My daughter got here from Denver on Wednesday early. I picked her up in Seattle, we met a friend of hers for lunch, and returned to Port Townsend. I am so happy to have her visiting!
On Thursday we walked from East Beach on Marrowstone Island south to Nodule Beach, where it looks like rock eggs are birthing from the sandstone. What does one call a group of those rocks? A flock? There is flocked fabric, after all, why not rocks?
And what about the sea anemones? What is a group of them called? They really like certain rocks!
It was a beautiful day and a super low tide and we tried not to walk on the exposed eel grass or the sea anemones. The rocks and sand were fine!
Wondering why vitiate ads from drinking carbonate seems a loaded silly freight puzzle future centuries late time foils stupid race hate future can’t tell the state from all attempts to carbon date
We sail on a jaunt into sherbet skies. The water is gold, the wind is light. The sky changes color and charms our eyes. The light is gold sliding into the night. The boat glides through the water with gentle ease. Light hand on the tiller, our wake lights up. We pass peaches and cherries and crackers and brie, pour tea into each other’s cups. It’s cooling off so we sit very close. Phosphorescent creatures trail behind. Warming each other as we steer the boat. Darkness falls and we don’t mind. The sherbet skies call us out to roam But we are ready to come about towards home.
I found this rock on Marrowstone Island, last week. All of the rocks are bright in the sun, especially right after the tide washes over them, but this one stands out.
The surface has layers and layers of mica. Apparently there are 57 different mica minerals, here, so I am not enough of an expert to know which it is. I can see the layers of flakes of mica. This is a beautiful rock.
When someone tries to hit me
I fight back
I didn’t worry much in clinic
even when patients yelled
it indicated they were upset
and usually I knew why
Not much fear there.
So what do I fear?
Abandonment and lies the one who says they care that we will be friends even that they love me and later walk away
But that has already happened more than once and I survive and the Beloved is still here and there and everywhere I am and everywhere you are and everything is connected so there is no fear and even a chance that abandoned I still thrive
____________________
The photograph is from Marrowstone Island in July 2022.
This is a sunset, not smoke. Right now the east coast of the US has spectacularly bad air quality from forest fire smoke. My son is going to work out indoors today, since he is in the DC metro area.
When I moved here, I was delighted by the air quality. That was 23 years ago. In the last five years, we have had smoke blowing in from forest fires to the east or south or north four of the five. Last year I built a home air purifier because the smoke was bothering my lungs even inside the house. It helped very much. I stayed inside for 8 days. The cats did not want to go out either.
“Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.” Ironic if it is smoke that takes us out.
I walked on Marrowstone Island yesterday, south from East Beach. There was a super low tide, to -3.38 at 1:07 pm. When the tide came in, it was at +8.76, so that is a huge difference.
There were almost no people, but the group enjoying the low tide were the great blue herons! I counted 14. At one point they all alerted, and a bald eagle came down and perched on the rock that a heron had been on. There must be some very delicious food for the herons with the low tide. The eagle seemed to be considering heron to be a delicacy.
Here is the eagle (and the great blue herons moved!)
He likes to be the smartest. She doesnβt care and anyhow, people donβt like smart women mostly. Men show it off. Women mask it. She can only partially mask with her professional degree.
Heβs pleased to walk on the beach with her. She is withdrawn, down. He can feel that. He does not ask why, ever. She slides neatly into the space his wifeβs dementia left. His wife who was also depressed. He does whatever he wants, heβs not available, he wonβt be trapped. Control.
She is withdrawn, down. She has a difficult task in a year that might kill her. Closing the clinic and working elsewhere. Maybe she only gets pneumonia when a loved one dies. Or maybe COVID-19 will kill her. There, the range is from make a lot of money to dying. It is hard to explain and people donβt believe her.
Tendrils from her time in the ocean brush him. Then they are longer and lit in the sun. They wrap around him, very slowly. The first after a year. Where the tendrils touch, he has scales.
Neither sees. They are too busy laughing. They are small children, wordplay, in the woods, on the beaches, talking, singing.
She thinks her mermaid self is separate, her dream self. She is safest in the ocean. Her microbiota, gut bacteria, are all from the ocean. Symbiotic. He has land bacteria, at least, he starts with them. They change the longer they are together. He says, βI can read your mind!β But he canβt read emotions, since his are locked away. They bang on the dungeon doors howling but his heart is locked there too. His head canβt hear, canβt feel. Only when the small child is out playing.
He is slowly turning green. Now he has a few small leafy tendrils too.
She goes in the sea, the ocean, the unconscious, daily. Unworried, free, happy, healed.
The year goes by. The clinic closes, she has a job.
βWhy are you afraid?β He says.
βI am afraid Iβll get sick,β she says.
He has tendrils running all over from her. Half his skin has designs, stripes and patterns. The earliest ones have thickened and spread, rooted wherever they touch him, scales edging the roots. She is fully scaled, with the tendrils from fins and tail and hair. She smells of the sea.
She goes to work and is sick after two months. Very very sick with all it entails.
“You didn’t tell me about this!” he says.
“Why would I?” she says. “No one believes me.”
“I am watching and I don’t believe it.” He hates that her mind is unmasked. “I can follow you and it makes sense but you jump topics so fast!”
She shrugs. “Well.”
He tries to cut ties. Once. Twice. He can’t see the tendrils, so how can he cut them? But now she looks from the ocean and sees. The third time he tries, she grabs a shell and slices through the tendrils and dives deep. He could come in the sea. But he will have to choose.
He chooses not to. He thinks she is calling him from the sea. Every day he drinks a little more, smokes a little more, trying to drown the call.
But it isn’t her. The tendrils are his, now. The dungeon is flooded and the monsters and the small child swim in an ocean, fully scaled. They call him daily, to open the door, to let them out, to join them.
Discover and re-discover Mexicoβs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
KO Rural Mad As Hell Blog 
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