Dave the Little Hoer

Dave the Little Hoer
Originally uploaded by maplemusketeer

I wrote a song but it didn't have the right words
I sung a tune but it didn't have the right sounds
I wrote a letter but it didn't have the right verbs
But here it is.. I made it for you

Like crayons and felts on the door fridge
Weird culinary concoctions reside in the garbage
Stomping and jumping our way across the troll bridge
hand in hand side by side

We talked before you could speak
We clambered and fell pushed into creeks
I chased you with a hammer
You dislocated my coccyx
Lets call that even

Ok so Grandma was right when she broke up our fights
and told us that one day we'd miss each other. so.. ok.
I miss you.

Remember that time in Roberts Creek at the bus stop?
You latched onto my arm and clamped on through
my winter jacket. Leaving teeth marks as across the street you ran.
Darting your head out around the side of the Can Post post can
My arm cocked with retribution in the form of an apple.
I waited till your head wasn't there... and threw.
I hit you square in the face! In retrospect,
that still was an awesome throw.
Then you rubbed your face and I rubbed my arm
and we got on the bus to school together.

All the time we spent together wishing we were apart is now so long eclipsed by the time spent apart wishing we were together.

You always wanted to fight on your birthday when we were little because for a week we technically are the same age.

Welcome to Round 29.

Though somewhere along the way we learned to share.
And so now we share a week being the same age,
as we share our memories and experiences.

The magic and wonder
of trying to catch leprechauns
when spring was just around the corner.

Giant forts with lunch conveyance systems.
Matching outfits and vocabularies tenacious.

Growing a bit to running through woods
and swinging around giant trees.. with our pet Griffin.

And then the sea. Walking along and living in.
Forts to build, rocks to throw, fires to light,
making the most of where we were.
As we do still.

I don't know that there are easy paths in this world.
I would say that ours wasn't.
I know that as a big brother there were many times
that my best wasn't enough.
that I could have helped but wasn't there.
that you had to do things on your own without me.
Our roads parted for a time.
Our feet down different paths.
And we both faced difficulties, hardship, sorrows, pain, and beauty.
I regret not being able to share them, to share in them.

What is the bond of a brother?
To some it is genetic, that of the blood.
To some it is a kinship born of time spent together
through fortune and hardship.
To some it is a oneness of spirit and vision,
the call and response of one soul to the other
an innate connection, language, reality.
We share all these.

With you Dave it is not for better or worse.
It is only for better.
In my life I've only spent 11 months and 3 weeks not having known you.

You are my longest friend.


I cannot being to fathom a life not having shared with you.
I'm so very thankful for being able to look back
at these 29 years
with you
and wonder what it'll look like, and how many crazy awesome adventures and struggles and hills and valleys and floods and droughts and tears and triumphs will happen in the next 29.

Happy Birthday Little Bro
you're such a little hoer.

~ Thoughts in Motion ~

I've plied my trades and lived my days in various ways up and down this coastline.

A member in a familial tradition

Not of one trade but of many

Not of one location but numerous

Ever onward a heartwood true grows, strives and survives amidst the storm's lull, the rain's temporary abatement.

Gulls wheel overhead navigating their course through air's flow and effect, like a fishboat chugging along through the pass. The tidal surge, the wind and weather, the plateaus, precipices, and prominences seen and unseen, known and unknown, all influence and impact the flow which follows its nature; its need.

Only fools and the ignorant surge forward paying no heed.

To them the glory and cost of their high stakes. One thing this coast teaches is that life is full of squalls that pass and blue skies that darken. The season is upon us and those that fear and fight and rail against the drizzle shall live in the selfsame gloom they reprove.

This is the season of life; of wind whipped waves and salt laden sprays stinging numbly any hint of exposed flesh. The dampness that communes in our bones with the water within. Liquid life lingers lavishly in the fall air we churn our way through. In and out, rise and fall, oxygen for carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide for oxygen, water water everywhere, in every cell that breathes.

It blows hard and cold outside and is testified to by the swell of white topped waves passing beneath the vessels bow. People sit, lounge, sprawl contentedly and warm in their space, in their place, in their seat, oblivious to the wonders that transpire outside of their shell; outside of their presumed safety.

To my right I see clouds I've never seen before, in this form. And I look towards and above Gabriola Island and Nanaimo. You may not think much of that statement until I share the next detail... I have spent over seven years with that daily view. Living in Roberts Creek we looked across. Living on Edward Rd in West Sechelt we looked across. Living at what was the top of McCourt Rd we looked across. Each day is different. Each moment unique as they shift and morph before your eyes. To me a clear hot sunny "perfect" day is about as exciting as 320 tedious television channels. I haven't even told you what transpires to the left. While dark round giant puff balls glom out past starboard, a glow emanates from the port-side. Looking up the Strait, bracketed by darkness blazes the golden radiant hues upon the freshly whitened peaks rising north up the Island. A transfixing fascinating beautiful view more full and deep and glorious than any television show.

Standing atop the ship having the wind whip and strip the heat from your hands

as you gaze

the greens of the sea one can easily see and be lost and found in that tempestuous tranquility.

Then to return once more to the confines of the present mindset in that particular moment with a fraction of the past a memory that one can only half hold like water in a bathtub. When immersed, your hand, your arm, your all is consumed by the experience. Once your hand comes out the water rapidly spills out and drips away leaving you with but a fragment; a minuscule pond in the palm of you hand, from what once clothed your being... your all

We frame our choices and with our lenses we dictate our sight. There are many who disinterestedly suffer the tedium of travel, the monotony of a ferry ride traveled numerous times, the amount of time wasted in waiting in a waiting room for another 45 minute sailing, currently 43 minutes away. Today instead of having to wake up early to drive straight to the ferry terminal I chose to wake up earlier still that I could drive past the terminal to a park to climb my way up a hill between garry oaks and arbuti to watch the sunrise. An opportunity acknowledged, observed, and appreciated. I had the opportunity of a nautical voyage through magnificent views in an area I love on a blustery day. I got to sit, ponder, reflect, and journal as I savoured some yerba mate as it melted the dark chocolate in my mouth and the warm horn lured increased blood flow back into my superior distal extremity.

There are very few decisions in life that are actually made for us. When we are born, sometimes when we will die, and perhaps alien abduction. Other than that we have the freedom, though often unacknowledged, to do what we will. Sometimes we don't see our choices, don't know they're even there, or don't like the ones we do see. Fair enough, but they are our choices none the less. So knowing that, what will I do? What do I see? And what lays beyond, around the next corner, next thought, next moment? I'm not sure but my second ferry has just gone into motion and I hear the wind calling my name, waiting to freeze my hands and my nasal mucosa.

written November 13th, 2009 between Departure Bay, Nanaimo, and Langdale Ferry Terminal on the Sunshine Coast.