“A line is a dot that went for a walk.”  ~Paul Klee

Left: James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Gray and Black No.2: Portrait of Thomas Carlyle (1872).

East of America

“A man may stand there and put all of America behind him.” ~Henry David Thoreau

The Pilgrims considered it too foreboding, abandoning it after only a brief stay in favor of the secured anchorage of Plymouth harbor. It lay fallow for another two-hundred years, wind-swept and storm-prone, as its shifting shoals and fickle tidal currents laid claim to hundreds of colonial sailing vessels. Their crews dared to skirt close to its lee shore, in search of the shortest passage to their Portland, Boston or New York ports-of-call. Maritime disaster proved to be the enduring legacy of this narrow spit of sand, curling like a giant flexed arm into the cold Atlantic—the American anatomical equivalent of Europe’s Italian ‘boot.’ xxxxxx

Only with the advent of increased 19th century social mobility and the rise of an American middle class, seeking a reprieve from the heat and filth of the city, did Cape Cod become a desirable destination. Its expansive beaches, pastoral moraines and cooling ocean breezes made it an ideal destination, as thousands flocked to towns like Hyannisport, Falmouth, Chatham, Orleans, and, at land’s end—the tip of the Cape—Provincetown. Dozens-more communities sprang up, as eager vacationers sought refuge in the scrub pines and towering dunes of Cape Cod; to a point where it threatened to sink into the sea if one more tourist journeyed to its shores. A narrow, man-made canal now separates the Cape from the mainland, eliminating the open- ocean route around its perimeter for sailors, while offering a towering steel and concrete ‘right-of-passage’ for Cape-bound travelers, eager to cross the bridge and ‘take the cure’ that only an ocean side stay can provide.

Cape Cod is a destination in the purest sense of the word—a state of mind, as well as a set of coordinates on a chart or map. Its enduring appeal drew us in for what felt more like a pilgrimage than a vacation drive this month, as my distant memories of the outer reaches of the Cape drew me back, again. The short drive (just an hour) from the canal to Provincetown curls like a wood shaving on a carpenter’s floor, seeming to come back on itself, as the east-bound arm of the peninsula reaches the ‘elbow,’ flexing abruptly and coursing northward. Here, the road narrows to pass through some of the most beautiful and well-kempt 19th century beach properties anywhere in New England—bastions against modern times and winter’s punishing, salt-laden winds and surf. A sense of calm and order prevails.

As we curve toward the ‘wrist,’ our bearing more westerly now, the sea closes in as the land mass narrows. Soon, Cape Cod Bay and the open Atlantic are simultaneously visible out windows on both sides of the car. It seems our firm grip on terra firma is growing more tenuous with each passing mile. To the right, towering mountains of sand, dotted with sea grass, begin to loom—a constantly shifting ridge sculpted by ocean winds—where from their summit an unencumbered view of coastal France might be imagined, if not for Earth’s curvature.

The terminus of our journey is Provincetown, an unruly jumble of homes and businesses stacked against the edge of the sea. A cacophony of sounds, bold colors and a press of humanity replace the Puritan austerity of the Cape scene which lead us here. It’s as though all of the energy and passion of the town has been funneled into one busy, narrow main street. Egalitarian in the extreme, a crush of tee-shirt shops, elegant Victorian rooming houses, pet supply stores, organic restaurants, sidewalk coffee shops and art galleries all seem to function harmoniously, side-by-side. Most significantly, the gay and lesbian community has made Provincetown their own, a far-flung bastion of love and unconditional acceptance, far from the madding crowd. They walk the main street arm-in-arm, hand-in-hand, while dazed busloads of Canadian tourists, cameras hung prominently, belly-side-out, day-trippers like us, auto traffic and undistracted locals, intent on their destinations, weave their way through the tumultuous scene.

A walk out onto the town pier offers a view of the harbor, and there in the distance a narrow finger of sand and grass extends beyond the limits of the town—a spit of land too fragile to support any structure except a small, intrepid lighthouse marking the entrance to safe anchorage for boaters. Here, the massive ‘arm’ that is Cape Cod, with its many towns, thousands of residents and tourist and centuries of history imperceptibly slips into the sea. A narrow fingernail now, its bone white, sugar-fine sand glows in the afternoon sun. More than a sandy spit marking the end of our journey in absolute terms, it seems to stand as a symbol of a broader quest. With our backs turned (literally) to the drama and energy of the town, and the Cape, and, for that matter, to all of America, one is left with the question: “Is this what it comes to, a few grains of sand tumbling and collapsing into a roiling sea?” I was reminded at that moment of the iconic installation work by Robert Smithson, his “Spiral Jetty” (1970), and the rambling stone walls and fragile leaf sculptures of Andy Goldsworthy.

For both Smithson and Goldsworthy, their purpose was deliberately ambiguous and playful. Goldsworthy plays with found objects, arranging them in temporary configurations as a way of calling attention to the tenuous nature of beauty—and that art is where you find it. The shape of Smithson’s ‘Jetty,’ like that of Cape Cod, itself, can be seen as an elaborate question mark, gently teasing the viewer to try and work out what it means. The considerable effort, time and expense to reach this spot on the Provincetown waterfront—with Cape’s End literally and clearly in view—brought us to a climactic moment, one that was neither glorious nor threatening, but a sly joke at the expense of anyone who sees the drama of their lives being played out in these ‘places’ we consider essential to who we are. The point seems to be made that once the traveler finally reaches this place and walks to the end of this fragile spit of land, there was nothing there; there is no choice but to simply turn around and go home.

The lesson is this: when the very margins of the natural world are revealed to us, we find ourselves measuring our own fragile humanity, anchored as it is in our familiar surroundings. Confronting the sea at the very spot where the ground beneath our feet narrows—as it fades to watery oblivion—becomes a dialectic exercise, where our own vulnerability in a built world comes face-to-face with nature’s indiscriminant power, rendering manifest our limited powers to defend ourselves against such incursions.

Thanks for reading ARTES Magazine…and Happy Father’s Day!

My Best,

Richard J. Friswell, Publisher & Managing Editor

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