DRINKS

 

LIBATIONS

              

                      
                            

DISRUPTED TIME AND STATE

 

Hamlet

Let us go in together,
And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint—O cursèd spite...

Indeed our times are sorely out of joint....

AN INTERVIEW

 

Characters:

INTERVIEWER - WM

INTERVIEWEE - LW

WM - So I understand you recently moved to the North Shore. Is that right. And I believe you began life as an adult on the North Shore many years ago.

Why di you move from Cambridge back to the North Shore?

LW - Well for a number of reasons, First I'd left my position at Harvard Medical School and at the Hospital. So there seemed little need to be near Boston. I lived by the river in Cambridge but really wished to return closer to the sea.

WM - And did you meet that desire?

LW- Yes very much so. I now live at Collins Cove, spitting distance from my front door. I can look across to Beverly Harbour with its forest of boats in season. There is the small beach also - not very busy - with pleasant walks along the shore.

WM - It sounds as if you are content? 

LW - Well as much as anyone can be I suppose. The neighbourhood is very quiet with hardly a car coming down the road for the most part. You can walk in the road to get to the beach. Cambridge could be surprisingly noisy. I didn't think so whilst living there but the contrast to here struck me from the first and is palpable. 

WM - So is Salem easy to get around.

LW - To some extent. There is much that is walkable from where we live - a great pastry shop (Morning coffee), a Polish deli, a CVS, a small super market, and wine shop. But where we don't run a car it is not quite as convenient as Cambridge was with the T. There are always trade offs and I am pretty content here in Salem and being back on the North Shore.

WM - How do you spend your time especially now in the pandemic?

LW - Well it is a quiet life. I do work some on my diagnostic start up company - via Zoom and email. I do read a lot and write some. Not a TV person as such. But do watch some things on Amazon and Netflix. But reading is mostly what I do. Or perhaps I should say "re-reading" as I am mostly going back to material I have read before - mysteries set in Cambridge University, the Journals of John Cheever, some early novels of Truman Capote. A pretty eclectic collection in my library.

WM - Do you see or keep up with people?

LW - Well until recently we don't see many people in person. I've kept up via email and Zoom mostly. Have set up a bi-weekly chat on Zoom with two old Caius college chums. But now as I've had my two Covid jabs did have and old friend. also vaccinated, for lunch this week. That was a treat and hope to do it again with others.

WM - Are you vaccinated?

LW - Yes fully as of early April. But I don't see it makes a big difference in my behaviour. 

But we did venture out for Eater dinner at the Hawthorne Hotel and had our first house guest for lunch last week. And we will have our young neighbours in for wine nd cheese this week. Of course all are vaccinated.

VM - Will you travel this summer? Perhaps make your usual trip to the UK or the continent.

LW - I doubt that. Its is highly unlikely we will travel much before mid to late 2022. 

                                      TO BE CONTINUED

MATTERS OF THE HEART

 

                      Nothing is more heavy than a heavy heart

SENEX

   

OUR AGE IS NOT MEASURED BY YEARS BUT RATHER BY WHAT WE HAVE LOST

CURIOUS CAT

 

THE CAT RESEARCHER

 

THE STUDIOUS CAT AMONGST HIS PAPERS

REFLECTION BY THE SEA IN ROCKPORT

 

MUTABILITY

                                              Mixed along the earth's age sand
                                             Along a Northern beach
                                             Are fragments of another time
                                            Once possessors of this land.

                                            Whose blue tinged Canton ware?
                                            Given in love?
                                            Possessed in pride?
                                            Now lies along the lonely strand.

                                            Perhaps they sleep
                                            In the churchyard  above the beach
                                            A Whipple, a Haskel, a Poole, or a Tar?

                                            They keep their silence also
                                            Their secrets of their shattered life's vessel
                                            As the shattered pottery
                                            Scattered by the immutable sea.

 

lfms