what we do for love

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the honeymoon phase. you can’t stop us.

power washing boat. gracie gets a bath. what it means to own a sailboat.

bath time

ok. update. i'm not sure what is indeed charming about owning a sailboat in maine in the winter. let’s be real, having a boat attached to your deck is something like the coolest fort ever and the biggest metaphorical poke in the side every time you glance out the window. feed me, your time your love and all your money.

but we wanted to. right.

it was mild that december day we gave gracie a bath. say in the 40’s and pouring rain and as you can (or can’t) see, dark, so we set up the spotlights. i see now the Edison bulbs upstairs give the photo a gentle, festive air. aha. nope. and the power washer, so loud. and the smell, think abandoned fish market. and the mud.

this was perhaps still the honeymoon phase.

and then we pulled her diesel engine off. yep. best night of the honeymoon.

but it was, ok maybe not the best night, but we were determined. you can in fact walk right from our deck onto gracie (super rad); you can’t see her in her full glory because we built her a house. yes her very own house. i’m pretty sure mother nature has been trying to rip it down since we finished it on a frigid january day around 9pm. no ma’am. you can’t stop us.

but. we do love our boat. her bathing needs, her no engine, her house, and perhaps most of all,

her potential.

admittedly we haven’t been working on her as much lately. cold will ruin any honeymoon. then again, sometimes you just need a little sunshine, and our electric propulsion system arrived on monday! that’s right,

gracie’s going solar

so yea, for real. . . it’s expensive, time consuming and often overwhelming. but it’s also what we do for love. with determination, grace, goodwill and compassion. what we do is our future. our potential. . . our evolution, if just one part.

and maybe one dream, one boat, won’t make a difference. but i love this fragile life, this fragile earth, and

. our house is still standing .

change

the . new . girl

revolution . evolution

get . drunk . bear . down

the miracle dog

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love. determination and the fight to save bean. poetry in progress

the quiet life

me and bean. cape cod. sept. 2012. 

 

his broad freckled chest now has a gnarly scar 

where he was stitched back together 

twice after the porcupine when

 

they cut his sternum bone in half 

again to remove the right front lung

lobe after they found

 

twenty-four quills in his heart

three in his lungs, forty

removed the first time

 

they performed open heart open 

lung surgery and he still 

didn’t heal nine days later

 

we brought him home in

critical condition after two 

nights of opioid torture in

 

the hospital parking lot we slept 

at a campground until he was stable

enough to make it home

 

where he could not be left

alone and his medication 

schedule was a short story

 

and his stitches became infected

the laundry constantly going to

rotate his t-shirt supply 

 

to keep him clean and his harness 

dry his sister constantly

by his side and

 

he healed as we 

fought against odds not in our favor to

keep him alive

 

after thousands of quills were 

pulled from his body they nicknamed

him the miracle dog

 

where we went for five weeks 

for check-ups and eventually it

was summertime

 

and he slept on the deck

sprawled on the couch his 

heart beating his lungs inflating

 

with salty air where he

swam and napped under 

the apple trees

 

where life re-formed

every breath no longer a fight 

but a reminder of

 

the value of the beat

the sigh and the light.

 

getdrunkbeardown

hugyourdog

 

may 12, 2017      recovery

navy

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aka Kengali's Smooth Sailing. the new girl.

'big brother'

navy gravy . 'cause she pours it on'

unbelievably affectionate and loving, intense and brave. curious. funny and always hungry.

'cause she pours it on? yep. love love and more love. navy like gravy.

accompanied by a friend who works for Jet Blue, i flew from NYC to Boston to Orlando and back to NYC to bring her home. dec. 20-21. 2016. 7 weeks old.

a week later her first weekend trip. the poconos. the next week. montauk. 2 months later navy was a full time nova dog. 

after a few years of what felt like overwhelming personal loss. navy was a new light. a reminder to embrace our past present and future. to accept the now. the memory and with hope - the unwritten story. she reminds me of toulouse from time to time. she reminds bean . not all is lost. 

navy is named for my grandfather, a naval aviator and sailor whom I admired and adored. 

"make haste to be kind" -RH

getdrunkbeardown . hugyourdog . dothenovadance

navy and boris in nova

benjamin

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if found please call 207 . . . . . . . 

benjamin

the dingy to the left in this snapshot at sunrise in september. a plaque on his stern has his name and phone number in case he is found at sea alone. area code 207 plus another 7 will get benjamin home.

i'm not one to disclose much and i won't tell you where benjamin lives. sorry. it's just too sweet of a spot. and it is public.

I have shared this blog with a few people. what and why are the first questions. others ask what the hell. yea. i know. i'm a bit brief. curse of a poet and a short attention span. 

what? stories. poetry. snapshots. life.

why? because if i don't write i go crazy and people ask a lot of questions. consolidated answers.

what the hell? benjamin made me smile. he is a story of an impeccable sunrise in an exquisite place. a life simplified with nova. waking up to the sun. not the noise and wondering what number should be on my stern in case mother nature wins the battle. he also stirs up memories of my childhood. 

my grandfather was a sailor. an aviator. a philosopher. a father. my role model. yea there's more. my mother and I secretly bought back his dingy from a boat yard in maine. after he passed away my grandmother put it up for sale.

alleluia.

you should have seen her face when we told her.

life is. well. short. 

getdrunkbeardownandfindbenjamin