Anatomy Trains

In Maine, a spring fog and an autumn fog are different - the spring ones lie heavy like a blanket on a sleeping teenager, while you can feel the fall ones just want to clear like a 7-year old on Christmas morning.

I am down bailing boats and can barely see the trees on the shore above the dock. The lobstermen’s diesels are growling invisibly on the river. Then, from the top of the trees, sunbeams start playing with the silhouettes of the leaves, and it goes from a Turner to a Weston, and finally, with a burst of light, that chases the chill, to Wyeth - the October country of brushstrokes as fine as etching.

I was walking in my woods, and then in the streets of NY.� On the streets of New York, the other people are like trees - objects to be walked around, avoided.� I love walking in New York.� The shops don’t do it for me; the people do.� There’s at least one of everybody here.

The other night I walked out of a dinner held upstarirs from my local spa. As I came out the front door (one beer to the good), there was a fountain, that made the exact same noise as rain. I hunched into my ‘walk to the car in the rain’ posture. When I got out from under the portico and there was no rain, I was suddenly vitally aware of how silly it was to take on that posture - you get just as wet walking straight up to the car.

We live very rurally, and everyone out here likes to keep to themselves, so we very carefully titrate our interactions with our neighbors. We all like to be neighborly, but we don’t want to be trapped into some social whirl where we have to see each other too often, or entertain regularly. It’s an interesting dance to watch: newcomers attempt to be social, holding dinners and inviting everyone, and then after a time routinely and decidedly pull in, like a whelk into its shell, not emerging for several months or a year.

We had a few neighbors in last night. It was great, but that’ll do it for this year. It is not the anonymity of the city (which is wonderful, in my opinion, as much as we lament it as a sign of degrading civilization) but it is our own way of maintaining the aloneness that all who choose to live here need.

Americans are constantly told that they don’t mind giving up small things to be safer - like taking off their shoes at the airport. Well, I do. It is an indignity I would prefer not to have to submit to just because one crazy tried to flick his Bic at his sneakers. It feels like bowing to a threat I do not feel - or rather, I feel the threat is from the government, not the potential bombers. It feels like shaving the pubic hair from a woman who is having a baby - a totally medically unnecessary show of power on the part of the hospital and the patriarchy.

The horses are very conscious of their privileged lives, and very sincerely grateful. Contrast that to the cats, who are sure it’s simply their due.