W2 - Wendy to the Second Power

My buddy J4 and I went to Cape Cod last week, staying in a darling little community called Craigville, which is near the Centerville Beach, one of the nicest beaches on the Cape, I learned.

Ironically, the beach was not a big draw once we got there. Go figure! It just didn't feel or smell much like being at the beaches I was used to. No fishy seaweed smell. No ozone in the air. The sand was composed of ground-down oyster shells, so the walking was actually sharp to the feet. J4 never goes barefoot, even in her house, so she only walked through the sand once and never again. I visited the ocean-- actually, Nantucket Sound -- more than she did. I even went late to one of my classes so I could take a quick dip and say I'd swum on that coast. It was a popular family beach, lots of folks, and also neat that it was a private beach for Craigville people with a nice Craigville Beach Center. But it wasn't very tidal, cooler than I expected, and it got deep fast!


The people enjoying a sunny afternoon on Craigville beach.

The Craigville community, composed mostly of cute little or impressively huge summer homes with lush flowers interspersed with the more "rustic" (read: not upgraded with AC or planted with flowerbeds) cottages and buildings owned by the Christian Church folks who owned the Craigville Conference Center, was quiet and sleepy and felt very safe. We slept with windows open, said "hi" to all the folks we passed on the street, etc. There were no stores and it was a drive to get to Hyannis (6 miles) or Centerville (3 miles) and we didn't rent a car. So we spent most of the week hanging out on the breezy porch of our cottage or hiking the streets up and down to go to class or get our meals in the Craigville Inn.

Imagine: a week with no AC, no TV, no radio, no email/Web browsing, no snacks, no sodas, and no driving. It was like living on planet Mars! But first, we had to get from Boston in a tiny Cessna, like a VW bus with wings! ( Read More and See Photos... )

I wrote this years ago and never did anything with it except print it in AUSTIN WRITER, the Writer League's monthly newsletter. Going through old docs now to polish a story for SlugTribe tonite and found it.


Brain Food
a poem by Wendy Wheeler

I keep books in the pantry like food
A cupboard of words
Shelves of sentences
Stacked and rowed provisions of plot and story line
Jars of metaphor and simile glowing with subtlety
Tall, teetering piles of character and motivation
Well-jelled themes
Floating in their own juice
Those necessary, nourishing staples:
Grammar and syntax

On cheerless days, my peckish brain
Lights upon a choice morsel
The spicy bite of irony
A satisfying crunch of emotion
Until a fullness grows within my head
And softly I belch a feeling of rapport