Island Time.

                                                                                                        Iron Ore Bay, Beaver Island, Michigan
 

Part One

In the middle of February, in a tantrum that was part frustration, part longing - after months and months of lockdown and not seeing anyone except through a screen  - I went online and rented a house on an island for most of the month of August.  An island I knew nothing about and had never been to before.  It looked beautiful, remote - like you could be there and get away from it ALL.  

Some things I found out before I came - like a bit about the history (quirky) and the exact process to be followed to get your car and yourself here (ferry, two ferries actually), and the fact that this is on the road to becoming a designated "dark spot" in this area of the country (August - Perseid Meteor Showers, enough said).

Other things I had no idea about - but they have all turned out to be delightful.  Most people bike (so glad I brought mine) and only 600 some folks live here year-round.  It is Irish.  Very Irish.  Names of people and places and streets - as familiar as Fitzgerald or McLaughlin or Tobin.  I find myself being as enamored of this island as I am of the one on the other side of the pond.

In her book, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics, Rebecca Solnit writes, "Places matter. Their rules, their scale, their design include or exclude civil society, pedestrianism, equality, diversity (economic and otherwise), understanding of where water comes from and garbage goes, consumption, or conservation. They map our lives."  I grew up in a suburb, where sameness was something to aspire to - as impossible as this proved itself to be. I've spent a lot of time thinking about place...and placemaking, because (as Solnit says) place matters.

                                                                                                                            Marina, Beaver Island

Chaos and Mess

Last week in a writing workshop David said, "Chaos and mess means thinking is going on."  I wrote it down.  Having heard it before in various permutations, "let's get messy"  or "mess signifies you are really digging in," it is often said to students and about students - and should be encouraged pedagogically.  Out of the chaos and mess - great things can come.

But it is also the story of my life as I look around the places I work.

Piles of books.  A given.  In any room that is inhabited for any length of time.  From the kitchen to the basement to the bedroom.  For all of the time spent with a device in hand or a screen nearby, it is the physical book that I lust after.  Yes lust.

synonyms:

crave, desire, covet, want, wish for, long for, yearn for, dream of, hanker for, hanker after, hunger for, thirst for, ache for...

Maybe someday someone will say:  She lusted after books.  Reading them and making them.

There is a place in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that, in my mind, is the optimal spot for looking at the moon and stars.  The stars are bright and endless, every constellation flung across the sky - the ones I can name and the others (many more) that I can't.  I sit in the dark in the middle of the night sipping bourbon and looking up.  The only sound in mid-summer being the clinking of ice.  No one around for miles.

They look chaotic and messy as well, unless you really can read them - which I can't.  But let's go with the idea of that for a moment.  Chaotic and messy - thinking going on - right?

There are a lot of references to these particular stars in the books in process of late.  

Solve vincula reis,
profer lumen caecis
mala nostra pelle,
bona cuncta posce.*

TETHERED 2015  (mixed media, v.edition of 6)

Tethered is one of those books.  It is a story of longing, motherhood, of travel, of moon and star watching.  It takes place over the course of 21 years.  In the colophon I write, "A solstice moon with a pacifier moving across the night sky..."   It is, I see now, also a story about how quickly time passes in spite of the constancy of some things.  Chaos and mess among them.

*Break the sinners' fetters,

  make our blindness day,

  Chase all evils from us,

  for all blessings pray.

Ave Maris Stella

Hail Star of the Ocean