Postcard from a Phoenix Motel

A real ceramic coffee cup brought from home makes motels feel more like home and the generic coffee taste better, and on this five-day trip I brought The Cup That Never Healed, a green Syracuse China coffee cup stamped 19-D, signifying manufacture in the fourth quarter of 1990, one of a six-cup motley crew hand-harvested from the factory-store seconds bin. These six were the originals in my restaurant-china-coffee-cup array, a secret source of comfort and pleasure (I have a cup for every mood) to me and nobody else.

This had been "the playful cup." (The others were "the intellectual cup," an unusual one broken when the kitchen table collapsed from metal fatigue, and I never cease looking for a replica; the "cup d'honneur" used for guests because it was the only one with a matching saucer; the pink-striped "feminine cup," and so on, insanely, or poetically.) After an accident cracked this cup from its foot all the way up alongside the handle, filling it with hot liquids put the drinker at risk so I shelved it up high, hoping it would use its vacation time to heal. Because travel puts any ceramic cup at risk, I packed this one for what has to be its last hurrah, conceding that if it hasn't healed itself by now it isn't going to. I planned to list here reasons why I kept this cup and kept my hope, but a sentimental attachment is made up of reasons that sound goofy to anyone else.

We have lived together long, this cup and I, and I can let it go only because I found on eBay one quite similar, although not a replica. Greetings from Phoenix. Get me outta here.

The 50-Year Vacation

Ordered some old books and from one of them fell a glassine bag of color negatives: 12 images in all, taken with a 2-1/4-inch camera, a type now extinct, already passe back when in college I bought a used one. These photos don't have the date anywhere, nor does the envelope, but they document someone's beach vacation in a place where there are palm trees (shown in another negative). I hope they had a wonderful time and remember their vacation fondly. In these delicate negatives it's lasted half a century.

Do resorts still have beach cots? Nowadays everyone lies on towels on the sand.

The books were from the late 1950s. Not only were there negatives, but tucked between other pages were 2 report cards, one from 1957-58 and one from 1961-62. I love these kinds of strange treats. Eye-openers for sure. More about them later.

I Feel Like Working Again

I couldn't get out of bed and wasted hours on the Net, in bed or on the couch, and folded a magazine to a fine recipe for Peach-Pecan Upside-Down Cake, and bought the peaches, but they spoiled. And bought the pecans, but ate them because I didn't feel like cooking (call the doctor!) and actually bought frozen dinners, and after a while eating wasn't appealing either (call the coroner!). I re-acquired my fears of bread, fat, meats, calories, alcohol, and sugar, plus caffeine (I'd read up on metabolic syndrome), all of which I'd blithely consumed while vacationing in Portugal where people don't worry, and within a few days of returning re-acquired aches, pains, hypochondria, fear of crime, and blues entirely absent while I was there. Making phone calls was an ordeal, as was sitting or standing; I slacked. I did the minimum amount of work (which is still a lot; there's no second income here) and during the entire past month met up with only two friends. Couldn't write. Exhausted by the very idea of washing, styling, dressing, and making up. Thought I had no excuse. But I was burnt out after working 12 to 14 hours a day for months, so that merely approaching my workspace lashed me with a wave of nausea  and dread which I fought with a firehose of positive thinking--and secretly doing nothing for two or three days at a time, letting matters worsen and fester. And I took no pleasure in anything.

Just today--having separated from one of my jobs--I felt like working again. It took a month of near-idleness to restore me. Two months if you count the vacation. I just made soup and furthermore I ate some. Don't work 12 to 14 hours a day for six months, no matter how much you should, or even for good reasons. This experience taught me there are pressures and workloads I can't handle, or can't handle anymore.

Terra Nova

Newfoundland -- first mapped as "Terra Nova" -- and Labrador, named for a Portuguese sailor, meaning "landowner" -- look cool on the map of North America, and because they're huge, mostly roadless, difficult to access, and nobody I know has been there, and I was seeking myself because I'd lost myself--that much I knew, but not how or when--after four years of yearning to do it I chose to spend 12 days in the province in northeastern Canada that seemed to mirror me.

Towns such as L'ans Amor ("Love Cove"; formerly named L'ans a Mort, "Cove of Death," but I'm told tourists like sweeter names), with a population of 6, are common. The words for this land are "pristine" and "extreme." The green and blue ocean is clear to its bottom; icebergs and whales swan by. Winters are abrupt, long, and bitter; no fruits, vegetables, or grains grow there; except for fish there's no farming or processing; all other products must be shipped in. You eat seafood and potatoes, and pay $2.50 for an orange. Polar bears ride into tiny towns on icebergs from Greenland and ransack houses. Jacques Cartier called it "the land that God gave Cain." Yet in June, July, and August pointed black and white fir trees cover the coasts, and lakes, rivers, mountains, and wildflowers; just now the wild irises are blooming. In Labrador it was 55 degrees and fleece was my best friend.

The road in the photo, in western Newfoundland near the Gros Morne ("Big Sad One") National Park, looks nice, but half of it is under construction, impossible at any other time of year. We didn't get to Blow Me Down Provincial Park on the west side of the island. The roads in Labrador, on the other hand, are terrible, all of them, every inch, period; the partially paved Trans-Labrador Highway breaks the suspensions and axles of buses. Awesome. Extreme. With trackless sea and stone and fjords and icebergs and timber you get a sense of the entire planet. And I got a sense of my place in it and that there might be more to the story of my life.

Family Vacation

Except for the guide at the far left, this is one family, all redheads except for mom, visiting the Lewis & Clark memorial at 150 feet above the ground, viewing the levee and the confluence of Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. I loved the way they lined up and the Midwestern colors they wore.