Invisible camp fires

Of all the sights in Nantucket, the most astonishing may be skyward. One week ago, I sat with friends around a washed up log on Nobadeer and traded stories at midnight. Henry started that he once ate a heart. His statement ushered in the predictable, but necessary, questions, “What did you say?” “Really?” “So how did this happen?”

Long story short, he took a gap year to “quite basically travel around the world.” With his savings spent on air fare, his parents picked up the rest of the tab. It was the most difficult thing he has ever eaten, he said, because it was tough, muscle, and, rather unforgettably, an antelope’s once beating heart.

We sat against the log, knocking the sand from the bottoms of our Bud Light cans so the grains wouldn’t go down our fronts as we made our way through the supply. Looking only upward, left and right, up and down seem to melt in the face of infinity. In that darkness, I couldn’t be sure if I was focusing on the faraway star nestled in a Milky Way invisible to Fall River and Amherst, MA . It was hard to envision my next week, let alone something light years away.

Henry was working on a South African land reservation as a farm hand. There, he shot his first antelope for the lions kept there. His coworkers, citing ritual, said eating the heart was a coming of age experience: kind of like bungee jumping from the Rye field so many my age flirt around.
Back on the beach, we had no fire. It felt like there should have been one, but I nodded as if he could see me, agreeing that manhood is a tough concept to swallow.

Telling and Wasting Time

I’m a victim of Wednesday’s soaking rain. Everything is nearly dry now: everything but my watch. So I left it bedside while walking through town today and killing time at the Athenaeum.

I was drenched to the skin and sweating, somehow. I resigned to being wet, but my watch suffered more than I. Though still working, its band was saturated and peeling, so I didn’t wear it today while walking through town. After a brief stop to pick a book, I emerged from the old library’s colonial dimness to a typical Nantucket afternoon whitewashed by fog. I looked to my wrist for the time but saw only the reminder that a watch is usually there – the pink circle of dry skin constantly agitated by my watch’s main dial. Shrugging, I took several steps before a horn blasted. On the straight wharf, someone announces the whistle’s sounding before it’s blown so that others can block their ears. So from several blocks away, I knew it was four o’clock.

Though several churches on the island have bells, many residents here can tell time by these whistles. Those who work on the ferries themselves live by them. At school, time is told by those around me. The parade travelling through the hall signals it must be nearing a time at which I should go to class. When in class, their collective movement tells that I, too, should leave the room. At home, in Fall River, the city knew what time it was when the bells of B.M.C. Durfee High School sounded 23 times, each resounding tone signifying a year of young Durfee’s life.

Downtown, the people working in the shops and restaurants just out range of the announcement but close enough for the whistle remind themselves how much time remains before they are free to roam the street and spend time outside of the doors so many casually amble through.

Just another note.

Bus Trips and Darkness

I’m wondering how many of those I came on the ferry with returned later that day. They walked Main Street, browsed in Ralph Lauren, ate some fudge and maybe hit the beach. Great day. But I feel privileged to stay longer. Tourists can come away from a place with an impression, a summary of sorts. I’m hoping to soak in a bit more than the sun while here.

Already, I’ve learned quite a bit in my first half day here.
1. Walking back is always easier than walking there.
2. At night, rule one becomes more true.

I think I have a solid sense of direction. The skill is innate. But walking in near-complete darkness while looking for a bus stop at a rotary after passing a parade of rotaries first tested then laughed atmy skills. Mitigating factors include that there are no signs for bus stops here, just posts with a stripe of red reflective tape around them. Also, the street signs are brown in many areas. They give a great New England charm and seem to be painted on driftwood when seen from far away; but once the sun sets, forget seeing them outside of three feet without a cell phone to illuminate your surroundings.

I felt stupid, blind and crazy walking up and down the deserted street looking for the sign. However, now that I’m back, it seems I’m no worse for the wear. I have the feeling the reflective tape is now so deeply supplanted into my subconscious that I won’t be missing any more. Same goes for grocery shopping in sandals -- great Nantucket beach shoes but not practical for marching on the cobblestone downtown. Sneakers: my back now agrees.

So I tell these hard learned lessons like war stories and resist taking cabs. I consider it cheating or at least taking a shortcut that keeps me from really understanding how to get around this place. If a day tripper can walk back onto the ferry with a general impression of this place, those who stay longer, I feel, should leave here with something a little more personal. People my age often dream of changing the world; but now, I’m holding on and waiting for this island to change me in some way instead.

Arrival

I’m convincing myself that a song didn’t bring me to this point. Most of what I own is in a backpack to the side of me and in a trunk in the boat’s storage bay. It’s funny. I’m surrounded by tourists wearing light windbreakers and top- siders on their way to Nantucket, and I think about the two hour ferry ride a lifetime in the making.
Like most of the songs I like, this one is about living a different way, as if a select group, me included, are privy to a secret, fresh perspective. It’s phrased like an enlightenment of sorts. The songwriter cites the typical rat race and what happens to the psyche when saturated with sunshine and surrounded on all coasts by water. But I’ve never acted like this before. I’m not sporadic; my moves are measured and planned. I don’t have an addictive personality, don’t get star-struck and have no real obsessions of which to speak. The lure of the island, though, has proved irresistible. There is no beeswax around nor rope or mast on which to tie myself. Besides, the song is pretty cheesy, and I don’t like music that much.
But I’ve stared at Nantucket for the past two summers. I lifeguarded at a large south-facing public beach in Westport, MA and at a tiny, private beach that sits adjacent. For eight hours daily, I watched those swimming in water that formed the horizon Nantucket lays just beyond.
We would put up red flags on the lifeguard stands when the water was too rough for patron swimmers. On hot days, the tossing waters would taunt those laying on scorching sand. But my perfect day was when it rained. Many New Englanders see their paradise on a deserted beach, but mine is in the water on these days. Then, the water is so rough that I would body surf and come out of the water red and burning – the result a millions collisions between grains of sand and my speeding, surfing form. Walking heavily from the water, a man walking along the water’s edge approached. He asked about the weather and the water and the tide. At this time, a peculiar slope had developed on the shore – the result of a March Nor’easter. The last wave of a set would retreat quickly and collide with another one coming toward shore, resulting a spectacular water display we had earlier dubbed, “The Belagio Effect.” We marveled briefly, and strangely enough, neither of us introduced ourselves.
But this man said he spent a summer on Nantucket in his 20’s. He talked of boarding with complete strangers who would evolve into friends – similar folks leaving friends and family to approach life from a different tact. He said that during storms a person could ride riptides out for hundreds of feet and ride the waves back in for the best body surfing experience imaginable. He said his lungs would burn because he wouldn’t want to come up for air.
So I have high expectations for this summer and this period -- speeding while wrapped in an experience so good that I’ll first have to remember then force myself to breathe.

My Trip to Hong Kong

Recently, I spent seven days in Kowloon, Hong Kong on a pre-summer vacation. Check out the photos.

Lobby Day and the Globe

On Wednesday, Apr. 16, about 80 UMass members of the Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts -- or PHENOM -- and I took a bus down to the Statehouse. They were lobbying for Gov. Patrick's $ 2 billion capital bond bill that would pump money into the operating budgets of the 29 public institutions of higher learning in Massachusetts and $17 million into a fading MASSGrant program, the state's fundamental financial aid system.
And I went for the ride to cover for the Boston Globe, the Massachusetts Daily Collegian and the Daily Hampshire Gazette. Click each paper to read each article, and be sure to check out the video package I put together.
More multimedia stuff like this coming soon.

We want a rally, a rally we want

For those interested in public education funding, stay tuned for a multimedia wrap of this coming Wednesday's "Lobby Day" that will feature hundreds of Mass. students rallying for a greater piece of the state's budget. Expect pictures, some video and maybe a slideshow if I get back in time.

I'll be on the bus with some rowdy protesters headed for Boston at 9:30 Wednesday morning.

Gov. Patrick's plan includes a little revenue bump, but it was banking on his casino plan. He rolled snake eyes on that one, and the state legislature shot it down.

This could mean more cuts to state higher ed. Tomorrow's Hampshire Gazette will feature Kristin Palpini's preview. I'll link to it tomorrow once it's published.