Transmission

I drove out to Rockaway last Saturday, and before I left, Dee, who was in town for a concert, offered to move her car into my spot in the Sanctuary to hold it for me. It’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done to support my parking obsession! I told her she didn’t have to, though, because my plans were in a state of flux, and I would take my chances.

There was an article in last Saturday’s Times occasioned by the overlap between Rosh Hashana and Id al-Fitr, by a woman with the wonderful byline Jennifer 8. Lee, which contained some interesting history about alternate-side parking as well as the excellent suggestion that alternate-side parking rules be suspended for the entire thirty-day period of Ramadan and the information that the only people who don’t like it when alternate side is suspended are the bosses in the D.O.T. who have to reassign the guys who drive the street sweepers. Surely they can think of something else to clean.

Also it was reported in the Wave that the American Princess, the ferry to Rockaway, blew her engine last Wednesday during the morning run. New York Water Taxi is putting another boat on the route, probably one of the yellow-and-black checkered catamarans. I would have loved to be on the ferry to witness this little maritime disaster: to see how the crew handled it, who towed them, where they got towed to, etc. I miss the ferry and the crew and New York Harbor. I even miss the faux waterfalls.

The New York Waterfalls, by the Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, are getting cut off next Monday, October 13. I found myself recommending them to some visitors from Italy, so I guess I like them, though I came to them from real waterfalls in Flores (below), worthy of King Kong. I am not ashamed to say that I am a waterfall snob, but I am also a big fan of plumbing.

In Rockaway, I intended to go on a historic bungalow tour that I saw a notice for in the Wave several weeks ago. (There was a typo in the headline: “BUNGLOW.” I couldn’t decide whether to pronounce it Bung Low or Bun Glow.) But then I remembered that I lived in a “bunglow” and I ought to be ON the historic bungalow tour. So instead of reporting on the historic bungalows, I offer this link to a cut of the documentary “The Bungalows of the Rockaways,” by Jennifer Callahan and Elizabeth Logan Harris. The filmmakers hope it will be shown on PBS in its entirety when it is done.

My first stop in Rockaway was the mechanic’s. I finally had to admit that the smell I’d been smelling, all across Ohio, of burning rubber or petroleum or something bad cooking, was coming from me and not from the guys spreading blacktop or making asphalt repairs who appeared by coincidence, for me to blame it on, everywhere I drove. It started on the L.I.E. a few weeks ago, when I felt a jolt—something pretty solid hit the right rear tire—but the car kept going and seemed to be all right. I told the mechanic, and I tried to describe the smell, but said I didn't know if there was any connection. He came out to the car, sniffed, and said, “I can smell it.” He opened the hood, and then crouched down under the car. (All the pens fell out of his pocket.) “What did you hit?” he asked. I don’t know, but apparently there were parts of it stuck under there (it wasn’t an animal).

While he was under the car, I thought to tell him that when I started up the car that morning, and pressed the accelerator to pick up speed, the engine didn’t respond. I had to pump it a few times. “That’s the transmission, isn’t it?” I said, and he said yes, he could see the leak. He couldn’t do anything about it right away (mechanics like to get out of the garage early on Saturday), but I gave him the spare key and said I’d park the car in the lot later. “Write this down!" he yelled to someone inside. "Tranny leak.”

High Seas

Yesterday I finally got out in a boat on the Atlantic Ocean, going from Lajes das Flores to Corvo. Flores may be the westernmost of the Azores, but Corvo is the most remote. For example, while Flores is dependent for a lot of its food and beer on a boat that comes in once every two weeks from Portugal, Corvo is dependent on Flores.

To get to Corvo, I was invited onto a sailboat called the Hannah Brown. She is a beautiful aluminum boat with a blue hull, and the owner, George, a very fit retired guy who used to be a cowboy (he is originally from New Mexico, and learned to sail in Chesapeake Bay), has been living on it since 1990. He has stories of Iceland and Norway and the Alentejo, in Portugal. He made us coffee, and had prepared paella, which we had for breakfast, with red wine, chucking the clamshells overboard.

Speaking of chucking things overboard, I was all right as long as we were protected by the island, but when we hit the open sea and George put up the sails and the boat heeled over to starboard, I realized I'd never been on a sailboat in the ocean before. In order not to get seasick, I had heard, you're supposed to focus on the horizon. George said it also helped to sit outside, where it was easier to keep your body centered, so I did that: sat in the chair in the stern, gripping the arms of the chair, breathing deep, and looking at the horizon, especially when a big wave came. I turn out to be a bit of a white-knuckle sailor, but I did not lose my paella.

We were welcomed to Corvo by two men and a St. Bernard. There is only one village, Vila Nova, and about four hundred people. We saw chickens and pigs and windmills and vegetable gardens (onions, carrots, potatoes, green beans, melons, cucumbers). The oldest houses are stone, with ancient tile roofs and wooden doors with faded paint jobs and improvised handles. The ship came in from Flores while we were looking around the village, and we watched it unload. It delivered lots of beer and sacks of cement and one container full of potted plants that had sat on the dock at Lajes all week. It took on some styrofoam crates of fresh fish. George was staying in Corvo, but I took the transit boat back to Flores. I was the only passenger, and it was not easy boarding: both feet on a big tire tied to the dock, right foot in a porthole, left leg up onto the deck, but the damn thing had a raised edge that I had to get over, and I ended up getting hauled on board like a heifer.

At first I sat on a padded bench right in front of the bridge, but the captain told me it was better if I moved, otherwise I'd get wet. So two crew members untied the bench and moved it to the stern, on the port side, and tied it to the rails. I sat there for most of the trip, until we were again in the shadow of Flores, when I got up and looked out over the rail at the volcanic stone covered with velvety vegetation and the waterfalls and the ancient stone marina at the foot of one gully that I'd hiked down to a few days earlier.

They did not charge me for passage. I stayed and watched them unload. The fresh fish were going to the airport and then on to Spain and other parts of Europe. The guy who drove the fish truck opened a case to show me a fish called an imperador. It was a gorgeous red fish with huge eyes (apparently they bulge out when the fish, which lives in deep water, is brought to the surface).

I had a beer in the bar at the port to celebrate my successful return, and a man named Izaias (I think), who lives across across the road from the house where I'm staying and keeps sheep and goats and cows, bought me a beer and gave me some peanuts (amendoim, one of the few Portuguese words I know). I thanked him and he gave me a solid platonic pat on the shoulder. I think I will remain on terra firma for the rest of my stay.

Gazetteer

I say AY-zores, you say a-ZORZ.

And guess what: We're both wrong.

Well, maybe not completely wrong. After all, AY-zores is the preferred pronunciation in Webster's. The British put the accent on the second syllable, which is beginning to sound more natural to me. But the other day someone here suggested very gently that if I was going to go around telling people about my time in the Azores, I should start pronouncing it correctly. It has three syllables, as in the Portuguese (Açores): a-ZOR-uz. Of course, in Portuguese it probably sounds more like MUSH.

Cows and Flowers

Flores is loaded with cows. Whenever you go someplace, up a road or a footpath, wondering What's up here? it turns out to be a cow. Well, sometimes it's a goat, but most of the time it's a cow.

There are, however, no dairy barns. I saw a man on a horse with a milk can hanging off each side. And then I came across this portable milking station:




The other thing Flores is famous for is flowers. Its name means flowers. Hydrangeas have naturalized here. They are not at their peak right now (that happens in July), but there are enough to satisfy me. The Portuguese for hydrangea is ortensia.

Of course I've tried to take pictures of the landscape, all combinations of hills and pastures, cows and the sea. This is the only really good one. It came out looking like a painting! Except that the horizon is not level. Tilt your head slightly when you look at it. Better yet, blur your eyes.



I went to church again yesterday (Sunday), because I didn't want the good people of Lajes to think that the big American tourists went to church only when there was a free lunch afterward (proving once again that there is no free lunch). I caught a few more words this time, including palavras (words), Senhor (Lord), oremos (let us pray), mundo (world), sangue (blood), memoria di me (pretty obvious at what point I caught on, isn't it?), and amanhá (tomorrow). Oh, and creio (I believe). I also picked up a two-month-old copy of the church newspaper, from which I learned that Irmã Lúcia (Sister Lucia), one of the three children who saw Our Lady of Fátima, has been put forward for beatification, the first step toward sainthood. Fátima is a huge cult here, and explains all the processions with children carrying crowns for the Virgin. I saw a notice on the church bulletin board saying that next week is First Communion. I think I might take next Sunday off.

Fajã de Lopo Vaz

Yesterday I hiked down the face of a cliff covered with greenery (ferns, ivy) and dripping with springwater, to a black pebble beach on the Atlantic. To the west, the cliff fell off into a ski nose of a promontory. To the east, surf sprayed over a mossy rock. There was a jetty formed by boulders that had tumbled off the top of the cliff hundreds of thousands of years ago. From the beach the cliff face looked like a big X on the shield of a goddess of war. There was a low plateau just above the beach: a slab of pastureland the size of two soccer fields laid end to end, threaded with stone walls and hydrangea hedges. It looked like a rich dessert.

I don't know what fajã means, but there are a lot of them here: flat places at the bottom of sheer rock falls.

I keep thinking black sand is dirty, but it's not. It brushes off just like regular sand, and when it´s wet it gleams like obsidian.

I forgot to take my camera down there, so I´ll either have to go back or write a thousand words.