IS THE WORLD REALLY MY OYSTER? The Etiology Of Retail Impulse

     If I’ve missed saying thank you to you for reading my work and looking at my photographs, I’m sorry. I need every one of you to keep reading and responding to what I do. I spend part of every day answering e mails and thanking total strangers for their positive regard for my writing and photography. I try to acknowledge all the thumbs ups, comments and ratings. I’ve had a good year selling photographs and receiving acclaim for my writing. But, so far, no one has offered me a book deal. My dream is to combine my photography and writing into a package that would earn a little money. That hasn’t happened, and I find it discouraging. 

     I try to just shut up and write, but occasionally I falter in the faith that if I stick with it, one day my dream will come true. Usually, when I whine to my husband and girlfriends about this, they suffer though it, knowing that I’ll shut up eventually if they just let me go on. It usually goes like this: “I’m just not good enough, apparently.” I try to deliver this as a matter of fact, not an emotion laden bomb, nor an opener for my neediness. Unconvincingly, I say it like I don’t care, like I’m bigger than that, like my ego doesn’t need more than doing the work for the work’s sake alone. Artistic types lie about that all the time. “I don’t paint for other people; I paint for myself.” Ya, sure you do. If that were true, you’d never show your withered water colors to another living soul.  

    I whine and snivel on, often after too much wine or when fatigue weakened.  “My biggest fear is that I’ll never amount to anything, that I’ll never create anything noticeable, that I’ll just disappear into a cloud of artistic mediocrity. People will even remember Barry Manilow, but they won’t remember me!” I’m usually crying by this point and dangerously sloshing a glass of red wine around. On one of such occasion, a girlfriend snapped unsympathetically. “Oh for Christ’s sake! What the hell’s the matter with you? Look around, will you?  You are famous! Look how many followers you have on your blog! And people already know who you are when you are introduced; they know your name!  That’s never happened to me! And, all those Editor’s Picks on Open Salon for God’s sake! That’s millions of people! I don’t know what you want, lady. Look around you –you’ve already gotten someplace! You’re there! What more do you need anyway?”

     I don’t know the answer to that. But, I do know that whatever it is, I don’t have it, yet. My seemingly bottomless appetites disgust me. I’m a greedy, needy, dissatisfied little, piggy person. The best I can do is confess to it in the hopes of being freed from it (And who says I don’t understand Catholicism!). I will work at fearlessness in the face of my deepest, darkest fear that no one will ever know me - whoever I am, whom ever you are. 

     A few years ago, I had my first oysters on the half shell. I only had a couple shared from someone else’s restaurant appetizer, but I was hooked. I wanted more someday. My husband recently came home with a big, fat bag full fresh from a local oyster farm. He shucked while I looked on the Internet for preparation guidance. We laid the oysters on their shells nestled into a bed of crushed ice to keep them cold and stable. If they fall over their delicious liquor spills out which would be a shame. My husband pried them open, and then delicately released each one from its fleshy hinge. The ecru morsels were floated back into a personal pool of brine and pearl shell.

     Oysters are best slugged down in one gulp, like a shot, juice and all from their own shell spoon. Purists don’t add anything to them. I can’t leave well enough alone, though; I always need to tinker. I squeezed on a little fresh lemon. On some we had a squirt of brilliant, red, Tai hot sauce. Some I served with a dollop of cool, cucumber Mignonette with shallots and rice wine vinegar. Rice wine vinegar added just the right acidic sweetness complimenting the oysters’ sweet meat. The cucumbers married the earth and sea. We tried several with both the Mignonette and the hot sauce.  Each way we had them was more divine than the previous. They tasted like mouthfuls of the sea, the sky and the earth combined, floating in briny oceanic goodness. They were so delicious that we ate three dozen! I would have eaten more had there been more. There will never be enough oysters for me. We sat on our deck, looking out to the southward sea, savoring oysters and the last days of summer. What more could I have wanted? I don’t know, but something.

     I also know there will never be enough shoes for me. My husband likes to razz me about how many pairs of shoes I own. He says I have shoe stashes all over the place, like a drunk that has bottles of booze hidden around the house. He doesn’t’ really care how many shoes I own but rather sees it as a personality quirk. He also thinks I have a sunglasses fetish which may be true. When I came home with another pair recently, he said “What, more sunglasses?” “How many do you have anyway?” “Not that many,” I defended. 

     One of my girlfriends has told me I have a shoe problem, too. I winced when she said this, having assumed no reasonable woman would have thought such a thing. Wounded, I examined my shoe piles. There wasn’t one set I was willing to part with. They all have different purposes, moods, practicality, or total lack thereof to support their existence in my space. I need them all.

     A few days ago, I went shopping for a pulse meter for exercising.  Next to the pulse meters were pedometers. Logically, I went from the sporting goods store to buy a pulse meter to the TJ Max shoe rack. And it was not my fault, either. Some evil temptation entity put the pulse meters next to the pedometers to prod me toward the shoes in the next retail establishment. I can’t be held responsible for that.

     I came home without the pulse meter. But I did get two pairs of the coolest, sexiest, hottest boots ever heeled. When I put on those boots I felt like a rock star! Who needs a pulse meter when you’ve got great boots! So that was that: I had to have them. Winter is nigh upon us and I’ll need something appealing to mince through snow and then slog through mud season. I’ll need something that will help me to look better than I will feel. Then, while working on my retail rationalization, I saw it: the most must- have, to die for, out of this world accessory ever fabricated.

     Imagine a sort of boa, a silky, soft, begs-to-be-touched shawl-ish wrap of fur. Close your eyes and conjure a cuddly, delicious scarf of Finlandian fox died in every color of the rainbow. Slung around my shoulders, the colors came to life as I moved; I was a goner. I would have defaulted on my mortgage before I’d pass up that chunk of lovely luxury. “Winter will be coming,” came to my mind again like the words of a song.  

     When I got home, I had to try on everything.  I had all the makings of a great outfit. I slung my wrap around my shoulders, put on my new Jackie-O sunglasses then sashayed out onto the deck. I felt taller in my boots and I’m sure I looked younger. I looked out to sea. It was calm. The water surface undulated softly, a satiny blue color, like the shells of oysters. Every color of the sky breathed in my scarf -pink, purple, teal, midnight blue, and tangerine. For just a few minutes, I felt like a famous writer.

Winter Point oysters (Crassostrea virginica) served three ways, with lemon, Tai hot sauce (Sriracha is a common brand of Tai hot sauce) and cucumber Mignonette.

Oysters are an important form of aquaculture in Maine. These came from J.P.'s Shellfish in West Bath, Maine, just up the river from us.

For more on Maine aquaculture, click here.
Read this for an interesting article on local oyster farming:
http://www.workingwaterfront.com/articles/New-oyster-farming-technology-comes-to-Maine/13165/

For Mature Audiences Only - Common Atlantic Eider

THE FOLLOWING PROGRAM CONTAINS CONTENT THAT SOME VIEWERS MAY FIND OBJECTIONABLE. VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

These Common eider hens and chicks are so cute that you'd be tempted to take one home for a pet, like an Easter chick without the pink dye. These are specifically, Common Atlantic eiders because they are on the reflecting pool of the Washington Monument. Now look, be serious. They are on the Atlantic ocean. Every spring, starting in May, we get flotillas of them feeding along the rocky shore line and resting on the rocks. The hens make a mumbling sound which makes us think of old men playing chess in Central Park. The chicks peep-peep-peep like most chicks do. We can even hear them at night because they sit up on the rocks in the dark. Eiders are a big, sea duck. Their soft feathers are of 'eider down' fame, though today most pillows and quilts are stuffed with farm raised ducks and geese. Within barely hours of hatching, the chicks take to the water where they learn to dive immediately. Diving is how they get crustaceans from the bottom and also how they stay safe. When airborne predators show up, the chicks bunch together with the hens and dive. The mumbling and peeping are delightful to hear and we look forward to the chicks first appearances every year. In our neighborhood, we call each other up on first sighting, "The chicks are here!" But from there on out, it gets really ugly.

We also have a pair of gulls residing on our pier. They are a mated pair and like all living things, they must eat too (this is the point where you'll want to get the kids and the faint of heart out of the room). They are very fond of eider chicks. By yesterday, a brood of thirteen eider chicks born a week ago, had dwindled to five as they were picked off by gulls and eagles. Bald eagles like them also, but they aren't as good at snagging them as the gulls are. When the gulls or an eagle cruises around, the hens usher the chicks into a tight bunch. If they are on the rocks, they all take to the water and rush away from the shore so they can dive. The hens stretch their necks in the air, heads raised issuing alarm calls. Two days running I saw the gulls grab chicks. They swooped, grabbed then flew off to flail their prizes on the rocks while the hens screamed. As soon as it's over, everybody goes back to their business like nothing happened. It's a wretched, natural drama that plays out every year and begs the question "Do you have any Grey Poupon?"

FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY

Every year at about this time, the Atlantic Eiders show up with their chicks. It seems to happen suddenly, though that’s not the case. For at least a month, the drakes chase the hens in relentless pursuit. I’ve posted photographs of them engaged in mating displays, stretching their necks while calling a low ah-hoo! Then things calm down. Hundreds of them float in the cove fishing and sleeping and apparently pretty bored with each other. Then one day, at the very end of May, they appear with chicks in tow. The family groups of hens and a couple of drakes escort a crowd of a hundred or more chicks long the rocky shore line to feed. Because they are so vulnerable to predators while on land, the chicks take to the water very quickly. They are balls of down no bigger than the palm of your hand. Once they are in the water, they dive under when predatory birds try to catch them. Sea gulls and Bald eagles like a snack of Eider chick whenever they can get one. It’s a depressing spring event to witness. The numbers of little puff balls quickly dwindles. Like stealth bombers, the eagles cruise across the surface scalping the chicks off the water. With each pass, the mothers frantically huddle the chicks into a circle. Stretching their necks upward and flapping their wings, they squawk miserably. I can always tell when there is a hunting eagle on the water from wherever I am in the yard because of the distress calls of the hens. Gruesome as this is, I have to remind myself that everybody has to eat. An eagle is just being an eagle; it’s not cruel or vicious. May is just a rough month.

May is also the month when there are nine birthdays among my family and friends. This year, I did not recognize any of them. It’s not that I forgot them, either. I remembered some of them, though not on time. I just didn’t think it was that important. Boy, was I wrong. As it turns out, several of my friends were hurt. One of them may not forgive me for it, which would be a shame. We’ve been friends for almost thirty years, but it looks like this may be the end of it. I do feel like a first class jerk for hurting anybody’s feelings. There wasn’t any malice in it; I was just a slob. I have no excuses. I guess accepting this about me is what it takes to be my friend. It’s not something I’m proud of, but that’s the fact of it. Like an eagle, I’ve got my great qualities, but some of me can be pretty hard to take. To expect me to be a different person is probably like expecting an eagle to hunt for a corndog. I guess if the people I love won’t forgive me, then May will have been the roughest month of all.