Ho Hum, Pass The Rum

 

It’s blog o’clock. I haven’t written a blog in a while and, at the moment, don’t really have much exciting to write about but my readers should be warned that yet I live. Each day is pretty mundane. Life is ticking by, my health is improving and the wounded ankle is slowly healing. I’m walking and swimming as much as possible. Part of my dream is to hike along cactus-studded ridges and look down on this boat anchored in translucent warm, green waters below me. Yeah, like the Sea Of Cortez! I want to be in good shape for that and I know that being in big shape is a death spiral. I reckon that I’m packing around the equivalent of a sack of concrete in my Value Village jeans. If any of you flat-bellied folks want to get ready for winter, I’ll make you a package deal on several pounds of blubber.

I’m also beginning to realize that I imbibe a buffet of prescription medications. I’m sensing that the pills are a toxic stew which does nothing to improve or maintain good health. It may be having the opposite effect and I’m noting how one thing leads to the next. Is my excess weight due, in part, to the influence of my daily drugs? I know that when I’ve sworn off some of these concoctions, the weight loss is soon noticeable. One new prescription’s fine print noted that if mixed with another drug, already in my daily intake, there could be dire consequences. At three bucks a day for this one poison, I declined to participate in someone else’s Porsche payment program.

It’s my body and it’s up to me what goes into it. A person should not blindly trust strangers to keep an eye on the details of their health anymore than one should trust a new mechanic with their vehicle. It’s simple. If the flab goes, so do the damned pills and perhaps, if the pills go, so does that excess weight. It’s all connected. And so pass the rum, chum. Now that’s a medicine I understand and can even advocate. Yes I’m aware of the side effects. That’s why I drink it!

Meanwhile I’m tinkering the boat back into good shape and watching other boats come and go. Damn! That makes for a big itch! There have been some beauties pass through already. One monstrous old Tolly Craft appeared within the painful thunder of two extremely loud Detroit Diesels. (If a tugboat produced that much noise, it would never have a crew.) Everyone in the marina was holding their ears. The geriatric skipper wore an intercom headset and mercifully shut the engines down promptly. The yacht gleamed and although it displayed no name, it caught even my eye. Within minutes of docking, the couple aboard it were out, up, down and around polishing and buffing. That went on until sundown when the flickering blue of television filled the vessel’s cabin. Wot a life! A Fart Parkerson-type sailboat next appeared bearing the name “High Heels.” There are things I just don’t understand. All that money, apparently, with no imagination. Yesterday an old geezer pulled up beside me at a stoplight. He was driving an Audi R8, a gorgeous, rare sports car. Its V10 motor rocketed the car away as if I’d only imagined seeing it. I looked it up on the internet and discovered the price tag is $164,000. And it only seats two! (Maybe the chap was a pharmacist!) I wonder how it would look jacked up in the air with big fat wheels.

Just off the end of the marina where ‘Seafire’ is berthed, a local marine contractor is breaking up a decommissioned steel tug. I can hardly bring myself to photograph the process. It seems so very sad. Each day there is less of the tug and a higher pile of scrap on the breaker’s barge. The smell of burned paint and the shower of sparks from the cutting torches are like the effluent of an Indian funeral ghat. In a bizarre way I relate to the worn-out old hulk. I hope that when my day comes there is a more glorious or, at least, discreet ending.

Call It Fred

There may well come a time,

When I’ll be shark shit.

I hope, at least, the bottom feeder will be a fish

And not a politician.

How my time in this dimension

Comes to an end I do not know

Except that with luck it will occur while at sea.

Hopefully I can be afforded the dignity of being discharged

in something like a sailbag ballasted enough

to take me quickly to a depth where the big fish are.

Passing through the belly of a gleaming sleek beast

I will become an object of low regard

Yet I will still exist, drifting, dissolving, feeding little fish.

They in turn, as you know, will feed bigger fish and so on

Until a time arrives when I am a shining smiley in your net.

You came name that fish.

Call it Fred,

It’ll all be the same to me.

The aspiration of finding a decent J.O.B. is dwindling. Apparently nobody wants to hire an old fart like me and pay me for my decades of experience. I also do not have a certificate or license for much of anything. You seem to require a document to do anything now and I marvel at all the things I have done in my life without paperwork. As we all know, a ticket is no assurance of competence but I won’t get into that rant now. I also have no interest or social skill to be a box store greeter or a security guard so, I’m desperately looking for a clever and legal means of producing an income, hopefully something I can do while travelling. That of course means working online and this Cyber-Neanderthal has got some adventures ahead on that path. In my heart of hearts, I don’t really want employment ever again, but there are other realities. Living under a bridge is not one of my ambitions.

 

It is now past mid-May and proving to be a very dry spring. Hopefully Vancouver Island does not end up burning like Fort McMurray but a serious drought does appear imminent this year. The creeks are dry already and the days are an endless stream of cloudless warmth. Every day, in an effort to stave off the blues and various anxieties I try to find the beauty in the world around me. Some days that is especially hard to see, but not because it isn’t there.

Other mornings the amazing natural wealth all around becomes obvious in overwhelming clarity. With the dry spring the wildflowers are profuse. I’m trying to improve my skills with the photo mode of my LG cell phone. It can produce some excellent high-quality images despite the clumsiness I find in using it. I’ve restricted my photography for the moment to that single device. All the photos (Except those of the birds) in this blog were taken with that one mobile phone.

So, this blog proves to be another photo essay. “Thar be new adventure to write about just over the horizon Billy! Stay the course!”

“There are times when the wolves are silent and the moon is howling.” George Carlin