what is it like in Nova Scotia?

A friend asks. Yes you can come along with me and Phebe some time. The librarian just handed me my new Western Counties Regional library card We have been here 8days now. Fog and rain two days, sunshine blue skies five days,one day half sun half fog. The town of Lockeport has shrunk to 700 souls. On Canada day, there were 6,000 on town(as the locals say) The mayor lives across the street a slim bottocelli angel who sez he's 36 but looks barely 24. He works with his dad at the garage next door. The dad is the man in the know in town. A very friendly place. We are two minutes from a beautiful beach that we can see from our house. Even better sight lines once we put in the dormers and a deck. Record heat on the south shore but it is always cooler in Lockeport. We go to sleep and wake up to the sounds of the sea. I came to the library about 30 minutes ago. Phebe was reclining in the backyard reading Updike. She finished Bodily Harm(Atwood) in a day. In the morning she rode bike and walked on the beach. We bought two Kayaks. She sets sail tomorrow. I am waiting for my kneees to get better. She has been in the ocean, but it is brisk. A different kind of blog aimed at responding to someone who commented on an earlier blog(whom I cherish!)

The Bakers of Pikeville, Pa & Lockport,Nova Scotia

Phebe called me from Nova Scotia this AM planning to settle on a house by the sea in a sleepy little town. Sooo border crossings in our future. I'll pick her up in K town Monday . Without Phebe in my grill, I was adrift,almost as much as the inside cat when she wanted in at 2am the last two mornings. Did a little mowing,planning to exercise the knees in the pool,walking with difficulty, in the midst of a series of shots of "syn/gin? that are supposed to provide lubrication in the aching joints;we will see. Today the Belmont. I'll go to the watering hole for lunch,then bet the race at OTB,come home mow more,into the pool and then we'll see. May go to a conservative evangelical church tomorrow, a day of testimony from new members. An old ball player working his way out of trouble has got me into reading and thinking about the big G or G _ _ess. I miss her(not the Goddess,the reflection of her in Phebe) so I guess I love her or at least am not whole without her.Exchanged phone messages with the local married kids. Hope they get back to me.

MP sez that Heidegger talking about how one evaluates the writing of a thinker of substance that it is difficult for one to measure the work because there is much more there than what is apparent.."The richer is that which through this work and through it alone, comes towards as never yet thought of ." MP goes on to talk about about husserl who at the end of his life ,according to MP, had an unthought of element in his works which is wholly his and yet opens out on something else...I gotta chew on this for a little while.

Reflecting

There was a time I did it without thinking. Yet how can one reflect without thinking? A mirror can do it, a body of water, a window, the eyes of another. I guess what I was trying to say was that thinking was second nature to me and that reflecting on what I was doing presently was closely related to what I had done sometime before, and in a sense contemplating what I might do in the future if the same conditions prevailed. I had a brief love affair with Merleau-Ponty when I thought he was talking directly to me and then the moment passed. A friend's immersion in a warm mud bath got me to thinking again. And so I turned to Merleau-Ponty once again. In SIGNS he says "to think is not to possess the objects of thought;it is to use them to mark out a realm to think about which we therefore are not yet thinking about." These remarks are in an essay about the phenomenologist Husserl entitled "The Philosopher and his shadow".

I'm in a ruminating stage right now awaiting an outpouring. In a way I'm marking my territory like an animal perhaps to warn people off, but only in the sense that my thinking is emerging, not even comprehensible to me except for a feeling that I ill return again and again until I get it straight or until I leave it behind because the scent has dissipated.

HOPE. a lotta love and a little bit of luck

The primaries are finally over. The networks made money on political advertisements. The pundits had fresh meat to growl over and never digest. The public endured the obscenity. Is it not time to change this system? Shorten it. How about a national primary lasting no more than six weeks? I guess I can live with three months of campaigning between (or better, among) the winners, but two months would be better. Many are bothered by the obscene cost of IRAQ . What about the cost of the primaries?

The money issue others me, but what really bothers me is the half truths and avoidance of thinking and true discourse that passes for news sharing and analysis.
People who never read anything about Liberation theology spout slanted opinions grounded in hate. I listened to Rev Wright's remarks on Bill Moyer and his presentation at the National press club, and I think He got a bad read by the "experts. I kept remembering James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time". The way the political scenario is structured Obama had to come to a political conclusion, just as Wright had to be a pastor true to his inner self. Ignorance and Fear permeate our human environment.

Hillary's posturing and casting herself as a blue color champion deeply saddened me. She is better than that. Downing shots with good old boys and telling lies is demeaning both to her and good old boys. During the endless primaries I listened -as is my wont -to conversations around me at my favorite tavern. Three self proclaimed middle aged white republican men stating to one another that they were going to vote for Obama. That restored my faith in the possibility for all of us to rise above the shit in which we are mired. Yet the vicious jokes about Senator C_ _ _ from New York and Senator C_ _ _ from Illinois dragged me down.

For this 73 year old "do not go gentle into that good night" old provocateur the issues are straight forward. "Love one another or die" starts it off,followed by "keep on trucking/Hope against hope and be grateful for small surprises. We need to get out of Iraq in this spirit. We need to stop allowing the oil magnates to gather windfall profits while poor people are abandoning driving and losing housing. We need to live up to the few wonderful moments where the USA has tried to fulfil its promise.(The Marshal PLan. the responses of young people in WW2 and the rest of us who believed the were fighting for freedom) and other bright shining moments. Greed and avarice will consume us if we do not change.

Old school picture

We grow, some of us like hot house flowers, but even the most protected among us have a desire to wander unattended in the wild. Little Billy peers into the camera self consciously,hair tousled, eyes smiling,mouth tight lipped,bowed upward into dimples,the shirt collar bent at the wings, tie knot slightly to one side,shirt wrinkled across the shoulders and chest. The picture must have been taken after recess, after a kickball game on a warm May morning, longer summer days beckoning, yet still out of reach. It is 1945. The headlines trumpet victories in battle after battle. No more ominous entreaties to stiffen our upper lips because ships are being sunk by submarines or kama kazi pilots. Victory is as close as the beckoning summer days. Victory will be ours before the tomato plants bloom in the victory gardens.

At the time I was an altar boy in church 365 days a year. I would attend morning mass with Aunt Marguerite on the days when I was not scheduled to serve. More often than not I would scurry up the aisle when one of the curates came in to celebrate his mass at a side altar. I fainted more than once from fasting on the days when there was a funeral mass after morning mass; on Holy Days when the service lasted hours I keeled over more than once.

Guilt was the glue that kept us in thrall; we were all marked with sin from birth.
Then, America was beautiful. I did not know what to make of amber waves of grain. In second grade when tall,gaunt,bespectacled Sister Mary Richard left the room-perhaps to pee- I stood on my desk and shouted the pledge of allegiance to the flag. Leo Goodwin turned me in when sister returned to the room in alarm.

Riding down the road

Returning from visiting an old friend who was a triathlete, I thought about how I am fearful of mounting my bike bacause of my artificial hip and my recently repaired rotator cuf. One on one side, one on the other. I flashed riding an adult tricyle;my traveling companion thought it was a good idea too. My vision of a trike was slightly distorted. I think it came from going to a circus when I was a kid and seeing clowns peddling around a ring on a trike that was a large version of a kid's trike. So I envisioned a clown's trike. I was a little disappointed when I saw what an adult trike looks like on the internet. It's so...pedestrian;you have to look twice to see that is different from a bicycle. Now I have to find a local dealer that has one in a catalog that will support my weight.
After I get one, I have to dedicate myself to riding it through the fall months and on dry days in the winter.

That was written a year ago. The only riding down the road I have been doing is behind the wheel of a subaru. Take that back This week I'm driving a monster dodge durango. Today I walked about a mile in town and on the beach. The knees continue to deteriorate. Maybe I can build the muscles a bit and salvage some better movement of the limbs. We'll see. The air here is conducive to breathing freely. Yesterday we rode down West rd to Westhead in Lockeport where there are 90 acres of seaside on a point into the ocean. If I win the lottery...

Tight little island

She has the real estate blues again looking for waterfront vistas. Perhaps we should buy a sailing craft and tour the islands we sometimes dream about visiting The craft would have to have a large galley.

We could manage such a life for a few years;yet we would need to be able to return to our landlocked island in Pikeville where her trees make the air sweet,and the sound less intrusive. Our new bridge is a destination worthy of contemplation.

Would we be chum for new age pirates who feed upon older citizens without missiles to protect them? A trip down the in land seaway might be a way to test our sea worthiness.

She wants me to learn to dance to latin american rhythmns in my senior years. That kind of bodily contact and foreplay would suffice and who knows what the back beat might stir.