Brad Woodger
Can’t get there from here. Bert and I said it first,
but Chappaquiddick truly took the sentiment to heart. Giving (or receiving) directions on Chappy is nothing if not impossible. Sisyphus himself would have said “aw, screw it” after the third run-through of the same direction to the same person.
There are markers on Chappy, real landmarks that denote location, which are fine if the location that you’re describing is within 10 yards of that landmark. Any further and you must rely on the ever-changing mailbox or disappearing street post.
Wasque is gone.
A great human conceit is to measure time in lifetimes. Regardless of what has existed long before us, and what will exist long after — our time is our time. So Wasque, as we know her, is gone. She may come back, may reform or even expand, but not in our lifetime. So we mourn her passing from our lives.
Night falls on Chappy. With it, falls rain. A mother and child run over the grate of the ferry landing, hopping puddles to the parking lot, where their car beeps a welcome unlocking. A captain waves goodbye and hopes for more CNN and less SUV. Mostly though, we are indoors now. We are stirring sauces. We are cleaning lint filters. We are watching the flames behind wood stove doors. We are working. We are playing. We are resting. We are, as we will be more and more, inside.
I slept with my first beetle at age eight. Ours was a casual affair; two souls finding refuge on my grandmother’s pull-out sofa. But, as with many relationships, what began as a simple nocturnal arrangement between insect and boy soon became a complicated and crowded tempestuous two week ordeal.
I read somewhere (maybe In Style Magazine) that the meek shall inherit the earth. I don’t recall if this statement was intended as a proclamation or as a suggestion, but I do know that the meek may want to consider the tax implications of such an inheritance before they blindly accept this gift. At the very least, they’d need to sell off most of Europe and Asia to pay the federal government (I’m pretty sure the land bank would want a piece of the action, so maybe Canada should be liquidated too).