Down through the hands of our gospel elders, I have come to realize. . .or, it's not the size o' the cup, but how hot the coffee stays. . .

Seen through the eyes of innocence. . . .



"When I was young. . .when I was just "this tall" knee high to a grass hopper, with no extra to spare, but just a little shaver going about things with little shaver ways . . who would know. . .who would ever suspect, I would close my eyes and dream of all of these things".





My Father and my mother. . .and if you look close enough. . .

". . . when I was young sitting in the top of the world at Cony's shack and the rain was pattering on the roof like the footsteps of thousands of angels, how could I know anything else other than all was well with the world. . .in innocence, all innocence, through the eyes of a child . . . . .how it is sometimes I think of how easily I could go back to that old fish shack door: "Cony's. . ."
I'd lift that rusty old latch and open it and step into that other world again. Hear again the soft hiss of the rain on the roof and the water. . .the cove. . .the sea. . .
Listen for those voices I grew up hearing, knowing and loving. . .being all the while every blessed moment thankful to hear them again.

"Compass me back. . ."

If you live long enough, you get to see how everything is a curse and a blessing. The trick is to keep rising above -- that's all there is to it, and that's all there ever is to it, in my never to be so humble opion. To keep yourself open to the blessing, because when you don't, you become a victim. And as much as I love Port Clyde, don't think I haven't thought of walking away from it. I think the best of us have, who have walked those Port Clyde roads; that were born and bred down there, and some do, and some don't. It's the love/hate thing maybe. But try and put me on the spot about it, and I get contrary about it. I dunno. It doesn't matter. It pretty much boils down to how you can take the boy out-a Port Clyde America, but there's no takin' the Port Clyde America, out-a the boy. It's a connection that can't be broken. There is this need in me to keep connected, that's all I know.


So, tell me, who'd have thunk it? Who indeed, in their wild-est dreams, that this place -- "Old Cony's" fish-shack -- humble as all get out, would have become the place of such fertility for me.

It's the place where it all began.

Even though the place is long gone from the physical world. . . torn down for the sake of progress over an eye-sore by the cove I grew up on, I come back to it over and over again, in my minds eye. Here I am to chase it down, and capture it again, in the wind, and the rain, and the snow, and the sunshine. Season in, season out. In writing or in paint -- ''In sickness and in health" -- HA!" -- more POWER TO 'EM these stardust ephemeral things that we call memories. Paintings, writings, you do it anyway, because it's what YOU CAN DO, and after awhile if you do it long enough, it becomes your life's work. I can't walk away from it, and I can't walk out. I got no choice. My paintings as are my writings are my bit of dream chasing, I guess. And just how do you chase a dream, exactly? There's probably just as many answers to that question as there are dreamers to dream. So you just go for it. How do you even catch onto it, much less hold it, you ask? Well again, that's up to you. Just remember, such things are made out of stardust in your hand, and may well be as fragile as a fire-fly caught by you as a child in the early days of spring. Home is where the heart is, so they say. It's a story as old as time, and still reaches out to comfort us. We all chase that elusive love. . . and we have it all the while.

"Old Cony", well, that's how I think of him, so that's what I call him. He's my father. Floyd Benjamin Conant, is his full real name. He is the son of Benjamin D. Conant and Grace Nevada Hussey, both out of Friendship, Maine, just across the St. George River. I am the son of "Old Cony" and Annie Dodge Oakes. Annie, " Old Cony" and I lived above "Old Cony's" fish-shack on Fisherman's Cove on what is now the co-op road, Port Clyde America. It's the place where I'd look out the window across the cove toward Monhegan Island, a straight shot out the mouth of the harbor. It's the place by that window up above the wharf there, where I sat on the tall wooden stool and dreamed. It's the place where I grew up. I was fresh as a fish out of Rockland General Hospital when my father and mother brought me down route 131 and they set up housekeeping up a-top the fish shack that was to be my home for the first 6 years of my life.The weathered shack is home, through the wildest driving seasons, and the calm sun warmed days of the heart. Some days it feels like it must have felt in Avalon, I think. "Old Cony's" fish shack, the cove, the sea just out beyond the harbor of Port Clyde. It has become the central point that informs my art as much as anything I know. "Old Cony's" fish shack. . . even though it isn't much to look at, it is one of the eldest of my muses.

Ok, that's all she wrote.


cwo