“…the accretions of shadow-box tidal-pool worlds remain, one marvelous emotional ecosystem after another…”
Every year spent in the same enchanted place is like a winged migration. Each season we pull in, park, vehicles filled to the brim with every single object considered a necessity for our survival (usually about half the carload of stuff). Windows opened, floors swept and mopped, kitchen stocked and beds made. Eight hours later, the season begins.
A place to make memories. And don’t we leave just a little bit of ourselves each time we wave goodbye and migrate back to our other lives. When someone asks, why don’t you just visit different places instead of staying in the same old place each season? Because camp is not just a place, it is a state of mind.
"You can climb a thousand mountains or one mountain a thousand times."
I think somehow I've done each 500 times.
That home was haunted with our lives. If you ever read Scheherazade (it's part of 365 in the menus) there is a LOT about that home where our lives ended. It was more home than our home(s) in New Jersey.
“cut free the buoy and orphaned the lobster trap” is the best euphemism ever, though I dare not decide just how free the buoy floated or if the lobster ever found his family.
The lobster made his way to the Pacific for about twenty years (in a styrofaum cooler and rubber bands on his arms,) before returning to Brooklyn where the rubber bands have been removed for personal safety. One baby lobster made his way to Los Angeles. The other still scuttles around mom and dad lobster's apartment.
Thanks, J.E. It's a lot to ask of a reader when we're all moving at Internet/Substack speed, but hopefully it worked a little even if the English professors are throwing chalk at me.
Hallelujah! How I love this. It’s not just that you dared yourself to tell a story in a sentence (and pulled it off, narrative arc and all). It’s the fit between the subject and form that makes me cheer. You have me thinking, Of course. Aren’t all the best memories just one long tumble of phrase and image, hopefully leading to such a pleasing central scene? If they are not, I’ve forgotten the exceptions under the influence of your master story. Bravo!
We had a summer home for years in Maine and ended up selling after my mother passed. What's interesting is how much thinking about the home really is like a photo album of the bits and bobs of the home, all the artifacts of our summers there for years and years. When we were kids and we first arrived, we always had a treasure hunt of finding all the things from previous summers (in the wooden shelves.) And there was a real comfort in the same old placemats. Truly my best memories of childhood – so much left behind there (but hopefully in the sentence, too! Thanks for your supportive note.
Then you know! I miss it enormously myself. Since we sold our home there we don't get up anywhere as often as we should, but it is a like a spiritual touchstone for me (and my wife and grown children.) There's something about it.
“…the accretions of shadow-box tidal-pool worlds remain, one marvelous emotional ecosystem after another…”
Every year spent in the same enchanted place is like a winged migration. Each season we pull in, park, vehicles filled to the brim with every single object considered a necessity for our survival (usually about half the carload of stuff). Windows opened, floors swept and mopped, kitchen stocked and beds made. Eight hours later, the season begins.
A place to make memories. And don’t we leave just a little bit of ourselves each time we wave goodbye and migrate back to our other lives. When someone asks, why don’t you just visit different places instead of staying in the same old place each season? Because camp is not just a place, it is a state of mind.
You captured it perfectly.
"You can climb a thousand mountains or one mountain a thousand times."
I think somehow I've done each 500 times.
That home was haunted with our lives. If you ever read Scheherazade (it's part of 365 in the menus) there is a LOT about that home where our lives ended. It was more home than our home(s) in New Jersey.
Scheherazade , one of my favorites. Read all of it!
Are you the author of that quote?
Oh how I wish I was!
It’s a beauty.
“cut free the buoy and orphaned the lobster trap” is the best euphemism ever, though I dare not decide just how free the buoy floated or if the lobster ever found his family.
The lobster made his way to the Pacific for about twenty years (in a styrofaum cooler and rubber bands on his arms,) before returning to Brooklyn where the rubber bands have been removed for personal safety. One baby lobster made his way to Los Angeles. The other still scuttles around mom and dad lobster's apartment.
Damn! You did it…and made it worth the journey.
Thank you for joining! I worried it was going to be a lonely ride when I first posted this!
I love a good list. Great paragraph, man!
Thanks, Andrei. They're so fun to write and you may not believe it, but twice as many items again were jettisoned. :-)
Lovely stream of conscious sentence!
Thanks, Pamela. 🙏
I love a good stream of conscious sentence! I write like that.
You torture the conventions of sentence structure, sir.
But this is beautiful anyway.
Thanks, J.E. It's a lot to ask of a reader when we're all moving at Internet/Substack speed, but hopefully it worked a little even if the English professors are throwing chalk at me.
Gah! Gorgeous.
So much here and not a bit of it blatherskite.
I’ll stop.
Honestly, I loved this. Makes me want to try a one sentence story myself.
Do.
Hallelujah! How I love this. It’s not just that you dared yourself to tell a story in a sentence (and pulled it off, narrative arc and all). It’s the fit between the subject and form that makes me cheer. You have me thinking, Of course. Aren’t all the best memories just one long tumble of phrase and image, hopefully leading to such a pleasing central scene? If they are not, I’ve forgotten the exceptions under the influence of your master story. Bravo!
We had a summer home for years in Maine and ended up selling after my mother passed. What's interesting is how much thinking about the home really is like a photo album of the bits and bobs of the home, all the artifacts of our summers there for years and years. When we were kids and we first arrived, we always had a treasure hunt of finding all the things from previous summers (in the wooden shelves.) And there was a real comfort in the same old placemats. Truly my best memories of childhood – so much left behind there (but hopefully in the sentence, too! Thanks for your supportive note.
So immersive!
I miss Maine where I lived for four years, and you capture it.
Then you know! I miss it enormously myself. Since we sold our home there we don't get up anywhere as often as we should, but it is a like a spiritual touchstone for me (and my wife and grown children.) There's something about it.