased by it and preferred the fan not blow on him. I was sweating constantly and had to shower at least twice a day. When he showed me where I would be sleeping on the 2nd floor there was not one window open and all three ceilings fans seemed inert in the stultifying heat. This was not good. I immediately started to open windows and turned on all the ceiling fans. The storm windows were still down and had to be lifted up. I was a little wary of my being able to sleep later that night. I was right. It took me quite a while to fall asleep and it was not a refreshing sleep either.

Peter did clear up a misconception that I have had about the meaning of my mother's maiden name "Chiaradio" and also revealed an interesting fact about my mother's given name. Her name on the census log in the early part of the 20th century appears as "Lucia" not as Louise. If that were true, then she was named "light of the light of God or Divine Light". Which is appropo, since she was a light that shone all too briefly here on earth.

The next day I again headed to East Matunuck and had lunch at Jim's Dock. This is a picture of Mcgee, a waitress there who comes from Charlestown, RI. We got along well. I told her I was raised in Westerly.

 

 

 

 

 

She knew she could level with me about various eateries in the area long past their prime and ones currently overrated.

The next day was rainy and misty so I made for Mystic CT and New London. The New London of my childhood where my grandfather on my father's side lived is gone, eviscerated by Pfizer Chemical and eminent domain. I could not get my bearings around Howard and Shaw Streets where my namesake grandfather Marco used to live. The lack of orientation was so annoying I headed to the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center to roam the sea mist-enshrouded grounds. There was a lot of activity at the place. Actors and wanna be producers. "Plays are the mirror of life" said a stone in the gardens. A small tour group had just concluded and was breaking up. I overheard a woman ask an approaching young man if he was an actor. As I passed by I muttered that we are all actors. A woman consulting her hand-held-device snickered.    

 

Although sapped from the humidity, it was a good trip with good eating, drinking and conversation. I was spent. On my way of out town I stopped at my godmother Amelia Turrisi's home. In the early spring, the Pawcatuck River which is right across the street from her home had overflowed its banks. I had heard that she had to be evacuated from her home by boat and I made a call to her that she never received. She was making homemade cookies when I stopped to visit. My godmother is a special person and was my mother's first friend in life. She and my mother were each other's cumarra. They always called each other this, never using their first names. I believe she is around my mother's age which would make her 94 or so. She no longer can drive but still walks regularly. She has a bright smile and is genuinely forthright, unassuming and warm. She's a remarkable lady, my godmother. I know that she is a religious person but never talks about it. She lives it and it shows. We hugged tightly many times. I left with a huge plate of cookies and a warm heart. Thanks, madrina.

 

This post has been brought to you by:

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Chateau Routas Rose Provence, France

La Commanderie De Peyrassol Rose Provence, France

Chateau Montaud Rose Provence, France

 

 

 

 

Library of Alexandria

Some years before I had even heard of the Library of Alexandria, I had a big dream about its contents and its wealth as "the place of the cure of the soul". The books and manuscipts were displayed before me in a special light. It was a humbling dream. It only was years later through reading the works of Carl Jung and E.M. Forster that I learned of the biblioteke, which term actually refers to the Collection of Books rather than the building itself, and its importance in the history of western civilization. In light of the dream, the print copy book versus the ebook is at an interesting nexus right about now.

Fucking Idiotic Is As Fucking Idiotic Does

Friends of The (Gurgling) Cod, or FOC, know of what The Cod speaks. So it should come as no surprise that he has been labeled a "fucking idiot" for reviewing a book about Saint Alice Waters and her devotees. This can be read on many levels, as you choose or as they choose, whoever "they" are. As the Cod says, if he is a fucking idiot in the use and comprehension of the English language, then maybe he should look for another day job. I don't think his students would agree, but that's another story.

A Book Is A Book Is A Book...

I read print in hardbound and trade paperback books, rarely in newspapers and magazines, cd liner notes (almost impossible even with magnifiers), ingredients on food packaging, wine bottle labels and mostly nowadays on a computer monitor. I do most of my reading now online. I do not see myself ever buying a Kindle. When I read a novel, short stories or a book about mythology or whatever, I prefer a hardbound copy or a trade paperback. Quality trade paperbacks are my choice since they are more easily held, lighter, cheaper and more flexible. I love the smell of a new book. I usually open a new book or like new book and smell the spine. Is this a fetish?  I would miss that quirk. Mass market paperbacks are flimsy and usually the print is miniscule, so I avoid them. I have read about the pros and cons of Kindle, but remain unconvinced. If I was a commuter or stuck in a God-forsaken cubicle, I might reconsider. They are light, portable, the contrast seems to be good and they are easily hidden. I don't travel for extended periods of time so I need only one book, if that. If and when I go to Sicily or Calabria again, the book is written on every stone I would fortunately step on.

Maud Newton has written a timely freely-associated (the entry is really for her upcoming moderation of a panel on Literature and The Digital Age) post on the various forms of books in the digital age:

"As Toni Morrison observed in her endorsement for the Kindle, reading novels means entering another world. When I’m fully immersed, I don’t focus on the pages, or how I move between them, but on the story itself."

As usual, Maud gets to the heart of the matter in her own succinct way.

Here's the rub for me. I know that my fictional novel reading has suffered due to my online reading. By online reading, I mean reading articles, or blogposts of fairly limited length. Oh, yes and YouTube. ADS and eyestrain, I know, but when I see an online article that is, say, 10-15 LONG pages, I balk. I do read them, but rarely and only when I get swept into the narrative of another world. Lately, I find myself unable to read a sustained print novel of say 400-600 pages. Under 400 or so, I'm still good if the narrative flow or author's style grabs my attention somehow and the story's rhythm(s) begins to resonate, transporting me to landscapes, villages, cities, other worlds, mindscapes, emotionally treacherous terrain and times out of time. Yes, also to short stories and essays. Thank you, Eudora Welty. "Love Is A Four Letter Word" took a few days, but that's only because I didn't want to finish it too quickly.
But my attention span is variable and seasonal, and yes, I know ADS again. Is this something that is digitally induced or is it just old age? Or a combination of the two?  I have unread books on my shelf that have been there for 20+ years. They keep me company. They tell me that I have much more to discover. Maybe I should wait until I open that one book and it will look like the ones on my shelf and "will be whatever book I desire when I open it".
 

  

"Love Is A Four Letter Word"

Relationships can be transformative in more ways than one. Love, or what we think might be love, can be one of the most ecstatic and treacherous experiences in life. Unfortunately, I am not one of those people blessed by amnesia or indifference. Giving, taking, heartbreaks, heart throbs, hearts mending, hearts rending, heart aches, "losing love is like a window in your heart, everyone sees you're blown apart", stalemates, horse latitudes, ferocity, violence, jealousy, remorse, spite, only the loneliness... The whole miraculous and horrific spectrum is there for those with the strength of heart to experience. I don't know about you but I am looking forward to the July 28th drop of "Love is a Four Letter Word" True Stories of Breakups, Bad Relationships and Broken Hearts."  

Jonathan Baumbach's "YOU"

Is it you? Is it me? Who are you? Who am I? Where are you? How are you? Where have you been? Are you the same you that I remember? Am I the same you that you remember? Am I the same I that I remember? Am I the same I that you remember? So it goes.

 

Jonathan Baumbach's "You" is a unique exploration of Memory and Love or lack of it. He blurs the lines between author, characters, the book and reader. It's called surfiction in this review. In the process of describing his encounters with an uncertain person (an ex-wife?), he plays with memory and its elusive nature. In re-membering, he shows how we try to put things back together. Though the pieces don't always fit quite rightly. This makes for uneasy places in one's memory log. As the psychoanalysts like to say, memory and fantasy have always interpenetrated each other. This book is a quirky imaginative view of human relationships and memory. How we remember is just as important what we remember. With humor and casual intimacy, the author invites us to be part of the whole dance. It's well worth the invitation for the surprises that await the reader. Highly recommended. 

The Garden of Eden

"Perhaps everyone has a garden of Eden. I don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it.  Either, or, it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between the madmen who remember and the madmen who forget. Heroes are rare."

James Baldwin "Giovanni's Room"