essays by shé

bookshelf

Tag: womenwhosurf

  • Amazing Grace

    It’s hard to be scared of a hurricane named Flossie. It brings to mind a docile cow, or a child’s dental hygiene tool. And sure enough, Flossie spun out and away over the Pacific, leaving behind much-needed rain. I am working on the memoir again, Diary of a Reluctant Traveler, wherein there are emotional hurricanes. It recounts…

  • Always Home

    I am not traveling. I am always Home. I put up a pretty purple curtain over the galley port. The color goes well with a nearby painting, Golden Years, attached to the bulkhead over the in-counter fridge. Homey, in a Shé way. I have always decorated abodes with art and design because it satisfies my soul.…

  • Juneteenth

    “It’s only a lightbulb,” said my mother. She was asking me to enter Jazz Hideaway’s bathroom and change the bulb, but when I opened the front door of the studio under her house, the scent of deep mold wafted out and I recoiled. The body remembered almost asphyxiating due to my ignorance of its mortal…

  • Ask

    “Ask for what you want, 100% of the time.” I read this in the Olympia newspaper, when I was stuck in a bog and didn’t know it, almost two decades ago. But first you have to know what you want, which isn’t always easy to figure out for a variety of reasons. The Thinking has talked me…

  • Full Throttle

    It happened suddenly. One moment Habibi’s depth-sounder read 19.2 feet, the next moment – at the same time I felt a bump – it read 4. Her draft is 5-6, though the sounder is at least a foot below the water line.  I wrenched the wheel to port and full throttled. After an excruciating half minute…

  • Damsels & Werewolves

    “That doesn’t make any sense,” I tell the director. It’s Budapest 1989, and we’re on the set of Howling V. This is director number two, and I don’t think he’s read the script. “I’m the werewolf,” I point out. He wants me to run screaming down a tunnel under the Danube River, and by this time,…

  • 400 Miles

    I heard them first, the dolphins, blowing out air like men swimming alongside Habibi. The moon wasn’t up yet, and I was motorsailing a cautious four knots while keeping an eye out for shrimpers, tankers, and fishing boats. The Big Dipper was clear above the mast, pointing out north. A dark dolphin shape leaps ten…

  • Eleven

    “Let the child drive, so,” the locals told my mother. She had chartered a horse-drawn gypsy caravan for two weeks in Ireland, even though she was scared of Equus. “Yeah, Mom,” I chimed in. “Let me drive!” I was eleven. Horse-mad. But no, she gripped the reins and struggled through despite high anxiety. Brave woman.…

  • May Day

    When I climb aboard after scraping Habibi’s hull – see you, barnacles! – what to my wondering eyes does appear? A small squat military vessel a few hundred feet off my port bow.  I sit at the rail to catch my breath, and notice that the ten fatigued and armed men on board are not…

  • Stuffed

    I had shoved too much into the day, and now I was paying. I couldn’t find Habibi in the dark. Audrey Kayak was loaded with water and provisions – I’d also shoved too much into her. Bright city lights prevent me from seeing the dimmer solar tiki torches I’d rigged fore and aft when the…