General

The path today took me south of Bangor down Route 1A to Coastal Route 1 through scenic places like Winterport, Belfast, Glen Cove, and then to Rockland on the Maine Midcoast.

After a day at the Wyeth Center and the Farnsworth Art Museum, punctuated by a wonderful lunch at the Market on Maine, it was word of the boardwalk at the harbor that led to this point.

And that was the view for more than two hours as my tired soul occupied a bench and read quietly – the only sound that of the wind and of the seagulls.

Tomorrow, I finally get to pay my respects to an old friend of mine. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, as I head south towards home, through Brunswick and Bath.

It’s no accident that we all be nestled togther in the curves of the universe. We are tugged by the forces of celestial tides.

Time folds in on itself and outward again in gladless as we spin around, each of us an utter miracle in a seal of tiny white stars. [Jamien E. Morehouse – 1999]

With thanks to Doc Searls for the original post.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for always the inmost becomes the outmostãand our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment… A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another…

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

The very picture of relaxation in Maine I am.

From Otter Point on Mount Desert Island in the Acadia National Park near Bar Harbor, Maine.

Took off on a 400 mile drive yesterday morning up Route 1 from Boston and found myself along the Maine seacoast. Kittery, Kennebunk, Freeport, Portland, August, Bangor… flashes of ocean, forest, small towns, and then to bed.

This morning, a forty mile jaunt brought me to Mount Desert Island, and suddenly all that I remembered from just a day ago seems to belong to a different time.

What was this place of mist and fog, rock and tree, leaf and water that I saw before me? And what was all of those.. things.. that I was so worried about on Wednesday?

My mind was filled with the scenes that Champlain must have seen when he mapped Mount Desert in the late 1600’s – bald mountaintops covered in deep forest, steep cliffs and granite dropping into the Atlantic spray, a quiet perch on a lonely shore, far from the sounds of cities and cars.

It was at Jordan Pond, just after you turn north from the sheer cliffs that make up Otter Point, that life slows down for a pot of tea and some quiet contemplation as one ponders the “bubbles” in the background. But a lone kayaker rowed across the still waters. Earl Grey mixes with honey as the sealgulls flew by…

It was later in the day, long after the morning ascent to the top of Mount Cadiliac, that the mist rolled in and hid the bald summit. The mist came in, like a blanket, wiping away the thoughts and worries that had been in my mind before… and added such a mystery to the mountain.

And then here, along the cliff walk just outside of Bar Harbor, someone had left a rock cairn for others to see…

It brought the perfect balance to the day….

I think I figured them out.

Most bore me 🙂 Some don’t. Those that don’t become my friends.

Red Sox Win – 5-2 over the Yankees.

IN NEW YORK.

Yes, life is good.