Long time no post! And now the proverbial returning-to-blog phrase: I hope to keep the posts coming and frequently! How've you been? In short, things have sucked, but may have been much worse, and are improving here...

The past few months have been ... well, they have been. Work problems, housing problems, health problems, car problems, all circling and swirling, slooping and slopping together as so many clothes and detergent bubbles in a Maytag washer cycle. And yes, they're clearing up slowly. Like line drying clothes. And like line drying clothes, I suppose these things are better to have happen in summer and autumn, than in winter. Challenges are inevitable, but sometimes they bunch together, and become oil gathering on the surface of water. At moments, I have felt like that otter, like that duck, going about his business when a banana-peel-slip on the bridge of an oil tanker leads to disaster. And somehow, unbeknownst to me, my fur, my feathers, have a coating of crude petroleum that won't rinse, lick, or shake off. But now an environmental cause that cleans beaches and wildlife after oil spills, has begun to work on me and my world. And through each of these lumps to the head, my wonderful woman has been steady and true, even and straight. For this, I am so very grateful. And I am grateful for the invisible hand that has kept me from steering into the rocks of disaster.

This is how the ocean looks must days on the Massachusetts South Shore. Sometimes, we get some winds and there is a swell, with rideable waves. Mostly, it's pretty calm. Lake-like.

Two weeks ago on St. Patrick's Day, we had a pretty big snow storm, and the Atlantic Ocean was pretty busy in these parts. These pics were taken around 11:30 AM, about an hour after high tide.






The black spots on this photo are IN it... that's all debris being washed aobut in the waves. Do not surf in water like this: it'll break your board, and maybe you!

This is a lobster trap, one among many, that was trounced upon the rocks.

That's a storm drain that empties out onto the beach.


Here's the beach access through the sea wall. Those cement blocks aren't there during the summer. In winter, they lay across the open space, intended to block the flow of water. Here, they have been puched over to the left... by man or nature? That water in the access is sea water draining back out to sea after coming over the seawall.




This house is a favorite of mine. You can see the water coming up the sides of the wall. It's about an eight foot drop down to the rocks, and on the ohouse side, it's about three foot high. The sides of this house are lined with beach-stones, and you'll see how that's a really good idea, given it's location. The fella who owns it helped me dig my car free after I stuck it in the sand this past fall.

Those meter-high posts are spaced about ten feet apart (yes, I'm mixing metric and SAE measurements). The bursts coming over the wall were even bigger an hour earlier that day.

This is a series of pictures from Scituate Harbor in February. My favorite is the boat, frozen at the dock.

Twenty years ago today, Mr. Andy Warhol passed away. Shortly before leaving town, I took my girl there to see the headstone. This is from the Post-Gazette:



In other news, last week I went out skating in my neighborhood... by myself. It was not the wisest thing to do, perhaps, but it was exhilirating, and the sub-freezing weather last week did not let up. Now, there are myriad factors that should sway people from casual pond skating, like unseen springs feeding into ponds, etc., that suggest that one may meet with disaster. In the area this winter, I have seen folks out skating, setting up hockey nets, and NOT falling into frigid waters. I wore my neoprene surfing gloves just in case I fell in, with visions of frozen fingers being unable to turn the key in my car's ignition when equipped with wooly mitts. All said and done, the pond by my house was frozen solid and skate-worthy, so I spent about forty five minutes exploring all of the nooks and glens that are accessible by boat only in warmer air.

I learned to skate when I was four, indoors at a rink. Maybe fifteen years ago, my Dad, the Filoni brothers, Dan Desena and I went out to Canonsburg Dam in January. That was my first and only outdoor skating on a natural surface until last week. The five of us played half-court hockey on the frozen lake.

Not even Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue I kept me from going out. I borrowed this from the library last week, as part of my ongoing self-taught film-studies course. One day, I hope to teach a film class, if only to my biological children or nephews and neices. Right. Decalogue I is the saddest of the series, and I knew nothing about it. I planned to have dinner, watch an installment of this 'great' movie series and then skate. Who knew ("Not I," said the Matt) that the first episode is about a kid falling though the ice when skating? who knew this would be his end? Again, not me. But I watched it, and went skating anyways. And this speaks of convergence.

Another minor sampling of this convergence happened last week, again with the library and home DVDs. I borrowed Lonesome Dove and watched it at home last week, only to learn in the special features that it was 18 years ago, almost to the day (certainly the week) that the mini-series came out. February 4. A big deal? Am I Karnak? No, just a mere observation. I also observed that my Dad's birthday is today: he would be 74.

I Open My Fertile Fields for You to Cultivate.
- or -
Irony, Inwardness and Other Self-Centered Thoughts.

All of this stems from a dictionary definition of the word "irony." You know what it means, don't you? Some, like our friend Alanis Morissette, may say that they do, but this is arguable. You can guess that the reason why a 7th grade English teacher might look up the word IRONIC is probably obvious, but the real reason I did, you would not guess. So let's start at the beginning.

In the beginning of my teaching career this year, before there were students, there were last years' artworks left in the halls. Yes, ancilliary cleaning crews strip, wax, and polish the floors each summer, but nonetheless, a paper mache mermaid sat awaiting me on the floor in an empty hallway this past August, days before any students had arrived. I picked said beauty up from the floor, and rested her fishy form on the window sill outside the art room. She remains there to this day, and this day is the day I stuck a post-it note on her lap that reads:
"How am I Ironic?"
Well, it should be obvious to the artist who created her, and anybody familiar with paper mache, that she is an incongruity between what is expected and what actually occurs. Nobody expects a mermaid constructed out of materials that quickly dissolve in saltwater, thus the irony. But, we'll see who, if anybody notices this. You, gentle reader, are miles, even time-zones away, and can chortle to yourself about the dry mermaid who sits silently with an unanswered question atop her lap: "How am I Ironic?"
We'll see if anybody answers, or notices, even.

Yes, but in looking to see if she truly is Ironic, I noticed some notes from Ed Said's book Beginnings on a scrap of paper that I found in my dictionary, marking the page before Irony. The notes read:

"A beginning represents a discontinuity with what precedes it. It opens fertile fields to be cultivated by others, allowing for the formation of subsequent texts. There must be the desire, will and freedom to reverse oneself, to accept the risk of rupture and discontinuity; for whether one looks to see where and when he began, or whether he looks in order to begin now, he cannot continue as he is. It is very difficult to begin with a wholly new fresh start." - Edward Said, Beginnings: Intention & Method p. 34

Indeed, this is the genius behind ingenius ideas: They make a wholly new and fresh start. Genius is related to genes, and Genesis, the root word meaning (my note/idea, not Said's).

"So borrowed from reality, and selected by necessity or need are then employed though the act of creation to make a new world or idea. These elements are thus refashioned or transformed." - Edward Said, Beginnings: Intention & Method p. 34
We have been reading Cosmogonies, Origin Stories, or Creation Stories, and I can't help but find something... cosmically ironic (?) about the discovery of notes from Said's Beginnings on the same day I left a note from my beginning, and felt a little 'ruptured' and 'discontinuous.' I suppose I should set down my wine glass and return to grading essays. I hope that Sunday I can paddle out on the water in Rhode Island and get some surf. I despeerately need it.