How Love Turns Garbage into Art and Cringers into Connection

—04.24.2000—

It’s the Monday after Easter. I’ve been on Gugh almost a week and will move into a shed at Elder (Hans and Jon’s place) tomorrow, on the very day that would have marked my originally-planned flight back home. Strange—I can’t really imagine going back just yet, nor can I imagine staying here indefinitely. I am looking forward to settling into something though—that feeling is clear.

I’m just thinking about what I’ve learned over the past six months. I like to say I’ve learned loads about myself but I’m not sure if that’s true. It’s so hard to say. Maybe things I’ve taken in here will bob up in the surface of my consciousness months or even years from now. I hope that I’ve learned about giving more of myself, thinking of others, about being steady and forthright. I hope.

I sent a friend an email the other day and was so interested in what I wanted to get out of it that I didn’t even ask her about how she was doing. It made me feel like a bit of selfish dork and threw me into a funk. I seem to do that sometimes with the people I care about the most. I suppose we all turn our defenses into fences when we’re feeling vulnerable. Tearing them down feels like an act of bravery.

I had a nice night yesterday. I called Ellen and Bryce in the afternoon to wish them a happy Easter. Ellen called back around a quarter to seven, just as the tide was beginning to severe the path to Gugh for the evening. They were going down to the pub for dinner. Would I like to join them? I said I would, but that I wouldn’t be able to get back to Gugh afterwards. “Why don’t you come stay in the guesthouse?” I grabbed a wallet and a toothbrush, jumped into my wellies, and ran out the door just in time for a quick splash across to St. Agnes and an evening at the pub.

Anwyn, a friend of theirs who was down at New Year from London, was back for another visit. So too was a woman named Eden who had just quit her job and was taking advantage of the time off to do some planting in Ellen and Bryce’s garden. Also there were Jemma and Nikki who had taken the boat over from St. Mary’s for dinner.

I’ll say quickly that it’s been great meeting Nikki. She loves it down here though she lives in Leeds. Her mom grew up in Pengold with Hans. Do you remember the scrapbook that I found in the downstairs bedroom that was stuffed full of Pat Boone articles? Well, that was Nikki’s mom’s. Anyway, she makes these great greeting cards out of things that she finds on the beach, like plastic bottles and so on. I kept seeing the cards around the island before I knew her, or that she’s related to Jon. The funny thing is that Nikki is that she’s so unassuming and quiet that you’d never guess that she’s a creative genius.

Recently I saw that she also makes necklaces out of beach plastic. It’s all top-drawer fresh. She’ll cut colorful, plastic detergent bottles, which are always washing up here, into 1 cm squares, then thread hundreds of squares into a necklace. They end up looking dazzlingly colorful and, I imagine, would fit in any cool shop in any city. And it’s all made of beach garbage. That she can turn garbage into fashion is, to me, an act of absolute love and magic.

So anyway, it was nice dinner at the pub. Afterwards we hid a bunch of chocolate Easter eggs in various locations around the pub: in a wooden sailor’s cupped hand, in an old bugle, under an old fire helmet, in the belly of a flag draped from the ceiling, and had an impromptu Easter egg hunt. Patricia left me a message on Sunday saying that she had hidden some chocolate eggs for me in a cupboard of her kitchen before she’d left—sweet, I thought—so I had plenty to share around. It was a fun night though I’m not sure we found all the treats we hid. Who knows—the crevices of the Turk’s Head may continue offering up chocolates eggs for years to come.

Walking across the bar a few days ago I spotted an orange ball just coming ashore in the surf. As I chased it down, I realized it was a mandarin. Operating on the premise that it had been dropped in the water by beach goers further up the shore, I peeled it and popped it into my mouth. It tasted citrusy sweet and salty. It wasn’t until I spotted an onion further up the beach that I thought, “Hang on, where is all of this produce coming from?” I still have no idea.

Liz, the girl from NZ that works at the pub told me a funny story the other day about a woman that I had stopped to chat with a couple of weeks ago on my way over to Gugh. According to Liz she had been swooning about how handsome I was. She’d caught me by surprise that morning as as I walked by, mumbling to myself, imitating some foreign accent as I occasionally do, when she said hello from the grass. It was as if she’d just appeared out of thin air: silver hair, bright smile, probably in her sixties, and I chatted with her a bit. Then the other day on the boat back from St. Mary’s Liz said, “...and then she said ‘I don’t know how any woman from six to sixty wouldn’t think he was just the most handsome young man. Of course, don’t tell him I told you that.’” I laughed, “Really? You’re kidding me...”

Then the other day Jemma said that she overheard some of the girls at the secondary school saying something like, “There’s this totally amazing American guy helping out in one of our classes...” I don’t know—it’s funny. I guess it just surprises me. It feels very sweet though. And it’s also good to know that Liz can’t keep a secret.

Speaking of girls named Liz, Beth, my ex-girlfriend from San Francisco, hasn’t appeared in my dreams for awhile, not since I wrote “Maybe she’s as close as I’ve come.” I can only assume something has been resolved. I often have the sense that I’m so close to myself that I can’t see a thing. That’s why I say I can only assume.

I haven’t been to a city since last century. It already seems like a long time ago, the Millennium, doesn’t it? America seems ages ago too. The facades of New York skyscrapers showed up on the news the other night: brass address numbers, big glass doors, porters, and white Cadillacs. It looked so strangely foreign, like something I was seeing for the first time. It all seems absolutely miles away.

——

Jon and I are hanging out in the living room of the Barn House on Gugh at the moment. He’s over on the couch coaxing stories out of a guitar, pick in his mouth, staring intently at the strings, and I’m writing. It’s a nice afternoon, even though the day can’t make up its mind about the rain.

Next weekend Scilly will host the Gig Racing World Championships. Over 70 crews from the US and Europe will be competing and the islands are going to be stacked with people. Next weekend is also Anwyn’s birthday, which Ellen thinks could be an even bigger event.

——

Jon headed back to St. Agnes. Day has turned to evening and made up its mind. It’s raining, hard.

I’ve just been thinking again about this whole idea of vulnerability and bravery. I think it might have more to do with learning and unlearning. That is, unlearning the stories we’ve been given that are crap and replacing them with ways of relating that work. When I think of some of the cringers I heard growing up that were followed up with “...and we love you,” and I think of myself, unwittingly offering those awful ways to others, it just makes me want to run.

—05.07.2023—

And we all do it. (Present-day me again.) The cringy things I observed in my youth, which I no longer even remember, and whose residues I’ve been working to scrub clean, were all, I imagine, handed down to me unknowingly. And I’m still discovering them, like the ways in which I might exault others, putting them on a pedestal, while diminishing myself.

One thing I’ve learned though is that we can be open about our experiences in the moment, be vulnerable and reveal our challenges. These are things that my partners have modeled for me and I find that every shared difficulty or wobble, when met with love and openness, and talk through, leads to deeper love and deeper connection.

And for all of it, even those old cringers, I am grateful.