lately, lately

Beach with mom and the girls this last weekend. It felt a little different than the last time I was there; I've been in a much different headspace lately. It was very fun though! The girls are all on big fitness kicks, so we did a ton of beach running (and skipping, and dashing, and sprinting, and CARTWHEELS and FLIPS if you're my ex-gymnist mom) and floor workouts in addition to the standard "dance and drink too much wine." I nearly danced my little ass right off.

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I rescued a loon that had gotten confused in the migration season and wound up getting battered in the big storm waves. It wasn't swimming temperatures, so I went in my clothes, and the poor thing was so exhausted and confused that it swam toward me instead of being afraid. I'd never seen a loon up close before. Red-eyed, all black with little white droplet marks on his feathers. He was huge. I had some trouble carrying him back to shore; it required wrapping both my arms around his body and holding him to my chest, hanging onto this big goose-sized ball of wet feathers in the pounding cold surf. A strange feeling, but good: alive, helpful.

I took him up on the dunes to dry off in the sunlight and he seemed much happier. He shook his head, lay down, and started preening his feathers. When we came back to check on him, he was gone. A little while later we saw him flying over dunes. I think maybe he'd just gotten waterlogged and needed a little quiet space---which is something that happens to everyone every now and then.

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I've been reading a great book on the Salem witches trials--The Witches by Stacy Schiff. It's excellent: eloquent, articulate, incredible sense of context, primary sources, manages to quote Dumbledore in the footnotes, and all while avoiding the kind of new age/wicca revisionist persecution complex and the patronizing tone some modern reads take on those events. 17th century Puritan women do not need the sympathy of their 21st century sisters.

One thing the book talked about was to suggest captivity narrative--one of my pet favorites--as a form of early memoir. It pointed out how relevant it is even still today in symbolic undertones: "Everyone has a captivity narrative."

It's true. It occurred to me that I've been writing them (in a much looser and more general form than the Mary Rowlandson kidnapped by naked savages archetype, of course) for years. I'd not really analyzed that before, but I do: I finish one in one form and I begin another. They are compelling. They are dangerous, with undertones of sexuality and wildness. It's another way of taking back control over the narrative of your own story, of making sense out of victimhood.