quiet

My day is that. Immersed in the quiet of work. And then, a ride home, by the lake.



[oh, by the way, Madisonians: you need no longer say that you have to travel to France to get a good steak frites; but shhhhh! I want to be able to get a table when the fancy strikes me; you can go there, but only on the weekends, when I’m likely to be elsewhere. You want the name? Okay, okay, Brasserie V. On Monroe. Damn close to perfect. And get the endive salad. And the rosé. What a place. But shhhh!]

preoccupied

And again work intrudes into just about every waking hour this week. The pay off? Enjoying doing things not haphazardly. Enjoying work. Working ahead. Looking ahead. Including to four out of the next five week-ends poking around interesting, distant places. WAS, UP, CDG and BOS. Three out of four promise good food. One out of four promises quiet. Four out of four suggest great company. And time to write.

For now, I battle the cold in the morning (it was in the low forties and very shady) and the desire to fall asleep before I want to in the evening.

Oh, wait. I did take a ride to the airport. To pick up a friend. On the way, I stopped at Madison Park. Who wouldn’t? The most brilliantly blue (but cold) day turned into a waterfall of sunset colors. So at least you have that.

color

It was such a windy day! The waters of Lake Mendota looked like the Baltic on an especially choppy day. Perhaps I exaggerate. But only slightly.






I may have had time to write an interesting post today, but Jason laid claim to a substantial chunk of my afternoon hours. Yes, yes, long-time Ocean readers, my man Jason continues to be a significant force in my life. The man of color and conviction.

Ed (another force to reckon with) asks me – why do you color your hair?
And I respond – I do NOT color my hair. I only touch up the roots.
Why?
Because they are of the color a mouse would be, were she to live to a ripe old age.

Ed studies the roots. They seem fine to me…
That’s because you are not seeing them as they would be, were they not touched up a bit.
To me, it seems like your roots are brown with highlights. So, you pay Jason huge sums of money (for Ed, anything done at a hair place that costs more than $12 is a huge sum of money; particularly if it does not even include a beard trim) to turn what’s brown with highlights into what’s another shade of brown with highlights.
The highlights are the sun’s doing! They are entirely natural!
…Besides, I like your hair when it’s longer.

What’s the matter with men?! in my experience, they all say they prefer longer hair. Hair that gets in the way of most everything. Hair that looks ridiculously unkempt when it is on my scalp (because, truthfully, I run a comb through it just once in the course of the day – when I am straight out of the shower; otherwise, I can’t be bothered).

Jason, it has been suggested that I should stay with longer hair.
Jason regards me with that a look of great benevolence, which is only slightly better than an eye-roll. You mean, you don’t want me to take off more than, say, an inch?
(I have just visited Jason 4.5 weeks back; it is nearly impossible to imagine that my hair grew by an inch since then; so let’s interpret this for what it is: my man Jason is flexing his tattooed arm against my occasional travel companion, Ed. Fine, he is saying. Grow it out. Slowly. So slowly that it must get shorter before it, in a decade or so, gets longer.)

I stay silent.
Okay, three fourths of an inch. Jason is no fool. He knows and I know that generally, I tend to tip big (a relic from my upbringing in communist Poland). Generally.

Of course, tomorrow, when I bike to work, it will all look terribly unkempt, but tonight, my scalp is aglow with the Jason touch. The man’s a genius.

an excuse

I wake up and, for the first time since maybe April, I get up to shut the window a bit. Because it is cold outside.

Biking to or from work is not an option. Not for me. The rain is coming down hard. I’d look bewitching with strands of wet hair plastered to my face, clothes dripping the dirty puddle water, fingers purple red from the cold.

Still, poor weather is sort of liberating, isn’t it?

I finish teaching, I look out my office window – this one, right here:





…and I see no reason to exert myself. Biking, hiking, sunning, dashing, accomplishing things that require movement from one place to another? Forget it.

I settle in for a comfortable, long period of writing.

bounty

Who knew, three months ago, that the dry, caked soil would be water logged? And home to an exploding population of mosquitos? Who knew.

And what if, in spite of it all, you kept working at it?


I watched this noble group of farmers swipe (at the bugs) and heave and swipe and heave.




It's going to be a magnificent harvest for them. Incredible.


At the end of the day I went to the grand opening of the westside Tex Tubb’s. Madisonians will reco0gnize the name. Tacos and such, done fresh and honest.




Otherwise, my day was so completely full of work. And writing. A swiping and heaving of sorts. With no guarantee of a good harvest.

batty world

Camera remains intermittently broken. Bats cannot take care of all the bugs that are out there right now. Riding on the roof of the car is fun. The lake is too murky to swim in. Really, the mosquitoes are horrendous. Moonglow pears are back!

My day in a nutshell.



The Westside Community Market was the place to be if you wanted a real deal on the freshest and the most honest foods. Oh, I can rave about the corn, the oysters ‘shrooms, the soy beans. And the onions and the cukes. And the goat cheese. With garlic. And sticky buns. (All made it home with me). But the stars of today – moonglows. Unquestionably. Reason to celebrate. Get some in the next weeks. They’ll make the nonfunctional parts of your life suddenly appear like a piece of cake to zip through.





A good weather week-end.

I asked Ed to come up with a place for us to explore. Preferably with a smaller ratio of mosquitoes to person than 1,000,000 to 1. Oh, and not too far from Madison.

The man tried. He suggested Yellowstone Lake Park. (Yes! In Wisconsin.) Here’s a DNR blurb on it:


What makes Yellowstone Lake unique is the lack of mosquitoes and a glossy-eyed mammal with wings.
The 968-acre park is the summer home to more than 4,000 little brown bats. The bats roost in 31 bat houses throughout the park. The houses serve as nurseries, where the bats raise their pups.

The bats love a meal of mosquitoes. They'll eat the bugs and thereby we, the hikers will be spared. That's the theory. And it works, I'm sure, in periods of light mosquito infestation. For example, last month, when there were very few mosquitoes in Wisconsin, there were probably very very few mosquitoes at Yellowstone Lake.


We set out toward the park. Through backroads, where the photo ops were tremendous. I was especially thrilled with the view when Ed suggested I relocate to the roof of the car. (He explained that he traveled through Central America that way and the views from up there were better than great; I rode -- okay, crawled, okay, inched, okay, basically stood still -- a more modest distance of maybe 300 yards). Unfortunately, my Sony SLR, after a brief hiatus at the Repair Center in Texas last month, failed me yet again. Out of the several dozen shots (there's only so much time I will spend on the roof of a car), only one, the worst one, of that I am positive, came through:





Not that I knew this at the time.

At the Park, we inspected the bat houses. No action there. Ed tells me they’re sleeping. I’m thinking they better get with it. You don’t sleep through a grape harvest in France, you should not sleep through a mosquito invasion in Wisconsin.





We hiked. The camera worked, on and off. The bugs? I'm alive. That's all I'll say.

Here are some off photos from when the camera was on board with me. I know, I know, I have a note of bitterness and resentment. Don’t read too much into it. It was such a beautiful, warm and sunny day.

blown away

Ed, my occasional travel companion, has taken to watching clips from the NYT food section on the Net. It didn’t take long for him to start salivating for the food that was being prepared in that tiny little video box. Look here, tomato paella. Now, doesn’t that look just fantastic?

I can take a hint. And indeed, I have a paella pot that I brought home some while back from Spain. And so last night I made the tomato paella. Ed was blown away by it. Nothing I had ever cooked previously was so quickly devoured.





Great. At least it gave me something to photograph aside from weather patterns on Bascom Hill.

But could it be that I am supporting the creation of a monster? Today I see him poring over further video clips. Stuffed artichokes. Eggs with shrimp. Pan-seared salmon.

I say to him: Ed, I have a million cookbooks and a second million clipped recipies carefully taped into fat notebooks. You want me to cook something, go ahead, ask me. I have favorites that have become family legends of goodness. I can cook up a storm that’ll rival all kitchen storms.

I may as well save my breath. Ed relishes the act of discovery. If I come up with twenty great things to make, he’ll eat them in a distracted sort of way. But if it is of his own finding, his whole being lights up.

And so tonight it’s back to the NYT clips. Salmon in curry sauce this time. May this new love of food video-ettes end there. I mean, while I have no objection to making fried falafel (the clip he had me watch just today), I remain loyal to the cookbooks that have been collecting dust on my shelves for months. Years, perhaps.

Now, back to commentary on my ride to and from work and to observations about the weather on this busiest of busy work weeks: it was windy today. Nicely so. At least I thought it was nice. The sailboats by the Union? They were having a tougher time staying upright. Blown away by a hefty breeze.

work

It pretty much describes this week.

And since I do not, anymore, blog about work, you are left here with posts about…the weather.

It is an interesting topic though. Partly hot, partly wet, partly cloudy, it offers variety. It’s spicy, you could say.

Walking to the bus stop from my office, I noted that the grass was too damp for student lolling. But, Bascom Hill is crisscrossed by solid walkways. A good place to exhale and think green thoughts.





UPDATE:

Mixed up weather means you can't expect much. But, this is Madison! Land of sky! One quick trip to my rooftop shows it off perfectly: downtown, ensconced in green, protected by a rainbow.

the last one

That’s it. Storms tomorrow will push this bubble of hot bliss out of reach until next year. The temperature outside or inside a room is not something I ever even thought much about forty years ago. How could that be? I lived in Poland, damn it. Wasn’t I ever cold?

There is cold and there is cold. Crank up the (Warsaw) radiators and the internal space becomes toasty pleasant. None of this forced air stuff, or thermostats that become a battleground for people who cannot agree on what’s comfortable in life. Did you notice that cool trumps comfortable most every time?

Outside? I can handle outside cold, so long as we’re not all sitting huddled over a mug of cocoa, in five layers of sweaters afterwards.

I mind Wisconsin’s weather less than I mind her residents’ fixation on keeping the interiors cool in the winter and frigid in the summer.

Oh, but why am I even writing of this… Today, we hit the nineties and I am over the top happy. As was she, the student outside my office window. Only notice the telltale signs. It’s fall alright. Pushing in on summer.

biker

Interestingly, in coming up with something to say about myself to my first day, first semester, first year law students, I said (among other things) that I bike. Now, that’s curious, because I wouldn’t typically focus on this as a defining characteristic. Real bikers bike. Or they do biker things (I can only imagine what). Quickly, I balanced this disclosure with cooking, neglecting to remember that I do not cook nearly as much as I did, say, two, three, four years ago. At the tail end, I lamely added that I also write. I mean, write non-law things.

I mention this for several reasons:

1. I truly deeply love the first day of classes;

2. One tends to obsess about things that one did yesterday over and beyond what one did, say, last week or last year. This is a good thing. Sometimes.

3. One tends to hide things that are truly important.


So long as I defined myself as a biker (!) I may as well post about my bike ride home. Excited yet?

For those who no longer live in Madison but have nostalgic leanings toward the place, you will cry (as opposed to, say, on January 29th, should you live anywhere south of here).

It was a sunny day. I was biking down Park Street and looking up, I saw the frisbee pair. There is always a frisbee pair on Bascom Mall on days like this.




Turning toward the lake, I caught sight of these studious types. Oh, come on. Suspend judgment. They probably had classes earlier in the day.





Finally, a comment on water. There’s a lot of it after the rains of last week. So much so that sometimes, even the ducks have had enough.

labor

So who asked the mosquitoes to come to this party? And don’t they believe in reproductive restraint? Unbelievable.

I wanted to photograph a dragon fly snacking on a mosquito, but restrained myself admirably at the last minute. Not for humanitarian reasons – I was simply unwilling to get devoured for the sake of a good Ocean photo.

It’s been a week-end of work. Surely you can tell. Culminating in a labor day full of...labor. And, consequently, light postings. Ocean Lite -- easy on the brain, not entirely satisfying on the palate. Ah well...

Because it is Labor Day, my moment of rapture and joy (sitting at Ancora and going over the pages of my unnovel) could not be. Ancora was closed. Still, when biking in search of a small nonfat cappuccino with a double shot of the strong stuff, I came across this: a sudden and fleeting view of corn stalks, late summer greens and the Capitol dome. Fitting for a Labor Day post from Wisconsin.




[It’s September 3rd. Thirty years ago today, I leapt into an act of adulthood. That I survived is remarkable and not entirely of my own doing. How could I not say -- thank you. ILYAFA. ]

the unexpected

What would you consider the unusual, here, on Ocean? A season with very very limited travel? Posts that describe in great detail the purchasing of a bathroom scale? So funny, so very very funny and yet – so un-Ocean like.

I was reading articles for my soon to begin semester and I was especially amused by one that talked of the proliferation of on-line dating. The author raised the usual questions: what’s binding about the blurb you put out there, describing yourself as being basically better than you are? The article also mentions the phenomenon of the disappearing relationship – the one that vanishes without notice. One day you’re emailing and building your future together, next day one of you skips out and is never heard from again.

And so I wondered: what if your blog switches gears and becomes something inexplicably different for no good reason?

Not likely, here, on Ocean. Predictably, I travel. Predictably, I get busy around the teaching months. And predictably, I post a photo, more than one oftentimes, taken sometime in the course of my day.

Today I biked a familiar path between Ed’s sheepshed (yes, Ed lives in a sheepshed) and an Ancora in Fitchburg that, believe it or not, I favor over and beyond most any café in Madison. It’s a 3. 67 mile trip between the two. A perfect back and forth.

And today, I came across these two characters, trying to find a safe haven in Fitchburg. Forget it! Move on!





And on the way back, I passed this person, diligently working a field. You have no idea how bad the mosquitoes are this week. Every few seconds, she would raise herself and swat away. I could hardly pause the minute it took me to take the photo. The world has far far braver people in it than I can even imagine.






Finally, just meters away from Ed’s sheepshed, I passed this field. No comment on it. Just that it’s beautiful, especially when the sun lets you know that in a second or two, shadows will replace light.

just curious

How would you describe/title (any or all of) the three photos below? They’re from this morning, from the Westside Community Market here in Madison.

I’ve come up with stuff: two-toned… or, all that glitters is not gold… but all that’s rather conventional. And, actually, quite revealing. Surely, there are other ideas out there?

If you have thoughts, pass them on. Comments are fine, but, as always, email is great for the shy at heart.

from Cambridge to Madison

Yesterday, I called it a day. There were no more nails to pound. One last meal at Henrietta’s (she was the first to implant the the words “fresh and honest” in my brain), and, then, just one last decision to make, like these people, at Herrell's…




Mango with banana?

And finally, a rush to the airport. And a handful of flights home.

Home. No lobster rolls and corn grits here.


Still, after work, I can take out my bike and, within minutes, be surrounded by flowering goldenrod. And soy plants.








Ed, my occasional traveling companion, leads me on a loop around the town of Marshall. The roads are so empty that I could dance circles around myself and no one would notice. Maybe the cat and the rooster. That's it.




I didn’t even mind the hills. Such a day!

from Cambridge: success, ltd.

Eventually I can do it. I can figure out how to drill in fasteners into tough walls. How to work blinds into uneven window frames. I can.

It’s easier to drive a nail through a brick wall than to change habits and dispositions, don’t you think?

Take this guy: will he always wear a tie? Even in the heat of the afternoon Cambridge sun?





Probably.

The day ends with grit. I mean grits. I mean both.

…heavenly corn grits with blueberries, poached peach pureé and lavender ice cream.

Now, if I could only have the daughters living within an hour’s drive of home, life would be so good…

from Cambridge: squash, lobsters and spires

I cross campus again and again. Always, there is the temptation to take a photo of the white spire against a blue sky. A classic for this place.





Less of a classic, but equally pleasing is the Farmer's Market. Also on campus. Just a few stalls, but a nice selection of fall foods. In the late afternoon sun.









Then, in the evening, I succumb to the New England temptation: a lobster roll with fries and slaw. I'm a sucker for it. And this one is pretty near perfect. How can one not love it here...

from Cambridge: 'spires

Inspire, aspire, perspire, I’ve seen it all on this day.

Without truck, I am left to run errands on foot. Screw wont go in. Get drill bit from hardware store. Not big enough. Return for another. Sweat as I work brackets into the hardwood frames. All the while, hanging on a hot cellphone which is suffering from overuse. Ikea, you are not user friendly.

But, as the apartment of the young little thing (aka daughter) takes shape, I can see her there, through the Boston seasons. Third one in our family of four to get a law degree (all the more remarkable since, before myself attending law school, I don’t think I had ever even met a lawyer; it wasn't a profession manyof us contemplated back in the Poland of the sixties and seventies).

Her apartment is just at the edge of campus, but in a neighborhood that I like. Her blocks have an elementary school, a corner park, a community garden.

Still, you can’t hide from Harvard, not this close to campus. The café up toward Porter Square is so lovely, but, before the semester even starts, it looks dangerously like a classroom, all “desks” facing forward, all “students” focused more on what their reading than on each other, the food, or the prettiness of the day outside.




A few more days of Cambridge. Of building and setting up and even maybe of reading texts together – she hers, me mine. The summer slips into fall without anyone even noticing.

from Cambridge: day one

It has been suggested that I may do well with a get to know Cambridge kind of day. You know, one with a solid brunch and a few pokes here and there to get a sense of the place.

My previous visits here have always been very goal directed. This one, too, has an agenda. It includes (for today) getting the truck unloaded, finding a Home Depot and returning the truck to its home base somewhere in the bowels of the city.

Oh, sure, I found plenty of stellar moments. Like locating the farmer’s market just outside our (hotel) door. Most markets I have gone to, outside Madison, seem shoddy little things, where abundance translates to a few bins of this or that. But the Cambridge one was bursting with good stuff. So how can you not love a day that starts with a look at these?





And, too, Cambridge has cool alleys and side streets. Ones like this:





Then, on the other hand, there are the scenes that cause you to wince at the juxtaposition of it all. You can’t miss them here. Like this one:




Not to forget though, I am here to be helpful, so my camera rests for significant portions of the day as I unload, wipe down, install. I figure it’s the last of the big moves for me. May as well go out with a bang. Have to maintain my reputation as being the one who can lift over and beyond what you would imagine. Hearty Polish peasant stock, you know.

road trip! (finalé)

Well now.

Well now!

That was a road trip to end all road trips.

I had it all this day – 800 miles of traffic, non traffic, rainy skies, clear skies, stormy skies, STORMY SKIES, so stormy, more lightening crisscrossing the skies than I’d ever seen in the space of a day. A week. A year! I swear!

800 miles with no food, bad food, super bad nothing food.

... of getting lost (how can you get lost following just one road across the country???? – hi, Ed? could you please google…). Of realizing that we set out too late (shouldn’t have watched the motel movie last night, shouldn’t have posted, should have been up at the crack of dawn). Of road construction. Of parking lots that do not like truck drivers (why do we have to park five miles away from the rest stop?).

Of New York state vineyards, in colors that I cannot describe. Setting sun colors (for at the time, there was, briefly, a sun).

I must return here to the storms: oftentimes, we were fooled into thinking we were done with them, but we never were, not to the end. Such downpours, such angry heavens. Such lightening!

…Of foxes darting out in front, of music, of rainbows, and even of fireworks, somewhere, randomly south of Albany.

We pulled into Cambridge at midnight. With a sigh of relief. And a huge smile.

What a hell trip. Loved every minute of it.

(just one photo,shot from the right side of the speeding truck: an optimistic little number, with skies of blue and grapes of gold)

road trip! cont’d

In Chicago: packing, lifting, stacking, carrying down to the curb. Finally, furniture and daughter, loaded in. Ready to go.

Wow, is it noon already?

Get on the Kennedy heading south and east.

Misleading first minutes:





Reality: worst traffic issues ever. Time spent driving from north Chicago to south Chicago: 3 hrs 50 mins.

There’s a sign saying trucks have to stick to the two right lanes.
I’m not a truck! I have two axels.
You are a truck.
Damn.

The truckers’ lane is at a standstill.

Cars edge in, truckers stand still. We are standing still.

For five minutes, let me not be a truck.


Books on tape!
Computer gets plugged in, selections are made.

Can’t hear a blasted word. The road, the truck, they’re all loud. The CDs are quiet.

We switch to music.

Finally. We lose the traffic and pick up speed in Indiana. Ha ha, ryan, in the comments said Indiana has great storms. We have blue sky, ha ha.





You know what? That’s not a clear blue, that’s a storm blue.

The rain comes, Thunder. Lightening. Whoa, need to slow down. The friendly skies are back in Chicago. Behind us.





We are chasing the storms.
By Toledo, we’re ready to quit for the night.

Road food!
A glass of wine, may I please have a glass of wine?
I’ll find out for you. People don’t normally ask for wine here.


Highway 90: it makes it’s way from my home in Madison, straight to Cambridge. I’ve done this trip more times than I care to remember.

This time, it came with storms.

And with a rainbow. No photo this time, but trust me. A rainbow.

Road trip!