Her body and bones

Hands closing over cold ribs, I lay her frame on the rotting boards beneath a drizzling sky. A long-cloistered body unfolds in front of me. She is naked, undone, jagged and stiff in a freezing barn. I smile at the rawness of the day, the vulnerable strips of wood tipped with metal, corrosion clinging to hardware, varnish chipping off delaminating edges. She is a mess. And yet she is mine. 

Mine! (as much as anything can actually be a possession)

I haven’t bought a boat since I was 24 years old. And then it was a partnership, parentship, a ship that would teach me about relating to another human I would spend glorious years with at arms length, both meanings so true, so close and so far. 

This boat is solely mine. A soulful project waiting to work with me as much as I work with her. 

(Can a kayak be a she? I've decided yes; there is no minimum length requirement for the tradition of treating boats as feminine entities.) 

I can feel her tough lines burst through me. She is roughed up at the edges, polish worn to faded yellow and splintering cracks, once-solid metal pieces rotted away. Pieces that may not be replaceable. And she is beautiful. I imagine adventures had and to come. I wonder if she imagined me into buying her from the silver-haired lady in Olympia who told me stories of remote islands and thin sails and the hull stuffed full of food and endless laughter ricocheting over soft waves. 

I piece together the frame and turn the pliable shell over and over, wondering how these bones will fit in the body. Wondering how my body will fit in these bones, the muscles of my arms dipping paddles into the cold clear blue.

Someday. 

But today, I shift the frame on the boards of the barn and realize that yes, I will need to read the directions. And yes, I can do this by myself. And yes, this is exactly what I need. My boat, my project, my dreams. With that solid foundation, the screws set tight, the rudder in place, I can invite others into my small floating world. We can share dreams and paddles and navigate whirlpools, but I want to know her bones and body first. I want to know the how and why and know that I can float on my own. 

And I do. And I am. And she has found me to put her back together.

Beets on the Asphalt

The beet hit the asphalt and rolled just a little. It was still (barely!) attached to the bleeding red stems and wilted leaves that had left marks on my shirt. The beet was fine. I was not. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream Fuck This Shit into the hollows between metal and glass and dirty ground otherwise known as Jersey City. When the bag that was carrying my groceries broke in the middle of the street, it seemed like too much. My arms were getting bruised from attempting to carry five overflowing shopping bags from the downtown Manhattan Whole Foods to a marina in Jersey City. 

Technically it was only 1.8 miles. 

Technically I could have walked this is 30 minutes. 

But technically I was across a major river, in a different state really, and about 30 pounds heavier with beets and organic milk and bottles of champagne vinegar (the latter of which bounced and cracked on the street). 

I plodded along for 15 minutes to the ferry from the store where the cashier had asked if I was getting a car and I had mumbled Or Something.  Blocks of concrete and avenues with cars and sidewalks with people looking at me like I was crazy. I felt crazy. One guy commented, “You got a strong back lady, a Strong back!” I took it as a compliment and huffed on. Crazy and determined and strong, that’s me. 

On the ferry, across the river, off the ferry, into the streets of JC, back aching. Crazy and not so determined and tired, that’s me. Fuck this, I’m getting a cab, I thought. But there was no cab in sight. I started stumbling towards the light rail hoping there would be more traffic. 

That’s when the bag broke in the middle of the street, beets rolling, glass cracking, me swallowing back tears. I just let the bag drop as I walked to the corner to put the other bags down. A man on a cell phone stopped and shuffled the beets and bottles back into the torn bag as he chatted about his weekend in the Hamptons to whomever it was who was on the line. He didn’t get off the phone or really look up but he did in fact ask if I needed any more help. Which I appreciated. And at the same time in my frustration I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself for not getting off the goddamn phone. Was that wrong? Misdirected anger? Projecting on him as a product of the city where people generally ignore one another and food comes in little plastic packages in brightly lit aisles and there is no way of knowing where it came from or who the farmers are or how much they are paid or whether the drought is affecting them this year or if the Begradas have finally moved north or do they use worm castings in their fields? This was not the man’s fault. He was connecting with Someone on the phone. He might have visited a farm stand himself out on Long Island that weekend. How was I to know? Even if he had been off of his cell phone I might not have asked him anything because I was so angry. 

Feeding the disconnection.

I want to feed the opposite. I know that cities can be amazing places to connect with people, with art, with food. But all these connections feel to me as manufactured and out of reach as a high-couture gown, me in my stained shorts and salty Converse. There are processes and barriers and some invisible scale on which we (I) compare one another and All This Stuff. This art, this conversation, this packaged and plated food. This yacht life feeds right into this weighted world that feels so foreign and plastic-wrapped. I want to step off the scale and just enjoy what I have. I can appreciate the effort and ambition and I also know that right now in my life I crave the simple. I want to shed all the pretense and drop down into the basic. Ground myself in place and community and converse about how we survive. I mean really soulfully survive. I want to make art in a falling down barn with the swallows flittering overhead. I want to go into the garden and pull out onions and carrots that I planted and watered and weeded, brush the dirt off their living backs and chop and cook and devour with gratitude, no plastic wrappers in sight. At home I have a chest freezer full of a cow I passed on the road everyday on my way into town. At home I eat eggs from chickens down the street. At home I have a closet full of dresses that have mud on the hems and I have shelves of dog-eared books on farming and soul. 

(And I am calling it Home! That is new. That is real. That is a connection I want to feed and nurture.)  

I also want to appreciate the now and all that this now is teaching me about what I actually want in this lifetime. All that this yachtie life and the city and its people can teach me. Absorb all the art and music and passion that I know is here. And then be grateful for the opportunity to choose my environment, to choose what and where I call home.

I rip off the bleeding stems of the beets and leave them as an offering to the lamppost on the corner. The concrete is simply sand and dirt and water. The city is a living thing, too, worthy of nourishment and gratitude for all it has been, all that lies beneath, all that will become of it as grass grows in the cracks of the sidewalk. 
Life doesn’t end, it is just the energy that changes form. 
The beet goes on.

Ocean Wings

Ocean stretches salty paws to the horizon, a fur of seaweed and sunken shells deep in the hide. 
Land growls in the absence and claws at my back, drawing my thoughts to marshy fields and jagged tree trunks searching for blue sky through a tangled pelt of clouds. 

Time twists and breaks, flexes like the bow of this pummeled boat. 
I strain my dreams through the sieve of stars overhead and what falls remains to be slumbered upon. 

Here in my hands the wings of a fish tremble and push, a curve pressing into the palms behind bloody knuckles as translucent bones shift and spread. A gasp and release, a shriek and a sigh. Into the water into the night we move forward together in leaps and glides and a jauntiness I never knew I held. You teach me well. 

I wipe the sun streaks from my eyes and let the moon wash over me its secret language of reflection, illumination from source unseen. The song has just begun in the quiet of the dark and I hold the notes between waves, between screaming gusts, between fingers that can no longer grasp this place. 

We understand each other: the dive and flight, the relinquishment of time and holding of grace. Fins and feet, whale jaws and rhubarb roots. None of it makes sense until I stand (swim) in the middle of it all and let it go. You (I) tumble back into the blackness, trusting whatever is after you (me) drives us forward and calls us to the slippery descent back Home.  

Peanut butter cookies

If I just scrape a little from the top of the lid, its not a real bite. Nor is a skim of the spoon off the creamy swirling surface of pure peanutbuttery deliciousness.
Mantequa de cacahuate as they say in Mexico where it is difficult to find the American staple and where we savored a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich on bollos.
I'm thinking about our cruising adventure a lot these days.
Long nights at sea, my spoon reaching deeper into the jar searching for smears of my favorite midnight snack stuck under the curvy lip as my eyes search the horizon for fishing boats and overhead for shooting stars.
Mantequa de cacahuate.

I am in Florida so finding peanut butter is not a problem.

My favorite recipe is one that my friend Jed passed on to us in a compilation of family recipes he and his wife Monica used on their boat, The MaryAnne II. They are also responsible for the most amazing margaritas I have ever experienced.
In my life.
In the cockpit of their boat on a breezy Baja California evening, we all sat with cold margaritas and flushed faces reading from Steinbeck's "Log from the Sea of Cortez." Gasping and laughing hysterically, I read the passage about Steinbeck's notoriously stubborn outboard. We had been battling our engine all the way down the Baja coast, so Steinbeck plus margarita equaled hilarity.

We didn't have cookies that night. On our boat Gitane, we didn't have an oven.
In my crew house, I have an oven, but no margaritas. Cookies for my class, cookies for my roommates, and on Friday after the exam, margaritas and martinis for all!

Peanut butter cookies

1 cup PB
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking soda (or in my world, powder if you don't have soda or the baking soda you do have has been soaking up nasty fumes in the back of the fridge for years maybe)

Mix it all up, add some vanilla or cinnamon or whatever. Roll into balls and smash onto a cookie sheet. Bake for awhile at 350.

Gluten free and tasty.