... saturday john asked, "how about after the ice storm we go out monday morning and see if we can find some nice pictures" ... even knowing that not a small part of his intent was to use the photography as an excuse to get me out of my apartment, i readily agreed, secretly proud of myself for having worked so hard learning how to accept, and happy i've such a friend ...
... it was a cold and overcast, but, per the rules of wanderabouting, we cared not in the least ... we stopped every now and then, looked out the windows of the car, and with no need for discussion started again on our little journey ... along the coast i was about to repeat the process when i spied these two blocks of ice ... intrigued, i zipped and buttoned up and walked down along the bay's rocky low-tide shore ...
... the wind chill was in the single-digits, but i'll not blame it since i know it wasn't the cause of the dullness of my lenses ... over time i've learned that in this situation the cure is to be found in finding something small, simple, overlooked ... in a tiny piece of frozen sea perched atop the barnacle encrusted beach stones my vision began to return ...
... being careful not slip down to the raft-iced surface of the lagoon, i worked my way to a vantage of an old bridge that crosses route 1 over the ducktrap river ... i thought, "those so familiar to us, who we encounter every day, often we are completely unaware of the graceful beauty of their strength" ...
... "park row," in northport, ignores time ...
... along the marden hill road, a tree ... i estimate it to be about my own age ... there're often times i feel like it looks, something i once thought a bad thing ... in this old guy, however, and many others its ilk, my mind has changed ...
... in one of john's photo captions he said i "cried out" to stop and go back ... odd, i don't remember that ...
... i do recall that at my first glimpse of the old structure i heard it calling, "come back for a visit, patrick ... remember, you used to live here" ... i hadn't, of course, my old houses are in alaska, nebraska, louisiana, on an island in the west indies and another in the mariana's arc across the western pacific ocean—a dozen or more other places, too, none of them along a rocky ridge in central maine ...
... still, i could hear the ghosts within, "oh, patrick, such a fool you can be ... do you really believe the clapboards and joists and trim molding are what we're talking about ... those're simply the enclosure within which we exist ... of course you lived here ... within is everyone's home, including yours ... not 'homes,' dear child, simply 'home' ... you know because of the word it places before your heart" ...
... "welcome" ...
... "welcome" ...
... so i stood in the door, entered, and remembered ...
... as i turned the corner to descend, ma, "make your bed before you come downstairs" ...
... tucked away for the night on christmas eve, we cupped our ears to capture the very faint sounds that we knew were evidence of a most wonderful magic ...
... after curfew, to avoid another grounding, trying desperately to remember the stair's unbelievably complicated creaking combination ...
... my brother and i, after a triple-dog-dare, in a large cardboard box winning the olympic bobsled gold ...
... pa, in the dark after a swing shift at the command center ... strange, that he could do the stairs silently but would always forgot about the tiny little squeak the hinge made when he cracked my bedroom door to peek in ... i would keep my eyes closed until i heard the sound again, then, in that perfect moment, fall asleep in his embrace ...
... i look and think, "my, how sad, so cold and alone in a frozen field" ...
... he looks at me and thinks, "my, how sad, such a pathetic coat you wear, while i'm quite comfortably enjoying having a beautiful pasture all to myself" ...
.. from the marden hill road ... left center of the image's upper-third line find the steeple of colby's lorimer chapel ... follow the ridge line right until you are about one-third from the right edge of the image ... that's where i live ...
wind chill freezes my skin
i can dress warm
but, as for my soul,
i must find a way to burn
LEE ALLEN
i can dress warm
but, as for my soul,
i must find a way to burn
LEE ALLEN