We woke early, fed the sheep, watered the finches, made coffee and didn't drink it, and rushed off for the morning boat run. David left us in Deer Harbor and went off to Friday Harbor for a meeting. "So, do you have my car key?" I asked the Spink.

We helped a neighbor take her stuff from the boat to the road. "I saw Tycho in Seattle last week," she said. "I didn't recognize him, last time I saw him he was about half that height."

"Hey, can you give us a ride to Eastsound?" we asked her. So we helped her locate a bicycle pump for her flat tire, and the bass player showed up. He offered to take us into town since she actually was going to the ferry, not town.

The animal shelter was closed. "Um, can you take us back home?" we asked the bass player.

"I can take you to the dock but my boat may not hold the mail and you," he said.

But it did.

We got home by noon.

David and I awoke far too early and tottered around, pretending that we were awake and expounding on the universe. David said something brilliant and I riffed off of it. It was really amazing.

Later, I asked him what it was that we were so brilliant about. "Substituting our myth of a person for reality," he said.

"Yes, I remember that part," I said. "But what was the example we were using?"

"Don't know, don't care," he said.

That's another way we differ. He thinks in abstract and emotional terms. I think in concrete, analytical terms. I want details and reasons. He wants ideas and feelings.

Ken Kesey wrote:

Of offering more than I can deliver,

But I have to offer more than I can deliver to be able to deliver what I do.

I'm reading Irvin D. Yalom's "The Schopenhauer Cure," which addresses the theme of life as suffering. Schopenhauer was a brilliant misogynist, who dealt with his depression and pesky bodily desires by withdrawing from dailiness as much as possible. Yalom suggests that, although this is a good interim response while you're trying to catch your breath from the sometimes overwhelming impact of experience, it isn't really living.

I'm drawn to Kesey's verse, though maybe it's a bit too far in the opposite direction. We only get one chance. Let our memories be of what we joyfully embraced, not of what we tried to edge away from.

Yesterday the Spink and I took her cat Paws to the vet because she was running a fever and has been getting very thin and lethargic.

"She has a tumor the size of a baseball in her abdomen. She's breathing irregularly because it's probably spread to her lungs. There's nothing we can do to help her pain," he said.

So we had her euthanized.

I spent a small fortune getting the front wheel bearings replaced in Portland. Left my dear niece in hostile hands. Stopped in Seattle to hang out with Tycho, and drove off with his backpack. In Anacortes, I figured I had time to drop the clarinet off to get re-corked and re-padded. I didn't. As long as I'd missed the ferry, might as well get Tony's bass from his sister's front porch. I couldn't find her house. So I got back in the ferry line and noticed that the front wheel was smoking and had a decidedly charred color to it. There being nothing to do about that, I went to the ferry dock beach to wait the two hours. Slipped on a sandy rock and gave myself a spectacular goose egg on the elbow, which swelled so much that today, two days later, the bruise is the size of a small child's head. It was shortly after dark when I finally got home.

Today I called Mom to check in. "I stayed up until midnight waiting for your call, to see if you got home safely," she said.

A dear friend says she's a Buddhist. "Life is suffering."

I can see why she said that, I suppose. We were having some really savory beef tendon pho. The chili sauce was hot enough to make my nose run, and I squeezed more in.

There are lots of ways that suffering defines me, aside from dealing with chili sauce, not the least of which is that I know I and everyone I care for will die within the next century.

But in a much more immediate sense, no. Taken moment by moment, which is how I actually live life, suffering is only one of the kaleidescope of mostly luscious sensations that shape experience.

A monk has been meditating for many years alone in the wilderness. One day, a group of pilgrims finds their way to his hut.

"Master! You aren't wearing any pants!" says one of the pilgrims, shocked.

"After I had been meditating in my hut for ten years," the master explains, "I realized that the whole world can be thought of as my hut."

"Ahh," say the visitors, impressed.

"After ten more years," says the monk, "I realized that not only is the world my hut, but that my hut is my pants."

"Oh," say the pilgrims. "Now we think we understand."

"And what I want to know," says the hermit, "is, what are you doing in my pants?"

Mom and I were in the checkout line at Goodwill with our vases, grunge clothing, and Carl Hiaasen books. A man with one stargazer eye came up to us and poked Mom.

"I saw you over by the skis," he said. "Thought you was looking them over but then I saw your cane. I used to ski."

"I did too," said Mom, "but that was fifty years ago." She laughed, embarassed.

"Come back from World War II and I said, 'A man has to be loose to ski,' and I wasn't loose any more. Responsibilities. Things to do." He hovered. The line didn't move.

"What?" he asked.

"Where did you serve? In the war?"

"In Europe. That was the easy war. Glad I wasn't in the South Pacific," he said. "You know, we could have lost that war, easy as pie. We could have lost it. We could all be going around saying 'Sieg Heil,'" he said, sticking his palm up and out. Mom pretended he wasn't there. He looked eagerly at me.

"It was a pincer," he said. "Them up in the North, and us down in the Pyrenees. We could've lost the line, but we held. We held it." His eye wanged around in its socket. "Yes, I served under General Patten. I didn't like him. He had a high voice, like this, 'Ooo ooo oo,' and he never spoke to the troops. Just to one of his underlings and then they'd tell us. Had a really high voice. Like he was poofy, you know? You know?"

Now Mom was totally rigid.

"We had to wear steel helmets, all of us, we were infantry. And it was cold, it was damn cold. We had a stocking cap on, and then the helmet lining, and then the steel helmet. And he told his underling who told us to take it off. So then we had to wear the helmet with nothing to protect our skin. It was damn cold. We all got sores on our heads where the freezing metal rubbed against the skin. Right here and all around here," he pointed.

"I can help you folks here," said the checkout clerk and we rolled on past the man, who was staring half at us and half at the ceiling fans.

Vruba's former housemates got in an accident. Nick was injured and Julia died. I loved those kids.

Snuggle with your family, hug your friends.

After sanding, priming, and painting the loft for much of the day, the girls convinced me to go to the dock with a picnic dinner. We ended up on Nick's fish buying boat, the Caleb Haley, stuffing ourselves with smoked salmon and crab.

"You can't whistle on a boat," said a wife.

"Sure you can," said Doug, the deckhand. "You just can't do it in the wheelhouse. Raises a wind."

"Yarp," said a visiting fisherman. "When I was a kid and I'd whistle in the wheelhouse, my grandpop'd yell at me, 'Cut that out!'"

"And," said Doug, "you can't fix pea soup on the boat."

"I've never heard that one," said David. "Is it because of the fog?"

"And," said Doug, "you can't wash the captain's coffee cup."

"Yarp," said the visiting fisherman. "Some people purely don't like that. At all."

Doug laughed. "I was a deckhand up in Alaska," he said. "About eighteen years old. And I thought I'd do the captain a favor, and I cleaned up the galley real nice. Washed ever thing in it. Captain come on board, said, 'Who the hell washed my coffee cup?' Saw me and without him saying another word, he picked me up and pitched me over the side."

Everyone laughed.

"So," said Doug, "Now I don't wash anyone's coffee cup unless they want me to."

To Do List

July 2: •••Crafts Fair: •yarn & hats •paintings, photos •Performance: Clarinet, recorder, fiddle, music books •glasses, cash box, reciept book, sunscreen, signs •card table, tablecloth

July 3: •Mail letters Astri, Mom •5:00 Christine wedding shower

July 4: •2:00 Scrabble LeMieux •weedwhack around house, other fire prevention

July 5: •Chakraoffish to mainland

•••Wrap up school year: •equipment back to District Office •transcripts, emergency cards to D.O. •report cards, transcripts •parent letters •return student work, evaluate year with them.

•Parking ticket pay

•••Start WHELK Natural History website •notes from Russel Barsh talk •notes from Tina Wyllie-Echeverria talk •dock logbook

•Sand, patch, & paint N wall of studio, all bathroom walls.

•Repot plants

•••Paintings: •Rhododendrons •Lame animus in water

•••Chapter 5.5 of “April Eyes:” (travelers in walled city) princess evaporates & discovers clouds.