Barracuda

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barracuda

Me and my "Irish Twin" couldn't wait for our big Mexican vacation in Cozumel, because we love the ocean. We'd spend every summer swimming in as many pools, ponds, lakes, rivers and oceans as we could possibly convince adults to do with us. We love the sea; the pounding surf, the oceans' salt spray, the sandy beaches, so much so that my bro is a Jersey resident. Me and my bro spent hours in the water growing up, and it didn't go unnoticed by the adults around us. We swam expertly like fish; first as toddlers, and then as kids earning Scouting swim badges. We loved it, even when it was rainy and cold during summer trips to Maine and Nova Scotia.

Like any Acadian, our father dared us to go into the cold oceans of his youth. No problem! We couldn't wait to cool off from the summer sun, wading into the frigid waters like we were born to it, and we are. We giggled and shivered as we splashed each other into goosebumps, egging each other on to go all the way in, which we did. It was a contest that proved our sea-worthiness to ourselves; a necessary rite of passage that any self-respecting Acadian should be able to do, like fishing and canoeing. We'd learned swamping out a canoe to breath the air trapped beneath well enough to earn colorful Scout badges that we sewed on ourselves to earn that badge, too.

Bernie and I avidly checked out snorkeling gear from the hotel our first day at the beach, running back and forth quickly, keen in our desire to hit the waves. So blue! Cozumel's water is some of the most gorgeous we have here on Earth: a crystal clear, bright turquoise blue that took our breath away. With those first tentative mask views done treading water near the shore, we were instantly hooked. We dove for angelfish and coral and anything else our pre-teen brains could soak up with the clarity of our deep abiding passion for life and the sea. We "pruned" our fingers every single day, just like our baby bath-times together, taking gradually deeper and deeper dives, like we did with all those public pool trips that astonished our parents with our steadfastly devout longevity in the water. So much fun!

We pool-hopped occasionally, but it was filled with ugly pale American tourists sitting on pool stools under a giant beach cabana. Blech! They're just the people we wanted to ditch! So boring, sitting around doing nothing but drink stupid fruity drinks and babbling on and on and on, just like they did at home. Yuck! Who cares? There's so much else to do! The last day we hit the beach hard was indeed memorable to us. We'd be going further and further into the ocean, and that day was no different. We wet our masks like we'd been taught, to create a seal around our eyes that was airtight. So far so good. 

Then, Bernie made his first mask check under the water to beat me to it (of course: boys!), with disastrously different results. He came up gasping and panicked: "I just saw something!" I took my mask to look, and one quick peek at two rows of razor sharp teeth inches from me was more than enough to send me packing, running for the sand quickly. Ahh! What the...?! What was that? We'd just seen our very first barracuda, and it is one scary looking fish. There'd been a whole school of them, too. We ran to our parents sitting on beach chairs under the palm trees, scared and shaken up. For the rest of the trip, we stuck to the pool. That ocean isn't just for us. It's for the predators who live there with every other life form in the sea. Understood, and very clearly so. We have our home, and they have theirs. It's nature.

Skeleteon in the Closet

Pour vous, Isabelle.

Summertime is a big deal for a lot of women, and not just because school is out, and the kids are home ALL DAY LONG. I never really thought adversely about going to the beach or the pool, because I've been a swimmer for as long as I can remember. What's not to like? But, like any other social situation filled with strangers and new people comes the attitude that many women and girls have about their bodies. I don't have any issues about mine, because I do the right things: I eat clean, good food that I enjoy cooking and eating, I walk every day, I do yoga or swim or practice martial arts...something happens in my life to keep me on track, because I am motivated to have the best life ever. 
I want to have fun and enjoy myself.

Don't get me wrong; I smoked and drank my way through the SUNY school system like any other college kid on a strict budget, but I never got it twisted. I actually wanted to show off my bikini body every year, and why wouldn't I? I work hard at it, and I want to stay beautiful for as long as I can for my partner, because I care about how he feels. I know he thinks the same way about himself towards me, too. Not that MMA is the sport for "working out", because it is extremely intense training (like my childhood ballet lessons that could have been a really serious career), but I have had points in my life when I gained unwanted weight from neglect, typically because I was working a job so stressful, most people take some sort of drug (or cocktail) to get through it. 

And so, try as I might, I no longer feel any pressures to conform to any standard other than the one I set for myself, because childhood was my time for insecurities. I survived my time in grade school, with mean bullies and schoolyard taunts. That doesn't mean today's "PSA" is a joke; far from it. Every day in my happy little home here in the Hudson Valley I see my beautiful people out in public, mixing it up in our common community spaces with people far less fortunate than us. They say the Irish are blessed with luck, charm, and good looks, and that's true, though I think it's more than a fair trade off for centuries of brutal oppression, military occupation, and countrywide starvation. 
We earned it proper. 

Yet, many cultures still demonize their women for their looks (or lack thereof), which leaves one to wonder why a woman with a serious brain disorder would dare hope to have a happy, healthy, attractive child. From what?! Thin air? It takes a lot more than running around a track like a lunatic because your mom committed suicide, and 30 years later you still can't talk about it until you are gaunt and winded. The work that I do (physical stuff included) is a lot more demanding than me running away from my problems and the world, just as starvation and hunger will not bring you the peace you seek. You need help, and I'll be here for you, girl, but first ya gotta eat something. I mean it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/world/europe/31caro.html?_r=0

 

Satanic Surfer

Years ago, after a financial downturn I didn't control, circumstances forced me to move from place to place, like a woman with hell on her heels. One place was an old, run-down townhouse in Brooklyn, with the usual suspects: an old white lady landlord living in Long Island who just wanted checks in her mailbox, a Puerto Rican super/building manager turned rogue slumlord through the opportunity that indifference brings, a corrupt bodega owner in "da 'hood" who recommended hard cases to the seedy crash pad, and a desperate network of ex-cons, schizos, and other outsiders (like me), who needed a place to stay immediately, because a hotel was out of the question with no money.

And so I nimbly footed my way through the system, meeting up with a troubled but highly intelligent man while working at the public library. He finally found a room to rent in his "dream" neighborhood, which had quickly become the over-priced hellhole I wanted to escape, but options had run out for me. When my library friend offered to let me crash on his floor in an old Army sleeping bag while I greased the palm of "José" (the building manager who was in the palm of the corner bodega owner), for basic cleaning services to the garbage-filled room next door so I could move into it. 

I had to pay the rent for even that floor space dearly by listening to my new friend rant and rave while he badly juggled school, work, and life on his own, which naturally led him to weaning himself off his anti-psychotics during my time at "Casa Crack Shack", but that's a story for another day. My sick friend does it routinely, and no one ever does a thing for him about it; another hard luck case for social services that are so anti-social, I have no idea what petty bureaucrat thought it up, but they should serve time for the offense.

Anyway, he had a substitute for his expensive medication, with all the excuses hard criminals have, who also struggle with mental illness and addiction: dirt weed and lots of alcohol! It was a brilliant plan, because he soon ran out of the sleeping pills he needs for mania, hence the healing nature of pot, which left him with a nagging smoker's cough that did not go away. In between hits off his cheap cigar blunt and hacking coughs, he liked to tell me outlandish stories, because I was already well-known in the city for storytelling, right here on this site.

I'm sure he read it, though true to the lifestyle of the not-so-rich and not-to-be recognized famous, he pretended he hadn't seen my work, choosing to bend my ear with his horrible lies instead. The tales he told were telling about his psychosis, and I didn't have a choice, so in between cleaning a room that had been vandalized for years, after my day job at an indie house as a rock star cover artist, I sat on the floor of his tiny room to let and listened.

Like any kook you meet at a cocktail party or on the Internet, he was obsessed with the usual wacky shit that crazy people get wrong all the time: sex, drugs, rock n' roll, and religion. He mixed them up poorly, fueled by the pressure to perform at NA meetings, finely honed after many therapeutic sessions. He was your average reality t.v. show guest star, having told me that he was a child actor who auditioned on Broadway and had recently tried out for a weight-loss show as a coach, because one of his jobs in Florida was as a "Personal Trainer". He's basically your headcase whose weight fluctuates wildly from extremes, which is the exact profile most producers look for in potentials, but he isn't handsome, so nothing ever came of it.

What he did have were hours and hours of bullshit; some good, some really bad, and occasionally he veered close to art, without ever crossing over into our territory, but he was fascinated with me for my beauty and my genius, which kept me safe, because he was enthralled by me as an audience. He must have read about my boogie-boarding and beach going online, which naturally led him to tell me a crazy story about him violating the "Boarders-only" policy at the Rockaways*. He must have got caught in a riptide and panicked, because he was in way over his head in rough waters, but instead of telling me that, he concocted a bizarre tale about evil surfers who tried in vain to drown him.

Why? I asked mildly, though I am shocked as usual by the utter lack of reason the seriously disordered among us suffer from. Why would Satan give a crap whether some fat Nuyorican drowned or not? Were in you in league or something? "Well, no, Marie," and then he would adopt this pseudo-white guy, actor-y voice, which let me know the real show was about to start. He forcefully told me that "Luciferians" were real, when I countered with the obvious truth that there have never been any documented cases of cult activity, certainly not while surfing poorly in Queens without a board. He pretended that I was a naive white girl, and that I should look it up online soon, on that other Wild West domain of the insane known as "The Internet", like a hypochondriac addicted to WebMD.

After I pelted him lightly with a series of easy questions in rebuttal, tired from a long day of brutally hard work, I let him know the jig was up. I sagged on the mattress I now sat on, because the floor had gotten hard during his long speechifying. So, I looked him right in the eyes, after yet another position change, this time him on the mattress and me on the floor, and he knew it, too. His eyes changed, the wind went out of him, and he told me the truth, finally: he had a psychotic episode while he was swimming, and he thought devil-worshippers sounded a lot more exciting. The only demon in the room with him and me that night were the ones flying around in his brain; a series of random, uncontrolled brain bursts that one very sick man needs medicine and treatment for, not stories and t.v. shows.

Can you guess what he was studying (and I use that term loosely) at Staten Island Community College? Some design thrown in for flash, and a lot of drunken, stoned television and movie-watching, but that's not what he called it. He told me he was a Media Major. 

Hey, have fun at the beach this weekend, America! Watch out for all those sharks that swim in deep waters. You never know where you might find one.


* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Rockaway_Branch

Small Town America: Cow Towns

http://www.deephollowranch.com/

I came across an article in a travel magazine the other day that I wanted to share with you, the reader, because I found it so interesting. It's contrast lies in direct proportion to the typical American myth that cowboys only live somewhere Out West, where the desert is dry and tumbleweeds blow, and men ride on horseback wearing big ten-gallon hats, squinting through the dust à la John Wayne. Not so.

The first cattle ranch was established in 1658, and it lies on the eastern tip of....wait for it... LAWNGUYLAND! That's Long Island, for those of you outside of the tri-state area. It's called Deep Hollow Ranch, and it still functions as a ranch, though mostly in horses, way out in Montauk. 

For those of you who want to grove to the beat of a horses' hooves, 
it really can be as easy as a drive on the L.I.E., or as we fondly call it, The Long Island ExSTRESSway, because the traffic is so bad, that if you weren't in sore need of a vacation before you set out, you sure as hell need a cocktail (or two, or three, or four) and some beach time at the end of your ride to get out there.

Hmm. On second thought, maybe you are better off taking your chances on a dude ranch somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The accents will be just as hard to understand, anyway. Write me if you go horseback riding at Deep Hollow, or even better, send me pics.  
Enjoy, New York!

Beach

One of the more pleasurable aspects about the Northeast is the vibrant, beautiful beach culture. I've written about it before—the history and ocean lifestyle, but somehow the mention of it still surprises people. Why? New York is surrounded by water, connected by bridges and tunnels that go over and under water, so why is it mysterious and surprising that we swim in the water around us?

We are part of the original colonies along the Eastern seaboard. I'm not sure how much clearer I can be about this fact, so let's try basic math. Here's the official Wiki entry: "The state constitution was enacted in 1777. New York became the 11th state to ratify the United States Constitution, on July 26, 1788." OK, so I did the numbers and that comes out to 224 years officially, with the actual European discovery coming in at 1604: "New York was inhabited by various tribes of Algonquian and Iroquoian speaking Native American tribes at the time Dutch settlers moved into the region in the early 17th century. In 1609, the region was first claimed by Henry Hudson for the Dutch." We know that Native Americans inhabited the land prior to European discovery for millennia. 

So. Why all this willful ignorance? It comes from a place outside of understanding, and that's called programming and bigotry. After all, if you get the facts down right, how can the mythic Californian Dream be sold to you? No more slow motion Baywatch Babes (homogenous and comforting with their dyed blonde hair, fake boobs, and spray tans), no Playboy Enterprise that sells those same women back to you again, this time without their bathing suits on, no running away to a place that supposed to make you forget who you are. All that stuff is advertising and marketing from billion dollar industries, so if I dismantle it with actual information, well, you can see how truly threatening that could be to those industries. And they will do everything to convince you otherwise.

Then there's the actual reality of the Atlantic Ocean itself: it's murky depths, rough currents, and harsh seasons. There's no prepackaged Club Med vacation here with servants, faux palm beach umbrellas, and frilly coconut drinks within a temperature-controlled climate that's permanently set to 85°, like the thermostat at home. It's a comforting and safe experience that's boring and devoid of any actual discoveries. Unlike a bland vacation, my ocean is real and unpredictable and it is the ocean, unrelenting. Must be scary to a population fed a steady diet of false realities. 

Our water is cold in the winter and warm in the summer and none of that has anything to do with you. Mother Nature is unpredictable to humans, and it always has been. I know mentally ill people who are addicted to The Weather Channel in some crazy and stressful show down with the earths' forces. They fear it, but they also enjoy the thrill of being scared: it's a build up and release of tension, something every fetishist and neurotic knows well. They are not in control. She is.

Once again, it becomes about who they are and their problems, rather than the simple pleasure of a swim in the briny sea. But, I have none of that static. I love the water, I love the beach, I love swimming, and I always will. I enjoy each landscape for what it brings to me, and I am grateful for it. A Montréal friend asked me about a status update I posted about the sea. I wrote about the smell of the ocean coming in off the blowzy breeze that advents a rain storm, a pleasurable experience for us here. 

He commented on this commonplace occurrence with disbelief. How could I smell the ocean when it was so "far away"? Far away?! I wrote back to him, after looking up the actual distance online, that it is 7 miles from my location to the ocean. SEVEN. MILES. And that was more than he could take in, because it doesn't fit in with his idea of Brooklyn as it is presented on t.v. and in movies. Sad, but also surreal, right? Wouldn't that make you feel discomfited and odd, like I do?

So. Here it is. My gift from me to you: the 25 minute subway ride to the beach at Coney Island, for a brief dip in the ocean with a little bit of body boarding thrown in for kicks. We can't wait to meet you, to see you enjoying our gifts, too. Welcome to the beaches of New York City. Welcome home. 
Welcome back. Welcome.

The Last Days of Summer

Indoor garden at the Hyatt Regency - Old Greenwich, CT. (photo © Marie Doucette)

As we drink up the last rays of summer sun, many of us turn our minds towards what is perhaps the most beautiful and celebrated season in all the world, Autumn in the Northeast.

Cool, crisp, clear nights, with a hint of woodsmoke in the air from long-dormant fireplaces, a riot of colors from trees of every kind that is unparalleled elsewhere in nature, let's look forward to the beginning of another glorious season on this fair planet.

We have a lot to be thankful for.

Greenwich Point Park - Old Greenwich, CT. (photo © Marie Doucette)

Hot Dogs and Coronas

The Boardwalk at Coney Island.

Nathan's Famous of Coney Island, site of the Hot Dog Eating Contest.