RE-STARTING GATE
It’s 3:18 am. I am awake because I catch an early flight to Portland today. Coco the dog and Marcia the cat are sleeping in cinnamon roll shapes next to me. Coco’s slow, content breathing is trying to lure me back to sleep. I feel my eyelids get heavy listening to her. I touch her velvet ear and feel a pang as I know I am going to miss her and the cats like crazy for the next three weeks. Touring and recording the audiobook version of my book has kept me away from home for two months as it is. My brief trip home has been chaotic but good. A rat moved into my kitchen in my absence. I have THREE cats for Christ’s sake! They are all FIRED! It’s taken over an entire storage drawer, ugh… the smell is horrendous. Now it seems to be living behind the stove where none of us can catch it. (STILL no excuse, cats!)
At least it has been gorgeous. Halloween was the most mild I can remember. Balmy even. A very stunning few days. There were warm fields to walk in where we would suddenly be stopped in our tracks by a frigid but welcome breeze. Down by the stream the two currents would braid together and alternate, changing the smells mid-air. The Larch trees were safety orange and spectacular against the charcoal trunks of the maples and spruce. The crunchy maple leaves fragrant underfoot. A few coneflowers and johnny jump up’s are hanging on for dear life. They break my heart a little. I’m not one to hang on for dear life at the end of summer, but August into the warm fall of the East has me in its thrall still.
Mike Bulington and I got to try out the new restaurant in Burlington opened by the Penny Cluse folks, called "Deep City.” I highly recommend it. They even have some of the old Cluse menu items! Bulington and I were heartbroken when Penny Cluse closed originally…it is such a Burlington landmark! So we relished every bite of out breakfast. On the way in we saw a couple people up on a high balcony of the next building over throwing HUGE pumpkins off the deck for two groups of cheering second graders seated politely on the ground below. “Do the big one!!!” they screamed. So, there was nothing the Rapunzels could do but join hands in a basket-carry fashion and lob a monster pumpkin to its gory end. Orange goo was everywhere. Mike and I cheered too. What a beautiful day.
Now I’m here above the Mississippi River. Holy shit! It’s really something! How have I never seen it from above before? It’s so much bigger than I imagined. It’s as impressive as the Grand Canyon! I sit in my tiny seat making "pros and cons” lists about staying in Vermont or leaving. It can be really lonely there. So many people have moved away because they can’t afford the taxes, myself included. I want to love it again. It’s just been such an uphill battle. This three hours on the plane may be my last to think about it for a while. Recording is king.
Well, hopefully everything goes ok at the polls today and we don’t have another January 6th or worse, a Hitler. I am way over-hopeful and I’m not sorry about it. I will not give this country my fear. Never. All my love to all of you. Peace and equality! Love Neko
Boon, Coco and their best pal, Mike
Bules! No giving in to fear over here. I was canvassing in Wisconsin over the weekend and was strong armed by a 10-year-old into buying a beaded bracelet as a fundraiser for her class trip to DC. I asked her to pick one out for me and she carefully pulled out a blue one and was all “this one goes with your outfit”—which was a denim jacket and a Democratic Party of Kenosha County sticker. I am taking it as a sign: the kids are alright, and blue is the color of the day.
As someone who has split my time between Portland and VT for a decade (after 20+ years in VT raising children and feeling the loneliness) I am also torn. The place is SO BEAUTIFUL, but also so often reserved and isolating. Here in PDX I go to the store and have a 10 minute chat with the cashier as I check out. While waiting for a bus, another woman and I strike up a conversation and end up going for a taco together after we descend at the same stop. I joined Meetup and found literally hundreds of groups to choose from - and now hike, discuss books, go dancing, have French happy hour....In Vermont, not so. The communities are insular, people have "enough friends" (someone actually said this to me once!), there are unexpressed rules about how to be/dress/talk/work... And the taxes!! My taxes have gone form $200 to $11,000 over 20 years, with an ever declining school population (who are receiving a minimally meaningful education). But still....still...it's like the Maggie Smith poem Good Bones - it always feels like..."This place could be beautiful,/ right? You could make this place beautiful."
I'm up for trying to build the kind of solidarity and connection that we need and deserve in Vermont - if I can find others who are open and energetic to create community. I just retired and am trying out 6 months (late fall - winter) in Portland and spring/summer/fall in VT. Not sure if that will work or whether I will at last (after moving to VT in 1989) give up on the effort, but I'd like to try. (BTW I am in Plainfield - close to the NEK ).