Provincetown – Sunday or Some Such

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Days have a tendency to blend together when you don’t have time-specific obligations, when you’re free to just wake up, drink tea, try to write, drink tea, try to write, examine your fingernails, try to write, lie on the floor, etc. Recently, one of the artists here said that playing trivia at the local bar on Wednesdays helped him break up the week. “Yes,” I said, “but how do you know when it’s Wednesday?”

Then someone alerted me that it was indeed Wednesday, so I joined two smarty-pants fiction writers and together we defeated the champion Wharf Rats—a team of longtime Cape Codders every bit as intimidating as they sound. They’re good, real good. But we edged them out in a tiebreaker that had something to do with…geography, I think...I had a pretty good-sized glass of wine.

Just returned from a morning of clamming and my refrigerator is full of littlenecks and cherrystones, all of them alive, I’m told, despite being out of the water. To catch a clam (for those that have never been) one simply walks out at low tide with a long-tined rake and starts prospecting. It seems as though the clams like to hang out in groups, so if you find one you’re likely to find others. I tried as best I could to think like a clam, and follow my instincts to a spot they’d favor. Sometimes, I was right. Sometimes I was wrong. And once, when I thought I’d found a great conglomeration of clams, I pulled up a really angry (but beautifully colored) crab that snapped at me and made all kinds of threatening postures until I buried him where he’d be safe from the circling seabirds.

When our buckets were full, we went to the breakwater (on the other side of which lies an unofficial nude beach—but not in this weather) and plucked some mussels from the rocks. The little guys cling to the rocks with their beards, and they’re difficult to pry loose. One of our party also collected tiny periwinkle snails, which he intended to steam and eat with a sewing needle. Here, I started to wonder if perhaps it weren't more sensible just to eat things like say, bread, or apples, which are so easily obtained and can be devoured very quickly, as is my habit. But just when I was beginning to think this clamming stuff was for suckers, we brought our bounty home and steamed a few—salty, fresh and delicious, entirely worth the stiff fingers and frozen toes.

Aside from eating apples like some kind of wild animal, I’ve been writing, reading, cooking, and watching short films by the Russian animator Yuri Norstein on YouTube. He’s been around forever, but I just discovered him, so I’m thrilled. He calls his work “visual poetry,” and as he eschews computers, it’s all done very painstakingly. He’s been working for the last 25 years on a feature-length rendition of Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” and as I understand it, he’s completed about 20 minutes. His fidelity to his vision is really inspiring, as is his drawer full of miniature ears (as seen in the documentary about him). He doesn’t speed up, or resort to computers, regardless of what pressures there may be for him to do so. He knows what interests him, and he’s committed himself to it.

Along the same lines, I found a great quote from Eve Ensler, about eradicating self-doubt: “I trust that what interests me interests other people, and what moves me moves other people. And I think if you go from that basis in any project, that if you don't second-guess people and you don't try to 'create' things for people but you allow people to see what you see and be moved by what you're moved by, it works. I think the reason we don't have leadership in America today is that politicians are double-guessing people and trying to say what they think people want them to say rather than having a vision. All you really need is something that moves you or an issue that disturbs you and passion behind it, and then you need to tell a story in a way that is truthful. That makes a good play or a documentary or a story. If it comes from a place of true intention and true passion, it always works."

-ar