our island

i’ve had a crazy day of emotional upheavals and i’ve worked for hours and hours. my back is tight and my hands stiff. i need to de-stress. i think i'd like to tell you a story. it has no hard core grief to it. only a hint of melancholia. when i need to quiet down, i meditate. i say my prayers, and then i take myself to our island. if you continue to read, then you’re along for the ride.

it was love at first sight. the first time i saw the island i was outside alone. we had just moved in to the house by the cove on the 22^nd of December. my Dragon was inside with the cable guy for the television and computer. i had put on my boots and coat and gone outside to look at the cove. it was almost dusk and bitterly cold. the wind was blowing like stink and the waves below the house were crashing high up on the rocks. when the water retreated from the rocks it sounded like rattling bones. i felt such peace standing there and then i saw the lighthouse flashing it's green light every six seconds. i studied the island in the rapidly fading light, and i felt it. i felt called. the connection to that bit of wind scrubbed land was instant and something i've never felt so strongly for before, or since.

day after day i studied and watched the island, and took hundreds, thousands of pictures. everywhere we walked in Rockport, i would look for the island. the whole place seemed to look for me, too. it was a siren call. the lighthouse needed me. the abandoned keeper’s house never felt to me as if it had given up yet. it was only waiting to be taken care of again, to be lived in and loved. it wasn't my obsession alone. my Dragon felt it, too.

closed to the public, people had ceased to care about it. everyone spent the money on Thatcher Island and the twins. it has a history, but so does my island. my island is more austere and smaller than Thatcher. it is harsh and elemental. it is perfect for a wild heart that people have tried to crush over and over.

my Dragon knew i would love to walk it. he said he'd set us up with gear to swim over. i went crazy young with excitement. i felt like a rebel, a wild daredevil. he laughed. it was a simple swim to someone like him. i mean, he is the original daredevil. well, not the absolute first but definitely one of the best. i'd lay some of his deeds on the table to match up against any others. my wild man. why he chose me, well, he did and i am the better for it.

we planned carefully for weeks. we charted the tides, watched the weather, and worked up to the adventure with a lot of walking and swimming at an indoor pool in the house of a lobsterman that my Dragon had gotten to know. he was a widower and our company was welcome. he smiled enigmatically at our plans and lent us a couple of wetsuits, thruster fins, and BC vests. it had been years since i had done any diving and all of it had been done in Mexico where the water is a tad warmer. we practiced in the pool.

so i guess you can logically figure it out. we picked a warm, flat day and went during low neap tide.

there was really only one place to swim to. the island rises up out of the water very high and very treacherous in most places so that one low beach, in the photo below, was the only sensible place to go to.

we avoided the rocks off the point between our cove and the next. it meant a longer swim as the crow flies but we wanted to avoid the water between the mainland and the island because of the strong undertow and surface current.

we left the beach, below in the foreground, but on that, you know, flat day, and made straight for the island.

the rock around the island is carved by the violence of the ocean. the water surrounding the island is a veritable paradise, anemones and starfish, seaweed and barnacles. lobster pots abound. i saw my first lobster doing his lobster thing underwater. awe-inspiring. if i had owned an underwater camera, i think it would have given me too narrow a view of life for that day and what it has come to mean. no processing would have ever gotten the color right. it was better this way because still, to this day, all i have to do is close my eyes, and i am there.

we swam for the selected spot because, as you can see from my photo above, that beach was the best access. it was less than ¾ of a mile. the day was warm and the water was calm. we had the scuba gear and had built ourselves up for the swim. we went at a leisurely pace and my wild man restrained himself and stayed right with me. he paced me so i wouldn’t tire out.

then we were there. we took off the fins and put on reef slippers. we didn’t go too far up and around. the place is overgrown in summer and unknown to us. we did circle the house and the lighthouse. the rest of the island is rock with huge cracks and scrub, thorny beach rose, and old stonewalls from when the lighthouse was manned.

there are no words to describe how it feels to walk in a place that you have felt calling for you but you had only been able to see at a distance. the sun was shining. everything was green and lush for the summer. we felt like we were the only two people in the universe. we held hands. we whispered at times, as if it were a sacred place. for us it was. Heaven and Earth. for a brief moment in time we were in our own Garden of Eden.

we would have loved living out there. it would have required a vigilance that living on the mainland never requires, but imagine how much we could have lived, really lived every single day. everything we did would have been in sharper focus. every breath would have been fresh. every action well thought out. we would have lived deliberately out there and in doing so our lives would have been so rich with feelings and sights no one can buy or find anywhere else.

it was always our fantasy, and what are we if we deny ourselves our fantasies?

we swam back and returned the gear to the old lobsterman. he invited us to stay for hamburgers out on his grill. he never ate lobster, he said. he called them bugs. we talked until long after dark and the green flashes from the lighthouse could be seen from his porch. it was then that he started speaking about his long-dead wife, as if she had only recently died. he told us that he and she had gone out to the island in their younger years. “It seemed closer when we were younger.” he said he was glad we had gone. "I've lived here all my life and I know for fact that no one goes out there. Not ever. Not anymore."

his final words that night before he bid us good night were, “That place calls to people in love; to people who deserve to be left alone with their love. My wife and I always wanted to live out there, take care of the place, you know? We only went that once though. I wish I could have taken her out there again before she died. I’ll always see her out there.”

his words haunt me now sometimes. we only went that once, my Dragon and i. i guess that’s why i can’t let it go in my mind either. i will always see him standing on the island. i wonder if i had died first, if he would have always seen me out there, like the lobsterman and his wife.

i had heard the island referred to as Godforsaken. having been out there with my Dragon, i think i am going to have to disagree. i've heard the expression, "if you don't take Paris with you, you won't find it there." i think God knows about the island. i believe my Dragon helps me get there in my dreams so i can find some peace in this life, so that i can rest at night. i think we all need a place to go in our minds when it feels like everything is crashing down on us. it's not giving up. it's not a retreat. it's a sanctuary to sit in until we regain some strength.

i choose to remember my island. i choose to go there in my mind. i think of it as our island. my Dragon's and mine. i never would have gone without him beside me. i never would have touched it at all. it would have stayed an unfulfilled longing.

thank you, Love. i've miss you bad today. it's almost midnight. i'm going to go try to dream tonight. come get me. please.

"wild heart"

i found a letter he wrote once while he was gone on one of his missions. it was in an envelope addressed to me, just in case it needed to be mailed by someone else. just in case. but he came home and we sat together and he got to read it to me. i changed it enough to fit the present.

She’s buried herself in her sewing today. She won’t write anything again until Monday, the start of the end of me. I thought I’d tell you something you didn’t know about her and probably never would. You’d never know it by looking at her, or even by being her casual friend, but my wife has a wild heart. I am the only one who knows this. It didn’t take me long to figure it out but I was looking at her pretty hard. It’s just under the surface but you have to know where to look. She keeps it hidden in the shadows.

She’s shy and takes reticence to a whole other level. It’s because she has been taught not to believe in herself. I remember our first date. I was fascinated from the start. I kept telling myself not to screw this up. When we parted I couldn’t tell if she liked me or not and I didn’t know what to do so I shook her hand and leaned in for a kiss both at the same time. I was so scared she wouldn’t want to see me again. And then I talked her into being my wife. She always thought she was the lucky one.

I wanted to set her spirit free, but I died and she’s alone again. I know she’s going to San Diego in August so I wanted someone to know this about her. I want someone else in the world to know that my wife has this wild heart that is filled with longing for me and for the life we had, and for the life I promised her. She’s lost right now missing me and wanting me back. And I would like it if someone knew to watch her watch the ocean while she’s there, because she’ll go out there and look at it if it’s close. She’ll smile and laugh inside with you, but she’s shy and I know she won’t let people see her. Not really. Not in so short a time. you'll turn around and she'll be gone. She'll have gone outside.

I watch her and know her thoughts. I can feel her going back into the shadows a little bit, except in her writing, in her sewing, her drawings, and her photographs. Her art is the only way anyone will get to know her. She’s got a vivid imagination and deep inside her that wild heart beats. But no one knows it's there.

She’s unobtrusive in public, and accommodating. I’ve been places with her and seen a whole room of people not realize she’s there, or if they did, never pay attention to her. She’s quiet. She studies people. But once she steps outdoors you can see the wildness in her.

I would lead her in hikes and turn around to find her far behind me. She’d stopped to watch something or look at something almost unnoticeable. She’d find fungus growing inside a hollowed out tree and show me all its colors. She’d watch bugs and birds and snakes. She didn’t like frogs though. She didn’t want one to jump on her. She was funny and different, and she looked at me like I was this big hero, and I loved it.

She was fearless and I always had to really watch her. She’d focus on something and drift off into a world of her own and get into trouble. But her world was a place I wanted to be in with her. She’d show me what she saw, tell me what she thought and it was always something I never saw before or thought before.

She drove me crazy. Once she realized it was okay to be herself she was like this wild horse freed from a pen. She wanted to walk everywhere, climb places she didn’t have the training for, and be out in weather she wasn’t able to deal with. She get out on the rocks and the tides would cut her off or she’d turn around realizing how high up she was or how far out, and she’d be unable to get back. And if she got too cold she wouldn’t be able to recover without help, my help. I had to watch her like a hawk.

She’d have me hike in with her to a place called Dogtown. It’s an abandoned settlement inland in the center of Cape Ann. There are no houses there anymore, only the dugout basements. It’s a dangerous place to go if you don’t know where to look and it’s reputed to be haunted and she was fearless. She’d climb down into the basements and I’d try to hold her hand, watch where she stepped, gauge the sunlight, the temperature, all the sh*t that could go wrong exploring abandoned places like that. Then I’d help her climb out. We’d be filthy and she’d smile and say, “Wasn’t that fun?” And it was. Then I’d see her pictures later on the computer, and see it as she did, and I’d want to go back.

She wants to go back home. I’d take her, but I died and now she’s alone and scared. She misses me more than she’s scared. She thinks she can’t do it. I see her looking at her pictures of our island and her eyes fill with unshed tears. She’s got a set of pictures that breaks my heart with their beauty. She wanted to live out there so badly. She wanted to be alone with me out there. She understood the wildness in me and is my soulmate. She called us kindred spirits, and we were, we are. She wanted to be alone out there away from everyone who didn’t understand the wildness and beauty of the wind, the waves, and nature. I wish I could have made it happen so I do all that I have left to me. I go get and take her to our island.

I wait until it’s very late and she’s finally out for the night. I go into her heart and her dreams and I take her to our island. For a while, a very short while, we are together again. We have a wonderful life out there under the heavens, day and night, summer and winter, clear or stormy. I’m with her and she is free to be herself. She can explore the island and take her pictures and be safe. No one can hurt her. She has all she wants. She has her island, her sky, her rocks, shells, the crashing waves, and she has me. Beach Bunny and her Dragon can be together forever on our island, even if, for now, it's only in her dreams.

Just do me one favor, will you? Keep reminding her, when she's down and feeling lost, remind her that I'm waiting for her. I'll take back over then and I'll never let her be alone again.

home is where the heart it

my mind is somewhere else these days.

it's not here with me anymore.

it's back by the ocean i left behind,

and my heart is so very sore.

i want to go home to the cove now.

i want this bad dream to end.

just sit by his side looking out on forever

so my broken heart can mend.

it's almost midnight for me and my back aches. my hands hurt. my heart is wobbly.

i'll be direct. i want him. i want to go home. i want to sit in the den and look out at the ocean in the sunlight. i want to see the lighthouse flash all night. i want to hear the waves on the rocks below. the gulls cried and the wind rushed by and together forever seemed easy to hold in the palms of our hands.

how wrong we were.