Transnewported.
TRANSNEWPORTED!
Transnewported! That's what happens to me in Newport, RI. I am transported to a singular realm that is at once outer and inner world, my own land of Oz, my cockaigne. Were I Dorothy, I would say, "Toto, we are not in Johnston any more!" I can arrive by car after a 35-minute drive via Jamestown, two bridges, visionary vistas of waters and isles. Or by Providence-Newport ferry, merging with a climactic emission of millionaire yachts.
Yeah, there is a tacky touristy Newport in the shirt-and-shit shops that line Thames Street. There is monumental Newport too, in its grandiose "summer cottage" mansions like the Breakers, Rosecliff, Marble House, along or near blueblooded Bellevue Avenue. The Wagnerian Newport with Ocean Drive, spendid in summer, is more spectacular in a winter blizzard, as with a British friend last December. Refined Newport reaches its epitome of class during the July Newport Music Festival. There, chamber music is played in tony mansions, melding martinis into melody. And what of that cryptic Old Stone Mill? No, the Vikings never set foot here! There is the gothic Newport of eerie old cemeteries flanking aptly-named Farewell Street.
But I write not of the historic or touristic city, but of the Newport of the soul and fantasy, where this Rhode Islander sleepwalks in onanistic dreams. Call it a newportitis or aquidneckmania or, as the French might foppishly call the affliction, mal du nouveau port.
My older memories flow: gin and tonic with a friend while watching a tennis match at the Tennis Hall of Fame court in the 1960s; a jazz festival at Freebody Park such as was immortalized in the delicious film Jazz on a Summer's Day; the unheard-of Bob Dylan introduced by Joan Baez at a 1960s folk festival; showing the Breakers to mamma and her visiting sorella from Italy after arriving via the Jamestown-Newport Ferry in 1962. There were nights carousing with summer seminarians, sobering up on a coffee at R.I. Lunch or swimming trunkless with them at a private beach. Oh yes, the lunch-concert aboard a ferry. Yes, a drunken 1971 gang dinner at the Pier Restaurant and that lewd coda in the gay Venetian Room.
But mostly my memories are of walking, even a full day with four students five years ago today. Walking, walking! I love to walk Newport more than any earthly city except for Rome. I like the little narrow streets descending to the harbor, cul-de-sacs with spiffy little historic cottages. I like the decrepit houses even more and want to dry-freeze them in their need-of-repair time-warp. I've driven all there is to drive, biked all there is to bike, and walked almost all there is to walk, from the Point and Battery Park area, to all of Cliff Walk, the whole arc of Ocean Drive, which is a 4 1/2 hour trek. For Newport, no blithe "been there, done that." Like sex, there is no conclusive satiation, only a temporary reprieve followed by a potent pining for the next pounce.
Transnewported! That's what happens to me in Newport, RI. I am transported to a singular realm that is at once outer and inner world, my own land of Oz, my cockaigne. Were I Dorothy, I would say, "Toto, we are not in Johnston any more!" I can arrive by car after a 35-minute drive via Jamestown, two bridges, visionary vistas of waters and isles. Or by Providence-Newport ferry, merging with a climactic emission of millionaire yachts.
Yeah, there is a tacky touristy Newport in the shirt-and-shit shops that line Thames Street. There is monumental Newport too, in its grandiose "summer cottage" mansions like the Breakers, Rosecliff, Marble House, along or near blueblooded Bellevue Avenue. The Wagnerian Newport with Ocean Drive, spendid in summer, is more spectacular in a winter blizzard, as with a British friend last December. Refined Newport reaches its epitome of class during the July Newport Music Festival. There, chamber music is played in tony mansions, melding martinis into melody. And what of that cryptic Old Stone Mill? No, the Vikings never set foot here! There is the gothic Newport of eerie old cemeteries flanking aptly-named Farewell Street.
But I write not of the historic or touristic city, but of the Newport of the soul and fantasy, where this Rhode Islander sleepwalks in onanistic dreams. Call it a newportitis or aquidneckmania or, as the French might foppishly call the affliction, mal du nouveau port.
My older memories flow: gin and tonic with a friend while watching a tennis match at the Tennis Hall of Fame court in the 1960s; a jazz festival at Freebody Park such as was immortalized in the delicious film Jazz on a Summer's Day; the unheard-of Bob Dylan introduced by Joan Baez at a 1960s folk festival; showing the Breakers to mamma and her visiting sorella from Italy after arriving via the Jamestown-Newport Ferry in 1962. There were nights carousing with summer seminarians, sobering up on a coffee at R.I. Lunch or swimming trunkless with them at a private beach. Oh yes, the lunch-concert aboard a ferry. Yes, a drunken 1971 gang dinner at the Pier Restaurant and that lewd coda in the gay Venetian Room.
But mostly my memories are of walking, even a full day with four students five years ago today. Walking, walking! I love to walk Newport more than any earthly city except for Rome. I like the little narrow streets descending to the harbor, cul-de-sacs with spiffy little historic cottages. I like the decrepit houses even more and want to dry-freeze them in their need-of-repair time-warp. I've driven all there is to drive, biked all there is to bike, and walked almost all there is to walk, from the Point and Battery Park area, to all of Cliff Walk, the whole arc of Ocean Drive, which is a 4 1/2 hour trek. For Newport, no blithe "been there, done that." Like sex, there is no conclusive satiation, only a temporary reprieve followed by a potent pining for the next pounce.