I'll never let go, Jack...I'll never let go.

Of course, that was the best part of Titanic--watching one of the worst actors in Hollywood pretend to freeze to death in the frigid North Atlantic. Man, here I am, not having seen the movie in absolute months, geting all misted up.

It's a new year. 2005 came to me in the quiet New England city I've called home for the past decade in the company of one of my closest friends and devoted Life in the Corn-er, Jeny, cushioning the demise of this past year into silent repose. Well, that and the three large blueberry Seadog ales I'd slammed. There's a lot I'd like to forget about this past year, but mostly I think about the corn and how I, for good and not, have been profoundly affected by my decision to nest myself in it. I've lost a lot, but I think that what I've got now - a job I love, schoolwork that turns me on, a town I've come to adore, a nice home and a new, banjo-playing buddy - and I think: hey, maybe it was worth it.

Speaking of "loss", my sister took me today to Mount Desert Island so that I could fulfill my promise to my Life in the Corn readers to fling myself into the sea. The "loss" I am talking about was threefold:

1) One complete layer of skin.
2) The ability to feel pain.
3) Use your imagination.

(See pictures below).

There was still a wee bit of the white stuff on the sand when I, clad only in a "Dodge City Testicle Festival" shirt - oh, the irony- and shorts walked calmly into twenty-six degree water that was thick with marine algae and tiny bits of sea ice. The Gulf of Maine and I had words. Well, mostly I shrieked. The web of profanity that I wove will hang in space over Mount Desert Island for centuries to come. (Ah, the Christmas Story). When I emerged, I realized with a start that I'd brought towels but no change of clothes. Thankfully I still had my Indiana sweatshirt and my socks and my jeans, which, while cold, were not wet. As I frolicked on the beach, barefoot, for the next half hour looking for sand-dollars (four! found four!) in Maine in January, I thought: my GOD, I've gone around the bend. The line between "weird" and "gibbering lunatic" is perilously near.

Later, we went to the undisputed tourist capital of this part of Maine, Bar Harbor, which perches on the best real estate in Eastern Maine. To the north of town, the Porcupine Islands lift themselves out of a Gulf filled with frolicking seals and otters and the omnipresent homarus americanae. Looming to the south the East Coast's highest peak, Cadillac Mountain, affords climbers the opportunity to be the first people in the nation to see the sun when it rises.

Yet in the summer, especially in July, Bar Harbor is insufferable. The tiny village, whose year-round residents number about 7,000, becomes an orgy of concentrated Maine-ness. It's almost more than one can bear. If it's got a lobster, a moose, a black bear, a humpback whale, or a lighthouse on it, you'll find it in Bar Harbor; similarly, if it's been concocted with clams, lobster, blueberries or if it can be balsam-pine scented, you need look no further. In a way, it's sad - you'd only have to drive into the island a little more to find more authentic New England- but in a way, hey: it keeps all of those tourists away from us. Bar Harbor had smog three days last summer. Smog. In Maine. But take the case of Sand Beach, which is in Acadia National Park and has, on average, ten people per square meter in July, and a beach less than ten miles away (which shall go unnamed) that has, uh, me. So, thanks Bar Harbor and Old Orchard and York for "taking one for the team" so that the rest of us don't sit on our "rustic" porches, sharpening our ice-hooks in eager anticipation.

Three days till I go back to the corn. I miss my bed. I miss my things. I miss the Republic and her loveable minions whom I've come to embrace. But tonight, as I watched the sun set over the pine-covered camel-back mountains to our West with the scent of brine in my lungs, I knew that it would be hard to go. Seven more months.

Oh, and hey! In the past three weeks I've gotten nine emails. Nine. Where did everyone go? Honestly, people!

Have a good night, Bangor.

Dom