Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

It’s a sonnet, of course, one of my favorites, another that I can recite from memory, although it’s been a while, so you may have to give me a minute to remember it all. But it’s another one that’s beautiful and yet also delicious mouth candy.

I love how the “sink and rise and sink and rise and sink” is almost like cheating, kinda repeating for lack of anything else to fill the line. But then it’s also just sorta going along with the old saw about going down for the third time. But by far my favorite part is the somewhat timidly hesitant, yet ultimately emphatic last line. Just so.

We go back to the beach to search more for my glasss. It’s rained pretty hard overnight, so it’s a fairly desperate, long-shot kinda search. We look for about half an hour before I decide to just about give up. I walk and search a bit north, far further north than I figure they are, far from where I thought I last had them.

And I find them.

Dawn leaves to go for a walk on the beach. She invites me to go with her, but I’m feeling drunk and lazy and decline. Just a few minutes later I change my mind and go running after her. I get to the beach and think I see her just a little ways north. I hurry to catch up, but then when I get closer I realize that I’m following someone else. So I turn back south.

It’s getting darker as it gets later. It’s not exactly dark, but it’s not especially bright anymore either. I take off my glasses, and I can see a little bit better. I hang them from the neck of my t-shirt.

I finally find Dawn, who’s walking back from her stroll to the south. We walk a little, then I go chasing after a little crab. A few minutes later I realize that I’ve lost my glasses.

We spend quite a while looking for them, as it gets darker and darker. As it does actually get dark. We can’t find them.

We rent bikes, Dawn and Erin and I do, from the rental place about a mile up the road. Then we ride them further north to the Currituck Beach Lighthouse. Takes about thirty-five minutes to ride to the lighthouse, a bit longer than I was calculating. And it’s hotter and sweatier work than I planned as well.

They’re strong, sturdy bikes. Lead sleds, Dave Corkran would’ve called them. There’s no gears, just the one speed. For a lot of the way we ride just on the edge of the roadway; other times there’s a path on the west side.

We rest on the front porch of the gift shop at the lighthouse for a while, Erin and Dawn in the rocking chairs on the porch. I go in and marvel over the models of ships that they have. The biggest most beautiful one is of a cutter, but it’s six-hundred dollars. The affordable one they’ve got for a hundred bucks is really just a cheap toy. An expensive cheap toy.

Up atop the lighthouse we try to spot a plane or planes taking Rob and Carol and John and Steve on a tour of the Outer Banks. Erin gets a text message from Steve just as they’re arriving, and we see the plane. I do giant waving and the pilot dips his wings. Great fun.

We take it slower on the ride back, stopping for a beer on the way. Erin is nice and lets me finish her beer as well. The bartender gives us a tip as to the ride back, telling us to take the private road through the country club. Dawn and Erin just want the straightest way back, but I take that scenic route. There’s one hill where I have to get off and push, but it’s a much more pleasant ride back. They get home maybe five, ten minutes before I do.

Feels so good just to fall back into the pool.

Today is Monday and fishing day for the boys. Last year we went trolling way the hell out in Pamlico Sound. Too fast, too loud. So this year we’re not going nearly as far or as fast. And turns out we don’t especially catch much either. But that’s okay.

And Erin joins us, so it’s not exactly just the boys. But since she seems to be a more avid (and better) fisher than most of us, it’s all okay by us.

We get to the boat rental place right around nine, and we’ve arrived before any proprieters or employees. Pete soon rides up on his bike though. We fill out forms and sign waivers and whatnot, and Pete then wades out to retrieve our boat. He brings it in and then shows us (mostly Rob) how to drive the thing. Plus how to switch gas tanks if we use up all of the one. We’re all aboard so Rob putters us out maybe a mile, to just under the bridge, and we cast off.

We mostly use shrimp as bait, although there are some blood worms as well. We have a pool for who catches the first fish and the most fish. We go home with no fish, as it turns out. Mostly Erin catches crabs, so I think she wins the pool, although I don’t think she ends up getting anyone’s money.

I mostly wear a life jacket and am the only one who does. I consider myself a pretty good swimmer, but I figure in any boating accident I’m going to get like bumped on the head and fall overboard unconscious, so I want the life jacket for when I’m out cold and unable to swim. It never does happen, and I look like an old woman wearing the stupid thing. Ah well.

We see some dolphins, which is pretty cool. Rob gets pretty good video. We’re all slathered up with sunblock, so nobody gets ridiculously burnt. We take home four crabs, at least one of them of legal size.

After Mass we head just a little east, over the bridge to Roanoke Island, then just a quick jaunt north to Manteo NC. We park close by the marina there, and I’m immediately captivated by a sailboat at the dock getting ready to cast off. And then there are boats and boats and more boats, so much eye candy to view. And then best of all is a short walk over the bridge to Roanoke Island Festival Park, where is docked the Elizabeth II. And she is glorious.

What she is, also, is a replica of a sixteenth century English merchant ship, like one that would have sailed across the Atlantic and landed at Roanoke Island in 1585. This Elizabeth was built here in Manteo beginning in 1982. She was launched in 1983 and formally presented to the state of North Carolina in 1984.

She’s a square-rigged ship, I’m excited to note, but she’s no ship of the line or even a frigate. As I’m talking to our guide aboard her, I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with the yard on the mizzen mast. No, it’s not stowed, says he, as I’m guessing. It’s always like this, rigged fore and aft. It’s for a lateen, and that makes this ship a bark.

Later we tour the encampment on the island, and they’ve got something of a workshop going. There’s a foot-driven lathe made out of a pole lashed to a tree. And there’s a working forge, where the blacksmith makes us a nail right before our amazed eyes. Just before we leave I finally figure out what this one strange bench with contraption is all about. It’s a shaving horse! I grab the drawknife off the workbench and sit on the shaving horse, chucking a random piece of wood in the vise and locking it down with the foot pedals.

Back over the bridge we have lunch in Manteo at the Full Moon Cafe. It’s like utterly Arctic inside, so we sit outside. A badass-looking biker couple arrive to join us outside. I hear the badass biker dude lean over and tell his badass biker chick, “It’s really a cute cafe inside.”

We take a brochure and plan maybe to take a cruise on the Downeast Rover, but the not-unreasonable twenty-five bucks each fare is cash only. We could swing putting it on the credit card, but we’re a little strapped for cash this week, so we make a plan to take this cruise for sure next year.

Finally we drive just a little further up the island to the Elizabethan Gardens.

We’re up early, around six, as we start our vacation today. First step is of course the long drive to the Outer Banks. Dawn’s plan is to leave at seven, but for some reason I’m under the impression that we’re shooting for eight. So somehow neither of us is satisfied when we leave at seven-thirty. And I never am able the whole way to get any sleep while Dawn’s driving. Somehow the Jetta isn’t as comfortable for sleeping as the Taurus was, although it’s sure nicer with the CD player.

We meet up with Dad and Main and crowd quite by accident at our usual McDonald’s on the way at about eight-thirty. We don’t especially join the caravan, however. We plan on seeing them again for lunch at the Border Station, but when I call Main when we arrive, they’re long past, on their way to Grandy’s. So then we tell them we’ll just see them at the Roadside in Duck, but then they’re still there at Grandy’s when we stop.

Traffic is terrible the last few miles to the Outer Banks, worst we’ve ever seen. And then there are no tables to be had at the Roadside, so Dawn and I head back to Kitty Hawk to hit the Wal-Mart for supplies. Then, finally, we make it to the house, Poet’s Loft.

After getting home from ballet class last week, Dawn and I walked up the block to Kevin’s house, to coordinate with him on taking care of our cats while we’re at the beach. Jonathan and Alana were on their stoop next door to Kevin, and we chatted with them for a few minutes. My first thought was that Alana looked pregnant, but I wasn’t going to say anything. Luckily, when I asked her how she was doing, she handily answered, “Pregnant.”

She’s about four months along. Jonathan saw me counting on my fingers and knew exactly what I was doing. He announced that the due date is February 9. Sonogram is scheduled in a couple weeks, so maybe they’ll know the sex after that.

And chatting with Alana, I told her the story of how I once witnessed childbirth. Always a good time telling that story. One of these days I’m really going to have to type it up and relate it here in this space.

I meet up after work with Kevin on the five-hundred block of Twelfth Street, on our way to ESPNZone for a drink before the kickball game. We were planning to meet at the Zone itself, but I happened to be walking by as he was parking his car. He goes to put change in the meter, but it’s after six-thirty so parking’s free. But then he totally has to give the change to the homeless guys begging for change, since he had told them he couldn’t give anything to them for having to feed the meter.

Kevin orders sliders to go with our beers. I’m surprised to learn when they arrive that sliders are apparently little burgers, like White Castle or Little Tavern. I have three of them anyway, but I feel bad for the poor little cows.

We make our way to the field, arriving right at seven-thirty. To our chagrin we find out that game time was seven-fifteen, not seven-thirty. But luckily the game before ours ran late, so we’re only just about to get started. Would’ve hated to forfeit because I was late.

The Parc Vista Ballers are in red shirts this season; last season they were in yellow. I remember this because I hung out with Kate last season on the night she reffed their game. And now I remember also that I was totally charmed by a particular young woman on their team. She, at first seemingly such a delicate thing, a rather pre-Raphaelite creature, kicked an infield fly that was easily caught by a defender, and she quietly but emphatically whispered a long, drawn out “fuuuuck” as she made her way back to her team.

We lose badly. The only good thing is that it’s the Ballers’ first win of the season. So good for them.

I was looking for an email that I thought I had sent out of my Yahoo account. Couldn’t find it, but I did notice something else.

Hey, did I make a typo in my signature? I did! I mis-spelled the yahoo domain, spelling it yhaoo.

What the hell? How long have I been sending that out?

A little research shows that I changed my signature somewhere between 22 Jan 2002 and 04 Feb 2002 from this:

to this:

Four and a half years it’s been! Hey, you people I’ve been emailing! Why haven’t you said anything, for pete’s sake?

Saturday morning. You know the drill. Eggs. Yoga. Whole Foods. Safeway. Home.

Then lunch and work on the house.

Except tonight we’ve got Becky coming over. It’s her birthday next week, Tuesday I think, and we’re having her to dinner. We’re making pizza. So we straighten and clean and make things presentable, instead of building like anything new. Then when Becky arrives we set down to some cooking.

It’s funny what people like on their pizza. I do mushrooms and black olives, Dawn black and green olives, and Becky green peppers. I don’t object to green peppers, actually, but we don’t usually do them on pizza. Dawn hates them, and hates them on pizza, I guess is why. I don’t like the green olives on my pizza. I figure black olives are canned, and therefore cooked, whereas green olives are bottled, as in preserved, in vinegar. Maybe they’re cooked beforehand, I don’t know. I think cucumbers are somehow cooked on their way to becoming pickles. But anyway, I love green olives, but only cold, either alone or in a martini. Don’t like ’em cooked.

Dawn also makes this cobbler thingy for dessert. Blueberry. No blueberries to be found in the produce department at Safeway, so we go with frozen. Or maybe there were some organic ones at some outrageous price. But frozen are fine for cooking. The cobble part of the cobbler comes from oats, which we find that we do not have when we go to look for them. Dawn saves me the trip back to Safeway when she decides that an instant oatmeal package will suffice.

We take a walk to and around Lincoln Park between pizza and dessert. I’m feeling quite fat and lazy, and have no desire to walk, but I’m glad that we do and feel all the better for it. And I’m also just generally pleased that we live so close to such a good size park. (Some quick calculations, measuring with Google Earth: A length of .16 miles and a width = .07 miles give us an area of .0112 square miles. At 640 acres per square mile, that’s a little over seven acres.)

We drive Becky home and then come back to all them dishes.

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

(painting: Bruegel, Pieter, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, c. 1558, Oil on canvas, mounted on wood, 73.5 x 112 cm, Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels)

A poem about a painting! How wonderful!

Although the poem is not strictly about the painting, of course. The painting is but an example of the feeling that the poem is trying to convey. That life is big, huge, gigantic and that things balance out somehow. That we can somehow continue, when so much suffering surrounds us.

This is a good thing. This is not good.

But what else can we do? How else are we to respond to suffering, to rockets and bombs falling today across the world on innocents? How am I to face one more day walking by the women who sit outside the homeless center, one whose own face she constantly rubs raw, the other in a wheelchair and who has enormous swollen legs?

So we can blot it out, when we need to.

And the poem rhymes, by the way. You may not notice, but it does. You may not notice because the rhyme scheme is like abca dedb fgfg e hh ijkkij. I can’t offhand think of another poem with that same scheme. Heh.

When I’d been thinking about featuring poetry in this space, this was one on the top of the list, along with Yeats’s Irish Airman, or anything Wilfred Owen but especially Dulce et Decorum Est, or what will probably be next, In Tenebris II by Thomas Hardy.