words & art by shé

bookshelf

Tag: Gulfstar37

  • Cleaning

    There’s a big difference between cleaning an abode you own versus one you rent. I was cranky and disgusted. A cockroach had leaped out of the tostada bag onto my lap. My bare lap. Then scurried onto the towel I was sitting on, a pretty blue one with fish. I did not want squashed cucaracha on my…

  • Sounds

    Dolphins in my swimmin’ hole! Well, theirs, yeah? The whole ocean.  I hear them before I see them, breathing. Hoosh hoosh. Standing on a small hill overlooking the calm Sea, I turn toward the sound. Hoosh hoosh hoosh. A pod! Such joy. They swim south around the point, out of sight. Sunrise. More excellent sounds: “Alliterative tour de force.”…

  • Swingin’ on a (Gulf)Star

    To get to Habibi, you must pass Enchantment, Namaste, Alley Cat, and Go Dog Go! Every single time I return to her — from swimming or grocery shopping or marina business — I grin, relieved she’s still floating, amazed that she’s mine. Yep, it’s dawning on me that, after 42 years of searching, I finally…

  • Tink

    Habibi has a side-kick, Tinkerbell the dinghy. Tink for short, rhyming with ‘dink’, which is what some folks call their dinghies. She’s a wooden rowboat with oars. “You need a motor,” said Francisco from the guard shack. I was returning with provisions from the big city (Loreto, about 18 highway miles away, population 20K). “I am…

  • In Praise of Floating Boat Hooks

    A piece of advice: given the choice of letting go of the boat hook or releasing the mooring line, always release the mooring line! Otherwise the current and Habibi’s momentum will wrench the boat hook from your grasp (which you’ve used to catch the line), and you will watch with dismay as both line and hook…

  • Heard

    Anxiety is finally taking a back seat. Feels like years that she’s been driving me around. But now I have a home — Habibi of the Sea. And time and space to write. A publisher contacted me recently. She’s interested in Letters to Lulu, the epistolary novella I penned in 2013, the same year I evacuated…

  • Gifts

    I finally left the harbor — yahoo! Habibi came through torrential rains and gale force winds just fine! Nothing shifted, nothing broke, the mooring held. The holding tank leaked a little because I’d been working on it and hadn’t tightened the lid enough. But all the hatches stayed battened until I opened them to the…

  • Hilary

    My mother did not evacuate New Orleans before Katrina hit and the levees failed. She hunkered down in the first floor bathtub. She had cleared out — unnecessarily, in hindsight — many times before, she explained, so she decided to stay. “River of misery,” she saw afterwards. Followed by “river of joy,” the following Mardi…

  • Lessons

    Put the dinghy together before throwing it overboard. (So that’s what ‘nested pram’ means! Three hours, use of the hoist, and many cuts and bruises later…) Swivel the grill inside the stern pulpit (the back of the boat) before leaving the dock so it doesn’t catch on your neighbor’s lifelines (horizontal cables running the length of the boat). (But…

  • Mine

    Paid the seller, paid the broker, not paying to fix the hull blisters at this expensive marina because the surveyor says it can wait until next year’s haul-out. Habibi is mine, all mine. No one can evict me. No one can raise the rent. I can paint her inside and out — any color! —…