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.

Gratitude

Summer. I am watching sun filter through old planks of a barn, prayer flags faded and torn, old couches softly decaying in still light. My desk is an old board nailed to sawed off two by fours, light green paint chipping and floating to join the pine needles and crunchy leaves on the dusty floor. Mosquitoes fill the evening-lit air with motion; a thousand specks of life and movement, no reason, no destination.

I am full of gratitude for this past week (and for this year, this life, but I will be specific in an effort to name my joy). This is how:

I am grateful for home-made, home-picked blackberry pie bubbling over and through buttery crust pressed into a cast iron skillet and the smell that fills the house as it bakes.

For the voices of a dozen men and women gathering on the front porch last night to do nothing but sing melodies and harmonies, sing for singing’s sake, sing for the pleasure of listening.

For a discussion at a potluck on that same porch nights before that ended with a promise to think about shooting deer in her backyard to dress, store, and eat for the winter. And how many island gatherings have had conversations centering around self-sufficiency and efficiently and sustainably maintaining an omnivorous diet in non-conventional (but really traditional) ways.

For a swing in the trees that makes my stomach drop every time as my body flies out of the forest and over the road far below.

For telling fantastical stories after the candles are blown out, the darkness ringing with bright laughter. And singing softly to sleepy ears upon waking.

For a house full of lovely people who grow vegetables and make food and call for community in so many different ways.

For the opportunity to open myself ever more deeply to love and connection in all of its various forms.

For bone broth soup made with beef from cows raised less than a mile away and veggies from the garden I help to grow.

For dolphins (porpoises?) surfacing in the sound as my kayak paddles touch glassy cold water. 

For dancing and running and leaping on the beach reminding me that all we are meant to do in this life is have fun and that fun comes in many different forms as does love and pain and growth.

For a tree rotting from within shepherded reverently from sky to ground.

For sleeping outside underneath the stars, underneath a bright moon, circled by a quiet army of trees, circled by quiet arms.

For sipping dream tea in the evenings, laps covered in quilts, bullfrogs shouting stories across the pond, owls questioning everything.

Dis/Integration

The breath long gone, the bones hidden. Deep green ferns under dusty pines, the road muddy and close. I check for feathers and beak, breakage and decay. 
There is nothing. 

Did the ants cart away red and black morsel by morsel? Did the coyotes drag apart the small bits of flesh and hollow wing? This body that I took from the side of the pavement, crushed between bright yellow dandelion-matted hill and jagged fence, this body I carried in cradled palms after the brief thought of premature dismemberment, this body I lay down on the damp forest floor, is gone. Disseminated into the world, disconnected from its form to form bits of other beings and places. 

Dis-integrated. Integrated into nothing. Integrated into everything else.

Each night I let go of dreams of the day, letting the real work of the night take their place, the truthful side of my eyes alight with color and motion. I stand at the periphery of whom I once was, marveling at the pieces floating and bumping together, swinging in wide arcs, ricocheting apart. I lift my arms to gather these fragments but they dissolve and disappear through fingers aching to cradle what they cannot hold. The parts become so small and rearrange themselves in such a way that I cannot see them with my eyes, I can only swim through the bright white of memory and possibility. 

Re-formed, re-integrated moment by moment, in this space and now. The puzzle pieces re-modeled, molded into the present. My wings re-membered in the flash of old man’s smile. The flesh of my yesterday’s being re-directing the subtle motion of a stream. My liminal thoughts re-appearing as an elephant on the page of a child’s notebook. 
 
I stop searching through the ferns for a glimpse of feather and beak. I empty my hands of yellow flowers, I breathe in the pine and moss. I step into the song of the birds, the dance of the clouds, the gliding stillness of my fingers against the air. Integrated into it all, the boundaries fall away and I walk further into this all encompassing self called world.

My Aspirations, My Inspirations

Gnarled fingers wrap around fraying canvas handles. Hunched over with the weight of milk and eggs, celery and carrots in an initial-embroidered Bean bag (they all look the same on the ferry, uh-yuh), the female elders of the island trudge up the shifting metal platform to solid (granite) land. They don’t ask for help but accept a hand if there happens to be a willing one nearby. They have sunspotted arms and faces and don’t bother wearing makeup most of the time. Their hair is short and a spectrum of uncolored grays.

Who needs to bother with such things on an island where the leaves change from deep green to fiery red to earthy brown each year and the transformation and march towards decay is a welcomed spectacle?
Where the tides are continually altering the lines and curves of the shore with their ebb and flow.
Where time is (truly) kept by (summer) marriages and (winter) deaths and (keep the school going!) babies born.
Where the technicolor sunsets are generally remembered more often than the fog shrouded sunrises.
Where you know your neighbor and their neighbor and so on in a circular path around this island of (about) 350 (births, deaths, weddings) and everyone knows what you look like without makeup and hair dye anyway but they also still remember you as a child jumping off the pier or when you would go cod fishing with your husband when there were still cod to fish.

They are the fiercest, most beautiful women I know.

She has reached her car. Not a car, but a truck. I am surprised. I was expecting a beat up sedan (the car of choice on the island where cars go to die) with torn seats and muddy floor mats (only $300 from a nice young man on the mainland). How will she climb into the cab? How will she see over the dashboard? How will she navigate these narrow roads? Of course she could do it by feel and probably does. She slings her Bean bags into the truck bed and smiles as I walk by.

She radiates confidence.

I want to be her in 50 years. But I want to learn from her now. I want to learn from all these elders with soft hands and mighty stories. On an island where tales of the sea, of farming, of childhood and marriages are told and retold and listened to because that is what you do when you stop by someone’s house not for sugar or to complain about their dog but just to say hello.
To stay for a cup of tea in a warm kitchen with a fire in the wood stove and a cat sleeping on the seat next to you
To sit with another person until the talking is done, without glancing every five minutes at your phone or apologizing for having somewhere else to be.
To let go of schedules and anxiety because fall is here and the summer people are gone and it is time to breathe and watch the yellow leaves from the birches swirl to the ground and create a carpet of gold on the island floor.

I look down at my own sun spotted (freckled) hands carrying Bean bags. I wonder if I will be lucky enough to own a truck to climb into when I am 85 and drive to my home among the pines and maples and birches. As I climb into that truck with these hands that will grow happily calloused with many more stories, will I have a younger woman unintentionally cock her head and smile? Will I know exactly what she is thinking and smile right on back?

If I have my way and I make it that long, You Betcha.
But for now I will sit, listen, and love these souls that inspire with every hunched, gnarled, and absolutely beautiful step.

An island in the concrete

These are the days I love.

I am in love with the rain clouds and drops falling on the dirt. I am in love with sweaters and bright pink beets and the lingering smells of mint on my fingertips and wet pavement under my boots. I am in love with long shadows at 4pm and coffee in the evening (the prospect of staying up all night writing and thumbing through my books). I am in love with myself with no make up and bright eyes tromping through the farm in a skirt.

I went on a planting spree today. Broccoli and chard revealed their gossamer roots, radicals punching down into damp earth, spindly green reaching above. I pulled tray after tray out of the greenhouse and shuffled volunteers past the kale and favas to the struggling beets and lettuce and basil. Interplanting (its all love), filling in (low birth rate), replacing harvested crops (the circle of life). We were dusty with fish meal and flax meal, fingernails encrusted in compost, knees damp from kneeling next to coffee brown beds.

It felt good to get things in the earth. The sirens, the horns, the white noise of traffic on the 5, the chattering of students, the tall buildings casting shadows across rows of radishes and corn were all still there but I could barely hear them over the flapping of butterfly wings, the squealing growth of the caterpillars on milkweed, the grumbling of branches and banana peels turning into compost.

Sometimes I forget that I am in the middle of a city. 

I am surrounded on all sides by concrete. 

There are still ribbons of man-made rock snaking through the farm. 

Yet I stand grounded and happy on my island of rich soil on a cloudy, cool, transplanting-perfect day.