Fort Messages 4

Three more messages in the tin box at the fort. One from a woman celebrating her 52^nd birthday with her partner and two dogs; another a longish quote from Gilda Radner’s (!) memoir; another a burst of joy about her fort building friend.

The Gilda Radner quote suggested people should enjoy the “delicious ambiguity of life.”

Amen to that. Hear that sound? That’s me licking my lips tasting it now.

Oh yes, someone also left behind a little bud of cannabis. I smelled it, laughed, and left the dankness behind.

I sat on the driftlog and opened the sack lunch my mother made me. My mother is still making me sack lunches and that’s probably a good reason, in reality, in metaphor, why and how I’ve survived the past two years.

The scene around me: a woman collecting rocks in a pail, a lone surfer, wind blowing out the waves, a green ocean, a woman running wild with her dogs, a man wandering around with his dog, multiple hues of blue in the sky, two fishing boats on the horizon, a couple vaping and making out in a sedan.

I tried to release my rage against a factotum who is trying to kill my spirit. I sensed adding to this fort would help. I was right. No factotum can kill the spirit of a man who had built 200 driftwood forts, in reality, in metaphor, to survive the past two years.

My mind drifted to someone from well over a decade ago, and the black and white photograph I took of her with an ancient film camera, a perfect shot of her doing a jig on the beach, silhouetted, that said everything perfect about her and us, at the exact moment in time.

We never built a fort together. We never will.

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