Provincetown 15

I slept late today and when I got up I made myself hot tea and got right to work. I took a break and had a light supper and then I took a short walk on the beach. The tide was coming in and there wasn't any firm sand to walk on. I passed a man on the beach who asked me about my hair. He was about my age, maybe older. He said, "Girl, how long did it take you to grow your hair out that way?"

I hesitated. I couldn't quite make out what he wanted. I'm not used to being in a strange town without my husband. I told him about twenty years. I kept walking and so did he. We were turned around talking, our feet still walking away from each other.

He said his hair was all the way down his back and then he cut his. He said he didn't know why. "I just passed this place and I did it," he said. We kept on walking. I did a hand gesture like "shame on you." I kept walking and so did he.

I said, "You shouldn't have done that."

He said, "I know." And then we were too far away to hear each other anymore.

The writing went well today. I'm anxious to get back to it.

I was sorry to see of Tim Russert's passing. I'll miss him.

Two days ago I bought Birkenstocks and painted my toenails.

May each of us live to see another day.

Provincetown 14

They have a name up here for when the dew point is way down. The weather person calls it "refreshing." That's what it is today.

I sat on my bed with my laptop and wrote 10 good pages today. Then I walked downtown and mailed a letter. Walked on the beach a while. Then stopped here at the lounge to pick up my mail and do a quick fact check on the computer. I'm heading back to my apartment now to look at what I've done and write some more.

What's good about what I write here is the nearly complete break I'm experiencing with my life back in Ohio. This has helped me to make my characters much different than myself and different from people I know. I write anything I want. The internal censor that's usually at work when I go to my writing room at my house in Ohio has been largely shut off. I'm free.

Provincetown 13

In response to Waterboy's question, I have read Tough Guys by Mailer, but not in a long time. I read it as part of my graduate study in 1988 or 1989! I don't remember anything but the sexy parts, unfortunately!

Today is my first day of being completely, entirely on my own. Allen, Buddha, and Sweet Pea left for Ohio at 1:30 in the morning. I couldn't sleep, so I finished a novel, took a nap, got up at 8:30 in the morning, wrote letters, showered, took another nap. It's been unseasonably warm here, so I just wrapped myself in a sari. Then I sat up in bed and wrote 800 words on the novel. I'm just heading out now to mail my letters and take a walk on the beach.

It's hard to describe my aloneness. Allen had been doing all sorts of errands for me, like getting me coffee and a treat in the morning. Today I had hot tea instead of coffee (I don't have the right kind of filters for the coffee maker FAWC has supplied me with). I put away the bowl and glass Allen has been using (FAWC supplies all dishes, pots, pans, and silverware). I have been missing him pretty bad. I wrote not one but two mushy letters to him today. That's what I'm getting ready to mail. Also a letter to our boys.

As I came out the door of my apartment, I heard a dog that sounded exactly like Sweet Pea.

Those of you who remember my first entries about Sweet Pea know that she is a rescued dog. She has never been friendly with people outside of our family. But so many people here in P-Town are dog-lovers and are so gentle around her that she really started to come around. To our great surprise, last night she allowed a young man from New Hampshire to pet her and she licked his hands and face!

I'm looking forward to the free days ahead to read, write, and think.

Provincetown 12

I've been up since nine this morning, unusual for me, since I'm a night person. But I tried for weeks to get acclimated to a day schedule so Allen and I could enjoy P-Town for the week that he is with me. I arose and had a glass of V-8, took a shower: I have the tiniest shower. I'm a bath person and worried about that, but the water here is far superior to that of Ohio, and my skin feels clean. All in all, life is happy here.

Allen was out on the fishing pier filming the commercial fishermen this morning, and, amazingly, one of them invited him to go along on the boat today. So he will be out in the Atlantic for six hours getting a taste of what commercial fishing is really like. The men who do the work are a rough lot, pants cut off just below the knees and Tee-shirts all covered with stains. I wrote a letter to my friend Julie and walked to the post office to mail it. I stopped by the truck to open the truck cap windows wider for Buddha and Sweet Pea, give them some water, and pet them awhile, and then came straight here to the lounge. In the background, I can hear Hillary giving her concession/unity speech: there is a TV here, but I understand it will be removed in a week or so.


It's warm today, and should get up to 85 or so tomorrow, but then it will cool down again, they say. Commercial street is the busiest I've seen it since we arrived.

I did my research on the Homestead Strike and thought more about how to proceed with the novel. I'm going to head back to my apartment now and try to get some words down.

Provincetown 11

We arrived in Provincetown on June 2 after driving almost straight through. We decided to spend the night in Hyannis and arrive fresh and Rested to P-Town the next morning. This is the first time I've had access to e-mail. I don't have a connection at all in my apartment; I have to walk across the courtyard to the FAWC lounge to use one of their computers for Internet. Frankly, there has been too much to see and do to think about the Internet! But, alas, today I reallized I had not printed out any of my Internet research on the Homestead Strike, which I plan to mention in my novel, so the Internet became a must today.

The town is on the tip of Cape Cod. I have a cozy upstairs apartment on the FAWC (Fine Arts Work Center) grounds. It's an attic apartment in an old Cape Cod house, so the ceiling has an uncountable number of angles. FAWC is a stone's throw from the shore. I'd like to post some photographs, but the computers here don't seem to be set up for disks or memory keys. I'll investigate later and if there's any way to post photos, I certainly will.

The price of rentals and real estate here is astounding. I'm so amazed, just amazed, that I will have the opportunity to stay here for 3 months.

So far the temperatures have been very cool, in the 60's during the day and 50's at night. For two days, it rained.

Provincetown is a dog-friendly town. Everywhere people are walking their four-legged friends and everywhere it is clean because P-Towners are very responsible when it comes to cleaning after their dogs. Buddha and Sweet Pea love the beach. They are just getting wise to the fact that the water is salty (so used are they to drinking out of Ohio rivers and lakes).

On my second day here, Dorothy, who is in charge of the Summer Program here at FAWC gave three of us a tour. She took the other OAC Provincetown resident (the artist), another artist on residency from Maryland, and myself in her car to point out some of the sites. She showed us Norman Mailer's house, and we asked if she'd known him. Yes, she said, she'd known him well, and he'd done a lot for FAWC in the way of giving readings and such. She also showed us Stanley Kunitz's house. Did she know him? Yes, of course, she said. She had helped him in his garden and had been his driver for a number of years.

Imagine.