Tongs Overboard

I was grilling chicken and green peppers when the tongs slipped out of my hand. In disbelief, I watched as they sank below the water's green surface, tho it may have been the scotch that was disbelieving. Wasn't the first time. These things happen. I've seen tradesmen drop a screwdriver and watch it sink, then fish it out with a magnet on a string. Me, I was in the heat of dinner, watching the timer on my iPhone, sipping Johnny Walker Black. Magnet-less. There was nothing to do but grab the spare tongs, save the peppers and chicken, and wait for morning's lowtide. Next day, with a mug of coffee and the net from the end of the dock, I rescued my beloved  tongs after a no-doubt long, chilly, muddy night on the bottom of the channel next to the aging finger pier. Magnets, nets on poles, & low tide. Scotch & Wrecking Ball joe. A satisfying rescue. This is the stuff of adventure, when you're afloat on a boathouse and drop your tongs.

Sunflower For Shel

Yesterday two French tourists were taking pictures on the dock. They asked me if artists live here. I said, sure, many painters, sculptors, writers, and photographers live here, though it isn't a requirement. The idea of having to be a card carrying artist, as a requirement, did amuse me, however. But this place, this way of life, clearly attract artful people- like the women who asked the question while holding cameras, like Shel Silverstein - one of my favorites, who once lived in the balloon barge behind this sunflower . . .  like the gardener who planted and nurtured the beautiful sunflower for all of us to enjoy.

Floating Self

Photo by Daralee

This photo of Ben and I (that's me on the left) floated up over Facebook from long long ago, from our old friend Dee. We were juniors at the University of Redlands studying in Salzburg and my world was changing in more ways than I ever imagined. Not yet 21, I was able to drink beer for the first time, and not just any beer but the world's best, in a bier keller 200 hundred years old, with my last name on the wall in a poem that I couldn't understand. I met my lovely wife-to-be Phyllis. Had a best friend, Kelly Cole, who ordered his dad's records  everywhere we went so that Nat King Cole's work would always be in stock - and Kelly would be my first friend to die of AIDS just a few years later. Traveling through Europe, I began to notice the bigger picture outside my own small limited world. I tasted the adventure of travel, knew there was no going back to the way I was before . . . and now, through the wonder of the internet, as the old image of myself - in those glasses, with that hair (!) floats back to me, I see my younger self possibly looking into the future, and I say "Hey, buckle up. It'll be a bumpy thrill, but you're gonna love the ride, gonna love where we land." Ah yes ~ This life afloat ~

Underbelly

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It’s easy for me to fall under the spell of high tide beauty when colors shimmer in the water and seals swim partially submerged looking for grub. Lately, I’ve begun to appreciate the beauty of low tide, too. Mud flats. Protruding chunks of wood. An old tire rearing its muddy self. Walking on the finger pier, I notice crabs and sea slugs. Low tide brings out the herons and egrets who fish with long beaks, bringing up wriggling morsels and kelpy salads as well. Paleo before it was hip. I like to gaze under the dock at all the pipes and lines that run from shore to the houseboats bringing in water & power, taking out discharge. Peering up from below the dock, the unsightly becomes visible. Such a contrast to the beautiful, eye catching houseboats that send our cameras clicking. Chekov said, include the compost piles in your stories. There’s beauty to be found in the underbelly view. A man from Japan I once knew described wabi sabi like this: everyone appreciates the beauty of a cherry tree in April; appreciating its beauty in December, that is wabi sabi. Beauty has many shades; subtle as well as dramatic, acquired as well as reflexive. Turns out that the beauty of low tide, and the strange appeal of hoses and lines below the planks where we walk, have their own strange spell over me.