Tuesday (A blog about Maddie, the best from her story)

I've been doing this a little while now guys. By 'this' I mean the traveling and the working, and th- well, you know… that sort of stuff you probably know me for. But sometimes it gets a little heavy. Sometimes my drive to go out and adventures gets a little bit worn down. I get a little bit tired of the go go go and start feeling like maybe, just maybe, I should try to stay stay stay. But I know deep down that'd never do it for me. I'd get bored in how long? A week? A month? Maybe I could even make it 2 or 3 months, but at the end of that month or those months I would look back at the fruitless days I'd just spent stationary and throw a little pity party for myself. I'd look at a month spent in San Antonio and say 'I could have gone here instead' or 'I could have gone there instead' and I'd feel like I'd just wasted a good portion of my life (how I now feel about going to college). Still, sometimes it gets lonely out there and the wanderlust isn't as strong as it used to be. Sometimes I need some motivation, not the old kind where I could Google 'cool places to see' or something just as silly, but something fresh, from a new angle. Sometimes I just need something to ignite me from within, a bellow for my fires, or a catalyst that connects with my specific chemistry. And sometimes, just sometimes, that tinder, that bellow, and that catalyst is a girl. An unassuming and quirky young girl. One that sits next to me in the Denver airport. A brilliant girl, by the name of Maddie.

I am not in the mood to write facts tonight, that is, I do not wish to be taking minutes on a moment in my life. Not to say that I haven't been attempting just this outside of the blog, wanting so badly to record these three days of my life accurately, precisely, and in a way that could make the reader feel, just maybe, 1/100th of the jolt I felt in such a short time. But that complete story is a long way off from being finished, and it is not quite of the blog style. If I had to pin a tail on it at all I would have to say 'short story' is the genre it belongs to. I'm still writing the short story version and have already attempted this same story you're about to read in a blog but, realizing that the story was merely 1/3 done when I wrote that post, I have reconsidered what I already posted in favor of this one, Tuesday (A blog about Maddie, the best from her story). Let me warn you in advance, this one is meant to be a whirlwind. Not a mistruth mind you, just because I said I didn’t want to write facts tonight doesn't mean that these things aren't the truth of how I feel about the whole situation, but I can hardly call my feelings fact when nobody other than myself will ever know them to be true. To me they are true, but to you they are merely a story. But the truth of it is, is that it was a whirlwind, if not a tempest in the flesh, and, I, caught completely off guard, was catapulted from my melancholy by such destiny that I was forced to reconcile with my passions. These events, of which I am about to relay to you, were the firing command of just such a force and, I must stress, that this is not a love story. Well, in a way, if you knew me well enough, or, possibly, if you were just a very insightful person, you could say it is a love story. But I consider that to be semantics and not of importance.

I'm going to go ahead and tell y'all I don't really know how to do this, as you can probably tell by how long I've been stalling with this introduction. I've been inspired before, but nothing quite at this magnitude. Not that it was a grand thing, it was quite an ordinary thing actually, but I just wasn't expecting it. I want to describe it all and how it went down so on point, and, as I previously mentioned, I am attempting to do just that in a short story that is not this blog. So, actually, what I believe I will do, I believe I'll go ahead and divide the rest of this post into thirds. Day one, day two, and day three. The airport, Seattle, and Bellingham. Each day will touch, respectively, on one of the three times me and Maddie saw each other. Does that sound agreeable? Good, because that's the best way I can think of to write it.

 I guess I should stop dilly dallying now, no matter how long I write this introduction it won't give me enough time to collect my thoughts. I suppose the best thing is to do is just start, no matter how intimidating the subject matter is to me. So let me just get on with it and cut the gibber jabber. Without further adieu, Maddie.

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Day 1: The Airport

So it goes, I'm in yet another airport, and I'm not in the best of moods because holy hell am I getting tired of airports. I mean, it's awesome that I get to travel all the time, seriously awesome, especially when work paid for this flight, but airports are just so incredibly dull. It's like they sat someone down and told them to build the least interesting place in the world with nothing comfortable to sit on and even less to do. So I don't really like the airport part of traveling. I don't go to an airport because I want to be in an airport, I go in order to get somewhere else. An airport, it's just a middle man, the means to an end, it’s never my real destination. I want to be in Seattle yeah, but I hate having to go through the airport shenanigans to get there. Apart from the docks that float planes pull up next to I never want to be in an airport.

But that's how it is as I get off the plane for my layover in Denver. I'm back in another airport for just over 2 hours. 2 hours! You know what I could do in two hours? Nothing, because I'm in an airport. I can't even buy a cup of coffee because I spent the last of my money, plus $20 I borrowed from my mom, on having a good time my last night in San Antonio. Even if I did have some money I certainly wouldn't squander it away on the monopolies that are airport snack shops where it'll cost you a gold nugget and a rough gemstone to get some water. The only money I have left is a fiver and a one dollar bill that a friend of mine artfully folded into the shape of a t-shirt before making me promise that I would only use this dollar on a stripper (because, ironically, I would be giving her clothing to take clothes off, and you're allowed to do anything for the sake of good irony).

I make my way towards the gate for my final leg of the day, the flight to Seattle. It's only a near half mile walk to get to the farthest area possible from my arrival gate, because when do you ever arrive at gate 35c and your next flight is at 36c? Never, it's always two trams, 4 sets of stairs, and then 12 moving sidewalks to get all the way to gate 99z where it always seems my next flight awaits. I find hardly anyone waiting there for the Seattle flight. Probably because it's still two hours from take off. Actually, no probably about it, that's definitely why there was no one there. I quickly locate an empty stretch of seats where I can try to settle down for Seattle. Why don't they just put some comfortable chairs in these places instead of these ridiculous pieces of leather stretched between two metal bars? Who thought this was a good idea? Probably an economist. No matter how much I flip, flop, roll, stretch, and or slouch I just cannot find a comfortable position in such a distasteful piece of furniture as an airport chair (I'm continuing on my sour mood here). And I'm giving a damn good effort at making myself comfortable too, but it just ain't paying out. I decide to switch over to a more normal person position, sitting straight up instead of sprawled along half a bench like a homeless man downtown after a typical nights splendor. As good as invisible the whole time to the stressed, half panicked passengers starting to mill about the kiosk where flight attendants tend to all the crazy and uptight with a fake smile and a sarcastic 'we are doing everything we can for you honey'. But hey, it keeps the masses at bay. I couldn't imagine having to deal with people in an airport as customers. As many times as I have told someone about how I travel and adventure, and they've asked me 'hey, have you considered being a flight attendant so you can fly for free?', I can still say fuck no twice as many.

With boredom digging his cold, dingy nails into me I begin eyeing the newspaper that some careless passenger has left strewn across the pleather chair next to me, that's how desperate the situation was becoming: I was so bored I was considering reading a paper. If that isn't desperate I don't know what is. Granted, I probably wouldn't have gone any further than the funnies, or, sometimes, I like to look at the dogs for sale in the classifieds. Before I have to live with myself for making such a desperate throw as that someone sits down in the seat on the other side of it. I'm not thinking anything as I look up to assess whoever it is. I don't have time to wonder if it's some middle aged woman who wants to talk my ear off, or some well off girl looking to pass 20 minutes with a bearded stranger (like the one I met on the San Antonio leg of this journey a few hours ago), but, honestly, anything is welcome in order to kill the last hour looming ahead of me. Really, whoever it is, it has to be a girl. For some reason a dude by himself won't sit near another dude by himself, unless it's extremely necessary of course. Then, and only then, could it be acceptable, like if it was the last seat in the entire airport. And I don't think that extremely necessary situation had arisen yet. So I look up at 'em. I look up at her, because it is a her, and it is, you guessed it, Maddie. Sitting just a seat or two over from me.

She's got two flouncy cowboy, or should I say cowgirl, boots on over a pair of ostentatious leggings. I mean they were loud, yeah, but some people can pull that sort of thing off. She is certainly one of those people. A plain shirt under a denim jacket. Her hair, a unique assortment of oranges and blondish colours strangely complimented by out of place trucker hat and large glasses. It's the kind of hair that does anything she wants it to. If she pushes it out of her eyes it stays out of her eyes, if she brushes it to the side it stays to the side, and if she runs her fingers through it front to back then it'll stick up at whatever odd path her hand unconsciously chooses to stray. The whole package was something of an oddment. I'd even go as far as to say I have never, never in all my life, seen a girl such as this. It doesn't mean she's better or worse than all the other girls in the world, just different, just something I hadn't encountered before, a rare and exotic type. And, I have to say, that is a big statement coming from me. If you know anything about me you know that I meet people. I meet a lot of people. I meet a lot of all sorts of people from all sorts of places doing all sorts of things. That's a lot of sorts going on and for me, and to meet a sort that I have never encountered before (not to say other people are all the same, but they, for the most part, fit into categories), it's a little bit exciting at the very least. It's like stumbling upon a mythical creature you didn't expect to find. Like a siren, or a jackalope. You know, just discovering something magical. Something you always wanted to exist, but you knew that it didn't, and now you know that it does. Foundation cracking.

I met Maddie probably around 8 pm. By 9 we were sitting next to each other on the flight from Denver to Seattle. At 10 we united together under the banshee wails of a screaming baby being cooed at directly behind us. Then, with the loss of an hour, and some sleep, by midnight, a mere four hours after becoming acquainted, being introduced to her mother and shaking hands with her father before loading up into their SUV with them. Okay, maybe that was a little misleading. I wasn't an adorable little fuzzy creature they wanted to take home with them for the night, but I was an adorable little fuzzy creature they didn't mind dropping off at his friends house on their way home.

In the Denver airport Maddie had discovered that my friends house, whom I was staying with that night in Seattle, was maybe 5 or 10 minutes down the road from where her family lives. After a slight hesitation I tentatively asked her if she could give me a ride there. I say tentatively because I didn't want to startle off this newfound pixie, but she nonchalantly called up her dad Damien and got the all clear. I find that incredible, how you can meet someone in an airport, and she doesn't know you from Adam, but she turns out to be one of the rare and completely open minded people that are out there in the raw.

Maddie and I on the plane

What I learned about Maddie that night was that she is passionately dizzying. A rowdy spunk, but also blessedly sublime. It's hard to peg her down into one category because it always, to me, seemed like she was existing in two opposing realms. One foot dipping into yin,  with the other planted in yang, and doing a jitterbug between the two. She is the type of girl who plants a seed of doubt in my mind, but no, it's not a bad thing, it's a beautiful thing. It's a fanfuckingtastic thing because sometimes I need a kick in the ass to get me going and show me there still are things out there that I never expected to find. Y'all saw how I was describing the airport just there, all morose. Like my ship had just sunk and my dog was run over. What's the point in doing things I know I can do? I need some challenge, I need some doubt about the outcome, and that's what she was to me at that moment. I wasn't looking to find someone in that airport, wasn't looking for a ride or a place to stay, she even talked to me first! She's the type of girl I spend a little time with in a controlled environment, like an airport, and seeing what she's like there I wonder if I could keep up with her on the outside should she choose to crank it to 11. She's the type of girl who makes me want to be more than I've ever been before and I've been some stuff in my day. Makes me want to travel and see and love and just experience all the most wonderful things the world has to offer. Needless to say, that night, she struck me like a meteor with her peachy demeanor.

I waved goodbye that night more than a little bemused by the extraordinarily quirky girl I'd met by complete chance still reverberating from the pleasant vibrations she'd been putting off throughout the evening and into the now early AM. I turned my back on her and her awesome parents believing I wouldn't see her again, even though we'd exchanged numbers. There was no way we would, especially since I'd be off to work in less than 12 hours.

But why fight gravity?

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Day 2: Seattle

Well, as gravity has it, there was a landslide and Amtrak wasn't running when it was time for me to skip town. Meaning, there was really no way, other than some really complicated and time consuming buses, for me to get up to Mt. Vernon where the boat I work on was awaiting my arrival. Lucky me, my captain was headed to Seattle the next day anyways for some parts and gave me the option me to hold tight in the city. Easy enough.

I'm in Seattle another night it looks like, Maddie is in Seattle too, and my friend I'm staying with doesn't get off until later that night. Why wouldn't I at least see what she's up to for the night? I mean that's why people exchange numbers right…?

I thought texting her would be an Apollo 13 mission, but there I ended up, walking down a stony beach, the cold air of early spring blowing my beard around (best feeling ever), with Maddie beside me, after she'd already taken me on a string of other adventures through her old stomping grounds in Seattle greenbelts and friends basements, watching the sun sink down. We'd spent the day just meshing, not like puzzle pieces fitting, but more like a front of cold air meeting a bubble of warm air and the resulting cyclone. It was a completely unexpected and infectious night. Nothing I'd planned for, nothing I'd expected in the least, simply a girl I'd only met less than 24 hours previously and some low key adventures.

Adventure is a seductive mistress though, even these small ones. Those of us that feel a quickening of the pulse at the sound of her whispering in our ears, whispering in our hearts, have incredible trouble resisting her sparking embrace, never quite able to get away from the persistent siren song she sings.

Exploring some parks

I'm impressed. That's for damn sure. I'm more than impressed, Maddie has galvanized me. I haven't had such unplanned escapades since… since… well, since the first time I threw caution completely to the wind back in Greece 2012. Ever since that first time that I'd let loose of those societal expectations I'd learned to expect the unexpected in nearly everything I do. Nothing was a surprise to me because I knew surprises were coming and it's not often I get in a rut where I have an itinerary that isn't meant to be strayed from. That itinerary, for the purposes of this time period, was work in Alaska. There were hard and fast dates with out much room to vary, or so I thought. I'd let my guard down to the unexpected thinking I had a plan, but, through some twists of fate, I was brought back to a rogue rose sticking slyly out of the flower bed at one of the few moments I really wasn't expecting such a thing and, therefore, was flabbergasted by it. Somehow meeting Maddie has floored me with grandiose daydreams. Plans to tie a bouquet of rocks to that pity party I'd been planning and throw it into the sound. I'd started to smolder, no longer as passionate as I'd once been about all these things, ideas of an endgame coming dangerously close to my conscious thoughts, but she was a cool Westerly, in the right place at the right time, bellowing that special thing inside me that makes me never want to stop doing what I do. Maddie.

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Day 3: Bellingham

Alright, that was it, we'd had a good row at life in the two days we'd known each other. I left her, for the second time, expecting to not see her again (at least not any time soon). Nevertheless, my heart had been lifted and there was a skip in my step. Off to reunite with Amber, my captain, and Gordon, the dog aboard the boat, it was like coming home and hanging out with a sibling you haven't seen in half a year. Just like the good ol' times, all the inside jokes come out and it's more laughing than talking. I fell in love with boat life a long time ago and it was good to be home on the water again. Maddie had excited and me in a discernable way, but I had to put that on hold for now. I wouldn't be seeing her again, at least not before the season was over, so why bother myself over that? And as work began she slid to the back of my mind while her infectious spirit lingered. I didn't know it then, but, yet again, why fight gravity?

Look at me, talking like it was weeks or months since I'd seen her. It'd been like one day maaaybe (probably not even), since our romp in Seattle, when I realized the boat was going to be in Bellingham for a couple, or a few, days and I knew she was coming up here at some point during her spring break to make a delivery of wine for her father. So I texted her, just to see when she was headed Bellingham way. You know? Just in case. Maybe I could show her the boat or something. I expected texting her to turn out like the Hindenburg, surely she didn't want to come hang out with this dirty deckhand she, still, hardly knows. But she responded lightheartedly with a 'I was gonna come up whenever' and a 'I'd love to see the boat, I'll come up tomorrow' (or something to that effect).

She came up, and, as soon as I got leave for the night, I invited her over to check out the boat. I wouldn't call myself an expert on people, or interpreting their reactions for that matter, but it seemed like she really enjoyed it and was maybe even a bit impressed by it all. I remember her mentioning how homey the boat is, and of course it is. This is our home for, what seems like, most of the year. It was fun showing her the boat because I'd really only ever shown the boat to one other person (oddly enough it had happened earlier that very same day). One of my old college professors who keeps tabs on my travels turned out to be in Bellingham (he had stopped by for a short visit). It was fun to show off my home to her though.

With both of us hungry as hell, we headed off to find some food and ended up chilling at her friends house in Bellingham town, away from my oh so familiar docks. Ah, of course I could launch into a description of all we did and the fun I had with her, add in a few quotes sprinkled atop with the description of the third and final night I saw her before I (for real this time) left on the boat for Alaska, but I started a blog for the quick and sweet version of things and, for the most part, I think I've kept true to that standard. So let me try to push through this writers block o' mine and unstop the story bottled up inside me. Let me just launch into my last attempt to describe the gem that Maddie left me with:

Now I know that all this sounds like a romantic sappy infatuation with a girl I've only really hung out with thrice. But look, from basically the moment I'd met her, she'd been willing to give me a ride from the airport to where I was staying, she had no idea who I was at the time either. She'd taken time out of her spring break at home to hang out with this total stranger as if it were no big deal while generously showing me a really fun time around Seattle. AND she'd let me tag along with her adventures in Bellingham which, I thought, was another really great time. I was impressed with her, I can't say that enough. If not for those things, then for her bold sense of fashion. In the way she holds herself like a ripe fruit, pitched to fall at any moment, hanging on to that moment of suspense right before the drop, and you don't know if it'll be now, or in an hour, or in a day. She just looks like… like… she looks like organized chaos. A little paradox wrapped up in a girl. And that little paradox somehow, someway, sparked me into a fervor about the things that I am doing.

She's like a burning cold. Intense and warm. Wait! That's it! It's like when I was trolling (a type of fishing up here in Alaska) and it's fucking colder than shit out. My hands hurt from the numbness, I'm soaked down to my bones, and my face is frozen underneath an ugly orange rubber hood and then, like a ruby in the rough, there's a red jellyfish that has mistakenly collided with the fishing line being brought aboard. The kind of jellyfish that burns where it touches you, and I'm so cold and miserable that it feels good to have that burn on a cheek or wrist, or whatever piece of skin has been left exposed to the lashing elements. All of a sudden I feel alive again, all of a sudden there's a drive again, all of a sudden I want whatever it is I've been searching for again. That's what she was to me when I met her, she was the catalyst my sense of adventure had been craving and I can't begin to explain why or how, because something about her just resounded at the perfect pitch somewhere deep down in my gut. All I can do is describe her. And she is the scent of jasmine with a citrus accent and a beet pollen base note (yes, that is a reference), an off the cuff flare in ebony leggings, a poem that's been written in the snow.

Of course I can say all these fanciful words using a pretty, but uneducated, vocabulary. My feeble attempts to try and convey the essence of what Maddie meant to me, and, on a certain level, I'm sure it helps, but the most important thing about her surging nature? As a friend of mine once told another friend of mine who then wrote that thing about me: Maddie, thanks for the spark, I'm ready for the flame.

You've inspired me whether it was your intention or not, I want to be me again. Thank you.

Be happy!

Beacon