Belly of the Whale

Out with the Flip-flops at Last!

Spring is here in the Heart as well as the Weather.

I’m inspired and know not what for. I feel alive and energized. I’ve left the cave for civilization again. I am no longer the hermit, alone in the belly of his boat. I have fallen in love again with Port Townsend.
It is spring. The farmer’s market was this morning. Flowers and food of every sort, colors and smells behind the soft sea breezes. I have friends, people that come to coax me out, people who want me around. Once again, I feel initiated into a place.

There is a certain aesthetic ambiance to Port Townsend. Everyone is an artist here of one form or other. Everyone values health and it is part of the community dialogue. There is no business which is more valued in town than the Food Co-op, which is nearly entirely orgainic, strongly local grown, ect.
The community fights, wins and loses, again large chain stores. We beat Rite-Aid, but are currently loosing against Hollywood Video. (HV is coming, but will anyone give them business??)

This morning was a most gorgeous morning, unusually so. Being Saturday and having worked well all week, I slept comfortably into the morning. I have some friends who are hauled out right across from me and I asked them if they wanted to go to the farmer’s market with me.
We walked around and took it all in. There was a band playing soft bluegrass music. A developmentally disabled lady stood there swaying to the music. She wore a metal around her neck.
Being such a day, I couldn’t help but ask her to dance. She smiled and we swung about to the music. I asked her about the metal and she said she won it in the Special Olympics. That took me back to Missoula in my mind, riding the van with Jon and Corina up to Lost Trail to coach for the winter Special Olympics.
So many good times in Missoula.
But now I find myself attachinig the same emotions to a new place and a new time. Of course, the fall was one of the great times of my life—the beginning of this new adventure, but it was a solitary sort of experience.
I’ve had lots of help and received more time and energy from strangers than I could ever have hoped for . But at the same time I was mostly alone. I never went out. I worked. I read. I slept.
Then, or course, the fall led to the winter. With the winter started the sailing and the beginning of the trials, one problem followed the next. I waited a lot. I worked more slowly and with increased frustration at myself. The weather deteriorated and hindered my getting out of my cabin.
It was a slow time. Projects moved but often to slow to really appreciate. I found new encouragement with the budding interest into nutrition and diet. The weather didn’t affect my eating, after all. So I felt productive, at last doing something positive for my body. This study took me through to the spring. And all along I have been myself and meeting people.
Slowly my presence has become natural here. I have become one of the community. A few days ago as a band played in the port brew pub, a friend of mine, a captain and shipwright, introduced me to someone with, “This guy gets out nearly everyday to sail.” I can’t say how it made me feel to have someone I respect like him
compliment me on my effort and determination to sail. I don’t always feel like I am working as hard as I could.
But again, just now as I was heading back to my boat from the farmer’s market. I stopped to talk to one of the guys who runs the travel lifts, the big moving lifts that moved boats to and from the water. He said, “I think it is great what you are doing [ie – my own work] This is Port Townsend, you know. People are always gonna stop by and help you out.”
To be noticed and approved of. I’ve had some down days here, to be sure. But knowing that these men, my superiors in the boat world respect my efforts encourages me. I’m doing so bad.
I often feel like people see my worst. It took me almost two weeks to get my fiberglass work done. I know a guy who could have done it in an afternoon. I had to spend so much time staring at the damned thing. The staring and the doubt gets me down. Bur, in the end, the jobs get done.

Right now, my engine is fully disassembled. I started the job without a clue and not but a prayer. But it seems people like engines. An old neighbor from the marina has taken to stopping by every morning. Ed, or the “Boatyard Bullshitter”, also has taken to stopping by and offering me little bits of mechanical genius.
The best, however, was the day I started lifting the engine out of the boat, my friend Bob, the original mechanic for my engine (from the previously owner) swung by. He had been living in Seattle for the last year. It turned out that he was moving back to town.
When I told him what I was up to he said he would help me through it. When I asked if I could pay him for his time, he said, “No, no, I really like your motor.”
Who says that?
Over the last week I have slowly gotten a hold of what it is I / we are doing with the engine. God, it has been fun. I am still anxious to get back in the water and start back to sailing, but this is an education I have ben tentative about, even apprehensive. I was avoiding it. And now it is here and it is great.
I feel so lucky. I have learned fiberglassing and engine repair in the last two weeks.

What is more I feel more a part of the community than I ever have before. I have real and true friends now. Ben and Meg and Ozzie and Brian and Jen, Rob and Tilikum, I could go on—but a few of these have become close already.
We share mutual ambitions, but we share similar hearts. They are good, good people. I feel so lucky. I feel at last that I understand Port Townsend. The Victorian beauty is easy to see, the size and slow lifestyle. But now I have entered into the heart of the community, not just the boatyard, but the community as a whole. I know the librarians by name. (Well, I should anyway.)


It seems that today is one of those days when you feel love emulating from everything you touch. Everything is sacred today. I received the sweetest most loving email from Carmel today.
Even as we face realities that will likely keep us apart, I cant help but feel so blessed to have her in my life. She has a way of making my heart glow.
I feel like calling Wendy and hearing her voice as well. My dad too. I want to connect with all those I love. Perhaps this letter is the best I can do.

Well, it is something. Where ever you are, I am thinking about you. I really believe that I am nothing but the compilation of all those experiences that you and I have shared. Where would we be without each other?? Somewhere different. And here is not a bad place at all. Thank you.
I hope it is clear by now how much the love and encouragement of my friends actually mean to me. I feel like I owe you everything. I would be nobody, no where, knowing nothing.
The dream to sail was offered to me by a friend.
The courage to love was taught to me by a friend.
Don’t be afraid to offer yourselves as mentors to those you love. They can only gain by it. I feel I have. Immensely.

Today may be a good day for some ice cream. Indeed it is.