Translated From the Original

Anytime you translate, a little part of you goes into someone else’s creation.

That’s just the way it is. It’s like seeing faces in a plank of wood. Your eye catches the eyes, the set of a mouth, shape of a head in a plank laid by an erstwhile carpenter.

Sometimes you wish you didn’t see these faces.               You can’t help it. 

It’s part of your shape too, 

 the way you look at the world,

  and the way the world looks at you.

So even though you don’t speak Tungesa, and even your spellcheck wants to auto correct and turn it into something that trades more in its orbit, limited as it is . . . you find the Original Portable Tungesa Dictionary in an antique store on Main, one that’s never open, but happens to be today, though you are the only one inside, with a basket that says 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 there is no change. Briefly you consider leaving nothing, or just a note expressing your thanks, knowing there was a time when you would have done just that, or worse . . . you would have walked out with the book, 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 now - like hearing an echo that you started way back when- finally come booming back

around, bouncing off the walls of a deep canyon in a voice you don’t understand,

or recognize. 

But a face is there, sealed in your head as if from a picture, and so you leave the twenty and walk out with the Original Portable Tungesa Dictionary under your arm.

You return home, and study the poem of markings on a yellow page, and you open the dictionary to search for the meaning of each stroke.

And you discover 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, 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

The Dishes Can Wait

I walk into the kitchen after dropping my wife off at work and eye the dishes in the sink and the pan, with scrambled egg crust, on the stove. This is my routine. Up at 6:00, feed the cats, make the coffee, read the sports and horoscope, wake up my wife, take her coffee in bed. We sit downstairs on white chairs and watch the water, stroke the cats, and rise slowly into the morning like sunrise. 

Sometimes color reflects off the houseboats across the channel and creates brilliant rippling reflections in the water. Then we go upstairs and look east at the sunrise over the masts of docked sailboats coming up across the bay.

I ask what she likes for breakfast - we settle on eggs or oatmeal or chicken sausage with fruit and toast and another cup. I ask what she wants for lunch, & when she needs us to leave to get her to work on time. Then she's off to shower and dress while I make her lunch and bag it, then I make breakfast and call her down, we eat - and then off we go, sometimes calling one of our children on speaker phone using her blue tooth in the blue prius. 

Over the Golden Gate Bridge we drive, through the  Eucalyptus forest in the presidio, past the mansions of Pacific Heights to Kaiser on Geary with its buses and taxis and people of all shapes crossing the street on their way to work, or to see my wife, their nurse.

And when I return home, I pour another cup, and wash the dishes and then my day begins.

But not today.  Today I think about my friend who texted me yesterday,  asking how one finds time to write: in the morning he has inspiration but no time, and in the evening he has time but no inspiration.

I text back: sometimes one must be a thief. And steal time.

I think about that as I look at the dishes and think about my life. 

And so I decide this morning to change things up & write this down - for me, for him, and for you.

This morning, the dishes can wait. ~ gb

Butterfly Effect

Walking from the parking lot to the dock, I hear a buzzing sound and look up. The Bottle Brush tree is thrumming with bees. I look down and see a butterfly on a flower near a stick. Earlier that day,  in the free pile near the mailboxes, someone left a book called, "The Meaning of Flowers".  I thought, Really? I need a book for that?? What about "The Meaning of a Book"??    Or,  "The Meaning of a Walk from the Parking Lot to the Dock"? Perhaps I'll just watch the butterfly, and listen to the bees ~

Beet Poetry

At the farmer's market, I buy yams from the smiling Greek woman with six kids who sells produce from her family's farm. She's a poet, but  doesn't write. The way she displays her family's vegetables and cheerily speaks with her customers about her sister's new baby born prematurely, or which potatoes are good for mashing, she reminds me yet again, that not all poets write, and not all poems are written down. Poetry is in the eye, and ear, of the beholder ~

Looking South

Did Someone Wake Up on The Wrong Side of The Cutting Board?

Tai Chi At Sea

My friend Neil took me for a sail on his 39’ sloop. Watching him sail is like watching a tai chi master at sea. He moves lightly and with grace. A flick of his sailor’s wrist and braided line coils around the winch; a quick pull and wrap and the main is stowed. Up and down he moves with ease and trust, at one with who, and where, he is. And me, novice at sea, at the helm, doing yeoman's work with metaphor.

Leap of Faith

Down By The Spit

The Garden Dock

    A little Madness in the Spring
    Is wholesome even for the King

    Emily Dickinson

Ahoy Pierre!

Felines of South Forty

Hull Inspector

The other morning I was working at home and heard someone talking close by, possibly outside on our pod. Sometimes tourists come down our ramp. It's a little like someone coming onto your porch, though I'm not sure they always realize that! Turns out it was a marine inspector examining the hull next door and dictating his report - hence the voice. I hadn’t seen such an inspection before (and frankly always wondered whether it was possible to walk on the bottom of the channel without sinking). Inspecting the hull is like examining the foundation of a house. When we first moved here, the concept of a concrete hull flummoxed me (how does concrete float anyway . . .??? - Displacement).  When the inspector finished and climbed back onto the dock in his suit of rubber overalls, he explained how he works at very low tide and often wears  snowshoes to keep from sinking in the mud, which requires extreme care as they have small spikes and some rubber hoses that run from the dock to the houseboat, house electrical wires inside - yikes! Sometimes he sports long wooden shoes, like skateboards or small skis, curved up at one end, a design of his own creation. . . And how was the hull?  I wanted to know. "Excellent," he replied, looking at his watch. "But now I must go - there are many hulls to inspect,  and low tide waits for no one!"

Farmer's Market Poet

At the small Friday Farmer's Market in nearby Mill Valley, a Greek woman sells produce from her family's farm in San Juan Bautista. I admire the Hearts of Romaine and she explains how she and her husband try to avoid bread and make their sandwiches with romaine, instead. Their 11 yr. old son has decided he wants to eat his sandwiches that way, as well. And now his friends at school eat their's that way, too . And I think, what wonderful parents and teachers. So natural. No insistence. The light falls on those who rise. Others notice, or don't. I look at the bin of summer squash, delicious looking and sweet. One is half yellow/half green. 'Ah,' she says, 'that one was kissed by a zucchini!'  She's a poet. I mention this. She says, 'I never write anything down.'    And I think, not all poets are writers, & not all poems are written down.

Double Rainbow

photo by guest photographer Dennis Bayer

. . . and while we were away for our son and daughter-in-law's wedding, our friend and neighbor, the amazing Dennis Bayer, captured this back at our dock. Coincidence?? I think not ~ a wedding rainbow ~

Things I've Seen Float By

Sunday Morning

writing on the dock of the bay

I love low tide in the early morning. It has a certain wabi sabi beauty where you can see to the muddy bottom of the channel all the things that are stuck there - remnants of broken pilings, half buried shells, a floating board that broke free but didn't get far. This morning as I sip my coffee, Dancing Water from Philz, I see a beautiful heron patiently waiting for breakfast. The ceramic pink flamingo in the window has a velveteen rabbit moment as she joins me in my watch, while the sculpture next door breathes Om . . . and our cyclamen waves yo ho! to the pirate's pansies  across the pod. A curious coffee klatch. And I refill my cup.

"Good Morning," said the Water

"The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book - a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as dearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell everyday."                                                           Mark Twain, Life on The Mississippi

We've Got All Night

Adele

Photo by Lovise Mills

   We were at a dinner party, 5 of us at our neighbor Adele's house. We settled in around 6:00, eating appetizers and having drinks and waiting for dinner to be ready, meanwhile catching up, but also all of us getting to know one another. We had no other plans that evening, just a pleasant time with friends over fine food and drink on Adele's pleasant houseboat that’s filled with art - each piece created by a friend, each with a story behind it.
   At one point, early on, the oven timer interrupted the telling of a story and Adele, said, 'Well, we have all night'.  Not sure we ever got back to that story, but stories flowed - and that line - 'we've got all night' - seemed so easy and gentle and generous and magnanimous, much like the evening itself.
   No hurry. No agenda. This simple evening, this time, these friends, this pork tenderloin to pull out of the oven, this bottle of Dewar's to pour, and oh yes, the story behind the cutting board that looked like a fish, made by Roger, the cutting board a simple but engaging fish design - its surface smooth after all the bread and fruit and cheese and life so thinly sliced . . . we had all night.
   And when we don't then we don't. But we don't wait or worry or hurry that time to come. We give it the benefit - take out the doubt - just give it the benefit, the way we would like it to be given to us, which makes it easier to give to others - whom we have no say or sway over anyway. It's how we conduct ourselves, how we live - generously and freely, how we pour - loosely and with a smile, how we enjoy the company of others, and give & take and join the flow, the flow of the moment, the flow on the water, the flow of good company, enjoying the benefits, as we relax into now . . . in no hurry, with no doubt . . . because we've got all night.   

gb, 2013
 

If The Shoe Fits . . .

Felines of South Forty

How Do You Get Any Work Done Around Here?

Writing On The Dock of The Bay

When we first moved to the dock, a friend came to visit. She sat at the dining room table where I write, looked out at the lovely view and asked, "How do you get any work done around here?" I smiled and said, "I make it my work."