MINUTE OF MONTH NO. 32 OCTOBER 2022
Channel: Sarah Bay Gachot
Date: 2023-01-13

#minuteofmonth No. 32, October, 2022. October was Rhode Island. The month arrived on the arm of a hurricane named Ian, though we just got the wild waves and people scurrying to secure their boats if they hadn’t taken them out of the water for winter already. We don’t normally spend time here so late in the year. This ancestral home was built by my great-grandfather, a naval architect whose forte was ferries (a specialization I recently became aware of—one of those “Ohhhhhhh” moments that confirm the concept of genes, as boats that convey passengers are a motif in the pool-of-things-that-draw-the-attention-of-sarah. If there’s a way to take a ferry from one place to another instead of a road or bridge, I will choose the former.) This great-grandfather, Eads Johnson, built this house on land gifted/purchased from my other great-grandparents as a place for his son and daughter-in-law, my grandparents, to go in the summer. My grandfather was also in ships, and followed jobs around the country working as a ship engineer for various ship-involved companies. Morristown New Jersey, Cleveland Ohio, and then Houston Texas. But they would always come here to this house that is like a wooden lung, that breathes in sea air and expels the warmth of humans, never holding in the damp and moisture that can permeate the New England air. So—it’s freaking cold here after about the middle of September. There’s one room that has heat, a section of the house built in the ‘80s by my grandmother, but we’re used to sleeping in the old quarters of the house, and that heated room feels too much like my grandmother’s bedroom to inhabit. In the middle of the month we drove down to New York for a few days to go to the Printed Matter Art Book Fair, dipping into a world I like very much, and though I didn’t buy that many books, I could buy some, because we were returning to Rhode Island and this is a place I can store a few things, including a library that’s been growing over the years from used book stores, the Rose Hill Transfer Station book hut, thrift stores, and Jamestown’s own free table at the dump. Rhode Island is a place with circular actions for me, and likely thinking too. It’s a place to visit my mother’s essence. She is emotionally and literally in the cove we look out on, as we spread her ashes here a decade ago, and I say hi to her whenever I go down to the water. I have other living family to visit too, though not so many this time of year. Mostly what we do here is write, read, cook, go for walks, and stare at the cove. We walk into town, to the store, to the Fort over on the other side of the island. I go to the dump looking for treasure, the thrift store on Saturdays, and the Marine Consignment in Wickford. I say the same things every year, like, “Where did all the skunks go?” “Wow there are a lot of mice this year.” “I have to wake up early to see that boat arrive.” “Maybe we’ll get a good thunderstorm we can watch from the porch.” or “What’s on TCM tonight?” There’s often a theme each year that has to do with something I’m working out, working through, working on. This year it was prisms. I bought a prism in Ramsgate when we were visiting J in August and I hung it in the window of our bedroom here, then I found a kaleidoscope and taleidoscope at the dump. Then I found another prism at the thrift store. I started making videos of boats and the sunrise through it. But, all in all, it’s very cold and the fireplace can only do so much. If my grandparents were alive today they’d be asking what the hell I’m doing here so late in the year. It’s time to head to the warmth, whether that be from latitude or a radiator. Originally posted on: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ckf6p1Mjf0V/