Some lives are stranger than fiction, my cohorts told me...therefore, I should learn to write so I could pass some of my blarny onto innocent ears, they'd say. I've a ball o' yarns by now, I should let it roll. So you know, writing has been far from my first choice of things to do for a long time.
Main thing is, I've had a bunch of careers. Each seemed like the only thing to do at the time, and I reckoned as though I would never leave any one of them. You know how it is, with all good things and how they eventually come to an end just as regular as sin.
My life has gone to Hell a few times...what keeps me going at a pretty good pace is the fact that they liked me a whole site more down there than what makes me comfortable. Man's got to know his limitations, and I'm fairly sure one of mine is dancing in fire.
I've always had a lost woman or a good ship for excitement. The best of either so far have been the Tara V, a three-masted schooner out of Gloucester, and sasha naya, who I found in the remote islands of the South Pacific. Which ones don't matter, for many years...I saw Her everywhere.
I loved her in a way that doesn't go away easily. Wind and weather have no effect on the passion we shared, time and circumstance diminish it very little...a love that could carry us through anything. She seemed as though, in every respect, she was made for me. In fact, she was.
Tara V proved to be the perfect ship.
sasha naya was even better.
I found Her in the islands and I lost Her there. By the time we pulled anchor and bolted for Birmingham, She was the only wind in my sails. Can't say that my time with sasha naya was the happiest time of my life, it was the only time in my days so far I've felt really alive.
Days were long and lazy, pretty much taken care of. sasha and I had little to do except fool around, fish, sleep, pick fruit and flowers and fool around some more. It took months to refit the Tara V and get her ready for the next leg around the globe.
Every moment sasha and I spent together was sweeter than the one before. Inevitably, the wind rose in the palms and the salt rose in my nose. The ship was brilliant in fresh paint and acres of fresh canvas ached to be unfurled. The aromas of the islands fought with the lure of canvas, manila rope...the varnish and paint.
The little hut we shared was the closest thing I had to home until I sold the Tara V and bought the farm in the Pacific Northwest. I grow lavender and blueberries, mushrooms and vegetables...fruit trees dot my ten acres on a steep hillside.
Naturally, I have a half-wolf named Sam.