I was introduced to the music of Alice Coltrane, wife of jazz saxophonist John Coltrane via this wonderful review in the @NewYorker. As the reviewer Hilton Als mentions, the track, Om Shanti, is amazing. If you have Apple Music you listen to the whole album. “World Spirituality Classics 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda”
August-itis
Something happens to the locals in a summer resort as the summer ends. A new summer friend called it August-itis but the fever peak is clearly Labor Day weekend. I can remember the deli counter lady at the East Hampton Stop & Shop years ago openly invoking the later days of September when “they are all gone home”!
It takes nerves of steel to traverse the length of Provincetown’s quaint Commercial Street at the height of a Labor Day weekend Saturday. The ferry has arrived, ‘another hundred people’ wheel down the asphalt with luggage, sun hats and baby strollers. A wedding party in pedicabs dragging just-married tin cans parades past Town Hall to applause and shoppers step out without looking for cars, trucks or bicycles. A townie yells to her friend dashing away from MacMillan Pier, “I’m done for the day. I can’t wait to get home and shut the door!”
But perhaps the most telling sign of August-itis seen was the local honking her car horn, yelling expletives at the bicyclers, cars and a couple with a baby stroller–all moving too slowly for her. Of course she could have easily driven parallel on Bradford Street to avoid the ‘renters’ and other non-locals; the very people who give Provincetown its primary source of income and tax revenues.
“Get the fuck out of the way! This is a road!” It must be a disease: prominent among her righteous assortment of bumper stickers was:
A New Poem
Provincelands
This potent sky and sea erases—
just for the moment—
tense lives
though so many have crossed
beneath and above them, hurting
the accumulated blue, green, grey,
moon-gathered energies
want payment in pain
Let it dissipate with the steady chill breeze
this membrane we pierce on entry
this town enlightened
in light enlivened
in sea energized
in sky entire
We’re Here
In some ways we should have known it would be the ultimate convergence of skill set and life’s demands. At least that’s what I thought biking past the preparations for a kiddie party in the garden that fronts the entrance to the Boatslip in Provincetown MA. Yes, that Boatslip. I would have taken a picture to show you, but I thought it might be intrusive. Though I suppose, if you’re setting up a tea party complete with large pink and lavender balloons bobbing around the white fence along Commercial Street—balloons that read “Our Princess”— with every PTown resident, renter and visitor eventually passing by, you are not too concerned with intrusion.
Gay marriage, gay child-rearing; these seem so perfectly aligned with our ability to throw a party (ok that’s a stereotype, some of us can’t apply glitter properly!) why did anyone doubt that we would be fantastic parents?
On the off chance that the princess being feted was not the child of a same-sex couple, the fact that the Boatslip was the most fabulous place in town to have the princess’ party says something too.
Spice Roulette
You arrive at your vacation rental and open all the kitchen cabinets and drawers to determine what you will have to work with for the next week or so. For better or worse these are your culinary tools you will have without going to any expense to fill in what is basic at home.
Often the most challenging is what you find, or don’t find, in the spice cabinet. If you are a spice addict as I am, you travel with the essentials: cumin, curry, tarragon, chili powder, italian seasoning, smoked paprika and my new fave, “sazon tropical”, which is a salt blend with annatto, onion and garlic powder. So when we arrived at Provincetown last night I was happy to see the spice cabinet had some good choices and not just the usual leftovers from the previous renters, plastic Morton salt and pepper shakers.
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