Foolishly
The eagles are back upriver in force now the ice has gone out.
Stick your head out the door and there'll be one pivoting on the
air overhead. The air has gone soft, as have the garden beds,
and maybe our heads, a little. It's Spring again.
Ebba In Winter
Spring always comes as a surprise. You don't know how tightly
coiled you are, until you find yourself bouncing from project
to project, shedding layers of clothing. Mucking out, raking up,
breaking ground, crank the old truck, uncover the boat, jack up
the sagging end. Thought you were stuck in a rut, and suddenly
you're galloping off in all directions
It's easy to get mired in the introspective season, or frozen
solid. Winter was late again this year. The Bear didn't bite before
New Years, and the shanty boys weren't sliding out camps until
January. Although the river ice made late, it came on hard and
heavy. The breakers knitted tight in most places, and there was
three foot of good ice by February. The eagles went down country,
and I realized how much I depend on them to lift my heart in winter.
Breakers
My shadow
Instead of which, there were beaver, and a loose goose. A pair
of flattails took up residence in the mudbank alongside Little
Fish Camps, and would come out to forage on the top of the tide.
I thought beaver hole up for the season in their wigwams, chewing
on popple and catching Zs. Maybe it was the high water levels
(you better believe the seas are rising), or just cabin fever,
but these guys were out and about in the chill of it.
One day the big male.. and I do mean BIG, this guy was the size
of CC.. got caught out at the mouth of Frizzle's Creek, bottom
of a tide, and spent the afternoon surrounded by small boys and
a crazed dog. Damned dog wouldn't stop harrying it, barking wildly.
The one of Shorey's dogs who lives on the river all winter, hanging
at the smelt camps. I bated her downriver a ways, hoping she'd
give it up, but the instant my back was turned she loped back
to beavertown. When the tide lifted the ice, Mr. Beaver slunk
off home.
Beaver fever
Stupid Goose
The goose was another story. Stupid animals. Probably one of Carol's
flock. Those the coons didn't get, all beat feet when their stinkpuddle
froze. One fat duck tended to the open water at the bridge, and
mooched handouts at Jimmy's, until some ladies carried him off.
But one clipped goose found his way to the holes under the double
bridges and refused to budge, even after the temps went into the
deep freeze. I'd ski over to check him out, but he always kept
a patch of open water between us. I could see that someone was
throwing corn down onto the ice for him. Then, one day in early
March, he was a gone goose. That was the day I saw the first eagle
come home. I wondered if he'd had goose for breakfast.
The river skiing was great this winter, but we only had two days
of skating. Just the reverse of 99. Luckily I'd gone out when
the ice was clear, and found the weak spots, before snow covered
them. Nobody else seems to like river skiing much. All the warnings
about thin ice, I suppose, not to mention that lots of days it's
more glaze than snow out there. We didn't get much snowfall until
March, but the corn snow and ice melt on the river combine to
give you just enough traction. If you don't mind slip sliding
away. I got to blow off the sugar almost every day, and CC got
to be a real pest if I didn't.
Seeps
Back of the shacks
Once the camps were out, the smelting was great. The boys always
seemed to be filling their buckets, and the fish were larger,
I'm told. So much for the dire predictions of a few seasons back.
They got the inside string at Riverbend up and fishing first week
in January, but Little Fish didn't go on until late in the month.
The different freezing patterns in the Cathance are hard to figure.
It makes sense that the tiderace at the bridge means the ice is
relatively thin there, and the switchback at Bernard's slows the
current to make for better ice, but some of the openings are a
puzzle, and why a tidal river gets heavier ice than nearby ponds
and lakes is a headscratcher.
I did a bit of headscratching this winter. Tried to reinvent myself.
Millennial resolutions and all that. Promised myself to make more
music and less noise, begin a new series of carvings to evoke
the spirits of place, deal with the sugar demons. You can't rationalize
your way into a transformation, of course. You probably thought
yourself into the gumption trap in the first place. All you can
do is catch the glimpse of a new hilltop, and try to navigate
that way through the underbrush.
Facing It
How am I doing? Well, Peggy bought us an old honkytonk piano for
Christmas, and set it up where my shop used to be, in the front
parlor. Dr. Bob heard tell and poked his head in. He was a R&R
pianoman in his college days, but let his fingers go stiff. Now
he's ready to pick up the tunes again, and has been pounding on
this tinny old relic. Where I'd thought to take piano lessons,
I find myself blowing flute with Piano Bob. Actually mastering
some of those sharps and flats in the blues refrains. HE's taking
the lessons, and passing on the joy. Music every day: who'd a
thunk?
The shop work is glacially slow. I have a pile of commissions
I took while building the TOAD, and I've gnawed away at them.
Made an articulated toy portrait of a young lady who loves horses,
for her Bat Mitzvah. She's crossed with a horse, naturally. When
her grandmother and uncle came to pick her up, he laughed, and
said, "It IS Amy." There is no higher praise.
Amy
Sealisman
I grumbled that so many of the commissions were retro: old genres,
superseded approaches, passe visions. But there have been pleasant
surprises in the sawdust. I'm able to make pocket carvings again,
for example. Tangible talismans. Feelies. It had gotten so I couldn't
winkle an image out of a handful of scrap without agonizing through
the whole sturm and drang of a major work. Then, poof, I can do
it again. I tend to give talismans away, as charms for those who
need them, and it's nice to be able to conjure them at need.
I did begin the long walk toward a new vision: Spirits of Place.
This is an evolved version of A Spirit Procession I exhibited in 97. The first step was that mask of Weird Eddy
the Emperor of Eels. Then a Smelt Dancer found his way out of
the woodpile. The archetype who rises up under black ice, holding
it firm and level as we skate across. Another local deity to mutter
imprecations to when the ice booms.
Smelt Dancer
Turtle Island Dancer
In February, I reached a little wider, and evoked a Turtle Island
Dancer. A masked performer with turtle head, hands, and feet,
carrying the Western Hemisphere like a shell on his back. I see
this circle dance as a symbolic geography, encompassing the inner
landscape at all scales. From homespun dancers here at the center
of the universe, to embracing archetypes of the continent. From
emblems of the native terrain and ecosphere, to symbols bourn
by immigrant carriers of culture.
American culture heroes are the face cards in this deck, I think.
Personifications of the cultural archetypes. Elvis and Marilyn
already wiggle in our music room. This month Margaret came back
to join them. I made a portrait of Margaret Mead for one of her
biographers, Pat Grinager, maybe 20 years ago. My first big toy
portrait. She waggles her jaw, and spits wooden flames. Pat spent
the last two dozen years of her life following Margaret's footsteps.
Visiting her family, students, colleagues, acquaintances. Going
to every place Margaret lived, to look out her bedroom window.
She would arrive in Jonesport in her beat up car with a loaf of
fresh bread, regale us with family tales, sleep on the couch,
cross-question us, and take off in a cloud of dust. The biography
took over Pat's life, and grew so unwieldy that everyone despaired
of it seeing print. But it actually came off the press last November:
UNCOMMON LIVES, My Lifelong Friendship with Margaret Mead. And
she sure caught Margaret, warts and all. Pat died the next month,
her work complete.
Margaret
Speaks
Her sons called to ask if I wanted the statue back. Actually,
if I wanted to BUY the statue back. Is this what eventually happens?
You end up repurchasing your best work, at today's prices? Sure,
I said. Now she's torch singing with E&M.
