Rosy Noir
photo by Dennis Bayer
Stormy Night
We got battered pretty good in last night’s storm - usually our paintings start swinging, this time the paintings were stable but the eyes of the characters were moving back and forth.
I ended up out in the bay around 9:00 on Dancer’s Whaler trying to help red haired Stephen whose anchor-out broke anchor and was perilously headed for the rocks on Strawberry.
Somehow it got caught up by Dancer’s houseboat - English Allen’s, and that’s the only thing that held it up.
So we got out there in the driving wind and pouring rain and there was Stephen in his rain gear siting on a bench on Dancer’s anchor-out.
I understand the true anchor-out’s code of staying with your boat in a storm. Being out there in the teeth of it, trying to help, getting knocked around - I went down, bloody knees, but didn’t get wet, helping Dancer so he wouldn’t have to single hand and helping Stephen, well that was a good thing.
Intense, I remember thinking well, it’s been a good life and i did get my book published and I am getting my West Marine rain gear broken in and covered in bay mud. . . surreal because in the teeth of the storm out there in the bay, I could see the skyline of the city in the foggy light beneath the vast dark canopy and it was quite extraordinary.
Lesson 3: How to Get Picked
All that I know most surely about morality and the obligations of man, I owe to football.” - Albert Camus
For me it was basketball ~
Working The First Reef
photo by Jason Bright
“The minute you begin to do what you want to do, it’s a different kind of life.”
― Buckminster Fuller
There are people you meet, who, after they go, you always wish the visit had been a little longer. My friends Neil & Shirlee, on the 39' sloop - their home they built, with one painting, with only what they need, all that they need, who in 25 min. can be at home on the bay with all they own, working the first reef. They teach me without teaching, show me the way by just being ~
Translated from The Original
from Exposition Review’s Flash 405 contest, Fall 2018
Anytime you translate, a little part of you goes into someone else’s creation. That’s the way it is. It’s like seeing faces in a plank of wood. Your eye catches the eyes, the set of a mouth, the shape of a head in a knotty 2×6 laid by an erstwhile carpenter. Sometimes you wish you didn’t see faces. You can’t help it.
It’s part of your shape,
the way you look at the world,
and the way the world looks at you.
You find the Original Portable Tungesa Dictionary in Darko’s Antiques on Main, the place that’s never open, but is today, and though you don’t speak Tungesa, and even your spellcheck wants to auto-correct it into something that trades more in its orbit, you have to have this book. You are the only one inside the store. A basket near the register sports a note: please leave a contribution, we’re trying out the honor system today.
And you think, it’ll be my honor.
You only have a twenty and the book costs ten. Briefly you consider leaving nothing, or a note expressing your thanks, knowing there was a time when you would have walked out with the dictionary, and whatever else you could carry, whether you needed it or not; especially if you needed it not. Because need wasn’t part of it. Well, maybe a small part. But need had little to do with the object you stole. Need ran deeper then, though then you didn’t budget for such thoughts.
Then was a long time ago. You were a person you barely remember—a forgotten echo that began way back when and comes booming back around at last, bouncing off deep canyon walls in a voice you don’t understand.
But the ageless face is there, sealed in memory, 4×6. So you leave the twenty in the basket and walk out with the Original Portable Tungesa Dictionary under your arm.
You return home, and discover a poem of markings on parchment tucked between yellowed pages, and you search the dictionary for the meaning of each stroke.
It’s a poem written by a hunter who has given up the hunt, given up all weapons, given up even the desire to hunt, apparently, but not the desire to discover…
And at the bottom of the page in script faintly familiar, you recognize two letters.
Initials.
And they
are yours.
~
gb
This Party's Just Getting Started
Three poems, one story, and coffee on the roof with Phyll, this parrty’s just getting started
and because I just can’t help it sometimes ~
Surgical Procedure In The Studio
Aboard my friend Jim's houseboat, Box Poem where the line between his living room and his studio is left up to the imagination
Seagrazing
A look out my back door. Or is it my front? Of this I've never been sure. A houseboat or floating home? A pier or a dock? Canal or channel? I ponder these decisions over coffee, these choices we can make. Definitions decided upon by somewhat else, accepted or not. I've reached a place where I'm comfortable with my own choices. The other day my horoscope said when the flower withers we sometimes mourn, but the end of the flower makes way for the fruit. There's metaphor there, one I choose to accept, as I sip my coffee and gaze upon the water and its fluid reflections.
