on
4/13/2002
As I made my way steadily down Longwood Avenue, straining against a load of film equipment, I kept returning to a single thought. This city life is making me soft.
The physical therapy appointment had gone more than an hour, and I was late for tutoring. Fortunately, no one showed up. It was hot that day in Boston. I never changed out of my shorts. Class followed; I left halfway though and made my bus as it was boarding.
On the bus, I worked on my shot list -- or tried to -- as we drove "down" from Boston to Maine. The narration I'd cut down from my long chat with Grammy was copied into my handheld tape recorder.
Mom and Dory Dog met me in Waldoboro, and we drove home. I made an early night of it.
The morning was foggy and gray when I got up at six. I packed up and got ready to go. After a bit of searching, mom and I found her father's rowing dingy stowed under the barn, hauled it up from the field and lashed it in the back of the pickup. I backed out into the road, spying a truck in the rear-view mirror, and stepped on the gas. It grew closer in the mirror for a few seconds, but receded again and for good by the time I rounded the bend by the lake.
Meanwhile, Mom was standing in front of the barn with Dory when I backed out. She saw the dump truck come hurtling over the ridge, and cried out the first thing that came to her; my dad's name. The truck and I soon disappeared around the bend. She told me she cried during the walk back to the house.
In Waldoboro, I stopped at local landmark Moody's Diner, bellied up to the bar, and got the first page of my shot list finalized as I ate. Afterward, I went to Shop & Save and bought a hunk of bread, a block of cheese, a gallon of water, some still camera film, and a pair of oranges.
Fifteen minutes later, I was down the peninsula in Friendship, pulling into the driveway of my friends' house to pick up my assistant. I found the house silent. Fortunately, I knew where the key was, and quietly let myself in. I found her asleep in the guest bedroom. She came to at the sound of my voice, and explained that she couldn't make it, and had tried to contact me after her aunt called asking to see her on this day, which was my would-be assistant's birthday. I left her to sleep more, and returned to the truck.
A few minutes later I arrived at the head of the wharf below Grammy's. Moving the wooden dingy from the back of the pickup, down the hill and across the rocks to the sea was something I'd planned on having an assistant for. Once again, I wished I was a bit stronger, or in better shape, but "sucked it up" and dragged the thing down alone. Once I'd set up and done two shots from the mainland, I repacked the equipment and loaded it into the dingy.
The breeze was steady at or above the predicted ten knots as I threaded out through the lobster boats at mooring. The plan was to head straight across the harbor, into the lee of the island, and then row along the far shore to the wharf below our cottage. My left oar kept jumping out of the oarlock as I crossed the swells in the harbor, fighting the breeze. My arms and shoulders were already aching from carrying the equipment across Boston the day before. As my frustration grew, I thought I must look like someone who'd never spent a day of his life on the water, rather than the kid who'd spent so many summer weekends here on the island, and rowed that very dingy hard most every evening after work for the past two summers. City life...
The wharf below what I'd always called the old inn -- even though it had never really been an inn -- was closer than ours (dubbed the "Willie Wharf," I'd learned from Grammy a few weeks previous, after the man who'd first built it). Both for a rest and to be practical about shooting, I tied up below the inn, and set up. I was shooting into the sun, and had to figure out the matte box, but it proved basic enough.
A man walked down from the house. I waved and said hello, explained that I didn't think anyone was over, or would have walked up and said hi. The gentleman worked for the woman who owned the inn. He was middle-aged, but smoked a pipe, and seemed pleasant enough. I told him the background on the film I was shooting -- the perhaps inevitable "family project" I'm not the first filmmaker to attempt -- and made sure he didn't mind I was shooting there. He said goodbye and headed off after a bit. I got my shot and repacked.
Landing would need some creativity. The inn's float was in, but ours wasn't. There was a ladder at the end, but I thought it best to land at the ledge beside the wharf. At the current tide level, the chunk of ledge made a natural jetty, which afforded a landing. There was only one problem; the sun had barely come out, and for whatever reason otherwise, the ledge was coated in a slippery layer of algae. I got out and somehow made it across the ledge without slipping. I no longer remember how I kept the dingy from drifting away as I located a length of rope above the high tide line, and returned. The tide had made another landing on a less slippery section of ledge, and I pulled the boat up and unload there.
I set to work shooting, and worked on my shot list as I went, pausing for lunch without wondering what time it was. Though I'd planned on food and water for two, I began to suspect that I'd be glad I was alone, supplies-wise. The sun stayed out through midday, but the air wasn't overly warm. I was comfortable in a tee shirt until the sun disappeared for good midway through the afternoon.
Though I had ten minutes of film and only nine minutes of audio, I would have had to shoot at a nearly "1 to 1" ratio (that is, every foot of film that goes into the camera has to be usable in editing afterward), which is practically impossibly. As such, I'd planned to shoot some still photographs of scenes that had no movement in them, and splice them into the edited film on the computer later.
Grammy's stories about Grampy -- how they'd met, his time in the war, life in the old cottage on the island where they'd lived when they were first married -- needed something undistracting on the screen while they were told. I took about a roll of still shots of old machine parts and buildings on the island. Grampy was an army mechanic, and always exceptional with building and fixing things. He'd died when I was twelve or thirteen, and while I remember a cheery, big guy, who loved being a grandfather, I've realized in the intervening years that I never really knew him that well -- certainly not as well as he warranted.
I shot slowly but steadily all afternoon, stopping to change the film in the motion picture camera twice in the darkest place I could find on our property on the island -- the plumbingless shower stall in the cottage -- struggling to feed and adjust the film, with the camera balanced on my knee, and my legs cramping. The afternoon got steadily darker for about two hours and the breeze died off, then it began to sprinkle. I moved everything into the cottage, and waited.
The rain grew heavier. I watched from inside the cottage, with the door open.
It occurred to me then that there was literally nothing I could be doing at that moment. I entered into a strange, free, isolated feeling, waiting there in an uninsulated house between dark spruce trees and a beating charcoal harbor, on a rocky island off the coast of Maine. As the shower became some semblance of a storm, I decided to shoot a few feet of film from inside the cottage, for the section at the end of the narration where Grammy talks about my dad. I got the treetops swaying, the rain pounding the deck in close up, and a few more. I still hadn't figured out how to construct the images to accompany his part of the story.
Eventually, the rain slowed, and I decided to make my trip back across the harbor. I locked the equipment up in the cottage, dragged the skiff down to the water (the tide had gone out in the meantime), and pushed off. The harbor was wrinkled but calm as I rowed back across, this time going straight along the hypotenuse of my previous course.
A problem presented itself, as I reached the mainland. It was now dead low tide, the float was not yet out on the mainland wharf either, and the end of the wharf was twenty feet in the air. I couldn't figure out a way to get the dingy back across the low tide mud and rocks, nor a way to further drag it up above the tall seawall rocks at the high tide mark. I finally lowered a rope from the end of the wharf and tied it on, though I knew the dingy would bang against the wharf when the tide came in, and might even get trapped underneath and swamped, if the tide was particularly high that night. Still, I couldn't think of a better solution.
On the way home, I stopped in to wish my friend (and would-be-assistant) a happy birthday. People were there who I hadn't seen for a while, but she was still at work. The rain started up again, this time with lightning, and built to a very strong storm. A person arrived who I didn't want to see (ever again, if possible), I was tired, and the storm was getting worse. Eventually, I gave up on waiting for the birthday girl, and drove the pickup home. Mom got home soon after me. Dad's brother, Uncle Bob, had called while I was still at my friends', to make sure I'd made it home okay.
I got up later the next morning, around eight, because it was still raining when I woke up. I had only one reel of film left to shoot -- eight shots minimum that I absolutely needed to get -- and told mom I'd be done in time to row back across for the belated family Easter dinner at Grammy's at one. The water was still calm as I rowed across the harbor, but a breeze was picking up against my favor. In a few hours it had blossomed into a steady wind that riled the spruce trees and kept the temperature down all morning. I finished my shooting and used up the remaining film on shots I had no specific destination for, but thought worth having. Only about half an hour past one, I rowed back.
Although the breeze had turned onshore, the tide was thankfully up, and a small entourage greeted me when I got back. Uncle Bob and my cousin-in-law Matt helped me carry the boat back up to the truck and get it secured. At dinner, there were kids running around. Kristen was, of course, the life of the party, and little Elizabeth, who adores me, had been talking of nothing but seeing me until I got there, when she shied up, as usual. Still, I got from her (with her mom's help) that she had looked at a kindergarten and liked it, and that she liked having a new baby sister. It's ironic somehow that her mom -- my cousin Michelle -- and I never really got along too well. Little baby Carl, an easy-going, pudgy little kid -- like I was, apparently -- had discovered the scooting method of crawling that I apparently favored as well at that age.
Auntie Joanne grew a little tearie-eyed, as usual, asking how I was coping with dad's loss -- I still never know what to say, and I doubt that she really wanted me to say anything. I guess her granddaughter, Elizabeth, always worries about me, too. Steering the conversation back to her seemed to help. Auntie Joanne is a very doting grandparent -- her husband, dad's brother John, as well. It's pleasant to watch them.
The day had turned sunny by the time mom and I left Grammy's. I caught a ride back to Boston with my cousin Amy and her fiance, and slept late the next morning.
Tomorrow, I need to return the equipment, and ask my film professor how to properly label the film spools for processing at the lab. Then it'll be a few days to get the negatives developed, and another day to get a beta videotape made for loading into the Avid computers. With any luck (okay, a lot of luck) the film will come back usable, and I'll be able to have a videotape edited within two weeks. I don't know how I'll react if the film doesn't come out; it wouldn't be the first time I've done a lot of work on a project only to see it fail. I'm feeling philosophical about the whole thing right now.
So here I am, back in the city. The tips of my fingers are still numb from oars and ropes, the damp cold and handles. My shoulders and neck are tight -- but I'm always kind of tense, and it's nice to have them actually sore for some reason. My shoes are still muddy, after a run and several miles of walking around the city this afternoon. The marathon and its crowds were present today, but I didn't mind them too much. Maybe I'll run it next year.
I've never dovetailed too easily into my family, back in Maine. I feel like less of a stranger there than I do here, although I live here now. This will be my first summer away from home, though I've told my family that I'll be up frequently, on weekends. I've thought about spending a few days on the island this summer, if my schedule permits it. Critiques of my previous films suggest an obsession with a sense of place. I don't doubt the conclusion, but wonder -- very much -- why this is.
Touch the Toast