Every time we start living in a place, our local adventures turn into past ghosts almost immediately. Riding the bike in traffic, hiking across the apartment complex and foraging for local food, keeping the boat stocked and the projects moving, the almost-eclipse…
All of a sudden, a whole bunch of time has passed. And I didn’t say anything about going sailing, which we have quite a bit this summer!
Summer in the Chesapeake doesn’t require much clothing, but it’s always good to check the weather.
This boat from Brunswick, ME, gave us both pangs of longing.
It’s in Mill Creek, just behind Possum Point. We keep going, when we visit. Past Providence and Martins Coves, around green can buoy “11”, we anchor up at 10:1 and chill the fuck out. Swimming, scrubbing the bottom, and sometimes rowing over to Cantler’s, but never failing to enjoy the trip and the stop and the being away from the place that turns into a blur of quotidien tasks, meals, and chores.
Of course, we love that too, with our sexy Ganesh and La Sirena and the whole boat of our devising.
I read this sexy post with a joyful smirk and a shadow of sadness. Sexy! Sexy James, sexy Dena *swoon*, sexy boat, sexy goddesses. Sexy like your glorious abundant life that flows out to the edges and keeps going. You are endless, placeless, timeless, inhabiting this liminal everworld of Now in your nation of two.
I don’t live there. I live in Baltimore. It’s a dirty, noisy city, terrestrial, boundary defined, absolute in its specificity. Not A Place, an interchangeable Here where this particular weather is happening. I live in a town with the same name every day, in a building dug down into the Earth to keep it still. Gravity works different for me. So does time.
I love watching you live this other way! It’s a pleasure to dream along with you. Always, but this delightful proximity to you in your own aquahome habitat has fed me well, two whole summers in a row. It’s been a blessing I don’t take for granted.
I’m watching the clock now, I know it’s nigh time to let the wind take you on to what’s next. The places we’ve enjoyed one another will be past ghosts soon. In two years, all this will be written over with new adventures.
So, ok. I’ll meet you there and then! I’m not A Place, I will not fade when you are beyond easy driving distance.
But I’ll miss you, deeper than you know. Time and gravity are poor substitutes for a face to face friendship. And long after you’ve been blown to another Place I will reminisce about this time and this land that is so temporary to you. In my Earthbound memory I will revisit the places you have forgotten. They have imprinted on my heart.
Sigh. I’ll give them your regards.