A porthole is a boat, a boat a ship of life. Tossed upon the seas of life am I, watching from my porthole boat. A boat, a boat. A boataboat. Putt putt putt putt putt.
Many years have I sat in my house, looking out my regular window at my back yard kingdom, impressed with myself and my accomplishments. Why is the stick there, and not there? The answer lies before your eyes in all of his might and glory. It is I, the “master of disaster” (just a funny name I give myself, I don’t really like disasters), and this land is the land I control and step on wherever I want to step.
How can I forget this place? How can I forget the many friendships I have forged in this wild land? There is Abner, the pigeon who watches me from overhead. I like to think of him as my guiding spirit whether he knows it or not. He doesn’t know it. He’s very standoffish if you want the truth and sometimes I think he’s in his own world up there. Still, he is my friend. Abner, come down from there and smell my coffee one day.
There is Beauregard, the blue jay, my ally in the Ant Wars of 2014. There was a while last year when ants were everywhere. All over the deck, in my dirt bed, everywhere. Yes I can stomp them with my pointed nails and lap them with garrulous tongue in defiance of their minute stings, but is this a war of me against the world? I think not. It’s a war of me against the ants and also Beauregard swooping down once in a while to eat an ant as well. Beauregard, my personal air force, the blue dash of fury, blue as the skies, joining me in my quest to find out if ants are good to eat, or more like when you try to eat a plastic bottle of Elmer’s Glue, which is to say it starts out tasting good but later you regret the whole episode. I like to think that my main man Beauregard winked at me as he pecked at the marauding insects, though I don’t know if birds can truly wink. I remember him well if I feel like it.
And now? I have moved. Yes I have. Out of the house and into the frying pan as they say, but in this case the frying pan is a new house. I packed my bag of imagination and hi-dee-ho, I went. We are moving up in the world they tell me. Me? I’m just along for the ride. My “boat” is a car to a new house, and my “captain” is a dragonfly who tried to hang onto the antenna the whole ride.
Off with you, fly! Dragon or not.
Now, I look out my new window and I see new things. I look out my window and I see a new yard, and new trees, and yes, new enemies—mark my words, centipedes, your reckoning is nigh! I look out my window and I see the same sun, in a new way. I look out my porthole on this traveling ship of destiny and at the crest of every wave I spot a horizon of possibility, and steaming platters of scrapple.
I see the same world through a new frame. I see a future. But I do not see my old friends. And no new frame can bring them home again.
I brought an old rubber hose to chew when I was in the car.
[Image by the canine Jim Cooke]