The Days Are Just Packed

All apologies to Bill Watterson for stealing his title. Summer is upon us, and what more proof need I put forth than the shiny new boat and store schedules which provide us with services seven days a week? And in only nine of those full-service weeks, I will be done with the Fellowship (ready or not).

School got out on Friday, and the last week was an event-intense one for the community: Wednesday we had a graduation ceremony for our lone 8th grader; Thursday was the school's spring concert; Friday was the end-of-school picnic (and report cards), and there was a contra dance in the evening; Saturday was a big double-elimination volleyball tournament, where six teams competed for the Stanley Buoy.

I am still aiming to stay on the island. Tomorrow I have a job interview at Deer Isle-Stonington High School for a part-time position. It was to be full-time, but some of the duties ended up being parceled out to a recently hired English teacher to make his/her job full-time. The down side is obviously a decrease in salary and the unlikelihood of benefits. The up side is potentially increased flexibility in hours (making my commuting easier to pitch), and perhaps the time to work on writing my thesis and taking classes to finally get certified to teach. Maybe even just write for the love of writing..?

As to housing, the Institute is fine with me staying on in my current housing situation and living with the new fellow. The owner of the house basically sees me as an important fixture here, like the kitchen counter, or hot water heater. As he sees it, he gives me a house to live in, and I make it a home for him. Which is pretty much how it works. He's been on-island now since Thursday night, and we operate under the system that he buys the groceries and I make the meals. Being an independent type who tends to forget to feed herself, this whole "must have dinner made" thing is mildly stressful, but it also gives me a compelling reason to drop my worries and spend quality time in the kitchen. In good news, he more or less remembered that he is not allowed to be in the kitchen while I am cooking, or else I get cranky. I may have to remind him once in a while at knife point, but for all intents and purposes, he is containing his extroversion. Tonight I am choosing to ignore the implications of his comments about the Swedes and how great it is they don't consider age difference when it comes to attraction, and how he thinks getting me drunk on Kentucky moonshine would be a great project.

In light of all that I need to do to wrap up the Fellowship, the added challenges the Institute throws at us that was never in the original job description, and the added responsibilities that I have taken on far outside the scope of the Fellowship... I might already be looking forward to the fall. I will, however, say that I had the opportunity to take two wondrous walks Friday night- one at about ten, when the world was alight with stars and fireflies, and one at two in the morning, when a fog bank was just settling in to rouse the ghosts and obscure the moon. I will get things done, and I will deal with the parade of builders, daughters, dogs, and the home owner as they buzz in and out of this house in the style of French farce (it has 5 exterior doors, after all). I will also find a way to steal some summer for myself.

My first swim of the season (May 31st) will not have been my last.

You Thought I was a Hermit?

I am an introvert. It doesn't mean I am entirely shy or retiring, or that I somehow lack social confidence. It means that in order to function, to replenish the stores of my soul, I need solitude to process the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I need to write long-winded blog posts and journal entries. I need to run away into the woods, to be where other people are not.

I have chosen to live in a place, and in a manner that is inherently highly social. From banter in the store and at the landing, to a culture of game nights, community volleyball, and pot lucks- my days are packed with human interaction. I've come to an island where anonymity is not an option, and while secrets may fester for years, they will surface. And the effects will spread. Because- to some extent- we all work together, play together, fight and grieve together, there is no escaping the joy or the pain that comes down the pike.

In the course of a week I will literally babysit my students, and stage their spring concert; swap baked goods and jokes, pour coffee, explain the new library system; I will cuddle kittens and pitch kitten-ownership to any likely taker; I will take a woman abused (who has had enough) to see a lawyer, and then play volleyball wildly well with her abuser- who I'd loved like a brother; I will hold the hand of their young son when he slips his in mine, and I will also give him five minutes in at recess when he is being a little shit; I'll welcome back the snowbirds, listen to the talk of a lobstering conservation zone; I'll gratefully confide in and seek counsel from a minister; I'll open up my house to builders, and then ready it for the owner's visit, and show it to a new potential occupant- I will eat, drink, laugh, weep, speak in coded language that would put Chekovian subtext to shame. I will keep secrets, but work with determination for their release...

These are the bizarre and varied things I am actually good at. And before my fragile little human mind cracks from the speed of the spinning, I stop the world. I lay in the sun with a book, I dive in the thoroughfare, I run away to the island's interior. Island time, and autonomy, I think, is the upshot of this intense interaction.

This blog is a constant exercise in the elucidation of what this life means to me, or what it is that I am deriving from the island that keeps me here- and I think the best answer is simply that it demands I just be unapologetically human. I may need to have time to myself, but there is no hiding from the infinite complexity of my friends and neighbors. I am learning (to borrow from that much more regionally famous island author, Elisabeth Ogilvie), how vast are the demands (infinite), and how wide the heart (infinity-plus-one).

Blooming

As in "June is busting out all over!!!!"

and

"Come on Dover, move your blooming arse!!!!"

Life is a whirl of seed swaps, tart baking, friend supporting, volleyball spiking, and- Lord help me, spring concert staging.

It's the hard knock life for me.

If you feel cheated by the small word count of this post, I ask you "what the hell are you doing inside reading blogs?"

Since I Am Spending My Words Elsewhere

That's write. I am living a small cyber double life, and it is taking its toll, as I shockingly neglect this blog. Wicked woman, where is your commitment to public displays of narcissism? And don't use the Facebook excuse- you haven't been constantly updating your status.

Regardless, I've used my allotment of original thoughts for the evening, but it is spring and I am overflowing with seasonal sap. So I give you selected bits from a cleverer bugger than me.

take it, ee:

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

~ ~ ~

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and from moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

~ ~ ~

may my heart always be open to little

birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young


and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

Success Is Counted Ironic

So I was not able to write into existence another year's worth of salary on-island for myself, but I was able to write into existence a salary for someone who by definition, must not be me- which is to say the island will have a new Island Institute Fellow next year for comprehensive planning. At least one application I penned was successful. The new Fellow will live in this house, will work on the committee I have been working for (in my spare time), will wear my title.

New blood will be good for the island.

I knew as I wrote the application that I was essentially displacing myself.

Tequila and the Truth

Seriously. I don't know why the CIA was fooling around with waterboarding when they could just put the tequila to 'em (ignoring the possible religious issues there, of course). They wouldn't only sing, they'd also dance.

Oh the truthiness happened.

After a pina colada, some number of tequila shots, and a rum and coke or two into the evening...

After a year of hemming and hawing, and multiple consultations (the friends, the father, the half brother)... I did grab the slender one by the hand, and pulled him out to the deck to figure out what was the what.

Sigh. It didn't take long.

I like making cake, we know that. So making a cake of myself should be no big deal. All a part of the human experience.

And the exchange lead to a pretty magical drive-home moment:

Nate: Morgan, are you crying?!

Morgan: Nooooooooooooo!!!! I don't cryyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!! (sobs into her hands).

And then I crawled to my computer to gchat with Stacey, which is when I typed this immortal phrase:

"tequila-y is the craziest drinkest drubnk."

Indeed.

On Spring and Linear Equations

Have you been able to focus your attention? Spring and all?

Well, you are a better person than me.

I've been baking, cleaning, hiking, purloining daffodils, taking cuttings from my geranium, and planting seeds in pots. Yes, there has been work too. But not blogging. The puttering and wandering has been too good, and the latest social bombshell too bad. Living in a microcosm is pretty intense, and if I sat down to write about it right now, with grace, maturity, and a searching heart, my head would go kablooey.

So I am wandering through the forest courting lyme disease, marauding for the flowers the deer won't eat, and other things of high importance. Oh yes, getting my feet wet with spring time woods muck.

Did a smidge of math tutoring last night, which was beautiful- linear equations. When else is life ever so straightforward and dependable? Learn the identity of the pieces, the rules and relationships, and voila- you know exactly what to expect every time. How a mad species like humans came up with such a relaxingly sane system of thought will never cease to amaze me.

So easy to navigate, so satisfying to work through. Nice, neat, and orderly. In a short space of time you can find an answer and know it is the right one. Now, finding the x-intercept of a line may have absolutely no bearing on anything in reality, but hot damn, it is an absolute answer, nonetheless! And I will whole-heartedly embrace it for sake of having sooooooomething be absolute.

Algebra, cake ingredients, dirt (literal! not figurative). I am focusing on the good stuff.