Summer's End

The cool mornings and slanting light of evening are reminding me that our summer is drawing to a close.

Unlike the East Coast, this year Portland's summer has been brief, cool, and drizzly. We've had almost no hundred degree days, few of the brutal dog-mouth days that make you want to set in the shade and do nothing.Now the nights will draw out, and clouds lour in, and the cold rains of autumn begin.

"For summer there, bear in mind, is a loitering gossip, that only begins to talk of leaving when September rises to go."

- George Washington Cable

Thalatta, thalatta!

Well. Here it is, halfway through August and I have yet to find my voice. I am wandering about lost in midsummer, unable to find anything compelling to speak of. My family is fine, I'm actually on vacation at the moment, but I have been unable to get a moment to myself to sit and think, and write.

And I can't really find anything to write about that doesn't drive me batshit crazy.

So I am going down to the Oregon Coast with my family for a little while, in hopes of enjoying some quiet time in a peaceful stretch of the coastline near Tillamook. Hopefully the sea will work its way with me, as it has in the past, and restore a portion of breadth to my vision, and some depth to my reflection.Thalassa by Louis MacNeice

Run out the boat, my broken comrades;
Let the old seaweed crack, the surge
Burgeon oblivious of the last
Embarkation of feckless men,
Let every adverse force converge--
Here we must needs embark again.

Run up the sail, my heartsick comrades;
Let each horizon tilt and lurch--
You know the worst: your wills are fickle,
Your values blurred, your hearts impure
And your past life a ruined church--
But let your poison be your cure.

Put out to sea, ignoble comrades,
Whose record shall be noble yet;
Butting through scarps of moving marble
The narwhal dares us to be free;
By a high star our course is set,
Our end is Life. Put out to sea.


For those of you fellow military historians reading here you probably recognize the cry of Xenophon's troops at reaching the Black Sea, having marched back across Asia Minor:

"On the fifth day they reached the mountain, the name of which was Theches. No sooner had the men in front ascended it and caught sight of the sea than a great cry arose, and Xenophon, in the rearguard, catching the sound of it, conjectured that another set of enemies must surely be attacking in front...(b)ut as the shout became louder and nearer, and those who from time to time came up, began racing at the top of their speed towards the shouters, and the shouting continually recommenced with yet greater volume as the numbers increased, Xenophon settled in his mind that something extraordinary must have happened, so he mounted his horse, and taking with him Lycius and the cavalry, he galloped to the rescue. Presently they could hear the soldiers shouting and passing on the joyful word, "The sea! the sea!" (Book IV, Chapter VII)

I note in passing that the actual words these soldiers cried have been debated ever since. Were they shouting "Thalassa!" ("θάλασσα!"), which is the classical Greek for the word "sea" or "ocean"? Many historians, and many publishers, have believed so and copied the passage as such. But the mercenaries escaping Cyrus' disaster were largely Attic, and in the dialect of Αττική the word for sea is "θάλαττα" - "Thalatta". The soldiers would probably have shouted their happy news in their local tongue, and as such have I quoted them at the head of this post.

But thalassa or thalatta, Alexandra Lianeri does well to remind us that

"Most significantly, the march itself did not end at the glorious point of encountering the sea, and the next day revealed a gloomy picture contrasting with the shining moment of the shout.

The Ten Thousand did return to Greece, but there they found themselves as much at a loss as at the start of their journey: the political confusion they encountered when they crossed the Bosphorus left them isolated and without support. An escape story that began as a eulogy of the Greek achievement subverts itself by exposing Greek weakness."

The sea doesn't always afford us a means of escape, and even when it does, we often come to land only to find that we have been pursued by our own failings and futility. We can change our skies, but not ourselves. In the ripe heat of late summer, is it too late to hope that I can find some change of heart in a change of scene?

"Sometimes, in my green retreat,
the weather makes a joke,
with early falling leaves
and snowy flowers.
It’s August;
nothing will change
until we tell it to."

Dorothea Grossman

The Girls of Summer

I have been bad about blogging this week, and I cannot really apologize. My absence really has all been for legitimate reasons. For all that explanations are as dangerous as apologies, let me try and explain.My excuse, what there is of it, is that the days have been hot, I've been coming home tired, and once home there has been something that needed doing other than blogging.Anyway, we had another hot evening Tuesday, and I spent it playing with little girls rather than here.The neighbor kids - two little girls, one Peeper's age and the other Missy's - had the smart idea of beating the heat by running through the sprinkler that was watering their mom's raised beds out front, thus combining playing in the water with gardening, a brilliant bit of synergy.

The older of the neighbor girls is this cutie. Right now she's all knees and glasses at seven, but in a decade she's gonna break a lot of hearts, and several academic records, at Roosevelt High. Isn't she adorable?After gardening and running about in the yard lost their appeal, the vixens turned to beautification, which in this case consisted of hauling out my bride's collection of abandoned, rejected, one-off, peculiar, and discontinued nail paints. Understand that my love is a somewhat-girly-girl. She prefers the simple, the elegant, and the unfussy. But every so often she is bitten in the ovaries by a frilly girl-symbiont and has to go find an unusual color of nail paint.

These range from deep purples through odd charcoal-blues to bright reds, but are nearly always the ones that you see for two weeks on the counter at Nordstrom's and never again, unless you hunt the truly neglected remainder bins at Costco or those whatzit racks in the back of the gas station convenience stores. But they're ALL good to little and not-so-little girls looking to dress up their fingers.Here's the clowder of girls gathered around the beauty bar. The nail polish was a huge success, and my bride helped them limit the overspray and protect the pretty nails until the lacquer dried. Both little girls and big were very pleased with the results.
And not the least of the distractions has been my inside. My gastric distress, having taken a powder for a week or so, returned today with a shout. So I'm crouched over like a sick kitten, pawing feebly at my belly and feeling very, very sorry for myself.

Mojo, as always, has been a rock, and a wonder, wrapped in a heroine. I never forget to remind myself that I am a lucky man and she, probably, a very foolish woman, but with luck she will never catch wise.It's late, and my guts are finally subsiding, and I need to sleep. Hopefully the raccoons that ran in and out of the space beneath the front porch have not returned. I enjoy them, given a sufficient distance, but not so intimately. If they have taken up residence in our residence, they will find that no territorial concessions are possible. I'l ne passeront pas.

No matter. Tomorrow is the penultimate day in July, and I hope it brings me a little more peace, both inside and out.

I hear you under there, you furry bastards.

You've been warned.