Good afternoon. And fair warning: if you’re the linear, A-to-Z, plot-perfect type, then today’s post should be skipped. Rest assured there are more “homeness” posts in store to explore notions of home, tidier essays and poems crafted with an identifiable trajectory rather than patchwork posts like today’s scrapbook-y mashup. If you’re curious and comfortable with enigmatic collage, assemblage art, evolving mind maps, you may find something of interest in this curious collection that includes a fragile artifact from our home away from home in the Caribbean, the perspective of Rosslyn’s boathouse from the Essex-Charlotte ferry, a turkey burglar, enduring pandemic takeaways, and the peculiar overlap of unrelated tests.
Sometimes ideas evolve slowly. Discontiguous concepts coalescing imperceptibly at first. Today’s Rosslyn Redux installment is of this sort. Preliminary. Fragments fumbling, kaleidoscoping within one another’s orbits without quite falling together. There’s just enough merging emerging — in my biased perspective, at least — to justify sharing this faltering foray despite its germinal state.
Let’s start with this sea urchin test.
Beautiful, right? Yes, slightly out of focus. Yes, abstracted to enhance the contrast, etc. But beautiful.
And evocative for me. A souvenir that sits atop our bathroom sideboard, reminding me of family vacations in Antigua.
A test is the hard shell of some spherical marine animals and protists, notably sea urchins…
[…]
The test of sea urchins is made of calcium carbonate, strengthened by a framework of calcite monocrystals… These two ingredients provide sea urchins with a great solidity and a moderate weight, as well as the capacity to regenerate the mesh from the cuticle.
(Source: Wikipedia)
So you see, sometimes a test is not a test. Or not the test you might have first imagined. Sometimes a test is a protective mobile home ensuring lightweight strength and regeneration.
I’ve mentioned elsewhere, and I will again, that Susan and I have an imaginary test. Perhaps no longer imaginary. Our test involves the ferry, riding the ferry, regarding Rosslyn from the ferry as it approaches Essex.
Since our earliest interest in Rosslyn — back in 2005-2006 when we were falling in love with this property but still unable to fathom how we might transform our pipe dream into reality — the ferry rhythm appealed to me.
[…]
A meandering meditation on the ferry rhythm so inextricably interwoven into our Rosslyn lifestyle. A contemplation of the metronomic ferry rhythm. Comings. Goings. Embarkations. Debarkations.
(Source: Ferry Rhythm)
Inextricably interwoven, the ferry. And the ferry test.
The contents of our ferry test better belong elsewhere, not tangled up with these scraps, three strands still unbraided, obliquely connecting home, sea urchin test, ferry test, Curtain Bluff,…
As if these jottings aren’t diffuse enough let’s toss in some turkey heist.
The voicemail had popped up on my mobile while I was riding to the airport in Antigua following ten days of sun soaked family relaxation. I wasn’t ready to go home much less hear that our house had been broken into by a wild turkey.
The connection was poor, the roads were bumpy, and the suspension was complaining.
I replayed the message.
Doug’s voice was tired and faltering, but it was the unlikely message, not the connection or his delivery which stumped me. A turkey broke down our door? What?!?!
(Source: Kamikaze Wild Turkey: The Gallopavo Imbroglio)
What on earth can I sea urchin test have to do with a turkey break-in?
Poking around in peripandemic photos, those early days when Susan and I had evacuated to Essex from a family vacation in Antigua, when we reignited long dormant fantasies about the icehouse, about transforming this historic utility building into a modern day work+life flex space, this golden hour gem jumped out.
(Source: Icehouse, April 11, 2020)
Sea urchin test, turkey vandalism, and Covid-19 pandemic? What?!?!
A day after my bride’s “polar plunge” in still frigid Lake Champlain, I’m swimming and drifting in the warm waters of Antigua, enjoying a free ranging conversation with one of my nephews, allowing salt and surf and steel band sounds (drifting intermittently from further up the shore) to exercise the sort of deep relinquishing that comes from knowing a vacation has only just begun.
(Source: Shirley Poppy)
Yes, a polar plunge. A ritual, more important for my bride than for me. Another point on the map. And as yet unhelpful map. A patchwork of notes, a placeholder for half baked ideas, the promise of these points meeting. Soon. Perhaps.
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