New Readings, Writings, and Some Mushy Stuff

Posted by Tele on March 5, 2013 in Commercial Fishing, F/V Nerka, Hooked Favorites, Reading & Writing | 10 comments

Hot off the inter­net presses, sweet­ies: In the Tote has a shiny new site for show­cas­ing Fisher Poets’ work!

Great big thanks to vet­eran per­former Pat Dixon for his tremen­dous devo­tion to doc­u­ment­ing the Fisher Poets. The revamped site includes new writ­ers, new pho­tos, and, thanks to Pat’s com­mit­ment to record­ing us this year, new audio. Give it a look and a lis­ten; meet some new favorite writ­ers. I have. (Nice to see you aboard, Meezie!) If you enjoy your visit, please do leave a com­ment to let Pat know. In an entirely vol­un­teer capac­ity, he’s given this work his all, and then some.

I’ve got some­thing new over there, too. “Love at Sea” is a six minute audio story that I haven’t yet shared with any­one. Not even my Num­ber One test audi­ence, Cap’n J — and as it turns out, this one’s entirely ded­i­cated to him.

(Brace your­selves for this shame­less “Get a room!” moment, buddies.)

I’ve appre­ci­ated my part­ner over the past nine years, for sure, but I couldn’t have imag­ined the level of self­less sup­port Joel would give me this win­ter. We’re in the mid­dle of intense boat projects – and by “we,” I mean he’s shoul­dered the entire load him­self so that I can devote myself to writ­ing. Every Mon­day, he makes the two hour drive/ferry ride to Port Townsend. He pulls fiberglass-dusted cov­er­alls back on and spends the week in the boat yard, work­ing to resus­ci­tate the cadaver that is our beloved boat.

It’s crazy over there. Every­thing that gives the Nerka life is either gone or in pieces. The main engine: gone. The refrig­er­a­tion sys­tem: out. Fuel lines, steer­ing lines: dis­con­nected. Shaft: out. Pro­peller: off. Throw in a few gap­ing holes where holes are not meant to be (a par­tic­u­larly dis­con­cert­ing state of being in a ves­sel that needs to be, you know, watertight.)

For those of you with­out boats in your life, I can’t tell you what a daunt­ing scene this is. The Nerka — like every other fish­ing boat — isn’t Just a Boat: she’s our home six months of the year, Joel’s link to his child­hood, our office, our sole source of income, our safe haven. We both know it’ll all go back together in the end. It has to. At the very lat­est, we have to be cruis­ing back up to Alaska by mid-June, ready to drop our hooks in the water on the first of July. I can tell you that know­ing your sweet­heart is spend­ing the day grind­ing fiber­glass is an effec­tive way to com­bat writer’s block. How can I whine about words, given such a gift of time?

I wrote “Love at Sea” for Joel, but sus­pect some of you will find your own point of res­o­nance. So many of us unin­ten­tion­ally absorbed the fairy tale of what our love was sup­posed to look like. Easy. Fun. Hot. Per­fect, span­ning time to Hap­pily Ever After.  But we’re human, and our love is none of those things all of the time.

You don’t need to have spent weeks at sea together, aboard a tiny ship, to have fig­ured out that though the fairy tale is impos­si­ble, hard-earned love is very real.  I won­der what chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tions some of you have pit­ted your part­ner­ships against, how you tri­umphed (or not), and what unique mea­sure of love you took from those experiences?

Give “Love at Sea” a lis­ten here, then come on back and let me know how you’ve defined love in your life. As always, thanks for being such a par­tic­i­pa­tory group — that’s one of the things I love about you.

Thanks, buddy. xoxo