When Did You Enter Me?

Look at you up in the sky
Shining, pulling oceans
Back and forth,
The flow of blood
Through my heart,
Thoughts in my head.

When was it you
Entered my genes,
Became part of me,
Wrapped around my soul,
Filled my veins with liquid
Moonlight?

When did my
Comings and goings,
Ebb and flow
Fall under your gravity?
When did I discover
I saw better by
Moonlight?

Look at you up in the sky
Shining, so bright
Mars hides
In your light,
Blushes at your beauty,
Paralyzed.

Judy

Judy is now
In her forties she works a bit
In a shop full of silk from Bali
Bags from a Women’s collective in Southern Mexico,
Incense
Gum carefully liberated from trees
Who, I’m sure, happily gave it up
Knowing just how trendy it would be.

I saw her again after so many years
Said hello, was greeted in a way
That left me feeling emptied,
But I didn’t say anything about that,
I just asked her how she was.

Her voice now cracks, gurgles, croaks
The effect on her of too many cigarettes
But that’s ok, says Judy.

The more we smoke the fewer people
She explains, smoking is a way to eradicate
The plague she calls human beings.
One fewer person, she explains
Is good for the Earth,
Even if that person is her.

And I don’t mention the greater drain
The ill are to the world
Or the damage tobacco crops do
To the land, the waters, and, ultimately
To Judy.

We use to sit, she and I,
Naked in the water,
A lake or a pond,
Sometimes a puddle would do,
Staring up at the reflected blue
Or at a moon whose bright opal
Set our bodies glowing in effusive glory
Against the background of the darker sky.

Long hours we sat,
Planning our next action
In defense of that which could not defend itself.
What would not get built on our watch,
Who sits in the tree this week,
Where the fence was weakest,
How to fight is won
By the compassionate warrior
Fierce and joyous.

We would look at the moon and she would howl
As I stood mute, in thought.
Now, the howl sits bound in her throat,
Unable to escape
Through the dark-matter mass grown of
Her loathing for herself,
The hatred for her species.

Pits

I was there when the first pits were dug,
after the trees were cleared; torn, dragged and burned.
My family and I searched for concretions in limey sand
that had not seen the sun
in a span of time that can be measured, but not understood.
Set as coral in the ocean,
became limestone,
became oolite,
Miami Beach,
became my home.

I use to roam and dig under what is now
Aventura Mall
in what was an elegant, high-rise my girl comes three days a week part of Miami,
then Aventura,
now The City of Aventura
which lies engorged between the end of
a double-decked Atlantic Ocean causeway,
named after a State Representative
who owned a Chevrolet dealership,
and a bypass so long, so high
I can no longer see the vast expanse of shrinking ocean.
Only solid walls of perpendicular road
and the mall.

After the palms were greased
and the foundation razed,
one of the first stores to open
was a New Age Giant,
moved from across town,
far from its humble beginnings
as a place to launder cocaine
money through the sale
of health enhancements only slightly less dubious
like vitamin k, brain hemispheric synchronizers,
Angle Cards, singing bowls composed
of cave grown,
high-pressure hose harvested
crystal,
designed to draw the harmony of nature and increase inner-peace and compassionate abide, and
classes teaching the myriad ways to simply life.

It opened after the protests
and the building and the pickets
and the building and the threats
and suits and the building
to sell books about the preciousness of the environment
and bumper stickers exhorting patrons to “Thank Goddess”
customers took home in pastel pink paper bags
printed on each side with delicate seashells.

And they were swamped
along with the Sears and Burdines
and Macy’s where the Cellar had to be on the top floor
because two feet underground,
just below where I use to dig,
was water.

The mall became a focus
for the area
as it drained and dried the commerce and custom from the west
as events were held to
draw crowds like the
“Parade of Whores”
The Cardiologists’ Wives Look-a-like Contest,
The Peach Polo Shirt and Beige Shorts Fashion Show and,
just down the road,
a bit past the beach you don’t dare tread barefoot,
the weekly
“Race to the Floating Bale.”

And so the mall grew,
so much so, soon
it was suggested the East Coast,
should be extended
to allow for its expansion
and, last time I was there,
I swear I saw it breathing.

Summer Solstice Eve

I have been standing in the Indian River for an hour now. Maybe longer. Maybe less. But, as I have stood here, the sun has disappeared behind me and darkness risen before me. This impossibly hot, long day has slipped into hot night.

A wood stork, never more than six feet from me, has been my companion since first I entered the water. We have both been listening. Just listening. Waves come gently in and out. Manatees nudge me in the knee-deep water. Fish jump, splash me. The bird and my self, silent and still.

There is no moon in the sky, only stars, numerous and bright. No light reflects in the lapping waves. They are felt, heard but invisible. The river, unseen. The water, silky, thick, warm. The air, dense, warmer, still.

After some time, I am moved to move, to travel to the sea and so I leave the river and make my way the half mile over it to the ocean, to the Atlantic.

Coconut Point. Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge. My car is the only one there. I leave my shirt in the car. Sandals in the car. Wallet and keys and phone in the car. The boardwalk through the mangrove, over the dunes, is long, winding, impossible to see in the new moon and I feel my way along. The waves resonate thunder through the boards, reflect off the waxy leaves. The thunder is everywhere. The waves are everything. Everything drums and crashes, washes in and out.

The boardwalk turns and declines and becomes sand. The waves quiet on the wide beach. I walk. I feel no other human footprints on the dark sand but, from time to time tracks, shaped like those which might be left by a small earthmover, a backhoe. Follow them to the waves and they disappear. Follow them to the dunes, a sea turtle may be found digging her nest, laying her eggs. Some tracks lead from the water, to the dunes and back – a turtle having entered the air and exited again, leaving her eggs behind.

Still, there are no signs of people. No light, no print, no sound. I remove my shorts and walk. Walk. The world is naked to me and I to it, with no thing between me and nature that is not of nature's making. Feeling the air about me, over me, covered in night and salt and dark and warmth, I am engulfed by the moist air and the sound of waves, each inch of me.

More sea turtle tracks. More and more. Some come halfway to the dunes, circle and return to the sea. Once a turtle is laying her eggs, she will not cease. Nothing will end it until she is done. Before she has begun, she may be followed behind, but cross in front and she will turn around to try another night, undisturbed.

Here and there I see a darker spot on the dark sand. They are patches of plant or stone, driftwood or the shadow of a depression in the beach. One walks carefully in the new moon. Slowly, they move. Turtles, the size of wheelbarrows, walk to the ocean, and I, from a distance, watch. Turtles, the size of kitchen tables, moving beachward against the oscillating surf. Do I see it? Do I see it? Yes, moving, moving, leaving the water for the land. I keep my distance, wait, watch, cross far behind.

I walk. Walk. There are small luminous, glowing spots in the sand. Shells, insects, glow worms, radium. I don’t know. I don’t want to know, I don’t want a description, I don’t want a name, I don’t want them named. I want only for them to shine blue and green and be the only lights on the beach. They are a mystery and I want them to stay that way. I leave them, undisturbed, like the turtles. Like the dunes, like the beach. When I have left, it will be as though I were never here. Already it is so.

Night Garden

It was around eleven pm and I started feeling hungry. I’m not sure if this is my stomach or my brain. I had a cup of black rice with about a cup of cooked vegetables for dinner around seven. Yet, since ten, I wanted more.

I opted for a bowl of organic Cheerios-esque cereal with almond milk. Not long after - not even after, halfway through the bowl, actually – I regretted every spoonful. So I continued, more and more loathing building with each mouthful until I finished the bowl, now empty of cereal but brimming with contempt.

Having eaten, it being about a quarter after eleven, I have to take a walk. While I know this does not undo what has been done, there is a part of my brain that tells me that is precisely what it does. A part of my brain exists that says this one action, talking a walk, will undo the cereal. A crazy part, no doubt. This is not something of which I am unaware. But had this part spoken up before the cereal, I’d be in bed now.

So I put on my socks and sneakers, collar and leash the suddenly ecstatic dog and out we go.

Today it stormed. This evening it stormed. I could hear the frogs and various un-named creatures through the windows. So, while I would normally take my MP3 player with me, this time I leave it at home. While normally I’d listen to lectures on physics, or religion, or recorded books, tonight I will listen to the sounds of the natural world, all wet and happy, awake and loud.

We leave through the back door, quietly, as my wife is sleeping, grabbing the bamboo short staff. There have been, as of late, stray, large, unfriendly dogs following us on our walks. Dogs in pairs and triplets, one at the heels, one on each side, each pushing me into the other. Growling and showing teeth. I tell them to leave and they do, then return a minute or so following closely, more closely, at my heels and side once again. I tell them there will be one fewer if I find a stick. When I do, they leave me before I can pick it up. Since I have carried this thirty inch long, one inch thick bamboo, they have not approached.

Through the yard and out the gate to the sidewalk. I attach the free end of the leash to my belt loop and my dingo trots along my left side, leash loose, looped, swaying as we walk.

I don’t see her, of course, walking next to me. One side is the blind side and the other side is the one with very little peripheral vision, so I need to trust her. And I do. I know what she is up to. I can tell where she is by the pull on the leash. When she gets a sandbur, and we have some versions of cenchrus here that appear to have been developed as devises of torture by the SuperDevil, I can tell immediately by the change in her gate, the different rhythm in the paws on pavement, the change in the sway of the leash.

A short walk. Two and a tenth miles. I walk this in the morning in thirty-five minutes which is a shade under four miles per hour and quite good for a fellow with my leg-length. Far too fast for an extended conversation which makes the dog a perfect partner. Tonight, though, we’d take our time and walk for the air and the sound.

The rains have left the night cool. Wet. It feels like home. Not a specific home, not a specific place, but home, a home faintly, distantly recognized, comfortable, familiar, inviting and kind. The wind is easy and the frogs are singing. Insects are buzzing. As we walk, Dusty’s nails clack on the sidewalk, insects tick in the taller grasses. There are croaks and calls and buzzes.

I place the staff, lengthwise, on my right shoulder, a foot and a half or so behind me, a foot and a half or so before me. It balances easily, seesawing from time to time, swaying in and out now and then, like a compass needle. This will keep my posture in mind as we walk.

I wonder what sings in the grass. Not names, not labels, just what is. So many creatures and so few found. So few named. Many people think we know all of life on the Earth, but here, right next to me, could be life unknown. There very likely is.

Very few have any interest in this. You could gather all the taxonomists in the world into one small hotel. Experts on fungus? The world’s mycologists could meet at a Day’s Inn conference room.

In The Diversity of Life, Edward O. Wilson describes the work of one botanist who spent a few days in Borneo and discovered over one thousand new flowering plant species. More discovered in half a week than the total of what is known in North America since we have been keeping records. A pair of Norwegian scientists, as a lark, picked up two samples, only one gram each, of soil from a beech forest near their lab. Carefully analyzed, they found between four and five thousand separate bacterial species in each sample. More than is recorded in the best known record of things microbial, Bergy’s Manual of Bacteriology. Over nine thousand species in two pinches of soil taken from no place special. In Kenya, four new species of millipedes and a new tree, a big tree, is found.

Such is the myth of naming. Such is the idea that we explore, thirst to discover, to mark, to label, divide, organize. We don’t care, most of us.

I don’t care for names. But I listen as we walk, wonder what might be singing I have never heard singing before. Maybe something is thrumming with life, just beneath my feet, no one has ever seen. Maybe.

Bamboo leaves rustle. Jasmine glows under the three-quarter moon. Angel trumpets hang, moonflowers open as we pass. A rabbit is sitting by an in-ground pool behind a house no one has lived in for over a year. Owls call. Bats dart. Dusty, from time to time, walks out slightly ahead, looks this way and that. When I follow her gaze, I see cats.
Lives in the trees as we approach silence as we walk under them and resume as we pass.

I bend forward and the staff slips off my shoulder and down into my right hand. I twirl it forward, back, round and round, behind me, under my arm. I flip it over my hand and into my left to do the same. My dog never notices. I place it on the left shoulder, grab the front with my left hand and the back of the staff with my right, pulling down, bringing my shoulder lower, digging into the muscle, ironing it with the broad bamboo. Over the back and onto the right shoulder for the same. A large toad crosses the sidewalk in front of me.

I leave the staff to balance once again. Blue lights of TVs brighten and fade, one person argues with another, cicadas call, moaning gains intensity, breathing quickens rhythmically, gains volume, slackens, softens, intensifies again, a dog barks, a baby cries, there is buzzing in the grass, someone says they are not coming back. A car starts.

Benjamin Franklin Broke my Alarm Dog

Tomorrow morning at 6:03, the invisible hand of Benjamin Franklin will reach to my bedside and wake me from a sound sleep.

I am in my office, the floor littered with books. I call it research. Next to me, flowing over the recliner is a wild dog.

I had no idea she was a wild dog when, a year and a half ago, we strolled the aisles at the pound. All we knew was, of all the cages and all the pens, of all the dogs, this small fawn-coloured pup, at eight months old, bread unidentified, was the only creature that was silent. She watched us as we walked up and back, as we inspected the dogs for the one that pulled at our hearts. We passed her by. She was too old.

But my son kept returning to her, staring at her through the kennel chain link. At that time it had not occurred to me she was the only silent pup there, the only dog not making an unholy racket. We had walked once through, looking at Corgies, Beagles, far too many Pits, Catahoula after Catahoula after Catahoula, and there was this one dog I could not identify and, still, second time through, silent, to which my son lingered closer and closer. Of course she was still eight months old so we walked again, fully planning, at least I was, on coming back to the pound once a week or so until the right dog arrived.

It was my birthday week. Forty-three. We were finally settled in our new old home, in a new practice, retired from an old job and marketing my new book. I wanted a dog.

It is never a good idea to get a dog. Never the perfect time. Just like a child, that perfect time does not exist, never comes. But the opportunity did, the timing was, my son and I were and my wife was not. So all the stars aligned in as perfect as it gets and we went to the pound.

And he kept going back to the fawn-coloured eight-month-old unidentified pup.

We grabbed a leash and opened the door. She sat there. We put the leash around her neck and she sat looking up at us. Silent. It seemed she wanted to be carried. She, already a bit too big for that, I, bending at the knees because I do love the sound of creaking so, we walked out to the yard - a father carrying his too-large child. Once there, once down, she walked by my side. When I ran she trotted right with me until I found myself on my back, staring at the sky, my leash-arm behind me, head slightly ringing. Fawn-coloured eight-month-old unidentified walked over and stared into my face. Apparently, she had decided to stop and have a liedown. At the door in from the yard, she stopped to be carried again and looked with disdain at the other dogs. Never a sound.

“What kind is the mute one?”

“We don’t know.” This was the Pound-mistress talking.

“The paper on the kennel says lab question mark. She’s not a lab.”

“Nope. But we have to write down something and we have no idea.”

“The paper also says she is untrainable, incorrigible, does not know her name and is an escape artist. Can you tell me anything good about the dog?”

Poundmistress explained to us they must, by law, write what the owners say when the dog is dropped off. But, and she moved close to my left ear, this family kept the dog out all day and let her in only late at night, never trained her, never called her by name. It was her opinion she was a good dog with no training that got stuck with a bum family.

We left, knowing what was going to happen. We should have pulled her papers and plunked the cash but I wanted my wife to see her.

And we looked back at her as we walked from her line of sight.

I planned on softselling the dog, working my wife up to a trip toward Eau Gallie and the pound with promise of old pottery and fresh fish. Instead, my son got to her first, with the pound open but one more hour after she got home from the practice. He told her we were going to the pound because it was only fair, daddy says, for her to see the dog we’re getting. This resulted in the need of much more in the way of promises.

Fine. In the car. Grab a Philly steak sub knockoff. On the way we talked about the description on the kennel door and what Poundmistress said about fawn-coloured eight-month-old unidentified.

Get to the pound, walk in the second time that day, into the building and quickly past the cats at which my wife sneezes and itches, out to the dogs and to fawn-coloured eight-month-old unidentified.

The noise was awful. The barking, whining, howling. All but her. All but fawn-coloured eight-month-old unidentified. She sat at the kennel-front and looked at my wife.

“She is eight months old,” says Lee.

“Yup.”

“At least she’s a mutt.” My wife insists on mutts.

“No idea what she’s made of. Just random dog.”

We opened the gate and repeated the carry-out to the yard. She behaved perfectly, silently. When Lee noticed fawn-coloured eight-month-old unidentified never made a sound, that was all it took. Sixty dollars on the counter, come back in two days, a sad look back from my son and an even sadder look at him from fawn-coloured eight-month-old unidentified.

The sign on the door said her name was Dusty. A common, non-descript name. Alek called “Dusty” and fawn-coloured eight-month-old unidentified perked her ears straight, sat at attention with the widest eyes I had yet seen on a dog.

Two days later we picked her up, groggy from the morning’s spaying, and she was cuddled home.

Within a week she was housetrained. With the help of Robert at Petsmart, we got training to train us to train her. Within a few weeks she walked with us, ran with us, leash or none. She sat, stayed, came and laid down. And in this time, she still did not bark.

I remember the day she did start making noises. It was late afternoon. Someone in the house was laughing. It did not sound familiar. I peeked into Lee’s office and nothing on Stargate seemed the least funny. No surprise there. I asked Alek but he said he’d heard it too and was looking for the source. He, too, thought it was his mother laughing. Dusty followed us.

Giving up, we each went back to what we were doing, Dusty in Alek’s room this time and I again heard it. Alek, running from his room, looked up at me and said, “That was her,” pointing to our dog, “and that is the strangest sound I have ever heard.”

When she is satisfied after a meal, and she eats sparingly, never gorging, she’ll spread flat on the floor and a low, guttural sound, not a growl in any way but from someplace deeper, more bass-rumbly, will resonate the room. When she wants something, she will open her mouth and high-pitched whistle talk to us. If she could manage to make it any louder I am sure the few remaining bits of household crystal I have not already broken myself would shatter. If we forget to feed her, she will stand by her bowl and whistle. If there is low water, she will nose it and whistle. When we come home with bags, she will not jump us but will instead back off, sit at the couch and, when the bags are down, lay back over the couch arm, belly up, and whistle for us to pet her.

Once, on a morning walk, Dusty and I passed a student of mine. I had been out of teaching for some months then and my neighbourhood is full or ex and barely-ex students.

“Mr. Tritt. “ I can’t get them to stop calling me that. “Is that your dog?”

“Sure is.”

“You have a Dingo?”

“I do?”

Apparently she had been studying Australia and was more than a little surprised to see a dingo walking with last-year’s English teacher. More and more people asked us the same thing. A bit of research, a check with people who should know and, sure enough, we have ourselves a wild dog. Once upon a time I wanted a wolf. I’ll take my dingo dog any day.

Far from being a baby-eater, she is the most gentle of creatures. She will instinctively sit with the infirmed, laying her head on a lap, patiently allows little ones to pet or pull or poke. She seems to have no preference for any particular member of the household and will become mopey if any one of us is away for too long. If one of us is not feeling well, she is nearly impossible to move from the sick one’s feet. When Lee had a week-long flu, Dusty was in the bedroom doorway all day and slept next to her, half under her, under the bed, all night.

She will walk through a crowd with ease and not give other dogs the time of day no matter how much they bark. She has barked on occasion but rare enough that, when she does, we listen, we get up, we see what’s there.

Dusty the Dingo Doggy went from being a good dog to great dog to wonderful companion we look forward to coming home to, one that can stay in the house by herself, will walk out the back yard when the gate is left open only to sit on the front porch and wait for us to remember we had forgotten to let her in. She plays ball with herself, tossing it into the air and catching it again on the way down.

And there is one more thing she does - Dusty wakes us each morning. As the sun rises, as it starts to colour our south windows, she walks into our room, whistles, puts her front paws on the bed and jostles Lee’s hand with her nose.

Neither of us has ever been a fan of alarm clocks. This is perfect for us. Up with the sun, more day in each day, awake in plenty of time to eat, shower, dress, do what needs to be done and get what needs to be got. No jingles, jangles, bells or chimes. A whistle and a paw.

Each day, slipping slightly more than thirty seconds later toward the Summer Solstice and back as the Winter Solstice approaches.

And then came Benjamin Franklin and he screwed it up.

We are big fans of Franklin. My wife from Philly and I from his quotes, quips and scientific queries. There is more to Franklin than most know. Sure, he was a notorious womanizer but, as seen for the times and locations he lived, that seems to detract little from establishing libraries, the Postal Service and newspapers as cultural standards. It does not detract from the creation of bifocals, which I steadfastly refuse every time I get my eye checked (The ophthalmologist checks them both but I’m not sure why he bothers. I think just look to see the other one is still there.), the flexible catheter (which I also have no experience with) the lightning rod, the Franklin stove, odometer and more and more. He invented the Glass Harmonica, an instrument of ethereal aural beauty (which, in the early days gave off lead dust but I accept we all suffer for our art).

As people who would be happy if our televisions got only Discovery, History and the Science Channels, that means quite a bit. “Well done is better than well said.” Ben, I agree.

But one thing he did that is fully, forever unforgivable was the creation of daylight savings time.

To be fair to Franklin, he did not really invent it. He suggested though, while living in Paris, Parisians should be woken each morning by bells and cannonfire so the stay-ups would tire earlier in the evening and conserve candles. He published this suggestion anonymously.

But the idea was taken up again, later, by William Willett who started pushing the idea in London in 1905. While good for local business that feed from late-shoppers, the original idea of saving candlewax is no longer quite as valid as once was. Electrical savings are found to be nonexistent with usage simply shifted to the dark morning hours in summer and dark night hours in winter in an economy that does not work simply dawn to dusk. And international commerce certainly suffers though not as much as agrarian economies still tied to daylight.

In the past, clocks were simply adjusted through the year to divide the day into twenty-four equal parts. The hours got a little longer or a little shorter and things ran quite fine that way.

We think with all our technology we can’t run that way now, but with some areas on DST and others not, we still become fully fowled up. Even in areas that do use DST, there are pockets that do not and time zones that opt out which, this month, are an hour behind and next month are not. Some US counties even opt out.

I say make six am the time when the sun comes up. We can certainly make clocks that can handle that. If the day is a bit longer, we have a few extra inter-hour minutes between five and six am. If shorter, fewer, but six comes when does the sun.

That way my dog would not be broken.

She was waking us at 7:16, then 7:15, 7:15, 7:14 and, the next day, gently, whistly, at 6:13. Daylight savings time had ended. This morning, as the sun peaked in through the windows, it was 6:04. Next week it will be before 6:00. Come DST again our dog alarm will move ahead one hour and, try as we might, we can find no dial or button to adjust her.

I Love Creosote

I love creosote. Not just the smell, which many people, if not most, find hard enough to believe, but the feel of it as well: the tacky frictional darkness under the fingertips. I love the smell of it as I roam the lumberyard, search out the scent, get closer and closer to a board with just enough of it to get my hands on, my nose close to sticky yellow.

The feel of creosote is harder and harder to find. The smell, though, is not so difficult to come by. On the occasions my wife will drag me to a big-box home improvement store, for it is she who likes the gadgets and tools, not me, I will wander to and stall in the lumber area casting for whiffs of it. If there is an exterior lumberyard, all the better because the outside temperatures tend to drive the creosote to the surface and, if not the creosote entirely, the scent, certainly.

This has been my habit as long as I know. I remember if from Sunday station wagon lumber drives with my father as he would choose boards, plywood, two by fours for whatever project was next on his list. Back then there was more creosote to smell as it was used much more than today, much less discriminately. It was everywhere, oozing from the wood, down the stacks, to the ground. The lumberyards stank of it if I could to, it was heavenly.

One might think these memories are why I love then scent so. Association of a smell with a pleasant memory. True, smell is our deepest, most primal sense, nestled far within the limbic system, the part of the brain we share with lizards. Scent will bring an emotional response more easily and to memories more distant, more faint, than any other sense and it can do so even if the memory itself is lost. The emotional content is still there and scent will bring it back.

But it cannot be so with creosote. These forays to the lumberyards would be followed by build-time where I would be conscripted to help measure, which I never did well, cut, where the sound of the saw would have me doing as I do today – picturing myself falling on a whirring blade, losing bits of my body. Later, as he worked through the night, I, tired, would never hold the light quite right, shine it in the right place. The hammer and power tools would have me holding my ears. Home projects often ended in violence. None of this comes back as pleasant. I never looked forward to trips to the lumberyard. Except, of course, for the creosote.

My brain likes the smell. I like it. Love it. Always did. And that attraction to the scent must, somehow, be separate from those experiences.

When I lived in Gainesville we had an apartment near a wood treatment plant. Koppers would take lumber and pressure treat for exterior use, in playgrounds, in buildings, for gardens. In Gainesville they made utility poles and marine pilings. This involved copper and arsenic. This involved creosote.

Never mind the ninety-four acres of Cabot/Koppers is one of the top superfund sites in the United States. Never mind one could grow a garden in the area but was strongly suggested to not eat the produce one grew there. I could smell the creosote so it was all fine.

Still, today, if there is a roof being tarred, I will linger. If there is a road being resurfaced, I will open the windows of the car or raise the visor of my helmet and breath deeply. Still.

I also like camphor.

Like Water

My friend and publisher Craig Smith asked of me a task.

This is not a strange task, given I am studying massage and working in the medical field. It was not an unreasonable request, given the same. That it came over a Fuller's ESB (Extra Special Bitter) at a local pub was a bit out of the ordinary but if I discounted that which came at uncommon moments and from non-ordinary directions, my life would be rather empty.

He asked me to work on his mom.

Without going into detail, his mom is old. Yes, that is rather a meaningless word. Old means something different at ten than it does at twenty. Vastly different at thirty than it does at fifty. I am forty-three and I consider her old. This is fully because she acts old. I have, in fact, no idea how many years she has been walking the Earth. I do know, however many years that is, discounting her infancy and the last few years, that number of would be minus a bit over three. She rarely ventures from bed and, then, with great difficulty.

He wants me to do massage for her. Her lower back is stiff and painful straight across. She has little flexibility and movement. Far too much time immobile has left her atrophied and less likely to become mobile each day.

She can’t get onto a massage table. A massage chair would be a difficulty. I suggested I was not the person for the job. Perhaps someone experienced in geriatric massage?

A few days later I asked a therapist who teaches at a local massage school. Ron is familiar with my work: I have given him massages in the past and we have had discussion on method, practice and philosophy.

I asked him about working on Craig’s mom. I suggested a few salient suggestions regarding technique or set-up. He did not disappoint me.

He suggested bringing in a straight-back chair and having her sit on that, the wrong way, with a pillow in front of her. Good idea. That would allow me to get to what I needed and still leave her feeling secure. It would be more familiar than a massage chair and easier to get into.

I went on to say I said I didn't think I was the right person for the job.

I was quite surprised at the answer. He countered me with what, to me, is a compliment.

"You are exactly the person for the job. You are gentle and the energy flows through you. You are perfect for it. You’re probably just what she needs."

Really? Gentle?

My touch is rather deep, but broad. It is slow and, I suppose, I can see that, though not light, being sensed as gentle.

But energy?

I said I never felt the energy flow and then, it occurred to me, what an idiotic thing that was to say. One only feels what one resists. A wire only notices the energy when there is resistance. A hose only notices the water when there is a block.

After all, if you notice your eye seeing, there is a problem. If you notice your breathing all the time, feel the air in and out, there is a problem. If you can feel your heart stomping in your chest, see a doctor. When things work right, they are invisible. When the country is run well, the emperor is never seen. So the Tao teaches us. So nature shows us. That which works as it should is not noticed, has no resistance. That which resists is worn.

I think that is why I never trusted the energy workers who shook and quaked and moaned when working. And I never figured the more hot the hands of a worker the better the work. In a way, that heat is a sign of resistance just like a cord with too much power for the gauge. It’s a sign of resistance.

So, I resisted the compliment, of course. But I was countered again, later, by another. Jennifer, my friend of marvelous intuitive power, trusted fully, implicitly and wholly, tells me the truth without hesitation or reservation. When she speaks, I believe. Jennifer agreed instantly. Agreed as though I should have known this all along.

So, I guess I'm the guy.

And why am I always the last to know? I guess I just never notice.

Kayak Book

The date is May 17th, a Thursday, and it is my planning period and lunch. I have no need to plan anything and it is quite too soon for lunch. In a middle school, lunch can range anytime from ten-thirty to twelve-thirty. It is a quarter to eleven and that is far too early.

I also have only a week left of school; hence, the lack of need to plan. Other teachers are planning already for next year, looking at recruitment, collecting materials, packing up what they have to be stored for the next year. They’ve been doing this for weeks.

Me, I had opened up my desk drawers and filing cabinets for the students to take what they liked, yanked wide my closet doors for students to take what they chose. My books, academic, scholastic and otherwise: given away. Papers: given away. Posters: given away. Rulers, staplers, pens, hole punches, clips: all given away. My plan book with my year’s lessons and projects, nearly everything, all gone to students. The little that remained: left for the teachers to scrounge. I had to scrounge at the beginning for the year. The day before the start of school my room was ransacked for furniture, supplies and books. I had to enlist students to help me find tables and desks from the trash. So the students can have what they like and the teachers can do what they will, what they do best: thieve. I have no need of any of it. As of next week, I am no longer teaching. I am done. I have had enough.

All but my writing program. That, I kept neatly organized in a binder. My principal asked to have it. I laughed, quietly, subtly but visibly enough he asked what seemed amusing. After all, I was let go for being more a writer than a test trainer, more a teacher than a techie. “You’re a genius,” he said, “but you’re not duplicatable. Neither is what you do. We can’t afford that.” I suggested he could purchase the program or hire me to teach as a consultant but, no, he would not be left the fruit of five years’ labour and two decades experience.

So I have little to pack but a portfolio and a few papers. I have finals to give and grade – pass them out, pick them up and run them through a machine. I have students for whom I must enter grades and, averaged, their final grade will not look like the letter grade on their report card. Students, eighth graders, who published essays, poetry, journalism, won contests, accomplished works of beauty and artistry but whose ability simply cannot be expressed in the final the administration mandates must be multiple choice and look very much a mock state assessment. No score will go down but several will be much higher than the numbers alone might dictate.

As a matter of fact, some of those final grades can be entered even before the test. As I start, I remember to turn my phone on, as I do during my planning periods. It chimes and I hear the signal that tells me I have voice mail.

The call is from Witney. I left him a message about kayaks some days earlier. I have been interested in kayaking and canoeing ever since I went on a rather surreal canoe adventure down north Florida’s Santa Fe River with an entire Hebrew school student body. The result was a blues song called “Jews in Canoes” and a love for quietly paddling calm waterways.

Jews in Canoes

(chorus 1)
Jews in Canoes
Bad News
Jews in Canoes
Bad News
You'll always get the blues with
Jews in Canoes.

(chorus 2)
Jews in Canoes,
Bad News.
Jews in Canoes
You're gonna sing the blues.
You're always gonna lose with
Jews in Canoes.

Went or a trip
with my daughter's class mates
from her Hebrew school
I couldn't guess my fate
We set out on the river
at the outpost site
oh my lord
I had such a fright.

We were set in the water
barely two feet deep
There were thirteen canoes
in our Hebrew fleet
one paddler in the front
and one in the rear
rocking the boat
both trying to steer.

chorus 2

Then we got it straight
headed down the stream
twelve canoes
from a very bad dream
When I heard a little chuckle
on the bank from an otter
when our fleet was jam
from one bank to the other.

Well I floated down the river
as easy as can be
Then I make the mistake
of looking next to me
out on a river
one hundred feet wide
a canoe from the blue
hit me in the side.


Shema Yisroel,
Adonai Elohenu.
Adonai echad.


chorus 2

Now we're out ahead
just my daughter and me
I look around
at the scenery
Here comes a canoe
with a mother and a child
next thing I know
we're a canoe pile.

When we reach the end
our destination in sight
I hang back
to avoid the flight
canoes left and right
my chances are slim
next thing I know
I'm hangin off a tree limb.

chorus 2

I get off the limb
and walk to my boat.
Barely ‘nough water
to keep it afloat.
Canoes all around
ahead and behind
paddling to the beach
like they was all blind.

Out on the grass
sitting in the sun.
licking my wounds
kinda glad we're done.
Then my daughter tell me something
leaves me cold with fright
“Our next canoe trip, Daddy, it’s at night."

chorus 1


Jews in Canoes,
Bad news.
Jews in Canoes,
You're gonna sing the blues.
You're always gonna lose
You're gonna pay your dues
You always get the blues with
Jews in Canoes.

I had asked him, in an email and phone message, if there was such a thing as a stable kayak or if I had to look for a canoe. I further wanted to know if he had a line on one that was affordable on my schoolteacher’s salary, which meant I was looking for someone who had a perfectly usable boat and wanted to pay me to take if off his or her hands.

I return the call.

I ask my question.

There is no such thing as a simple answer to any question asked Witney. This is not because he doesn’t want to answer a question in a simple way but because he wants to be sure the answer is right and complete to the best of his ability. It requires patience. Sometimes it also requires coffee and, often, strong drink.

What do I want? To paddle easily along Goat Creek, Horse Creek. To get some exercise, see the manatees. To cross the brackish shallow sound of the Indian River, eight-mile wide, until I reach that quarter-mile spit of land that keeps it from the Atlantic Ocean. To be alone on the water.

How about a johnboat? No. I want to see where I’m going. He doesn’t blame me.

I ask if a canoe is more stable and the answer is, “It depends.” This doesn’t surprise me. Some have flat bottoms, some are meant for the sea, some for rough water. What about a kayak? Same deal. Some actually ride a bit under the water, some are for racing, for smooth water, for the sea, for whitewater. For me?

This is why I called. He will take it apart, find exactly what is what and, together, we will find the answer. I might take a month, but we will find it.

A month. Little do I know.

Don’t kayaks roll? Sure, he tells me. People actually roll them on purpose. Not me. Not me.

I don’t swim. I am perhaps a poor candidate for kayaking or, for that matter, water sports in general.

It is not for lack of trying. I hear I could, if I would just try hard enough. That’s what people tell me. They say, but they don’t know.

I have taken classes. Chicken of the Sea classes from the Red Cross. Adult Beginner classes from the Red Cross. Classes designed for little kiddies from, again, the Red Cross. I once swam about ten feet. It was an accomplishment. Then I panicked and flailed and reached for the comfort of feet on solid surface.

My wife tried teaching me. She was a certified lifeguard and tells me she never felt in danger in the water until she tried to teach me to swim. She says I almost drowned her. Almost doesn’t count, right?

I took a swim class in community college. My instructor was a tall, solid, chiseled figure of an ex-marine drill sergeant. He told me I would learn because he could teach anyone. Has never failed. He, himself, was a difficult case - being all muscle, he explained, he sunk immediately. Yet he learned.

I, on the other hand, overweight, fluffy, was in no danger of sinking. He was sure. I was never so happy to be fat.

Like a rock. Like a brick. Like an enthusiastic member of the Pharoah’s army chasing the Israelites, I went down. Oh, Mary, did I sink.

Sergeant Swim signed my drop card.

And now I want to kayak.

Not as strange as it may sound, he tells me. A kayak will work. Some have keels and flat bottoms. They are stable, don’t roll, smooth. The deal is I should come down and try one and see. Good idea.

What price are we talking about? How much?

Don’t worry about that. He has a better idea. Witney wants to build one for me. The cost will be materials. What can I do? I don’t do power tools. It’s the old story about the one-eyed epileptic with the chainsaw. If you don’t know the story, just use your imagination. Does it end well?

I once owned a jigsaw and a circular saw. I owned other tools as well. I once had my thumb nearly removed simply in the process of starting a lawnmower. I came home from a trip to discover my wife and my father had gotten together and sold my tools. They love me.

So I won’t be helping build. Oh, I could hold something while it dried if it wasn’t an important piece and we could afford having it call of the first chance it got. If that isn’t a problem, then I can do it.

No. He has a better idea. Watch. Just watch. Watch and write. Record the process. Chronicle building from beginning to end. He has a lead on a publisher. He gets to build, I get a kayak, we get a book. Everyone is happy.

Has he read my essays? “New reporting” some call it. Creative nonfiction. Not technical writing. It will be chronicled. Every bit. Each delay, mis-measurement, discussions. All of it. All of it surrounding the building of this kayak. It must be more than measuring and cutting, gluing and painting, if any of those are even part of the process. I’d want people to see the event in its entirety. He understands, he says. I wonder.

Let’s make a date to come down to Ft. Lauderdale, to make the two hour drive. I know I’ll have to do this a few times and this will not be built in one or two days.

First, we must get me into a kayak. We make a date. It’s set. Early June.

My second book is out. The Phoenix and the Dragon hits the shelves - there are launches, readings, performances. The date for the building approaches and I figure, since I’m going to be down there, why not set up a reading or two, a workshop. I’m making the trip anyway and the first time down is for kayaking, not building.

It is the second week of June. I look at my ringing phone and it is Valerie. I hear Witney in the background. They live next door to each other in a duplex. They share a wall and a child. They also shared about ten years together. But there were some basic philosophies and proclivities they did not share and now, they get along well enough but a marriage is no longer one of the things they share. In the past, yes, but not today. Not tomorrow. I know them both. I met them in church.

He wants to know if I am sure. Should he order the plans? What plans? Weren’t we going to check out the stable kayak first? Wasn’t I supposed to get into one before we decided to build a boat from scratch? I have never been in a kayak.

Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry? He is telling me, from the background, not to give it a second thought. Val says she took one for a ride, built, by Witney from the same plans we are going to use. She and her daughter and it was smooth, non-tippy, non-rolling, stable. Val would not tell me this if it weren’t true. I’m pretty sure she prefers me alive to be her partner in crime, camping, contradancing, singing showtunes in front of gay bars – all difficult to do after drowning.

Sure. Order the plans.

Don’t worry.

*****

I have waited ‘til mid-day as the early February morning is cool. It has been eight months since the idea of building a kayak was suggested to me, since I was offered to build one, write about it, take it home, author the book.

Mine is orange. The company, Pelican, based in Quebec, calls this material RamX resin. It seems rather indestructible. It is extruded and multi-layered and all sorts of other terms that means it floats and does not fall apart. I was told this by the company secretary with a quiet, musical French accent in a soft velvet voice, so I know it’s true.

It is not wood. I did not build it. I’m writing about it anyway. I’m quite happy.

This is the third time I have been out in it. Me, who doesn’t swim, out on the expanse upon which I am comfortable and in which I am not. And it is glorious.

Within ten feet of the slip, down which I carried my small boat between craft larger by far than mine, the world had changed. Within ten feet the manatees are floating alongside me. I paddle. I am but slowly getting the hang of paddling and, at times, I am a bit overzealous, but when the manatees are alongside, I stop. One of us belongs here and it is my place to be still.

Within five minutes I have passed through Turkey Creek, past the Palm Bay Marina where I paddled in and out between parked boats just for the practice of it, and under the bridge on which the thousands of cars a day buzz on US1 over the creek. And there is the Indian River.

Immediately I hear the spray of a dolphin beside me. I register the sound, understand what it is just in time to turn and see the water shooting from the blowhole of a dolphin well within arm’s reach. Thrusting water high and in my direction. Without expelling water, the dolphin would drown and expel water it does. A muscular flap opens and other muscles push with such force the water leaves the beast at slightly over one hundred miles an hour. Plenty of speed so that it lands, less than gently, on me.
I am glistening with water from the spouting dolphin. One, two, three, more swim along as I slowly skid toward Castaway Point. In the water and out, jumping up, wetting me down. Surfacing next to me and disappearing again, again, again.

I pass the point on either side and the water opens in front of me. To the left, in the distance, North, up the river, I can see the Melbourne Causeway misted gray faint by the bay air. To the right, the nearest bridge is thirty miles downriver at Sebastian. Aside from the scant beach behind me, the nearest land is two miles away, over this river that, more properly, is a sound, a brackish bay. Indialantic is a quarter-mile-wide spit and all that separates me, this river, from the Atlantic Ocean. I am headed there.

Once there, I’ll beach, take my shoes and wallet from the ziplock bag (terribly unreliable, I’m told. Get a drybag.) and walk a block to the cafés. I’ll sit and have coffee. Stroll to the ocean.

In the meantime, here I am. The boats race by, longitudinally, as I cross. Each larger than I and each given the right of way. Wakes come and I learn to meet them head on, the water rising before me, above me, under me, behind me, before me.

I am delighted to find myself not becoming seasick.

From upriver, sliding toward me, is a barge. Perhaps this is coming from Cape Canaveral. From the distance it appears massive and grows as it approaches. I backpaddle.

I had not thought of backpaddling before. I imagine it is the same as paddling frontward but just the opposite direction and, of course, the kayak stops. I drift as the barge is pushed south toward me, Sebastian Inlet and the ocean.

Drifting. This kayak is tiny, even by kayak standards. It is small and cheap. Nine feet and four inches. A kayak to sit in, float in, paddle in but not race in.

I bought it for one hundred and forty dollars. A few years old, it sold for about three hundred new. Bottom end.

Stable. Very stable. I needed that. It isn’t long so it won’t be spun much by the wind. But it also takes work to keep it going where I want it to. It does not track well.

Track. That is a word I learned recently while teaching myself about my little boat via Internet searches for explanatory material, tutorials, instructional videos and glossaries. Track means to go straight. This kayak doesn’t.

It tends to drift. Actually more what feels like a skid. If I paddle straight it goes straight, paddling one side, the other, the other, the other, with correction here or there. But if I stop or paddle a bit more strongly to one side, the skid is obvious and anything but minor.

And I don’t care. Paddling is exercise and all I wanted was to be out on the water.

I did try to find a skeg for it. That is another word I picked up recently. A skeg is a non-movable rudderish device to keep a kayak from skidding. It helps it track. Mine is, I discovered, not designed to take a skeg. The Ms. with the velvet voice told me so. No problem.

At times, when there is a current and I am paddling toward the dock or one side of a fork in the waterway, the kayak pointing slightly in the direction of the current, my head, facing the point I’m aiming for, the kayak moves slightly forward and slightly sideways, skidding in a way that tosses my senses a bit, my body facing in one direction while it moves in another.

What a kayak this size does have going for it, however, is more important than what it does not. It fits in my truck with no problem. I pick it up and carry it with no difficulties. From home to slip with no stress and all ease. It feels as stable as a floor and, at its size, I can turn with almost no space needed. It can nearly spin in place.

Spinning in place is what I’m doing now as I wait for the barge to pass. The closer it gets the more clear it is to me how thin lines between safety and danger are, between good sense and opening oneself up to the universe saying, “I’m here. You’ll take me if you want. It doesn’t matter. My stuff was part of the world before I was born, I did not come into the world, I grew from it, I am not separate from it and I shall go back into it when all is done. And now, I lay myself out on it, onto myself, and trust it will be OK.”

My small self, this small boat, the water beneath me, surrounding me, the barge. And, still a half-mile away, coffee.

*****
June, and I am ready to build a boat. School has been out two weeks and I have been two weeks gainfully unemployed. As planned, it is time for a short trip south and my first writing assignment since leaving college. And this one should prove much more satisfying. It should certainly be more fun. Time to build a kayak.

On an early Saturday morning, I head south in plenty of time to arrive by eleven-thirty and put in a full afternoon of building. It should take a few days I’m told. Four or five. Two weekends.

I arrive at eleven-thirty, as planned, knock on the door and find Valerie on the phone. Witney is not here. His car is not here. Where is he? On the other end of the phone. She hands it to me. Can I help him pick up something?

I don’t drive much in South Florida. Drive in and drive out. After I arrive in Broward County, I tend to get carted around. But there is building to do and that requires materials and I have a truck. That leaves me with the toting.

I assume we are going to pick up kayak parts. Raw materials for boat building. We are picking up wood; plywood, two by fours, posts. From Witney’s description of the materials, this is either a super-long or monstrously heavy kayak we are building and I ask, eager to learn, about his choice of materials. No kayak parts, these. This is wood for a table. There will be no kayak building today. We are building a table. I don’t know why we are building a table. Do tables float?

Katarina, the age-six daughter of Valerie and Witney, who spells her name with a “C” but which I stubbornly refuse to and replace with a “K” on the sole concept her name rhymes with Tsarina and, therefore, should be spelled appropriately, laughs. She knows why we are building a table and wants to tell me. I want to hear it from Witney.

The table is to build the kayak on.

One would have thought this might have been done before, but I do want to chronicle the entire experience of building, start to finish, so, sure, why not.

The plan was to build the boat using common woodworking tools one might find in a home workshop. Well, the plan was, originally, to get into a kayak first and see if it worked for me, but I’m not mentioning that. Now, instead, we’re talking old-time carpentry. No production tools. No professional woodworking shop with specialized devices. A home-build at home, in a yard, using what Witney had called “primitive” tools. On this he was adamant.

But he was adamant about this at eleven-thirty the previous night. He was adamant about this in a conversation with Valerie, not me. I knew nothing about this. And so, at eleven-thirty the previous night he decided at eleven-thirty today we would be building a table.

“Where do I meet you?”

I am given directions and five minutes later I am back in the truck, in Ft. Lauderdale, Valerie beside me to ensure I don’t become hopelessly lost.

I just missed Tina, she tells me. She had come over to give her Valerie’s other daughter, now eighteen, a driving lesson. Valerie still attends the church, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ft. Lauderdale, where, over most of the last decade, she and Witney were well known. Witney has not been there in over three years. He was, at one point, a Sunday school teacher in the teen program. So was I. I frequently return for guest appearance, readings, to take part in poetry workshops or services. I am greeted warmly, joyfully each time. Returning to the UU, for Witney, would be a much less welcoming event. Tina, complicit in Witney’s lack of welcomed status, was in the teen program as well. But not as a teacher.

Tina is now twenty.

Just before we arrive at the woodshop Val receives a call from Witney. No need to head to the woodshop after all. We’ll receive another call, with a new timeframe, in five minutes. In my bones, I feel the doubt growing. The look on Val’s face tells me I should have known better. We head back to her house.

A third call. A third-person, intermediary, go-between conversation about timing with me the only person not on a phone. The table is to have one straight edge and, apparently, this must be built at the woodshop. It is to be built first, then an edge cut of to make it straight, then transported to his mom’s house. I am to tote the table. We will then start the building.

He says he wants to have this done before, "but," he says through Val, “you know how things go. With Witney, yes I do and all too well. I have attempted projects before with him - overly bright, overly eager, underly reliable with no developed sense of time. Do not wait for him to start ordering dinner.

He’ll call, yet again, in a few minutes and let us know when to meet him there. I don’t expect that call anytime soon. My day, suddenly, is much more open.

I was hopeful. I’m not sure why. The angels of my better nature must have been having a particularly good day.

A few minutes prior, before Witney called, I spoke with my parents. Certainly, there is time for lunch. No, there is no rush. Yes, I have plans. No, there is plenty of time. Trust me, there is absolutely no rush.

I am free until eight tonight when I’m giving a reading at the Chocolate Moose in Davie, twenty-five traffic-free minutes from her house. When we had woodworking plans, Valerie has asked we get home by seven, thus giving us enough time to shower, eat and get to the venue. My sense of logic is sure I heard the suggested time incorrectly but my experience tell me I heard what I heard. This would account for Valerie’s unparalleled ability to be late to her own parties. I suggest six would make much more sense. At least it does to me. We’ll see where exactly between those times we end up.

I am waiting for my parents to arrive for lunch. The plan was for them, already out of the house, to meet me at Val’s and for us to drive the few further blocks to Lester’s, a large chrome and brilliant white diner. An hour passes. More. More still as my blood sugar hits a Black Friday low and they arrive. As I head out the door Val suggests a title for this book, for this day: How Long Will it Take?

Once in, once my mother, in her wheelchair, is trundled into the open, external elevator to rise in the world the height of one short flight of stairs, once we have fought the crowds, we find a seat with sufficient room and look through the menu. I find little here sufficiently healthy, succulent or intriguing to draw my interest and resign myself to something I am sure is going to kill me. I watch my parents eat things which I am sure will kill them as well. Another hour passes. Another. We leave and I find myself back at Valerie’s at about three-thirty. I have one thought at this moment: Witney is going to pay for this. He will pay and pay and pay. But, behind this, a voice reminds me I should have known better. I did know better and ill-advised hope to this moment led.

It is four-thirty. And then five. Five-eleven. The phone rings and it is Witney. He is calling Valerie’s phone, not mine, to ask for my schedule. She tells him I have plans this evening, at eight, and am expected to be reading at that time. It’s my stage for the night. I should be there.

Can we move a kayak-building table after? After? Eleven-thirty at night, through Fort Lauderdale, with a table in the back of my pick up? No. I shake my head. I enunciate as clearly as possible so Val, talking to Witney, still insisting on using an intermediary, can see me, clearly, decisively stating there is no way I will be toting a table of unknown size around unfamiliar streets on a Fort Lauderdale Saturday night. I say it loudly, so Witney can hear me.

All the while, phone crooked in her neck, Valerie is cooking and one brief scent makes the question of missing dinner to move the table now easily answered by Hell No. Val is cooking real food and I know, from this point on, I’m hers for the evening. I am being plied with food and all she wants in return is time, laughter and shared bottle of port. I don’t need to be waiting for something that won’t be happening when time with my friend is happening right now.

A truck goes by playing, in bells, a song I remember from my childhood and I know what it means: ice cream on wheels. I grab Katarina and we each get an Italian ice.
On the lid of the Italian ice, as I had hoped, as I remembered, I find a small wooden spoon. Wide at both ends, tapered in the middle – a shape very much a double kayak paddle - and I am thinking this is as close as I’m going to get to paddling anything anytime soon.

“I should have prioritized” is what he says when he walks, late, into the house. It is six-fifty three. Dinner is over. Let’s move the table, I suggest, recognizing the mistake as the words leave my lips.

We jump into my truck. It is an industrial area. Warehouses. Here is a clamp factory. There a sailmaker. Then, the nautical shop and the massive specialty production woodworking shop within. Seafarer Marine.

The shop is stacked high with posts and pillars. In vertical slats five feet high capped with horizontal slots, up to the ceiling, there is exotic wood after exotic wood in solid sheets and plywoods, varying thicknesses from veneer thin to inch thick. There are rolls of wood. Slats and pieces. Some of these in the most beautiful patterns, glorious colors and amazing grains I have ever seen and could never have imagined. Was my kayak to be made of these?

But we are here for a table and it is a few minutes after seven. I see none. No table here. I am leaning against a trough, about twelve feet long, three feet high and just as wide.
“Funny that,” Witney says. I found the table all on my own. The bed of my truck is barely six feet long.

Witney shows me around.

*****

“Four sheets of four millimeter okoumé.”

“And why don’t we get this from Home Depot?”

“Because they don’t have it.” He says this very mater of factly.

“And why not use plywood? Regular plywood?”

“You mean why not just use plywood from Home Depot?”

“Yup. What’s wrong with plywood?”

“Well, your Jo Average plywood you might get from Home Depot or your local lumber store that doesn’t specialize is made to pretty much stay flat and look pretty on both sides but it generally is not waterproof, which is not a huge concern for this because it is going to be covered with epoxy but it is not guaranteed to have totally filled cores. The cores are not guaranteed to be high quality.”

“So there are spaces inside? Sometimes voids or the plies don’t quite meet?”

“Right. There will often be a line where two pieces of the core material don’t meet when you bend the wood, because you make a kayak by forcing wood to bend in the shape of a kayak. You take a piece of plywood and force it to curve to follow the hull. What happens is you get a kink if you have a void in the core.”

“So the plywood this place has is of a different quality.”

“Right. Marine plywood. It is certified to a British standard called BS1088 that basically says it is going to be high quality faces, it’s going to be the same material faces and cores, not just whatever you happen to have laying around in the cores and the cores are going to be contiguous and free of voids.”

“You said something about Russian birch?”

“Yup. And wenge, an African hardwood with a gorgeous light relief in the grain.”

And the okoumé is actually a light mahogany? What about the clear fir?”

“Yes. A light mahogany. The clear fir is a dimensional lumber we are planning on cutting into long thin strips to make the sheer clamps out of. We’re also going to make the cockpit carlands, which are the cockpit equivalent of sheer clamps. They’re the part that goes between the visible combing and the deck and they’re up on the inside.”

“Now, what is this about the hatch you were saying? You asked about that and I have no idea how to answer.”

“Well, it is possible to fit a hatch in either the fore of aft deck or both, accessing the normally sealed off compartments fore and aft. On my larger Mill Creek two-person kayak I chose not to put hatches in because the deck is so pretty just the way it is. On my longer, thinner, single kayak, which has a much smaller cockpit area, there will be a hatch fore and aft. The aft cargo hatch will be quite large and the forward hatch will be of a moderate size.”

“What would you suggest for me?”

“Well, it all depends on its intended use. If it’s day trips, no. If it is limited over-nighting, no.”
“I don’t intend on taking it out over days at a time.”

“Then make it pretty.”

“OK, then there is room in the cockpit for a bottle of water and such?”

“Oh yes. Much. The cockpit is large enough for a camera, a bag, lunch. Use a dry bag. Those are usually made of PVC that has a roll-down top that clips back on itself and keeps things from getting wet.”

“Or a ziplock bag?”

“Notoriously unreliable. Get a drybag at any kayak store. Any outdoor store.”

“So you know this guy named Kayak Jeff and before you take a boat out you bring it to him for a blessing?”

“Well, not so much ‘a’ blessing as ‘his’ blessing.”

“And you brought your first one to him and he gave a blessing to your hull?”

“Well, in the most kayak way. Basically, I am building a slightly modified long skinny single. And he is a very experience kayaker who is also a certified instructor and he runs a kayak store called, appropriately, Kayak Jeff and he came over last night to my mom’s where all this is being built and looked over the shape of the hull and the curvature of the bottom and said ‘This is good.’ That’s the blessing.”

“So I want to know I’m not going to play twirly-games in the water.”

“Oh, this boat will spin very well.”

“Not on its longitudinal axis?”

No, on the vertical axis. As far as longitudinal… OK, if you have a center point and you try to rotate the point, it’s very easy. If you make that point low on the arm, center or not, and you try to rotate that arm, it’s very difficult. It has resistance to turning.

“You’re describing a fulcrum. I’m not sure how that applies to this. You’d think having a fulcrum would make turning easier.”

“Well, actually, I’m describing center of gravity. What I’m saying is if you put the friction at the ends of the arm, what you are effectively doing with a boat hull of this shape is your center of rotation is the center line of the boat. It is very low because you are sitting low in the hull. You are actually sitting on the lower hull. And the deeper the boat goes, up to a certain point, the greater its resistance to turning. Of course, once you go so low the entire boat is covered by water, there is no more resistance to turning.”

“But I wish to not cover the entire boat with water. I want to be clear on that. I don’t want to build a submarine.”

“Do not gain a lot of weight.”

*****

On Sunday the plan is to start early. How about eight? Eight isn’t too early to start building a kayak. That is the plan. I have it in my PDA.

Witney tells me he has a kayak class tomorrow. How to roll and recover. Tomorrow? The plan was to build a kayak. He signed up for this class three weeks ago. There is nothing I can say in the face of this temporal absurdity.

He knew. Never told me. I didn’t know, but, really, really, I should have known better.

The reading comes and goes. We stop for coffee on Las Olas, walk, talk, laugh and make up names for the kayak book. The Kayak that Almost Was. How Long Will It Take? Sunk: The Story of Not Building a Kayak. Building with Witney and Other Myths and Fancies.

It’s late and a two-hour ride home. I could stay overnight, but my own bed is so close and, despite Val’s objections and worry, I head north on I-95.

I should have known better.

*****

It is the last week in January. Plans again. Plans to travel to Ft. Lauderdale and build a kayak. Everything will be ready. For some reason, I am skeptical.

I am headed south on I-95 on this bright Friday afternoon. My phone rings and it is Witney. There is no wood. Specifically, no quarter-inch okoumé. None. Anywhere. Not in Florida. Not in the US.

I am not surprised. I am not upset. I am not worried. I tell him so. I don’t tell him I’m going to keep heading south anyway. I had made other plans. People to see, things to do. It’s Val’s birthday party. I’m having dinner with my daughter. At no point during this trip had I an illusion I was actually going to build a kayak. I don’t tell him this, of course. I also don’t tell him I have a kayak waiting for me at home. It’s orange. The dolphins seem to like it. I know I do.

And who wants to read about kayaks anyway?