My Life as a Sponge

Sponge Brain by Jeffrey Allen Price

I have always been too spongy. That is a major flaw in what makes me me. In fact, if there were a procedure available to become cold and heartless and care only about myself, sort of like the way my cousin Suzanne already is, I would do it.

Being spongy means never having any control over anything that happens to you. For example, things can be going swimmingly in my life, but if someone I know calls and tells me how everything in their life sucks, I am then totally bummed out and depressed--sometimes just for a few days, sometimes much longer--over their sucky life. I have tried and tried to get over this, attempting to replace my sponginess with a callous, devil-may-care attitude of who gives a shit, that's your problem, but to no avail.

Once, a long time ago, I almost succeeded. But then it caught up with me and now it's back, and here I am again, sad because one friend is in the ICU with god knows what, and another relative is all but homeless, and a third is in a wheelchair in a nursing home. A fourth is living on Nantucket Island oblivious to everyone's problems but her own. They all make me so sad.

The Maine Way

There's an article in today's Wall Street Journal about whether or not it is appropriate to wave at passers-by while out riding your bike or running. I skimmed it, and it seems to say that some people do and some people don't, and it's nicer if you do. Here in Maine, that sort of discussion would never take place. They don't. End of story. They also don't smile unless you have the same last name or have been formally introduced.

I walk a few miles every day, and often pass someone running, biking or walking in the opposite direction. The usual reaction around these parts is to lower the head and turn it slightly away from the passer-by. I am getting quite good at this. I also have hundreds of smiles saved up, no longer wasting them on people I don't know. In fact, the last time I smiled at strangers was back in March, in Haiti, where everyone smiles a lot, even if they don't know you. Poverty does that, I guess.

Why I Shop at Bean's

There is simply nothing cuter than a puppy. I want one all the time. I see the pictures and I ache to hold one, burying my nose in its soft, mushy tummy and smelling its puppy smell. But the thing is, they don't stay puppies and soon enough they are not cute at all. Okay, they are still cute sometimes, but not enough to put up with the times they're sick and have to wear one of those cones around their necks, that is so depressing. And not enough to make up for needing to find someone to watch them whenever you want to go and live your life somewhere else for a few days. No, not enough. So I don't have a puppy, or a dog, anymore, which is a shame, because there aren't that many things to have or do in the world that are anywhere near as adorable.

There's travel, which is okay if you can stand flying and road food and hotels and always talking to people you will only know for a short time. And look, there it is: the Taj Mahal or the Grand Canyon or the Eiffel Tower, and they look just like they look in all the pictures you've seen your whole life, except you are right there--along with the pulsating throngs of other people, all with cameras, snapping pictures, which is so dumb because as I said, they look just like they look in all the pictures. (There are already a lot of pictures of everything.)

My husband went off to New York this morning and he wanted me to go with him. I thought of flying--going through the nude bar at security and then getting strapped into a tiny seat, finally with any luck landing at LaGuardia and taking a crazy cab ride with one of those terrorist drivers speaking Arabic into their cell phones, always with the Arabic, on the LIE into the ancient Midtown Tunnel, then coming out into the traffic and the noise and the steamy grates and the hot dog vendors, and I just couldn't do it. So here I am in Maine, with little to do but at least no pulsating throngs, wanting a puppy. It's times like this I go to L. L. Bean's. They're always open, and even if most of the merchandise is made in Cambodian sweatshops, all in all it's a pretty cheery place.

Here's to Your Health

An alien just arriving on our planet today would likely feel very sorry for the Earthlings: What a pathetic mess we all are! I say this because, as I do each morning seeking freelance writing work, today I logged on to Craigslist and for a change clicked on Volunteers--after all, even if I can't earn any money I can still do some good for someone else. In the past I have found interesting things there, but today every posted position had to do with the crumbling health of the citizenry. For your amusement I print below, verbatim, the kind of volunteers currently being sought in the state of Maine:

Do you or a loved one have psoriasis?
Have you had a heart attack or stroke? 
Do you have one or more warts? 
Does bowel pain put a cramp in your lifestyle?
Would you be interested in taking part in a Type 2 Diabetes research trial? 
Do you suffer from migraine headaches? 
Are you suffering from severe facial acne? 
Do you have COPD, emphysema or chronic bronchitis?
Are you a healthy Type 2 Diabetes sufferer?

Happily I was able to answer "no" to each and every question, which means once again I failed to find meaningful work. But it got me wondering what ordinary people are doing to have so many illnesses, syndromes, diseases and afflictions visited upon them. Is it possible that Earth is not an appropriate environment for humans after all, or are we just doing something fundamentally wrong?

The Hovel Next-Door

Is this in our future?

In all the houses we've lived in over all the years of our marriage, my husband and I have always been good friends with our next-door neighbors. The names may have changed but the circumstances were fairly identical: The four of us socialized--seeing movies, dining out often and toasting one another on New Year's. Birthday gifts were exchanged. We offered aid in plumbing emergencies and provided chicken soup for the flu. It was grand. We enjoyed this camaraderie up until the previous occupants of the house next-door, but then they moved two hours away and you'd think we'd loaned them money. All the fun was replaced with complete silence--although they were our close friends when they were neighbors, now they're nothing.

So, still licking our wounds when the new people came along, we were hesitant to embark upon a warm and cozy relationship. Still, there they are, literally a stone's throw away. The hope exists that if and when an emergency arises, as they do out here in the country, we could count on them and they on us, but as certain elected officials have taught us all too well, hope is highly overrated.

They arrived in winter when the ground was frozen--too frozen for them to dig a hole and install their mailbox. So they stuck it in a plastic bucket, filled the bucket with rocks, and there it sat until the thaw, or so we assumed. But now it's June and the thaw has come and gone, leaving the ground soft, and there the mailbox still sits in the bucket of rocks. Finally, frustrated, Mitch brought over his post hole digger several weeks ago, along with a pineapple to sweeten the deal, assuming the young, new neighbor might have lacked one. (The tool, not the fruit.)

Today the mailbox remains in the plastic bucket, an eyesore out there on our otherwise lovely country road. "It's like the Beverly Hillbillies," our cross-the-street neighbor mutters, passing by on her daily morning walk. Another local resident, out for a jog, rolls her eyes at the offending bucket. For Maine, that's tongues wagging.

The new neighbors, who are not even so new anymore as to deserve that moniker, still have our post hole digger, and Mitch thinks maybe he should just go on over there and dig the damn hole and stick the damn mailbox in the damn ground himself, just like the neighbor on their other side, out on his riding mower one day last week, mowed their bushy front lawn. I say forget it. They are not friends, they are neighbors, and as far as I can tell, neighbors are only friends until one of you moves away. As for the mailbox, I doubt that it is hurting our property values, and if it's still there when we decide to sell, we can dig the hole before our first Open House.

Inside the Bell Jar

I suppose I should be happy to have been mostly unsuccessful for most of my life. It seems that those who do succeed are mostly unhappy, having something to do with an inability to see themselves as anything but hateful. What's got me going on this tangent is Sylvia Plath's novel, The Bell Jar, which I deliberately avoided reading before but am reading now, it having fallen off my bookshelves yesterday while looking for something else. I believe it was purchased by my son for his high school English class with his favorite teacher-- and mine by proxy-- Mr. Joe Riener, back in 2004. (Ultimately Mr. Riener was fired for being too good a teacher.) Since the book fairly jumped out at me, and since there's no time like the present, especially at my age, I started reading it right then and there.

Well, that Sylvia sure could write. It's amazing how well; many of her sentences demand several readings just because they're so delicious. Nevertheless, at the enviable and still-young age of 31, despite much critical acclaim and many prizes and being published everywhere and having two very young babies, Plath stuck her head in the oven one cold winter's day and turned on the gas. Besides that being sad, it seems like such an uncomfortable way to die, and such an awkward position in which to be found. I say if you are going to kill yourself do it with dignity like James Mason playing Norman Maine in A Star is Born--drop your robe, preferably on the beach in Malibu, walk boldly into the ocean, and just keep going.

Anyway, I digress. I don't want to talk about suicide, I want to ponder instead why so many people with so much talent are so unhappy, while all the dolts with no talent at all and living horribly dull lives sit around watching reality TV and eating Taco Bells choose to go on forever. I guess I'm somewhere in the middle, although reading Plath's novel makes me slightly uncomfortable at how many traits I share with its author. Except for the fame and success, of course. Thank God.

The Art of Eating

My husband and I went out for dinner recently, and honest to god, I did not understand at least half of the menu, and it was an American restaurant. I did notice that "Roasted Pig's Face" was one of the entrees. (I resisted.) This trend is disturbing, especially since I am considering opening a restaurant and thus have begun thinking about the copy for the menu. Even if the food is plain, it better not sound that way or the customers will leave before they even taste anything. With that in mind, I decided to hone my menu-writing skills with my simple two-egg breakfast this morning:

Spinach, Dill and Blueberry Omelet

Two extra-large, free-range, local pasture-raised Eggs with chopped, organic, Maine-grown, pesticide-free Baby Spinach leaves, dried all-natural and organic Lao coriander (dill) and Wild Maine organic high-bush Blueberries cooked in clarified butter (ghee) and served with slices of fair-trade "Sugarloaf" South American Pineapple and a generous portion of Driscoll's non-GMO, premium, all-natural, organic jumbo Strawberries

Coffee

Organic, fair trade certified, dark roast Wicked French whole bean Maine-roasted Coffee, with a smoky, rich and smooth taste and no bitter aftertaste

From the Bakery

Gluten-free, organic, whole-grain and seeded 100% hulled wheat Breads are available upon request, however bear in mind that carbohydrates are addicting and unnecessary for a healthy diet