XOXOX - Excerpt from Events at Vista Bay

April 21
I like it. Took a long exploratory walk around the whole point and through every street, drive, court, and road. I like it very much. Vista Bay is roomy and bathed in light. Few trees. All is open. There are man-made ponds and long and wide stretches of lawn and beds of plants and ornamental trees and bushes. There's a clubhouse with swimming pool, party deck, tennis courts and such things as that. The clubhouse overlooks the river and the marina, which houses eighty boat slips. All very pretty and salutary, even though I'm not interested in boating. We thought about getting a boat, but I rejected the notion. I don't want to get involved in vain activity, in distracting myself. I want to paint and read and write in this journal. I want to absorb the natural beauty around me, and consider things. I want my head to be clear and I want to see where my life is going and what I can make of the rest of it.

Vista Bay, Long Island, is a sun-drenched neck of land of about one hundred and fifty acres that spears the bay. On either side of it ride shallow waters. The condos that cluster the point are one- and two-story structures. Even though construction is still going on, the feeling I get is one of tranquility and peace. You can rove about the place day or night and run into a very few people, even though there are about two hundred families already here. No children. About half of the residents work and the other half, I'm told, heads for Florida in the winter. That means there are only one hundred families here from December to May. Nice. My kids find the place deserted, silent and boring.

"Doesn't it give you the creeps, Dad?" they ask. "It's like a cemetery."

Coming off the main "highway," which out here in the boondocks is a two-lane road, you enter a very wide, curving driveway with a center mall green with shrubs and trees. This driveway winds and bends for at least a half mile and is sheltered by tall trees and dense shrubbery. All is April greening and the trees and shrubs perform a satisfying noise-reducing function. The point is you come off the main road, heavy with traffic, and this winding road shuts the door on all the racket. At the end of the road there is a short flat bridge rising over a boggy stream that, I'm told, goes dry when there's little rain and is fishable when the rains are heavy. Vista Bay Bridge is the only way into the complex. This is beach country so you find the beach plum and phragmites everywhere as well as the hardy low growing pines that thrive in sand and smell so delicately of the mixture of heat and fragrant odors when the sun burns in on them. It warms my bones just thinking of the coming summer. With the natural beauty and the landscaping, Vista Bay beckons.

Once over the bridge, you come to a guardhouse where traffic into the complex is regulated. The old democrat in me bristles at this form of control and regulation-I call it the Gestapo Booth, but I live with it. I'm not fighting battles anymore-big ones or little ones. I'm hors de combat and I'll take what comes. It's a nice feeling not having to consider the rightness or wrongness of every turn in the road.

The road turns and twists again through yet-to-be-built-on property and then the condos and the ponds start appearing. You drive on and you come to the sales office and then the clubhouse and then the marina. Our place is on the opposite side of the point-the quieter side where they'll be no more construction.

From our deck, we see a vast lawn, the wetlands, the river, and beyond the river another point which right now-and forever, I hope-is undeveloped. Across from the clubhouse side of the point and the marina, there seems to be a thickly settled community.

May 22
The weather's so great that Julia came walking with me. She pulled herself away from her agitation and paperwork long enough to get some air. I hoped we'd be able to talk, which is something we're doing less and less of. Not only that. I notice Julia has new clothes and yet she hasn't modeled any of them for me, which is always her habit. If I say anything, she'll say she's too busy, got too much on her mind, can't be bothered. I already know the answers in advance. I can't be too critical because I clearly remember how absorbed and committed I was to teaching and how often I virtually ignored her. Let's be honest and take that "virtually" out of there. It was foolish, it was idiotic, but I did it. And now she's out there wasting energies that could be put to better uses. How much sexual energy did I use up which could have been better spent making love?

We met Charley and Mary and they filled us in on the meeting. Henry Eisen conducted it and Charley said he did it in his usual efficient and cantankerous way. But that Clyde Andersen is another case, Charley said. He thinks Clyde's a bad influence because he's persuasive and his views are ridiculously extreme. But he apparently has a following. He wants the complex to hire him as a security officer with the promise of sure and certain law and order. Charley's eyes dance with mirth at the thought of it.

Julia and I never get to talk. It's very difficult. Even the kids notice it. They came for dinner, which I cooked. What's with Mom, they want to know. Lisa thinks it's menopause. Bill agrees with Julia, saying we made a mistake moving here. This kind of life doesn't fit our personalities, he says. We're not joiners, we're not fitters-in, but Blossom Drive was no pleasure either, so where were we to go? Eva says we should have gone south where we really want to be-in Florida or the Caribbean. After dinner, I took out my collages and we had a good laugh over them. That lightened the atmosphere. But some of the sketches and paintings didn't go over too well. "Dad," they want to know, "what's on your mind? Why are some of these so morbid?" I don't think they're morbid at all. They're what I observe. The pleasure of my life here is being able to observe and listen... "and be free of all the bullshit, right, Dad?" Bill says, finishing my sentence for me.

Speaking of listening, there's some bird or fowl out there in the wetlands that produces a regular, satiric commentary on our lives. Probably some species of duck. Every so often, night or day, morning or evening, at irregular intervals, in the absolute quiet of midday, I hear this mocking squawking laugh that goes something like: "HEH-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-HEH-heh-HEH." Sometimes the wetlands and the river are absolutely silent and you see no bird life. Then, at other times, it's an incredible chaotic but deeply appealing symphony hall of nature: "Kee-ow, kee-ow, weeta weeta wit-chew, check-check, chip chupety chip, see see see see, tees teesi teesi, seet seet seet, zee zee zee zee, tee-yari tee-yari, caw caw caw, whooee whoee, trit trit trit, twit twit twit, piteery picheery, honk honk honk, bek bek, kwek kwet kwet, and on and on, plus the one that gives me the biggest kick: "HEH-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh HEH-heh-HEH." The mocker is out there and I wish I knew who he was.