IS THE WORLD REALLY MY OYSTER? The Etiology Of Retail Impulse

     If I’ve missed saying thank you to you for reading my work and looking at my photographs, I’m sorry. I need every one of you to keep reading and responding to what I do. I spend part of every day answering e mails and thanking total strangers for their positive regard for my writing and photography. I try to acknowledge all the thumbs ups, comments and ratings. I’ve had a good year selling photographs and receiving acclaim for my writing. But, so far, no one has offered me a book deal. My dream is to combine my photography and writing into a package that would earn a little money. That hasn’t happened, and I find it discouraging. 

     I try to just shut up and write, but occasionally I falter in the faith that if I stick with it, one day my dream will come true. Usually, when I whine to my husband and girlfriends about this, they suffer though it, knowing that I’ll shut up eventually if they just let me go on. It usually goes like this: “I’m just not good enough, apparently.” I try to deliver this as a matter of fact, not an emotion laden bomb, nor an opener for my neediness. Unconvincingly, I say it like I don’t care, like I’m bigger than that, like my ego doesn’t need more than doing the work for the work’s sake alone. Artistic types lie about that all the time. “I don’t paint for other people; I paint for myself.” Ya, sure you do. If that were true, you’d never show your withered water colors to another living soul.  

    I whine and snivel on, often after too much wine or when fatigue weakened.  “My biggest fear is that I’ll never amount to anything, that I’ll never create anything noticeable, that I’ll just disappear into a cloud of artistic mediocrity. People will even remember Barry Manilow, but they won’t remember me!” I’m usually crying by this point and dangerously sloshing a glass of red wine around. On one of such occasion, a girlfriend snapped unsympathetically. “Oh for Christ’s sake! What the hell’s the matter with you? Look around, will you?  You are famous! Look how many followers you have on your blog! And people already know who you are when you are introduced; they know your name!  That’s never happened to me! And, all those Editor’s Picks on Open Salon for God’s sake! That’s millions of people! I don’t know what you want, lady. Look around you –you’ve already gotten someplace! You’re there! What more do you need anyway?”

     I don’t know the answer to that. But, I do know that whatever it is, I don’t have it, yet. My seemingly bottomless appetites disgust me. I’m a greedy, needy, dissatisfied little, piggy person. The best I can do is confess to it in the hopes of being freed from it (And who says I don’t understand Catholicism!). I will work at fearlessness in the face of my deepest, darkest fear that no one will ever know me - whoever I am, whom ever you are. 

     A few years ago, I had my first oysters on the half shell. I only had a couple shared from someone else’s restaurant appetizer, but I was hooked. I wanted more someday. My husband recently came home with a big, fat bag full fresh from a local oyster farm. He shucked while I looked on the Internet for preparation guidance. We laid the oysters on their shells nestled into a bed of crushed ice to keep them cold and stable. If they fall over their delicious liquor spills out which would be a shame. My husband pried them open, and then delicately released each one from its fleshy hinge. The ecru morsels were floated back into a personal pool of brine and pearl shell.

     Oysters are best slugged down in one gulp, like a shot, juice and all from their own shell spoon. Purists don’t add anything to them. I can’t leave well enough alone, though; I always need to tinker. I squeezed on a little fresh lemon. On some we had a squirt of brilliant, red, Tai hot sauce. Some I served with a dollop of cool, cucumber Mignonette with shallots and rice wine vinegar. Rice wine vinegar added just the right acidic sweetness complimenting the oysters’ sweet meat. The cucumbers married the earth and sea. We tried several with both the Mignonette and the hot sauce.  Each way we had them was more divine than the previous. They tasted like mouthfuls of the sea, the sky and the earth combined, floating in briny oceanic goodness. They were so delicious that we ate three dozen! I would have eaten more had there been more. There will never be enough oysters for me. We sat on our deck, looking out to the southward sea, savoring oysters and the last days of summer. What more could I have wanted? I don’t know, but something.

     I also know there will never be enough shoes for me. My husband likes to razz me about how many pairs of shoes I own. He says I have shoe stashes all over the place, like a drunk that has bottles of booze hidden around the house. He doesn’t’ really care how many shoes I own but rather sees it as a personality quirk. He also thinks I have a sunglasses fetish which may be true. When I came home with another pair recently, he said “What, more sunglasses?” “How many do you have anyway?” “Not that many,” I defended. 

     One of my girlfriends has told me I have a shoe problem, too. I winced when she said this, having assumed no reasonable woman would have thought such a thing. Wounded, I examined my shoe piles. There wasn’t one set I was willing to part with. They all have different purposes, moods, practicality, or total lack thereof to support their existence in my space. I need them all.

     A few days ago, I went shopping for a pulse meter for exercising.  Next to the pulse meters were pedometers. Logically, I went from the sporting goods store to buy a pulse meter to the TJ Max shoe rack. And it was not my fault, either. Some evil temptation entity put the pulse meters next to the pedometers to prod me toward the shoes in the next retail establishment. I can’t be held responsible for that.

     I came home without the pulse meter. But I did get two pairs of the coolest, sexiest, hottest boots ever heeled. When I put on those boots I felt like a rock star! Who needs a pulse meter when you’ve got great boots! So that was that: I had to have them. Winter is nigh upon us and I’ll need something appealing to mince through snow and then slog through mud season. I’ll need something that will help me to look better than I will feel. Then, while working on my retail rationalization, I saw it: the most must- have, to die for, out of this world accessory ever fabricated.

     Imagine a sort of boa, a silky, soft, begs-to-be-touched shawl-ish wrap of fur. Close your eyes and conjure a cuddly, delicious scarf of Finlandian fox died in every color of the rainbow. Slung around my shoulders, the colors came to life as I moved; I was a goner. I would have defaulted on my mortgage before I’d pass up that chunk of lovely luxury. “Winter will be coming,” came to my mind again like the words of a song.  

     When I got home, I had to try on everything.  I had all the makings of a great outfit. I slung my wrap around my shoulders, put on my new Jackie-O sunglasses then sashayed out onto the deck. I felt taller in my boots and I’m sure I looked younger. I looked out to sea. It was calm. The water surface undulated softly, a satiny blue color, like the shells of oysters. Every color of the sky breathed in my scarf -pink, purple, teal, midnight blue, and tangerine. For just a few minutes, I felt like a famous writer.

Winter Point oysters (Crassostrea virginica) served three ways, with lemon, Tai hot sauce (Sriracha is a common brand of Tai hot sauce) and cucumber Mignonette.

Oysters are an important form of aquaculture in Maine. These came from J.P.'s Shellfish in West Bath, Maine, just up the river from us.

For more on Maine aquaculture, click here.
Read this for an interesting article on local oyster farming:
http://www.workingwaterfront.com/articles/New-oyster-farming-technology-comes-to-Maine/13165/

SCENIC SUNDAY- Vacationland, Maine

View to south from Totman Cove, Phippsburg, Maine

So Hot the Deer Are Swimming! White-tailed Deer

White-tailed deer swimming in the Atlantic ocean.

This is the view from our house, looking south out to sea. See the deer near the mooring ball? The deer could swim straight to Morocco from here.

Deer have such fragile looking legs, it's hard to imagine them clambering on slick, sea weed covered rocks.

Deer swim like dogs. When they get out of the water, they shake like dogs do, too.

    This has been a hot, sultry summer with record breaking heat. That's not news to anyone in Texas, but we Mainer's aren't used to it. My husband installed an air conditioner in our bedroom. I was skeptical about the need for what seemed like a decorating monstrosity. Here on the coast, it's usually ten degrees or more cooler than inland and we have steady breeze off the water. However, we had enough days of ninety degree weather strung together to claim a heat wave and I had to eat crow. Even the deer took to the water!

     Deer swim well, but it doesn't look natural to me. They swim to escape predators and to find new territories for food and mates. In the photo above, the land mass on the left is the tip of Hermit Island.  "The Hermit" is over run with White-tailed deer as no hunting is allowed there. This was not the first time I've seen deer swimming the mile or so across the cove.  Hermit Island has more than 200 camp sites. Perhaps the deer object to the camper's noise, or choices in music. I start feeling a little crowded with summer people, too. I'm much too lazy to swim that far, though. Deer sometimes get into swimming pools, too which can be a disaster. Their sharp hooves tear up liners and if they can't get out, they drown. White-tailed deer weigh between 125 and 300 pounds. That would be a lot of dead weight to haul from a pool. Deer may seek relief in cool water from skin parasites, like ticks, Deer flies  and mosquitos. Or, they may swim just for the pure joy of it, like we do. This particular deer swam across the cove, got out, then turned around and swam back. To date, I've never seen a deer wearing ear plugs nor a bathing cap and, they swim in the nude. 

      Soon enough, before we even realize summer is really over, it will be cold and snowing. We'll be complaining about shovelling instead of the heat. The air conditioner will be gone and frost will coat the windows. I'll scratch a hole through the frost to look outside and shiver at the falling snow. Maybe I'll see a deer ice skating or skiing. I'll let you know.


(This post was chosen as Editor's Pick for Open Salon at http://salon.com. It is the ninth of my works selected as Editor's Pick.)

FLYday - Osprey

Osprey, or "Fish Hawk" in hover flight. Phippsburg, Maine May 2011

FLYday is an homage to what our feathered friends do best, fly.

SCENIC SUNDAY - Fishing Boats, Lubec, Maine

Fishing boats at anchor, Lubec, Maine - March 31, 2011

Scenic Sunday - Surf's Up!

Old Fashioned Boiled Frosting - Scenic Sunday

The Dangerous Season - Deadly Spring Fever

I don't know this man, but I can tell you that he's an idiot, self-absorbed and without regard for at least one of his fellow beings - his dog. I know this about him already because on March 1st, he was in a canoe on the open Atlantic ocean without a life jacket. The water temperature was 39 degrees Fahrenheit. Had he gone into the water, he and his dog would have been dead of hypothermia in under ten minutes. We saw him paddle from the cove and out into the harbor. He struggled to return against the wind and then the outgoing tide. David and I paced by the windows watching him drift further and further out to sea. I felt sick and wondered for a second if he was deliberately trying to kill himself, unlikely since he had his dog. In the summer, there would be loads of boat traffic. Someone already on the water would help him. But, before Memorial Day weekend, there is hardly a soul here. The fishermen who work the water all year don't exactly have an office one could call for an appeal for help; they work from thier boats. If we had a radio we could have made a general distress broadcast. The Coast Guard is an hour away if they are available at all. So, we watched helplessly, praying he didn't go into the water. We watched him dig hard into the chop trying to get to the "Red Nun," a navigational buoy midway between Hermit Island and the Newberry Point shores. He rose on swells and dissapeared into the troughs repeatedly. We could imagine his breathlessness, the burning pain in his arms are he worked, not being able to rest for a second for going backward if he did. We frantically called some guys working on a construction crew down the road who would have been able to see him after we lost site. There was nothing they could do either, just watch him helplessly and mumble "Dumb bastard! What a freakin' idiot" and hope for the best. The dog had no choice in the matter and would have died just as quickly in a flailing panic in the water. I took this photo when the man passed back by our house. He waived to me, quickly, not losing a paddle stroke. Squinting into binoculars, I grimaced, not waiving back. I wondered what he said when he got back to where he came from. Did he have any idea what a stupid, selfish thing he had done? Probably not. This is a dangerous time of year. It's the time when hopes are high that winter is over, finally. The sun is shining brightly and some days it's warm. The songs of birds are everywhere and they have changed to songs of love and desire in the trees. Gardeners and weekend yard warriors go outside for the first time in months and get really carried away. This is the time of year when back injuries are made and raw, oozing blisters appear where skin has ground off under the rake's handle. We'll all be lured by the sun into biting off more than we can chew. In January, seed catalogs with their shimmering flowers beckoned with the sirens calls of addiction, "Buy me, order me, lust for me, you want me!" And I did. Boxes are arriving in overnight mail from southern growers.  The boxes are stamped with red, screaming instructions,"PERISHABLE," "DO NOT CRUSH," "PLANT NOW," "REFRIGERATE!" I was so quick to jump in with my credit cards, but now I ask myself  "What have I done? How will I ever get all of this into the ground? Where will I put it?!" On the kitchen counter the little plants having rushed to get here, now languish, stranded. Shriveled tendrils of young plants wind their way through tangles of packing, yellowing in despair with every day that they aren't planted. Bare root stock, pathetic and hopeless looking sticks, begins to crack open to pinks, thin greens and creamy yellow begging to go into the ground. There doesn't seem to be enough daylight to get it all done fast enough. And yet,they seemed like such a good idea at the time. And then, it will snow. Deep, wet and heavy snow will crush my budding joy. Last night the temperatures plummeted and it will be colder still tonight. The pinging of hail and ice striking the greenhouse glass woke me. I imagined the primrose blossoms freezing and cracking apart. I thought of that man in the canoe, and his dog.