A Visual Travelogue

Vignettes of our time thus far in North Cackylacky:

Four Generations of McDevitt Women

Tallulah's Botticelli Impression (as Cherub)

Tallulah and her Great Grandmother Elizabeth "Bette" McDevitt

Tallulah's Alphabet Quilt (created by Rebecca Hix, left)

Dad and the Circle of Neglect

A New Five Happiness...The Feast Has Moved. Please Make Note

We have spectacular mornings. The sun rises with a deep golden hue and crawls lazily, heavily on the tall Loblolly Pines. A gentle heat seeps into everything and animates the day slowly, like a young child blowing up a balloon, or an inner tube for a ride down a river. The song birds begin just before dawn, ever mindful of sleeping beasts, careful only to sing just enough to carry dreams deeper and early risers with reverie. Tanagers, Blue Birds, Cardinals, Titmice, Chickadees, Wrens, Flycatchers, all reach an harmonious crescendo come breakfast time. Wildlife of every conceivable variety: Great Blue Heron, Red Tailed Hawks, Fox, Canadian Geese, Snakes, Turtles, and on and on...

By the afternoon, distant thunderheads, several miles high, trundle and morph into fantastical shapes and push breezes through new green leaves in ancient trees. The heat is only a harbinger of Summer fury, in its infancy now, but we can feel it-climbing out of it's crib and testing the latent powers it holds. Summer will be hot and humid. But we have that time tested, age old stand by, ensuring a consistent civilized nature: The ocean.

A mere three hours drive, the eighty degree waters, the lukewarm tide pools, the huge swath of beach sand, the sea oat forested dunes, the tickle of worn boardwalks and piers, festooned with crusty locals fishing for dinner. The occasional treasure; a shark's tooth, an intact conch, deep blue sand glass...and the companion of the wave's metronome measure-the lure of instant bliss. One, two, three...dive and surface reborn.

There is a great deal of that here, for me especially. I feel reborn into a world I am deeply familiar with, but each day seems new like a foreign country. The feeling I've only just arrived imbues the time with the same magical aether which permeates one's arrival to a new world. New smells, alive senses, sharp eyes, unknown people...everyone a potential friend. And now, this is Home.







Tallulah has settled in. She sleeps now, on my chest, wrapped in a comfortable cloth origami tying her to my body. Her weight comforts me, and as she gets heavier, I get stronger. She has begun to reach for the things she wants, and it all ends up in her open mouth. She looks like she is trying to taste the world. I remember discovering, perhaps at age four or five, that by touching objects with my tongue, I could instantly discern their composition-glass, stone, metal, plastic. Like an oral oracle, the taste and texture were unique. The temperature, exact. And I was always right. I imagine Lu doing that with everything new, the air, a toy, her foot...

Five Happiness, content, rests its head on your shoulder, as if to say, "I want to be still, and let the world, this new world, swirl about me...you are a rock and I hold on..."

I Am The Calm Center of the Storm

Tallulah doesn't know we're in another state. But she does know there is a lot more sunshine than there was a week ago. The blue sky is a patient reminder of why we're here. To slow down, to look, and to expand. Which we are doing in more ways than one.

Felicity loves her new cottage. As does Lu. I, on the other hand, am looking for stability in the form of honest work and a place where I can settle down to exorcise these ghosts haunting me. I have never been here before, but I grew up here. Each road I travel has new meanings added to the old memories. Here is where I kissed Sasha behind the fence, opposite where we shop for groceries. Here is where my best friend and I used our wits to escape from the mean punks, that is now a containment area for relocated Yankees. Here is where I played soccer in a neighborhood which has changed it's demographic from upwardly mobile to downwardly retracted.

North Carolina has the nation's fourth highest unemployment rate: 10.7%. So, I've decided to go back to school. New skills for a new environment. If they'll have me I will study Industrial Design at NCSU in Raleigh. They have a two year masters in design program that seems perfect. By the time I graduate, my daughter will be four. She will begin to write, to read, and to craft intelligent seating solutions for my ergonomics class. This prompts me to pontificate at length about her future interests, hopes, and dreams. But I won't write any of those down here...she will.

And to my dear dear friends keeping in touch personally: thank you for your support. We are making the best of the worst, and turning the lemons into meringue. I hate meringue. But others seem to really enjoy it.

To Begin Anew

Writing about our life is not easy. It is like looking up from your dinner to find your hot date has spinach on her teeth. You tell her, because you want to be honest, but you do it in a classy, clever way that won't make her hate you for seeing her with spinach on her teeth.

Our life is not easy, nor always happy. We are Five Happiness because we always try to remember who we want to be, though it's not always who we are. We get caught in the trap of wanting, and forget that we set the trap in the first place. We forget about the needs we have. We gloss over the simple and the necessary and jump to the complicated desires which require we step in the mud.

One of the intentions we hold foremost in our minds preparing for our jump into hyperspace (read: East coast) is paring down our lives to remember who we want to be and what we hold around ourselves and in our environment. For instance; I, who have been performing theater for most of my life, realized as a product of our discussions, I don't really enjoy it anymore. What a revelation. Trying so hard to make something the focus of your life when it is a falsehood is like running a car with the idea of gas. Getting out and walking feels like the best thing in the world. Like the diver taking off the lead vest, without the bends.

That's not to say I won't act again. But it opens up a huge space in my life. Now, I plan to get my master's degree, to be the creative designer geek I have always played at in my head, but never pulled into a form or shape I could set in my sight. Excitement where there was dread! Form from the void! That is creativity: Living purposefully. I have my wife to thank for these revelations. She who daily looks into the face of the future and wipes it clean of spit and goo. She sees things much clearer than I, especially after quitting her job of 16 years. That takes guts. Being an adult takes guts. This adulthood thing may actually be worth something. (Though Felicity and I agree, we're still 26 on the inside.)

I leave you, mon lectur, with this image. Destroy your ambition. As Anne Sexton wrote, "...ambition is the death of the poem." I believe it can also be the death of the life well lived. She was a student of Rilke in this sentiment. Strive to be a beginner. That way, everything is new.

A triptych