Tested this morning and I am now a certified General Class HAM. YEOW!!! YIPPEEE! *JUMPING* One goal for the summer down and a couple more to go and those may not get accomplished. But more on that later.
Just as important, I finished the dreaded personal statement last night and I can now apply to medical school. Once I push that button the future is shot into the unknown and it's out of my hands. I don't particularly like that part of it. I'm more comfortable when there's something left for me to do, to control and to perfect. It's good for me, pushes me to be still and exercises my character. Jumping into activity isn't scary for me, jumping into stillness, into waiting, terrifies me.
So I'm looking over the edge and about to let go... wish me luck.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
The Business of Being Alive
My expectations are fairly low regarding the mountains of the east and Smokey Mountain National Park did little to raise them. It's still early in the high country, not many leaves or flowers and the pinnacle of a few thousand feet the views were brown. Not horrible, it's hard to imagine being out in the woods and it being horrible ever. Every place, like nearly every human, has something to appreciate. Something wise to bestow on the person who sits for a short minute of contemplation at its heart.
On down to Transylvania County. That's the place to go. Waterfalls that sent sound waves to beat your backbone, roar down gaps in sheer mossy cliffs. Forests that pulled in the mist like a breathy hint of lace and little towns with sweaty, bearded men driving trucks piled with rakes and shoves as well as alabaster skinned men in button down shirts, Italian leather and cars. I saw few women.
Little restaurants could be found, covered in ivy, surrounded by green ponds, lit by candle and owned by people who came looking to run away from the life they had built for themselves and never went back. Gregarious entrepreneurs with more life experience than most have in 100 years and a penchant for kissing the women that visit their place.
Antique shops with brand new merchandise shyly beckon from nearly every stomach lurching corner. I started to count and then gave up wondering how many people it took to keep these havens of commerce thriving in a place that looks like you leave on vacation and come back to find your shop entombed with vines, centipedes and trees.
Unlike the arid peaks of the west the rain forest of the east crawls and hums with six, eight or hundred legged life all going somewhere and eating something. On the way back from a warm shower with a tiny button in the wall that you pumped ferociously to get 3 minutes of pressure, I found a centipede with a fringe of tiny yellow legs. These legs moved in a sinusoidal pattern from back to front. All the legs bunched together in one spot as it tickled along the ground and this bunched up spot flowed up its body in a perfect sin wave pattern. Beautiful in a squirmy sort of way.
I found direction there. Purpose for the summer anyway. Another summer of no money. A summer of rice, beans, Ramen Noodles and dreams. But dreams to chase that I'll never get to chase for years if I don't do it now. Someday I need to get a real job. Something that will take my soul from 9-5 and give me a decent living in return, but it appears that won't be this summer. I have settled on trying to sell at least three of my stories and perhaps write more to send out.
Lower priority but still a priority is to put my name out to do portrait photography and see what comes to me. Why not? Like the Italian in the little ivy covered restaurant pointed out. You try and if you fail you get down, do two push ups and move on. I like that. It's true. I have to try. I may fail but I'll never know if I don't hurtle myself down mountainside taking the challenges as they came. I prefer landscape/nature photography but why not try, I have the skill and a good camera and I can always stop when I tire of it.
At the top of a mountain one can prepare, mitigate risk, visualize success and enjoy the view but life isn't lived at the top. It's lived either climbing up or hurtling down. If I try to stay at the top it loses it's ecstasy. The view is made sweeter by the sweat, the agony and the sensuous experience of being physically and mentally engaged in the business of being alive.
- To Shel...
 |
| Dry Falls |
On down to Transylvania County. That's the place to go. Waterfalls that sent sound waves to beat your backbone, roar down gaps in sheer mossy cliffs. Forests that pulled in the mist like a breathy hint of lace and little towns with sweaty, bearded men driving trucks piled with rakes and shoves as well as alabaster skinned men in button down shirts, Italian leather and cars. I saw few women.
 |
| Out the Window |
Little restaurants could be found, covered in ivy, surrounded by green ponds, lit by candle and owned by people who came looking to run away from the life they had built for themselves and never went back. Gregarious entrepreneurs with more life experience than most have in 100 years and a penchant for kissing the women that visit their place.
 | |
| Horacio's |
Antique shops with brand new merchandise shyly beckon from nearly every stomach lurching corner. I started to count and then gave up wondering how many people it took to keep these havens of commerce thriving in a place that looks like you leave on vacation and come back to find your shop entombed with vines, centipedes and trees.
Unlike the arid peaks of the west the rain forest of the east crawls and hums with six, eight or hundred legged life all going somewhere and eating something. On the way back from a warm shower with a tiny button in the wall that you pumped ferociously to get 3 minutes of pressure, I found a centipede with a fringe of tiny yellow legs. These legs moved in a sinusoidal pattern from back to front. All the legs bunched together in one spot as it tickled along the ground and this bunched up spot flowed up its body in a perfect sin wave pattern. Beautiful in a squirmy sort of way.
I found direction there. Purpose for the summer anyway. Another summer of no money. A summer of rice, beans, Ramen Noodles and dreams. But dreams to chase that I'll never get to chase for years if I don't do it now. Someday I need to get a real job. Something that will take my soul from 9-5 and give me a decent living in return, but it appears that won't be this summer. I have settled on trying to sell at least three of my stories and perhaps write more to send out.
Lower priority but still a priority is to put my name out to do portrait photography and see what comes to me. Why not? Like the Italian in the little ivy covered restaurant pointed out. You try and if you fail you get down, do two push ups and move on. I like that. It's true. I have to try. I may fail but I'll never know if I don't hurtle myself down mountainside taking the challenges as they came. I prefer landscape/nature photography but why not try, I have the skill and a good camera and I can always stop when I tire of it.
At the top of a mountain one can prepare, mitigate risk, visualize success and enjoy the view but life isn't lived at the top. It's lived either climbing up or hurtling down. If I try to stay at the top it loses it's ecstasy. The view is made sweeter by the sweat, the agony and the sensuous experience of being physically and mentally engaged in the business of being alive.
- To Shel...
Sunday, April 4, 2010
My Meditation
Running, meditation.
The focus narrows,
The sensation of effort,
Sweat tickling down skin,
Music overwhelms thoughts
And each breath a prayer moving with the rhythm of being alive.
The focus narrows,
The sensation of effort,
Sweat tickling down skin,
Music overwhelms thoughts
And each breath a prayer moving with the rhythm of being alive.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Global Environmental Politics
Link to GEP paper.
Here is a link to the paper I wrote. Again, try not to judge it too harshly since I struggled with the format the teacher wanted. It was very unnatural for me to write and I ended up pushing through it over night. It is probably one of the most difficult papers I have written because of this. The subject itself was fascinating and the data was fun to pull together. Ok I'm done defending myself. :D Enjoy...
Here is a link to the paper I wrote. Again, try not to judge it too harshly since I struggled with the format the teacher wanted. It was very unnatural for me to write and I ended up pushing through it over night. It is probably one of the most difficult papers I have written because of this. The subject itself was fascinating and the data was fun to pull together. Ok I'm done defending myself. :D Enjoy...
Saturday, December 12, 2009
The Pop-riveted Wonder
It was green, wasn't it? Last time I saw it, green was the predominant color. A dark, dusty green, with small cracks where the sun had been able to get through the shiny gloss that enticed the original owner. The cracks ran down to a peachy spot that was sandy and dull and picked up on the other side where they branched out to a burgundy burst of rattle can paint. Then they dove on down to where it suddenly stopped short in the mottled silver of tin that took up where the crack had left off. A rivet seam sewed the tin to the fractured green.
Each tin patch gave way to another tin patch, their rivets lined up in precise rows until the tin gave way to a cancerous lesion's lacy edge. The rust that threatened to end the life of the venerable machine, eating it in pieces and leaving it in the Upper Michigan driveway to nourish life with its oxidized iron.
Sometimes Dad, a tall imposing man whose gigantic hands were the terror of every naughty boy in Sabbath School, would wind up its motor and charge the feisty steed shooting gravel from under balding tires down the driveway toward the growing pothole that marked the quarter mile point. As my brother, Eric, and I, bent toward the space between the two front seats our blond heads nearly colliding in the center with each lurch. Our eyes were pinned wide open with the g-forces and we leaned forward with the thrill that 35 miles per hour on a gravel road can give two grade schoolers.
Then we would hit the dip, our seats dropped out from under us, our heads rapped the seat in front. We would be suspended for just a second at the apex of our bounce and then we would be falling down while the seat came up impacting our bums with the force of a resounding spank. Our high voices would cheer. The sharp smell of the dust that had hovered above its resting spot, the lightly grooved plastic mats, was pulled into our noses as we inhaled sharply. Dad cheered too, I think, but it sounded kind of like, "it should make it to school and back." The struts were rusted so badly he feared they would give out and the sporty hatch-backed car would strand us on a lonely country lane while doing the permanent splits with its tires.
Normal places people don't have to worry about breaking their struts on the way to school, even if they are rusting. But Upper Michigan was hit hard by the slump of the 80's and it was rumored that our town had written the head of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to stock our potholes so all the non-vegetarians could all have fish to eat. We vegetarians were happy too, that meant more food for us since everyone else would be eating their Rainbow Trout, Sucker or Coho Salmon. Maybe, the hardy locals whispered, they would even stock a few Smelt for those prone to biting the head off of the little fish in the ecstasy of successful fishing.
This fish head biting was a local tradition. My 10 year old male classmates would puff out their scrawny plaid, flannel covered chests and recount their latest experience of this tradition hoping to make the small female population at our school scream. Most of the girls did scream, their stiffly sprayed bank of upright bangs quivering in their horror. The DNR never did honor the request and it seems that the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) - busily making life better under the bridge, never came to patch the holes. And so my dad continued to try to break the car in the driveway where we could get home easily.
I didn't like the car. In spite of the joy of the daily NASCAR like drive down to the looming pothole in the driveway it was beneath my 10 year old permed and hair sprayed dignity. Thinking back, it was the 80's, everything was ugly and there were very few new cars on the road but somehow I knew I rode in the ugliest car in the nation. This was my third school since I started five years ago and since it was populated with cousins and people of the North that had dug in for years, as a newcomer I did not feel welcome. Simply put, I was really not cool. Life was a tragedy and that was compounded by the green patch worked Datsun that got us to school.
As Dad drove, I would sink down in my back seat, well under the little triangle of glass that was my window. When we arrived to our orange and white vertically striped, tin sided school, Dad pulled the grayed green emergency break until it clicked out to its last setting and hopped out the "pop" the seat. I would scramble out careful not to catch my tightly pegged jeans on the car and hoped that no one, in the twenty kid classroom would see me out the plate glass windows.
Even then I had to admit it added brightness to my life. Eric and I with our heads down resting on our knees would amuse ourselves by pealing up the aforementioned rubbery black floor mats and peer at the pavement streaking by. The different colored rocks that made up the gray concrete would speed by making faint streaks of color under the car. We would whisper in conspiratorial tones about what we would do if we were kidnapped in the Datsun. At 10 and 7 we had it all planned out. We kept an arsenal of driveway gravel on the floor near our seats. IF someone were foolish enough to steal the Hornbacher children we would quickly pull up the mats to the secret holes in the floor and drop out the little rocks. A Hansel and Gretel trail of gravel. It was infallible.
But the best story happened when the Mother-in-law or Coco as we all called her, came up to visit.
To be continued...
Each tin patch gave way to another tin patch, their rivets lined up in precise rows until the tin gave way to a cancerous lesion's lacy edge. The rust that threatened to end the life of the venerable machine, eating it in pieces and leaving it in the Upper Michigan driveway to nourish life with its oxidized iron.
Sometimes Dad, a tall imposing man whose gigantic hands were the terror of every naughty boy in Sabbath School, would wind up its motor and charge the feisty steed shooting gravel from under balding tires down the driveway toward the growing pothole that marked the quarter mile point. As my brother, Eric, and I, bent toward the space between the two front seats our blond heads nearly colliding in the center with each lurch. Our eyes were pinned wide open with the g-forces and we leaned forward with the thrill that 35 miles per hour on a gravel road can give two grade schoolers.
Then we would hit the dip, our seats dropped out from under us, our heads rapped the seat in front. We would be suspended for just a second at the apex of our bounce and then we would be falling down while the seat came up impacting our bums with the force of a resounding spank. Our high voices would cheer. The sharp smell of the dust that had hovered above its resting spot, the lightly grooved plastic mats, was pulled into our noses as we inhaled sharply. Dad cheered too, I think, but it sounded kind of like, "it should make it to school and back." The struts were rusted so badly he feared they would give out and the sporty hatch-backed car would strand us on a lonely country lane while doing the permanent splits with its tires.
Normal places people don't have to worry about breaking their struts on the way to school, even if they are rusting. But Upper Michigan was hit hard by the slump of the 80's and it was rumored that our town had written the head of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to stock our potholes so all the non-vegetarians could all have fish to eat. We vegetarians were happy too, that meant more food for us since everyone else would be eating their Rainbow Trout, Sucker or Coho Salmon. Maybe, the hardy locals whispered, they would even stock a few Smelt for those prone to biting the head off of the little fish in the ecstasy of successful fishing.
This fish head biting was a local tradition. My 10 year old male classmates would puff out their scrawny plaid, flannel covered chests and recount their latest experience of this tradition hoping to make the small female population at our school scream. Most of the girls did scream, their stiffly sprayed bank of upright bangs quivering in their horror. The DNR never did honor the request and it seems that the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) - busily making life better under the bridge, never came to patch the holes. And so my dad continued to try to break the car in the driveway where we could get home easily.
I didn't like the car. In spite of the joy of the daily NASCAR like drive down to the looming pothole in the driveway it was beneath my 10 year old permed and hair sprayed dignity. Thinking back, it was the 80's, everything was ugly and there were very few new cars on the road but somehow I knew I rode in the ugliest car in the nation. This was my third school since I started five years ago and since it was populated with cousins and people of the North that had dug in for years, as a newcomer I did not feel welcome. Simply put, I was really not cool. Life was a tragedy and that was compounded by the green patch worked Datsun that got us to school.
As Dad drove, I would sink down in my back seat, well under the little triangle of glass that was my window. When we arrived to our orange and white vertically striped, tin sided school, Dad pulled the grayed green emergency break until it clicked out to its last setting and hopped out the "pop" the seat. I would scramble out careful not to catch my tightly pegged jeans on the car and hoped that no one, in the twenty kid classroom would see me out the plate glass windows.
Even then I had to admit it added brightness to my life. Eric and I with our heads down resting on our knees would amuse ourselves by pealing up the aforementioned rubbery black floor mats and peer at the pavement streaking by. The different colored rocks that made up the gray concrete would speed by making faint streaks of color under the car. We would whisper in conspiratorial tones about what we would do if we were kidnapped in the Datsun. At 10 and 7 we had it all planned out. We kept an arsenal of driveway gravel on the floor near our seats. IF someone were foolish enough to steal the Hornbacher children we would quickly pull up the mats to the secret holes in the floor and drop out the little rocks. A Hansel and Gretel trail of gravel. It was infallible.
But the best story happened when the Mother-in-law or Coco as we all called her, came up to visit.
To be continued...
Saturday, August 22, 2009
This Week
What happened this week?
It started last week. The night we arrived at our new apartment, after our 2000 mile drive from Colorado, I made the mistake of checking my email. It was 9pm and I should have gone to bed, but I did not.
There was an email stating that there had been an update to my FAFSA and I was not eligible for financial aid. What? I had accepted the loans already. I didn't sleep well and spent much time praying for peace and a little perspective. It would have been nice to run down to the financial aid office but I could not. The next day we had a UHaul rented and we had to move out of storage and into our new place. So we did.
Thanks to God, I began to get some perspective. Every stressful time in my life I have been able to learn something new. Sometimes it turned out like I wanted and sometimes not, such as the case with the MCAT. But I was always given new insight into myself, life and God by these situations. My life has been deepened and enriched by each moment spent out on the tippy-tip of the trembling limb where we have chosen to make our nest. Thus after some quiet time, thought and prayer I was thankful for yet another test of my ability to relax and let the things go I could not handle right then and still be motivated to take care of what had to be done. Thankful...in a day or so, that is unheard of for me. :) Maybe I'm learning/growing.
I discussed with Charles what I thought was happening. I was planning on applying to start the 14 month BSN (bachelors of nursing) this next summer but if my financial aid was running out I may not have the money to do that. It is good to have another head during these times because he suggested I look to see if I could apply for spring 2010. So I did. This year they had extended the deadline to Aug 17, 2009 and the day I found out was Aug 15, 2009. So I had a lot to do in two days if I were to apply. This is where three essays and getting all the schools (high school and colleges) to mail out my transcripts on Monday, August 17, because they had to be postmarked by then.
Sunday I filled out the lengthy application and finished 1.5 essays out of three. Monday I faxed and called all the schools (that were still open) and begged them to send out my transcripts that day or at least tell me if they could not and save me the $70 application fee. They all promised and that was over 3/4's of the day just to get everything taken care of as far as transcripts. Then to finish the application. It's a long boring process and I'll spare you the details. We'll just say after they closed the application early (mistake on their computer's part) and I had the run around at NCSU to get my transcripts to drive them to UNC I was able to submit the application less than 2 minutes before 11:59 August 17, 2009.
Thursday I was finally able to make it in to the financial aid office (9am sharp so there'd be no lines) and figure out what is going on with my financial aid. I have been expecting financial aid to run out. The government only allows students to borrow a set amount from them and I accrued a pile of debt by going to private college the first time around. I knew I would run out of financial aid in the next two years but this was a little early. (By the way graduate limits and undergraduate limits are two different things I am still doing undergraduate classes.) Come to find out it was a mistake on the lender/government's part. So things are back to normal. I will not run out of financial aid for a couple of years. WHEW!
But now I have an application in at the UNC School of Nursing so we'll see if I get in. If one person did not follow through on the transcripts I don't have a shot and I have no way of knowing until November. So we'll see.
Why nursing I thought you wanted to be Dr Heather? Nursing, well it could take me two years to get into medical school and I am running out of useful undergraduate courses to take. Nursing would give me experience in the daily life of medicine, give me a good income and provide a back up, Nurse Practitioner, if medical school should fall through. So if after two years of applying to Dr school I don't get in I will have worked two years as a nurse and since I have to work one or two years to be eligible for NP school it would allow me to slide right in.
I have it all buttoned up right? Not so fast. Read the sailing post before this one. Life is NEVER buttoned up. Plans are good but I am finding that life/God has its own ideas when it comes to plans. And so far I have found that it doesn't generally follow my plans and I am much happier when I am willing to let go and learn to sail with the winds.
It started last week. The night we arrived at our new apartment, after our 2000 mile drive from Colorado, I made the mistake of checking my email. It was 9pm and I should have gone to bed, but I did not.
There was an email stating that there had been an update to my FAFSA and I was not eligible for financial aid. What? I had accepted the loans already. I didn't sleep well and spent much time praying for peace and a little perspective. It would have been nice to run down to the financial aid office but I could not. The next day we had a UHaul rented and we had to move out of storage and into our new place. So we did.
Thanks to God, I began to get some perspective. Every stressful time in my life I have been able to learn something new. Sometimes it turned out like I wanted and sometimes not, such as the case with the MCAT. But I was always given new insight into myself, life and God by these situations. My life has been deepened and enriched by each moment spent out on the tippy-tip of the trembling limb where we have chosen to make our nest. Thus after some quiet time, thought and prayer I was thankful for yet another test of my ability to relax and let the things go I could not handle right then and still be motivated to take care of what had to be done. Thankful...in a day or so, that is unheard of for me. :) Maybe I'm learning/growing.
I discussed with Charles what I thought was happening. I was planning on applying to start the 14 month BSN (bachelors of nursing) this next summer but if my financial aid was running out I may not have the money to do that. It is good to have another head during these times because he suggested I look to see if I could apply for spring 2010. So I did. This year they had extended the deadline to Aug 17, 2009 and the day I found out was Aug 15, 2009. So I had a lot to do in two days if I were to apply. This is where three essays and getting all the schools (high school and colleges) to mail out my transcripts on Monday, August 17, because they had to be postmarked by then.
Sunday I filled out the lengthy application and finished 1.5 essays out of three. Monday I faxed and called all the schools (that were still open) and begged them to send out my transcripts that day or at least tell me if they could not and save me the $70 application fee. They all promised and that was over 3/4's of the day just to get everything taken care of as far as transcripts. Then to finish the application. It's a long boring process and I'll spare you the details. We'll just say after they closed the application early (mistake on their computer's part) and I had the run around at NCSU to get my transcripts to drive them to UNC I was able to submit the application less than 2 minutes before 11:59 August 17, 2009.
Thursday I was finally able to make it in to the financial aid office (9am sharp so there'd be no lines) and figure out what is going on with my financial aid. I have been expecting financial aid to run out. The government only allows students to borrow a set amount from them and I accrued a pile of debt by going to private college the first time around. I knew I would run out of financial aid in the next two years but this was a little early. (By the way graduate limits and undergraduate limits are two different things I am still doing undergraduate classes.) Come to find out it was a mistake on the lender/government's part. So things are back to normal. I will not run out of financial aid for a couple of years. WHEW!
But now I have an application in at the UNC School of Nursing so we'll see if I get in. If one person did not follow through on the transcripts I don't have a shot and I have no way of knowing until November. So we'll see.
Why nursing I thought you wanted to be Dr Heather? Nursing, well it could take me two years to get into medical school and I am running out of useful undergraduate courses to take. Nursing would give me experience in the daily life of medicine, give me a good income and provide a back up, Nurse Practitioner, if medical school should fall through. So if after two years of applying to Dr school I don't get in I will have worked two years as a nurse and since I have to work one or two years to be eligible for NP school it would allow me to slide right in.
I have it all buttoned up right? Not so fast. Read the sailing post before this one. Life is NEVER buttoned up. Plans are good but I am finding that life/God has its own ideas when it comes to plans. And so far I have found that it doesn't generally follow my plans and I am much happier when I am willing to let go and learn to sail with the winds.
Changing Like the Wind
Muscles bulged, white knuckled fingers wrapped around the halyard and eyes squinted to see the top of the sail. Did the mainsail catch on the hook? Are we ready to go? The jib, pregnant with wind, pulled at us, our feet were braced in the water that tickled our knees. There was the hollow clang of the ring settling on the hook and we all began to look at the job in front of us. Batten down the snacks, jackets and shoes, sail and tuck the mainsheet in its cleats then bruise shins and stub toes while scrambling topside because sailboat 888 is not staying by the dock for very long.
Our eyes turn to the open lake, wind creating a map of it's directions and speeds around the lake. Out to the starboard side a it is like a crazed weaver created a cloth with random texture, some of the water nubby with wind and other parts smooth and soft like velvet where the breeze has lifted her skirts and floated past on lace pantaloons without touching down.
We were in a nubby section and the boat is sliding backwards toward immanent collision with the dock at a frightful speed. The mainsheet yanked forcefully from the stainless steel of cleats allows the mainsail to slide across the hull, we ducked our heads one right after another in a silly looking dance to miss the mainboom's skull crunching reach as it swings overhead. Turbo lifts his black fuzzy ears as it comes toward him and drops to the trampoline deck with an omph. Once it is settled in its new location it causes us to bear away, out of the wind's strength, and gives us more time to get all the tack arranged and ready for the warm breezes that are pushing across the lake.
After an appropriately democratic discussion on where best to tie down the mainsail we begin come about and the boat begins to heel. The three designated scramblers, Charles, Dad and I, scratch and tumble under the mainboom and onto the hull that is hovering above the water by several inches. We do not want to capsize, what a mess that would be, we don't even know how to sail let alone right an upside down boat. Thus we are off across the lake heading toward our current destination, the other side of the lake.
My hair pulls out of it's ever present black hair tie and finds a way to tickle my nose and slide into my mouth. My heel touches the water and it releases diamonds from its murky depths that land on my leg and slowly make their way back to the whole. Eric, at the helm, has the smile of the toothpaste model, his hand holds the tiller firmly. Dad and Charles lean out over the hovering hull, holding spider web guy wires, their eyes shut to the wind. Dad is dipping his backside toward the water to see how close he can get before it drags. Turbo the breeze pets him, ruffling his hair on his head, then his back and then lifting his tail for one last tweak, lays with his chin between his feet. His frosted eyebrows move up and down as he looks around at the liquid and shoreline birds sliding past. It is silent among us.
In front of us a velvety spot appears, much to large to avoid and immediately the wind stops. The heeling hull comes down to the water and Dad's posterior comes down into the water and he yelps. He and Charles laugh while splashing around to get out of the water and back topside. We're learning. So there we sit. Wind happening all around us, other sailboats speeding on toward the other side. We look over the edge and our faces stare back at us a perfect mirror in the middle of a lake wracked with wavelets. We pull out the paddles and begin to paddle toward the nearest nubby spot in the lake but we don't make fast time. Sometimes it works and sometimes we wait it out until the wind blows up on us again. It will, it always has, it may take awhile but it will come running by, pick up our languid sails and we will fly again. We may have to adjust our course, or our goal but we will sail again.
Our eyes turn to the open lake, wind creating a map of it's directions and speeds around the lake. Out to the starboard side a it is like a crazed weaver created a cloth with random texture, some of the water nubby with wind and other parts smooth and soft like velvet where the breeze has lifted her skirts and floated past on lace pantaloons without touching down.
We were in a nubby section and the boat is sliding backwards toward immanent collision with the dock at a frightful speed. The mainsheet yanked forcefully from the stainless steel of cleats allows the mainsail to slide across the hull, we ducked our heads one right after another in a silly looking dance to miss the mainboom's skull crunching reach as it swings overhead. Turbo lifts his black fuzzy ears as it comes toward him and drops to the trampoline deck with an omph. Once it is settled in its new location it causes us to bear away, out of the wind's strength, and gives us more time to get all the tack arranged and ready for the warm breezes that are pushing across the lake.
After an appropriately democratic discussion on where best to tie down the mainsail we begin come about and the boat begins to heel. The three designated scramblers, Charles, Dad and I, scratch and tumble under the mainboom and onto the hull that is hovering above the water by several inches. We do not want to capsize, what a mess that would be, we don't even know how to sail let alone right an upside down boat. Thus we are off across the lake heading toward our current destination, the other side of the lake.
My hair pulls out of it's ever present black hair tie and finds a way to tickle my nose and slide into my mouth. My heel touches the water and it releases diamonds from its murky depths that land on my leg and slowly make their way back to the whole. Eric, at the helm, has the smile of the toothpaste model, his hand holds the tiller firmly. Dad and Charles lean out over the hovering hull, holding spider web guy wires, their eyes shut to the wind. Dad is dipping his backside toward the water to see how close he can get before it drags. Turbo the breeze pets him, ruffling his hair on his head, then his back and then lifting his tail for one last tweak, lays with his chin between his feet. His frosted eyebrows move up and down as he looks around at the liquid and shoreline birds sliding past. It is silent among us.
In front of us a velvety spot appears, much to large to avoid and immediately the wind stops. The heeling hull comes down to the water and Dad's posterior comes down into the water and he yelps. He and Charles laugh while splashing around to get out of the water and back topside. We're learning. So there we sit. Wind happening all around us, other sailboats speeding on toward the other side. We look over the edge and our faces stare back at us a perfect mirror in the middle of a lake wracked with wavelets. We pull out the paddles and begin to paddle toward the nearest nubby spot in the lake but we don't make fast time. Sometimes it works and sometimes we wait it out until the wind blows up on us again. It will, it always has, it may take awhile but it will come running by, pick up our languid sails and we will fly again. We may have to adjust our course, or our goal but we will sail again.
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