Four’s Flights

absolutely fabulous collection of guests this weekend, one of whom comes from Venice, my favorite place to visit in all the world! We had a lovely morning over coffee and popovers talking about the restaurants, so much fun! She’s invited us to stay at her place next time — will visit, but we’ll probably rent an apartment in the Dorso Duro as we usually do instead, when we go back. It’ll be great to go about with a real bona fide local though! Can hardly wait. Her husband comes from Spain, so we got an invitation to the family homestead there too — that makes four invitations to Spain in just one summer. Glorious! Spent some time singing along with Andrea Bocelli. He would have cringed, but we had fun.

   The other couple is charming too. The wife is into yoga and meditation and said she’ll teach me some new techniques and some yoga for injured hips later, by the pool. They all love the garden which is very gratifying as we’ve put so much work into it this season. The garden started out so rough and raw in the spring I thought it would take at least five take years to fill out and fill in, but it’s as lush and thriving as a tropical paradise already.  We’re so lucky to have such a richness of beauty all around us, and to be able to share it with such wonderful people!

Hope everyone has a splendid day, unspolied by any of the poisonous bile of some few poor sad angry souls on the message board.

🙂

last week, spent a wonderful rainy evening with one of my best friends. We first tried The Meetinghouse in Amagansett Square where the speakers were belting out “Froggy Went A Courtin'” and the waitstaff had to compete with close to a million screaming middleschoolers for volume control and walking space. We ambled in one door and bolted the other with barely a hello/so sorry, maybe another night/goodbye to the harried owner.

  Across the street at the ever-overpriced Hamptons–cliche-cachet Estia we found a section of empty booths, some peace and quiet, and a fabulous salad of fresh baby greens, blue cheese, and walnuts. The dressing was spectacular — complex, subtle, and delicate — every ingredient worked with the cheese and walnuts to bring out every variety of flavor. The wine was passable, the chicken taco miserable (twice cooked, stringy old chicken, no flavor in it or in any of the other bits and pieces of whatever was in there, really dreadful), and the dessert was about as boring as a dessert could manage to get short of removing all the ingredients completely, but S. likes chocolate pud so that’s what we shared. I would have opted for the flan — very few restaurants can muck that up.

    What was really wonderful was the quiet efficient service and the long talk. S has been having a shitload of trouble with the teenaged son of a friend. She’s been trying to help by having him stay over a few nights a week with her own son, who is older, and marvelously sane. The boy’s mother is a lush doesn’t want him anyway — never did.  He’s got a host of serious psychological problems, not hard to imagine given the mothering he’s gotten.  Or not gotten. S. tried to persuade his mother to get them all to a shrink to try some meds, but they did that once a few years back, got the boy onto prozac for some horrendously medically insane reason, at which point he went (predictably — who the fuck uses prozac anymore?) stark raving mad. They got him off the drug and are now terrified to try any other and also mostly don’t care a whole hoot, so the kid is miserable and desperate and everyone around him is in full dance-to-the-music-mode just to keep him from killing himself. Well, if they won’t, they won’t, and waiting it out is the best they’ll be able to do. They all take turns staying home so the boy is covered just about 24/7. So sad.

    We also talked some books, most notably Poisonwood Bible, how incredibly rich in language and stunning in its character development, and how masterfully written, and how magical to watch the persona of the father, the only one not given an actual voice in the novel, emerge full-blown, complex, intricate and quite mad,  as if in a fantastic negative-space drawing. Will have to read it again as S. mentioned some bits I’d managed to forget. I think as a work of fiction it rates right up there with “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” as the one of the two most exquisite, brilliant, powerful, and compelling novels I’ve ever read.

Great evening — such a gift, being able to spend time with a good friend talking about things important and wonderful to us both.

another funny one from The Happy Hamptons Hopping B&B Scene:

around 9:30 last night while I was unwinding after two very late check-outs, I got a breathless call from a young woman with a yellow lab who was visiting friends in Montauk. Said friends had decided that, after all, dogs were not very welcome in their home, so she wondered if I had a vacancy. I said I was half-way through the room change cleanup procedure but could have a room for her in half an hour, and told her my rate. She hemmed and hawed and asked “what’s the best I could do for her”. I hate hagglers. I quoted her a rate twenty dollars higher than the first one, and got a moment of silence from her (instead of the expected laugh or gasp), and then “Thanks, maybe I’ll call you back”. “That would be fine” I said, wondering where she had parked her brain, and she rang off, only to call back within three minutes asking for half the rate. Suddenly feeling very sorry for the yellow lab hopelessly adrift between unfriendly and apparently humorless human habitations, I said sure, why not. She said she’d be here in half an hour. An hour and a half later, with no apologies for the lateness of the hour, she appeared, checked in, paid up, got her receipt, and went to bed. Okay fine. The dog was sweet as a peach.

   This morning bright and early (7AM), she found her way into the garden (apparently unable to read, she never got the message, posted on both guest room doors, that the garden is open between 8:30 AM and 7:30PM). The dog is a charmer though, so I didn’t say anything about it. I asked her how she liked the room and the coffee. Both were fine, she said. Most people rave on about the peaceful quiet and the light in the private, walled garden, and a few have said the span of the 10 foot picture window with all the trees and ivy outside made them feel as if they were sleeping in a tree house. “Fine”, is all she had to say. After a few minutes of watching her dog and my Rosie swim together, this woman had the nerve to ask when I served breakfast. I stared in disbelief. In August, she’s paying about a third less than my lowest winter rate, at which time I don’t serve breakfast. She’d read all that on my website, which information I guess she’d forgotten along with how to read at all. I collected my wits and suggested she try the local deli, which has great bagels. “Oh” she said, and that was that. If I don’t see her again that will be fine, though I hope, along with forgetting how to read, she forgets her dog.

He’s a peach.

😀

I rub Tiger Balm

into Ernesta’s swollen feet

and teach her little girl

to fingerpaint

right on the table,

with no one yelling. 

Ernesta’s husband beat her

one-eyed bloody

and then

shot off her left arm,

leaving her with

a diminished complement

of the necessary.

The cook walks through the Big Room

on his way to the kitchen,

arms loaded with cans

from the county van.

Ernesta’s little girl asks

if he’d like to marry her mother.

“She used to have two eyes,

and both arms, you know”.

He says

he does know, and maybe next week,

but not today.

Today he’s making chili,

and would she like to help?

She would, and does,

 little hands red, blue, yellow, purple, green.

Ernesta says

 “Fuckinsumbitch”,

her eyes disciplined and dry.

She’s not talking about the cook.

And she knows there are just not

enough tissues.

 once I saw a brown toad

on the edge of a viburnum leaf.

He clutched a flower in his webbed foot

and looked askance at the sky.

Parking rage took all the breathing space in town,

even the thrift shop betrayed a sordid avarice,

not to mention

the  parking stickers, which litter uncontrollably.

Ice cream led a uniformed, coned and sprinkled charge up to seven dollars,

and the plate glass freon leak

summoned every ambulance in three townships.

There were oil slicks too. Every color.

Hot day blown away by winds,

two joggers in critical care,

the crooked tree limb that deranged them

lies ignored, its malice spent,

in the lane.

The itinerant toad is gone. Only the hawk, who every day calls out

his baleful epithets at the dogs,

circles

in a lazy updraft

unnaturally silent.

gorgeous morning, great swim, then chores. Always amazes me, how so much dirt accumulates every single day. It must have a lot more energy than I have.

   Does anyone else watch the soaps? There’s a group of women in a makeup company presumably  working out their problems with each other. One woman turned on the one she hates because she’s married to the man she loves and said “why are you even here?”. The woman she said it to turned and left the room, but she didn’t cry, good for her. One of the other women asked the mean one why she was so mean, and she answered, “I belong here, she doesn’t”. Funny how they get their story lines without even reading message boards pr chat room scrolls. Or maybe they do read them and that’s where they get their relationships and dialogue. Makes sense, right?

    Of course, on the soaps, all the women are young and beautiful, and none are bigger than a very small size two. No wonder they act like children.

  Miss Moon has that same attitude problem, always picking fights with the big, good-natured dogs, marking off her territory. She seems to be completely unaware of the fact that she’s old and sick, weighs all of ten pounds, and has only three teeth, none of which would help her out in any way, in a fight. Miss Moon’s a dog, so she’s not actually being mean. It’s just instinct. Maybe it’s the same with people, and they just can’t help it.

   Getting ready for company tonight — a cousin I love and her husband, really nifty people, warm and charming, talented, and intelligent. He’s an artist so we usually spend time telling each other how great our new work is. Well, his is, actually, though he could be just saying that to me to be polite. Either way, it doesn’t matter, since we all have a good time together, which is the point. Simple tonight, as have been so sick and am still pretty weak:  pizza and a big salad — they love pizza, even mine.

The heat was so icky all week was glad of the cold rain yesterday, though I think my B&B guests were a tad disappointed. They perked up when I told them they could have a free rain day when they come back next time — good policy, makes people all smiley. 

   After being so sick all week have decided to cut back on reservations to some degree, though have a feeling it’s been decided for me — very few calls except for last minute ones when we’re already booked. The migraine has finally lifted, and the loading dose of antibiotics Peter gave me for the sinus infection that knocked me so low all week has taken the edge off — am feeling almost human again. Those bamboo Amagansett windchimes really help.

   Have to get out into the sun and shake off the morning shill, especially the one from one of the guests, a single woman,  who is painfully, no, really PAINFULLY,  thin. She’s out jogging (again, and again, and again) and only managed to eat a quarter of a scone. I’d wish for her eating disorder if it didn’t come with such a  fragile personality. Had to give her a ladder-backed chair to stick under her doorknob at night because she freaked out about how open our house is, and then I found her rooting around in my linen closet because colored and flower printed pillow cases “make her nervous” — good lord!  Can’t understand why these kinds of people don’t book themselves into motels.   She’s also a bit of a piker — had booked for four nights and then changed her plans two days before her arrival, too late for me to book the empty nights she’s left me stuck with but then, wasn’t it my plan to scale back? Har. Joke’s on me.

   Had a beach cookout the other night with a couple of Frank’s (republican) clients, people who have a condo on the ocean east of Amagansett and had  a small fit of jealousy, wishing I could live on a private beach at the ocean — but being in that “colony” would drive me mad. Houses all jammed together, rules and regs, no dogs!  Nonetheless, it sure is lovely there — there’s nothing like the sound of the ocean. I was glad to get home from there — can’t complain, this is a lovely place — and worked in my garden for a while in the dark.  The moon was bright enough to see the weeds.

   Very peaceful here, and very private since Frank’s guys put back the section of the fence they had taken down behind the pool. No one can see it from the road what with the fence section and now the trees and weeds flourishing along the berm, so the skinny dipping is fine. Even sick all week, and yesterday in the cold rain, it’s a joy to swim naked under the branches of the cherry and maple trees in the early morning light.

 I didn’t think about my mother, or my grandmother, or even Daisy, which in retrospect shocked me. I can’t remember thinking about anything except the need to clean the kitchen, fold and  put away the random heaps of laundry, polish the oak table, pack my bag with a book on tape, two print books and two pair of reading glasses, just in case. Waiting rooms can feel like months. I guess other women might have thoughtof makeup or  a hair brush but I got into the car without another thought,  even forgot Miss Moon, just trying to breathe.

   The weight on my chest was oppressive, like a grimy August day. I’d been listening to the sound of my own breath since 3AM and was seriously tired of it — not the breathing, the listening. You’re not supposed to be so godawful conscious of your breath unless you’re meditating, which I was clearly not.

   The doctor’s office thermostat was set at “refrigerator”. Was very glad of the sweatshirt I’d remembered to bring but lay on the exam table wishing for socks, the squishy blue ones especially. I felt like a refrigerator with all those little blue tabs stuck all over me like post-its. Wondered briefly what my notes to myself might have been, but there were too many for my imagination, which wasn’t in working order.

   These modern EKGs are very fast and the verdict came in guarded-normal, a relief, though am booked for  more tests Friday. There was something about a sphincter in the diaphragm, some pills and medicine that tasted like a kid’s nightmare and finally a permission to go home wrested from Doc. S. with promises to call if I got worse. I refused a proffered jaunt to the hospital — told her I’d rather die at home. She told me I have to come back tomorrow with Miss Moon, and socks, just to say hi.

an excerpt from a message I received yesterday:

  “This is Kabir, a wonderful Indian poet. He’s talking about a clay jug, which means one’s own body or a clay jug; it doesn’t matter; they’re the same. He said:

Inside this clay jug, there are canyons and pine mountains and the maker of canyons and pine mountains. All seven oceans are inside, and hundreds of millions of stars. The acid that tests gold is there, and the one who judges jewels, and the music from the strings no one touches, and the source of all water. If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth, friend; listen. The God whom I love is inside. “

another hot, humid, no-raindammit day on the horizon so was up at 6 pulling weeds from around the three red maples to make sure that when the guys go in to weed-whack they won’t damage their trunks. What a gorgeous lot of trees out there — am constantly amazed they were just growing ignored and quiet as little mice out in the giant weed patch before we expanded the garden and brought them into the fold.

   Found a few old tennis balls which Rosie thought were spectacular and some human debris which neither of us thought much of. Sheppy found something a wild animal must have left and did her hand-stand-peeing-into-the-air trick which if I”m lucky  I’ll catch on tape one day. Someone will have to teach me to use the camera on “film mode”, but whoever that is, we haven’t met yet.

   Poor F. has had to swallow is grumpiness and rebuild the pergola back behind the one section of old berm we still have up beside the pool. The one he had the guys build originally ran all along one side of the pool, was too huge and obtrusive, and seriously cut off the view from the pool to the back of the garden where the Russian Olives live. Way back when we first hacked our way into that wildly overgrown back section, he’d thought of them as weed trees and had to be forced to not chainsaw them down, and now am so thrilled I stood my ground (and that they did too) because they are breathtaking lovely: graceful, lush, abundant — especially from the pool. Those silvery pale shades of olive green — they just do something to my heart. Past-life trace memories from Greece, I’d bet. There are a ton of them growing wild out in the back — can hardly wait till fall when we can transplant more!

  The new pergola is more square, with one tall section in the middle between two shorter sections — will look fabulous when we plant around the posts, train the trumpet and wisteria vines all over it, and when I put the old blue door back.  At some point we’ll probably make a pathway from the pergola  to the tree-well bench, as those two areas are very near each other — should tie in nicely.The whole thing is coming together with astonishing speed. Might even be finished (if anything in a garden is ever finsihed) before I die!

  Speaking of dying, in order not to do so any sooner than necessary,   F. and I rejoined WW yesterday. Found the first day surprisingly easy. Our first hurdle will be a beach party on Saturday night.  Depending on the guest situation, might just have an easy out and not have to go.

Crew’s here, have to go pull weeds again.