Snapshots

— I got sucked into The Adventures of Mark Twain almost against my will. It has a ham-hocked script that rushes through the events of Twain’s life (his wife, “You are an eternal boy … why don’t you write about boyhood?”, etc.) – but Fredric March is a favorite of mine, and I had never seen it, and I found myself blubbering like a MANIAC at the end when he was honored at Oxford. March’s face! Yes, uncanny resemblance to Twain, but it was the look in his eyes that really put me over the damn edge. Deep true acting can forgive even the most obvious of scripts.

— It was so brutally cold yesterday that my windshield wiper fluid froze into little bursting stars the second it hit the windshield. Today, the ocean around the jetties is frozen. Solid ice.

— We had two days of massive wind, roaring and throttling the house like a wild animal. It was more like a big presence, taking deep breaths, sudden pauses, and then roaring forward again. The wind felt TALL. It was wide, yes, but it was tall, too.

— Today not so windy, but I am going to go exploring along the jetties, so I can at least witness a partly frozen ocean.

— Watched Place in the Sun early in my time out here – of course I’ve seen it before – but the character of George got me to thinking about the Yo-Yo from last year. He is, essentially, empty, something broke a long time ago, and so he looks to others to fill him up. With opinions, feelings, desires, whatever – with life. He will be brutal about this, and unthinking, because it doesn’t come from a place of consciousness. It comes from a place of need. He will get this or that need fulfilled, but if someone gets too close, too intimate, then that person must be discarded, because on closer inspection what seemed to be openness and beauty and connection will be revealed as yawning nothingness. What he has been presenting to the woman is a mirror, not a self. He looks to others on how to behave, how to be. And so he knows that for him, the jig will always be up. He will always have to move on. Cutting his losses. I had never quite put it into the context of Montgomery Clift in Place in the Sun before, that terrifying mix of sincerity and greed. If you knew one side, you would swear that was all there is. But just ask Shelley Winters about that other side. Oh, but you can’t, can you? Girl is at the bottom of the damn lake. People like that always leave casualties, whether actually dead or no. It is an imperative.

— Went up to the little Block Island airport last night as the sun was setting and the moon was rising (at the same time). It was honestly too cold to be outside for long, but the scene – still and expectant – in the long long shadows of that time of day – was truly something else. The little planes sitting on the empty fields, the moon was full (or almost) and picking up the light of the setting sun, and nobody was around. The airport is near my house so I do see the planes lining up for landings, and it’s such an isolated windy spot that sunrise or sunset is definitely the time to visit.

— The gas station is here has very odd and specific and limited hours. I needed to get gas today and thought to myself, “I should call the gas station and see what their hours are …” That night, I walked to the only restaurant open on the island, a couple of doors up from my place, on a dark country street, to get some takeout. I sat there, waiting, and it was so cold out, freezing really, it took me 20 minutes to warm up. And sitting right next to me, waiting for her food, was the woman who works at the gas station. So I asked her what the hours were, she told me, and our nights moved on. Just thought that was kind of funny and indicative of what happens when you live an island whose population is so small during the winter.

— Oh, North Light, how will I live without you?