The East, pt 5: From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

A blustering and unkind day. The wind is driving the clouds in toward the land, but the leaves are scudding seawards. It is as dark as early evening in the middle of the day. And the rain cannot make its mind up to congeal – so we walk through half hearted, spitting mists. A perfect day for sight seeing –

Actually, a perfect day for ocean viewing.

On our way to Newport:

The Jamestown Bridge is a graceful curve of steel.  I have no long shots of it, but it’s beautiful in shape, and the rails have settled into a very nice green patina.

Newport, like so many small towns in picturesque places, has turned into a funky tourist shopping place—arts and T-shirts mixed with nautical lore.  We didn’t stop.  Good thing, since I’ve about filled this memory card and emptied my retirement fund on this trip already.  The old downtown buildings are again typical of this kind of town, preserved in the artsy-fartsy (I had to say this because Kris made me), attention to ancient detail way.  You can see what I mean about the light easily here; we’re at mid-day and people are using their headlights.

I liked the glass balls in the window of this shop.  But as it always is with cars and horses, no one will slow down so that you can take a proper shot. 

K—I have to tell you that being here is tour de force for me.  Living in New York was a complicated and intense affair (we were not in the city – in Hartsdale, much more my stye), and had all the more impact on me because I was a child there, a young woman, really.  The magic in the north east is heady, concocted of deciduous woods, stacked stone walls, shingle walled houses half hidden by trees, the breathtaking changes that come as each season takes its turn – together with the age of the place, the sense of grace in the architecture, he opiate of the imminent sea, and a deep shot of romance.

We lived, back then, in the middle of a wood.  So much like some of the pictures I will yet show you that my heart cried out for the loss of it in my life.  It’s funny—I seem to live poised between what is and what I would cobble together for myself out all my requirements of color and feel, history, mystery, wonder and grace.

 

Looks like Shrewsbury, actually.  A natural conclusion about a people who had come from an old country to make a new.  And for new money that wanted badly to look like old.

Not my favorite picture of the water, but if you squint, peering at the far bank, you will begin to see the Great Houses of Newport.

In the canyon, Zion actually stepped square on my foot when I got down and asked him to stop so I could take an image.  Gin just doesn’t stop.  So I am shooting through the window at glimpses of the odd and interesting.  This was the gate house for one of the Great Sprawlers.  One thing I envy money is the luxury of detail.

These gulls, unlike their cousins out at Montauk or in Finding Nemo are not focused on stealing steak.  These gulls are hang gliders, thermal riders, speed demon hang-timers.  This is the kind of day when the ocean breaks out in whitecaps and the gulls can find invisible hands to bear them up in the wild air.

We stopped the car (thank you) and made our way, leaning into the wind, down the beach toward a little quay.  More top gun gulls, working the winds.  Low tide—you can see that the water will soon enough again come all the way up to the break.

This is the Dan road.  It strikes me as I say this that movie makers actually do cobble their worlds out of bits and pieces taken from everywhere.  And they get paid for doing it.  Hmmmm.

Water more troubled than most days.  Some people see white horses in the foam.  Did you ever read The Last Unicorn?  Required reading for the philosophical and fantastic.  Here, they come dashing in, a million tiny white mares, overshadowed by the air-hangers.

And this is just the lap of the great ocean beyond.  If you were to go down there and put the tip of your toe in the sea, you’d be touching that which touches the western coast of Africa, the cliffs of Ireland, the Rock of Gibraltar.

The Frazz has done a portrait of me as he sits in the back seat.  I am pleased with it.

A beach comprised solely of skipping rocks and shells.  Walking against the wind and tasting salt on the tongue, here.  The small gosling following the gander.

The Dance of the Four Year Old.  Takes a toll on the partners.

Look closely, and you will see all the tiny shells.  And see?  Tons of excellent skipping rocks.  Not good on a day like today.  But on a clear day?  You could get twenty five easy out of these babies.  Red shells and white, some brown.  Not many scallops.

The Frazz has found a really good rock, and we brought it home.  I’m not sure exactly what he was doing here, but it was passionate.  The water is lapping the other side of the break, but we will leave before the tide turns.

Why do I wonder if suddenly we’ve been transported to Ireland?  

Money, and the bit of ocean slip it owns.  This is the beginning.  I could have taken hundreds of shots of these places is somebody had just driven a little slower.  They are amazing the way a giraffe on a city street is amazing.  Or, if some nice house suddenly was picked up by the wind and dropped in the middle of a desert or a city intersection.  These are European estates, built out on the small cliffs, overlooking the ocean.  Who, tell me—who lives here?  Do they have one hundred children?  Do they need to shelter the villagers when the Hun comes riding down from the north?  Why does any one family need eight chimneys?

Gin doesn’t like this place, but I do.  It only has two chimneys (on this side, anyway) and you could fill it with two or three families instead of twelve.  Besides, I like the white trim.  If I owned this house, I’d have the money to fly all my children here for Christmas every year, and I’d keep lights and wreaths in every window.  And I could empty the entire Frog and Toad so that there were surprises in EVERY corner.  And the rest of the year, I would write in that room just below the eastern most chimney – the one with triptych window, and I would ride my horses around and around the house on the veranda.

The houses are funny.  They are like crazy quilts of architecture, drawing their elements in the most egalitarian manner, a turret from here, a roof angle from there, into grand piles of houses.

You drive by one, and you suddenly feel that you are passing an estate in Suffolk.  Go around a bend, and suddenly, you are passing the EXACT same wrought iron, gold foiled gates that have flanked the France Soir publishing offices, ( just off the Champs Elysee?) since before there was moveable type.  In fact, there were TWO such places, each with its own copy of that formidable gate, almost across the street from each other – french names emblazoned on the great surrounding walls, the houses lifted whole, perhaps straight out of the Loire Valley.  Such silliness and excess.  A sort of extremely exclusive Epcot Center.

An English turret in a sort of French garden.

An expensive silhouette.

Your breath taken, completely gratis.

A child’s opinion of it all.

And now, frozen and soggy, we head home.

Looking back at the quay.  I do not know who these people were, but they were certainly in the midst of a fabulously romantic moment.  There was even a kiss.  I know, because I was taking pictures (smirk).

Fat gulls.  Just for Chaz.

The Frazz is tired.  Soooo tired.  But he will be up for tomorrow’s adventure, I promise you.