Back to the Islands... (WIP)
Well, friends, it's been an eventful last few years.
Staggering out of a 25-year-stretch spent in Norway like some punch-drunk tropical Viking, I careened crashing first - as all genuinely heroic shipwrecks of humanity have done since the dawn of the New World - into Key West. Set in the sleepy "little drinking town with a fishing problem" Mexican Gulf Coast haven Punta Gorda became my temporary base camp of sorts. Though I hadn't intended it to be such a brief residence, I plied the many, and various tiki bars of the area 'til the winds left my sails a mere year or so later. That sure didn't take long. As I mentioned earlier, many of my best friends from the area died off, and I somehow became masterful at the art of thoroughly pissing people off for no good reason -- all without effort or intention.
Great old friends and newly acquired ones died too quickly, unceremoniously, and from wholly avoidable causes. Beloved family members followed soon after. Smooth sailing Capt. Nedley and Capt. JB Bradshaw. Aloha 'oe John D'Nobriga, Aunty Rubi, Uncle Jim, and though I never got to know him, my half-brother Johnde Flemming-D'Nobriga.
I didn't know my biological father before I was in my forties. I didn't get to spend much time with him after I found him, but he seemed a vividly colorful person with a wildly adventurous and eventful past. He sure knew how to tell a great story. I very strongly felt that I was part of him and he was a part of me. He looked uncannily as if he were my older brother. I miss him often.
I've come to view the movement and flow of my life as being incredibly akin to a river - all eddies, turbulences, swirling vortices, and whirlpools undulating at differing speeds and directions - yet all flowing at one seemingly consistent, smooth rate when viewed from a removed distance.
Some aspects of my life seem to happen at a nearly unbearably slow pace. Some parts of it never arrive. Other events pass by so quickly that they often overtake my consciousness like dreams - when they've come and gone, I'm usually left wondering if they ever actually happened at all.
Some of the fondest of memories all too often become ethereal and dreamlike; all fog and mist in the moonlight -- ghosts shouting from yesterday's breeze.
Some of the worst pains remain raw dull, aching, and dreadfully, darkly tugging at one's heart as unrelentingly and searingly as the day they were born.
Into the future, I wandered carrying a quarrelsome mix of fond memories, soul-wrenching pains, and newly sprung hopes along with me like a clutch of favorite songs on a playlist. Onward to the Rockies until a trop rock music event known as the Six Strings Songwriter Festival dragged us back down to New Orleans. As indescribably beautiful and transformative as the Rockies - and the various mountain village towns that inhabit them - are, the highlight was in having gotten to spend some indelibly memorable times with my treasured longtime friend Chuck and his soul partner Pam on their houseboat at the Northshore Marina in Pueblo.
The Six String Songwriter's event in New Orleans was good fun too, thanks mostly to "Sunny Jim" White and Jerry Diaz.
There was a highly rejuvenating and emotionally-charged road trip mini-tour to Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico to play a Parrothead party hosted by fellow trop-rocker Brian Fields and his wife, Michelle. The radio stations were of such quality as to be excitingly inspirational and the landscape resplendent with mountains, desert, and iconic epic Southwestern scenes at every turn in the road was downright transformative.
On the way south my raven-haired, rather stunning blue-eyed companion and I stopped in at the Buckhorn and had the "Seventh Best Burger in America" as rated by American celebrity chef, restaurateur, and reality television personality Bobby Flay, and provided by owner Bobby Olguin. I have no idea what the six other burgers on the way to the top of that esteemed list might taste like, but Olguin's green chile cheeseburger is indeed in a class all its own.
White Sands was another world. We could have spent a week there easily just soaking in the atmosphere and constantly changing vistas of sky, clouds, sun, shadows, and light working their visual splendors with the vast glistening seas of stunningly snow-white gypsum sands.
Staggering out of a 25-year-stretch spent in Norway like some punch-drunk tropical Viking, I careened crashing first - as all genuinely heroic shipwrecks of humanity have done since the dawn of the New World - into Key West. Set in the sleepy "little drinking town with a fishing problem" Mexican Gulf Coast haven Punta Gorda became my temporary base camp of sorts. Though I hadn't intended it to be such a brief residence, I plied the many, and various tiki bars of the area 'til the winds left my sails a mere year or so later. That sure didn't take long. As I mentioned earlier, many of my best friends from the area died off, and I somehow became masterful at the art of thoroughly pissing people off for no good reason -- all without effort or intention.
Great old friends and newly acquired ones died too quickly, unceremoniously, and from wholly avoidable causes. Beloved family members followed soon after. Smooth sailing Capt. Nedley and Capt. JB Bradshaw. Aloha 'oe John D'Nobriga, Aunty Rubi, Uncle Jim, and though I never got to know him, my half-brother Johnde Flemming-D'Nobriga.
I didn't know my biological father before I was in my forties. I didn't get to spend much time with him after I found him, but he seemed a vividly colorful person with a wildly adventurous and eventful past. He sure knew how to tell a great story. I very strongly felt that I was part of him and he was a part of me. He looked uncannily as if he were my older brother. I miss him often.
I've come to view the movement and flow of my life as being incredibly akin to a river - all eddies, turbulences, swirling vortices, and whirlpools undulating at differing speeds and directions - yet all flowing at one seemingly consistent, smooth rate when viewed from a removed distance.
Some aspects of my life seem to happen at a nearly unbearably slow pace. Some parts of it never arrive. Other events pass by so quickly that they often overtake my consciousness like dreams - when they've come and gone, I'm usually left wondering if they ever actually happened at all.
Some of the fondest of memories all too often become ethereal and dreamlike; all fog and mist in the moonlight -- ghosts shouting from yesterday's breeze.
Some of the worst pains remain raw dull, aching, and dreadfully, darkly tugging at one's heart as unrelentingly and searingly as the day they were born.
Into the future, I wandered carrying a quarrelsome mix of fond memories, soul-wrenching pains, and newly sprung hopes along with me like a clutch of favorite songs on a playlist. Onward to the Rockies until a trop rock music event known as the Six Strings Songwriter Festival dragged us back down to New Orleans. As indescribably beautiful and transformative as the Rockies - and the various mountain village towns that inhabit them - are, the highlight was in having gotten to spend some indelibly memorable times with my treasured longtime friend Chuck and his soul partner Pam on their houseboat at the Northshore Marina in Pueblo.
The Six String Songwriter's event in New Orleans was good fun too, thanks mostly to "Sunny Jim" White and Jerry Diaz.
There was a highly rejuvenating and emotionally-charged road trip mini-tour to Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico to play a Parrothead party hosted by fellow trop-rocker Brian Fields and his wife, Michelle. The radio stations were of such quality as to be excitingly inspirational and the landscape resplendent with mountains, desert, and iconic epic Southwestern scenes at every turn in the road was downright transformative.
On the way south my raven-haired, rather stunning blue-eyed companion and I stopped in at the Buckhorn and had the "Seventh Best Burger in America" as rated by American celebrity chef, restaurateur, and reality television personality Bobby Flay, and provided by owner Bobby Olguin. I have no idea what the six other burgers on the way to the top of that esteemed list might taste like, but Olguin's green chile cheeseburger is indeed in a class all its own.
White Sands was another world. We could have spent a week there easily just soaking in the atmosphere and constantly changing vistas of sky, clouds, sun, shadows, and light working their visual splendors with the vast glistening seas of stunningly snow-white gypsum sands.
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