Skip to main content

a north-easterly direction



a few excerpts from my journal while in maine:


...we left the garden state in a general north-easterly direction, proceeding along highways and turnpikes with ease and great speed...the great thing about traveling in new england is that you get to drive through a new state nearly every hour, which is a good thing except for that one miserable excuse for a state known as massachusetts. we took the 495 loop to (thankfully) avoid boston, but i still got the chills as i could feel the city's horrid evil even from miles away. other than feel like we had veered dangerously close to some kind of netherland, a sort of sheol, it was a good trip. once we hit new hampshire the darkness lifted and i could taste maine...

...so yesterday was our first full day here in maine. we stay at this awesome old home called "the oaks." it is this house on a hill, a home that feels as full of stories as it is full of sags and shelves that lean. take, for example, the billiard room, which i started calling the billiard room because there is a pool table in it and i always thought that 'billiard room' sounded fancy, like the mansion in the game of clue. however, on this vacation we call it the toy room because the host of toys that my mom and dad continue to give to jack are in there. anyway, if you go in there you might want to wear a pair of walking shoes because the wooden floor has so many hills and valleys, you'll be sorry if all you've got on are socks. but its not just the slants that make this place. its the nooks and crannies. its the stories. like the shoe hanging on the wall in the toy room. it has 3 or 4 porcupine needles sticking out of it. apparantly, some annoyed pedestrian found a porcupine in the road and tried to relocate it with a swift kick to the prickly posterior, but ended up with some sharp needles in his shoe...and foot. this house feels full of these stories. it has settled over the years with seaglass and shelves full of old books and sundry collection of knick-knacks. there are old stories in this house. and we are making a few new ones of our own...



...our six-week old is sleeping in a suitcase at night...

...yesterday felt like maine: it was foggy and soggy. it was cold. it was grey. it was met with fire in the hearth and sweatshirts and a good book...

...today began with cinnamon rolls. not a bad way to start off...

ps. i can see the ocean from my window. there's a fishing boat headed in our direction...

greg.

Comments

Megan said…
sCade looks so cozy in that suitcase - love it!
Mary said…
that is my favorite boat in New Harbor!
Anonymous said…
an excert from my journal over vacation in maine...."I love my brother..."

and my laugh-o-meter is dangerously low since vaycay

Popular posts from this blog

bad haircuts (for a laugh)

everybody needs to laugh.  one good way i have found to make that happen is to do a simple google image search for 'bad haircut.'  when you do so, some of the following gems show up.  thankfully, my 9th grade school picture does NOT show up.  otherwise, it would certianly make this list!  please laugh freely and without inhibition.  thank you and have a nice day. 

happiness is dry underwear

we started potty training jack on thursday. we followed a program called POTTY TRAIN IN ONE DAY, which, by the way, i think is kind of crazy. i mean, if someone were to offer you a book called, "ACHIEVE WORLD PEACE IN ONE DAY" i don't think you would take it seriously. and yet here we are, trying to accomplish an equally daunting task in one 24-hour period. it is intense. the day is shrouded in a lie because as soon as your happily diapered child wakes up you tell him that it is a big party. we had balloons and streamers and noisemakers and silly string - all the trappings of a legitimate party. but it is most certainly not a party. it is a hellishly exhausting day. as soon as jack got out of bed, we gave him a present: an anatomically correct doll that wets himself. jack named him quincy. several times quincy successfully peed in the potty and even had an accident or two in his "big boy underwear." he also dropped a deuce that looked and smelled sus

the crucifixion of Robert Lewis

  "the crucifixion of Robert Lewis" mixed media collage with leaves, acrylic paint, and found objects by gregory a milinovich october 2023 this october i was invited to participate in a three day trip which was called a "pilgrimage of pain and hope."  while that may not sound super exciting to many of you, it actually really intrigued me.  i am the kind of person that wants to feel big feelings, and i am drawn to the deep places, so  i was interested in traveling to the scranton area, where the trip was planned, to see what it might look like to be a pilgrim that was wide-eyed and listening to the pain and the hope in the stories of others.   this trip included hearing the stories of immigrants to the northeastern pennsylvania area, and the work in the coal mines that many of them did.  it included hearing from folks who are working for housing justice and equity in downtown scranton.  it included hearing from those indigenous people who first inhabited that land.