Posted by: tlnemethy | October 7, 2012

Missing: Selkie’s Seal Coat

In folklore there are tales of people who swim the sea as seals and upon reaching land they shed their seal coats and bury them safely in a hidden place. The may remain on land for a short range of time, walking  with no real differences to note them as anything but human, but once they return to the sea they can never walk the shores again. Some cultures say they are the embodied spirits of those who drowned at sea, some say selkies can only be women searching the land for a husband or a lost love. But no matter, if their hidden seal coats are found, the finder controls the selkie and can never escape the land until the finder’s death. Many stories tell of female selkies gazing out at the ocean after their seal coats have been found, their hearts knowing they will never return to their true home for they are bound to this land.

I believe Alaska took something from me that I will spend the rest of my life searching for. Something that I feel the loss of presence from, something that grieves me and makes me yearn for. If I was within sight of the water it would be unbearable, but with every passing moment with only land as far as the eye can see I find the hold rusting on me, the grip just as strong, but somehow growing more sombre. Were I to hear the lapping of the waves, smell the fish and taste the salt I would always remember my true home of the sea. But Alaska has hidden my seal coat.  I go about my days as if I’d never known the sea, as if we were nothing more than distant stories from an unreliable source. The wind blows the leaves, shuffling  through the branches to my nose, but there isn’t the scent of home on the breeze so much as I smell the soil and the rock, the moss and the copper.

To the coast. Onward. Always moving in search of my seal coat and the return to my home. Alaska is my unbidden husband, my constant companion, but if I return the sea will be at my door. The sea will return to everything I know. The dampness will no longer reside in my bones, but in my soul. You see, the earth will always be the bones of us, the structure. But the sea, the lovely ever-changing sea will always be the blood of our soul, sweeping us towards our destinies and our true selves.

When you see the pained expression of longing on the face of another as she stares at the sea, always know that somewhere, no matter the vast distances apart they are, somewhere lies her seal coat and the hope of a return to the sea.

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Posted by: tlnemethy | October 1, 2012

Fair Animals: Not Necessarily Happy Animals

We already know how much I love fair food, but the animals are really the biggest draw point for getting my lazy ass out of bed on a weekend and walking around outside. Trust me. If I was invited to a root canal party I’d politely decline, but hey, if there was even the slightest chance that a puppy was going to be there I would put on my outside-the-house clothes and get my butt to that root canal party. It doesn’t even have to be a cute animal either, so long as it isn’t a spider I’m game to just sit and look at that critter all day. Fairs allow me to do just that.

Now, since fairs are generally the busiest on the weekends I can rarely squeeze through the crowds of strollers to reach my hand through the slats on the horse stalls without having to smack away a few children. Because I’m relatively polite, I DON’T smack away children, but instead stand back and watch how excited they get when the cow blows straw at them, or the horse thumps itself against the slats to relieve an itch. I am living through their excitement. And, although I may roll my eyes when a child tries to feed them a jolly rancher or gets startled when they make noise, it’s all in good fun.

Forget the camel rides or the “zoos,” I go straight for the horse barns and the dairy cows. Dairy cows are so slow and gentle looking that you can often give em a pat as you walk by. And for some reason, the black and white ones seem to be the most popular with the children, so I can spend most of my time alone near the BEAUTIFUL brown ones like the Jersey’s and the Guernsey’s. There is just something so placid in their eyes. The black and white ones have creepy eyes that make me think they are being squeezed, but the brown ones just look like Puss in Boot’s eyes in Shrek. You know what I mean? Soulful eyes with long eyelashes. You can’t help but look at them and fall in love.

I don’t know how happy farm animals are, but they just look kind of miserable. And really who wouldn’t if you were tied to a wall right next to a cow you’d been feuding with for months? Who wouldn’t hate dying of heat and fly bites, fending off the awkward hands of children and their dumb parents who aren’t watching them?

At least the ones in the barns are supposed to be more interesting than the ones that are for kiddie rides. Gah. Kiddie rides. I wouldn’t want that job. You always see those poor miniature horses tied to that carousel of torment under the big top tent and they just wait, head down, like Eeyore. Please someone give them some Paxil.

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Posted by: tlnemethy | September 27, 2012

Fair Season Is Fried Deliciousness

Many people already know of my fascination with fair season, but if you don’t you’ll at least read about some of the awesomeness and maybe get inspired to attend your own fair season festivities. I dropped in on a fair earlier in the month, Rochester Fair to be exact. Now, when you’ve lived in an area of New England for as long as I have, you tend to know of all the fairs and have attended the majority. This is one of the fairs that I’d never gone to before, but if I stick around the area, I can guarantee I’ll go again.

It was smaller than usual, and much less crowded, but it had everything I wanted: fair food (the style, not quality), livestock, and the newest addition of rides. For the first point on my list, I managed to consume a deep-fried PB+J sandwich. Never before have I seen one offered at a fair, sure there’s normally some other deep-fried foods like fries, corndogs, fried dough, candy bars, jalapeno poppers, etc, but never a sandwich with the caliber of that primal childhood delicacy. I watched it being made as the sneaky customer that I am. First off, I was disappointed to find out that it was not a full out  homemade sandwich, but one of those prepackaged flying saucer-shaped “lazy person” sandwiches. The lady making it shoved a huge popsicle stick up its ass and proceeded to drop it on the ground where she debated on still serving it to me, before getting me a new one. With how excited I was, I probably still would have eaten that thing pre deep-fryer, but thinking back on it I’m glad she got me a new one.

I am new to this whole deep-frying fad and I suppose, except for the yearly fried doughs, avoid fried foods all together. I can be quite dense so when the realization hit that they actually dipped my sandwich in a thick batter I was pretty pumped that it wouldn’t just be a sandwich dipped in a vat of oil til it turned golden brown. I’m pretty sure if that happened, the bread would just soak up the oil like a sponge and you might as well have called an ambulance for me right then. Anyways, there was a thick coating of the batter on it so it took a good while to cook properly; I actually found myself getting a tad impatient as I waited for it to finish cooking.

Finally, after flipping it a few turns to a delicious golden brown color, the square brick was placed into a bowl and dusted heavily with powdered sugar. Powdered sugar is like fairground crack. You’ll see people walking around with a thin coating of it all over their faces, a rim around each nostril, or hand prints on the legs of jeans. If it was an illicit substance there would be no hiding your involvement and the generic, “I was just holding it for a friend, ” would be completely useless.

Biting into that brick was so mouthwateringly tasty that you almost forgot about the molten peanut butter that squirted out the sides and gave you burn scars a la The Joker. The popsicle stick was useless and left me hanging after attempting to pick up the sandwich only one time. From then on it was fingers or nothing. I would definitely order another, but if only they were homemade sandwiches, because mine had way too much peanut butter and I could have guzzled a fire hydrant after eating it, not to mention how many times I found my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. A count of the day’s ingested foods: 1 deep fried PB+J  sandwich, 1 Italian sausage, 1 lemonade, 1 fried dough  (OF COURSE), and 1 corndog. Yes, that day put me over the edge.

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