cellini's Diaryland Diary

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From the Cottage

[This entry is back-dated on account of not having internet access when it was written some days ago on the road]

I have been on the road for days now. Set off on Thursday morning, I think. Today is probably Monday. I arrived in New H@ven, Connecticut only six minutes late to meet a couple of oystermen for dinner with a gentleman from Y@le and we made a late night of it. We found much to talk about and had many ideas in common and at the end of a long, expensive meal at a famous sushi restaurant I was informed by the waiter that the evening was on the house, compliments of the owner.

The next day I slept late, thanks to a broken motel alarm clock. I gathered inv@sive crabs in tide pools at a park along L0ng Island Sound and then drove to W1lmington MA, stopping only for an hour at a large sporting goods store in H@rtford where I bought a new surf rod and reel.

In Wilmington I arrived at my grandfather's house, now physically empty of my grandfather and occupied by my aunt and her girlfriend or wife on one side and my cousin on the other. My cousin Patrick is a great fisherman. He is only 21 years old but he has the greatness. He has the patience and eye and the dry wit of a great fisherman, only he has it all decades before these things usually become clear.

We didn't meet for years. I saw him once when he was three years old and then once for about ten minutes when he was seventeen. I never knew him until he was fully-formed and twenty years old when I came up for my grandfather's funeral last summer. We look very much alike. Right away we got along well and resolved to undertake some very serious fishing together. And on this occasion I drove up in order to finally catch fish with the greatest fisherman that I have ever known.

Within minutes of dropping my suitcase off in my grandfather's old bedroom (nearly untouched since his death) he suggested that we got to look for trout in a certain stream before the sun went down. We drove over in my car with rods rattling against the window and a five gallon bucket full of tackle between his knees.

The stream was running fast and cold out through a tunnel under the road. We slid down the bare dirt of an embankment. I crimped exactly three small lead sinkers to the gossamer-thin line and slipped a salmon egg on to the hook. I cast the small, unfamiliar rod and dropped the line about 15 yards out onto the smooth water at the edge of a rocky drop and its fast current. I let it drift down the smooth water to the edge of the little waterfall and then I reeled it in slowly. Again I did this and on the seventh go-round IO felt a tug on the line and at first I thought that I must have snagged a branch. I always think that I must have snagged a branch because it always seems so improbable that a fish could really and truly have bitten the hook and pulled back on it. I waited a few seconds for him to run with it and then I set the hook and began to fight the fish back to me. The fishing line was thinner than any than I had ever used before and the trout fought well and hard. The mosquitoes hovered around my arms and everything was well while I slowly brought the fish in, coaxing it diagonally across the flowing pool of cold water.

It was big and bright and good as I landed it. I dared not hoist it into the air without the landing net that I had left in the car. I reached into the water and took it in hand and held it aloft in the failing dusk sunlight and admired the brightness of its colors. The power of its fight.

That night we stood on the dock at S1lver Lake and fished for eels and catfish with Patrick's friend, Justin. The catfish were only small bullheads but the eels fought like heroes. I stuffed them live into a small chest cooler half filled with water to be cooked and eaten later.

We slept late and then there was my grandmother's funeral on Saturday. Her second funeral, I supposed. Not a proper mass but a wake and a reception for her ashes in her old home town and a short prayer service and then the internment of her ashes in the town cemetery alongside her husband's grave, 40 years after him.

That night Patrick and Justin and I drove to the town near the NH border that Lovecraft used as the inspiration of many of his stories. We arrived just before dusk and the owner of the bait shop knew my cousin by name and welcomed him as a friend, giving us free sea worms of some sort. We carried our heap of gear on to the beach and set up about an hour before the slack of the tide. We fished for striped bass and the wind howled in our faces from directly off-shore and the rain spat at us. We drank beer in spite of the cold and smoked cheap cigars and sat in our folding chair and spoke of fish caught and lost. There was no moon and no stars and no light but for the glow of a town in New Hampshire a few miles off to our left and the occasional blinking light of a lone ship keeping station in the rolling sea out on the horizon.

On Sunday we slept late and woke up and packed to fish for carp on the C0ncord river. Great shining beasts that we hauled out of the river only with the greatest of difficulty. I took wonderful pictures with my new camera of Patrick and Justin hooking and hauling in vast great carp as big as you could ask for. I kept the largest of these to filet and cook, which needed to be done for a chapter of my new book. My heavy rod didn't get a bite, but my light rod snapped on something big and unseen. Perhaps an enormous carp, or maybe just a submerged branch. It snapped in half, line and rod alike and both disappeared in the current.

This morning I left W1lmington and drove to N0rth Adams, MA to meet with my editor. I didn't want to do this. I had only agreed to it thinking that they were located right outside of Boston but it turned out that they are clear on the other side of the state. But I did it anyway and boy did it pay off. They are all jazzed about both books and I had long conversations with my publicist and the nice lady who is in charge of 'special sales.' It seems that the large retail conglomerate that owns the Pittsburgh Stee1ers really really loves my book and everything that I am doing and they are going to feature it in five of their catalogues. My publisher wants me to meet with these people and many others and they have a whole list of personal appearances to make. Most of these are things that they had in mind but hadn't gotten around to doing much about until I showed up in person, which apparently most authors never bother to do but now I'm right at the top of their list on account of bothering. Nice.

Most notably about this visit, they immediately decided that I must make all haste to appear at the big deal publishing industry convention in NYC this week. Especially since I have to drive past NYC on my way home any way. I was supposed to head straight towards home after the meeting, but they are putting me up for free in a cottage on a lake with the use of a boat, etc. tonight. It is from this cottage that I write this.

Tomorrow morning I am to walk down to the boat and do some fishing and then to pack up and drive to NYC and somehow manage to park and then collect my badge to appear at this huge important publishing convention. I'll spend a few hours there talking to people and then see about driving home. Hopefully I can make it home that night from NYC, but its a long drive and I just don't know if I'll make it all the way without needing to get a motel room. We'll see.

It is an interesting life. There are ducks and geese everywhere on the pond. The old wood floors of the cottage are worn and grooved. A white, enameled wood stove sits in the corner and I am drinking a growler of beer that I picked up along the way. For the first time, I feel that I am inhabiting the life that a stereotypical professional writer of books is supposed to be living. I don't know how to pay the bills next month, but people ask me for my autograph and publishers put me up in cottages and I travel to odd places and do interesting things with the finest people and I pop into NYC for a day of luncheons and networking.

I mean it about the finest people. Justin and Patrick are right up there with George and Mojo and all of the rest of the good ones. Guys who will freeze and bleed and sit there for hours on end with the wind in their teeth to get the job done with friends. Guys like them are the best part of this job.

12:47 a.m. - 2011-05-24

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