Starboard Port

I Love Passport

Jessie — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:48:29 +0000

I Like Big Boats.

Jessie — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 05:23:38 +0000

Oh hello. You’ve caught me here exploring this Seattle wharf on a fish shipping adventure.

Ain’t she a beaut?

Starving. Hysterical. Naked.

Jessie — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 02:55:11 +0000

Today I knew I had to write.
I tried my new method of choosing a picture at random from my travels
and writing that story in a couple hundred words, but I realized I had
forgotten how to even start. My heart broke a little and two snotty
little tears fell out. I had so neglected my craft that I didn’t know
how to approach it anymore.
So I turned to the Internet. I searched around on some award-winning
travel writing sites. I read nothing that inspired me.
I decided, if nothing else, I had my shitty journal writing scraps of
observations and emotions usually written on a two-beer-empty-stomach
burst of sentimentality while traveling. I checked for it in two bookcases with
no luck. Finally I found my the notebook in a piled-up box in my closet,
tucked in next to a sweet little mirror bordered in Guatemalan
embroidery – a gift from a good friend who spent Peace Corp time
there.
I felt something twinge. Some rusty, neglected cog in a creative motor
that seizes up during the long right-brained season of fisheries.
But I saw that journal with its silver letters embossed on the black
cover.

Mainard said she bought it for me for two reasons:
1. I’m a writer, and writers need something to write in.
2. Something about the Ginsberg quote on the front caught her eye and
reminded her of me.

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.
Starving. Hysterical. Naked.”
She wrote an explanation in the front cover – “…maybe because you
like to live your life with passion and intensity…”
And more movement from that rust-seized cog of creativity.
A feeling of relief in my chest.
A sense of return to self and skill and left brain.
I flipped to pages with scribbles from the same trip as the picture I
wanted to write about originally. I read my words in the pages, and I
liked them. I felt inspired.

{And hey – thanks again to Maire for the word holder and to T-Pain Handsome for encouraging me to write something…}

Fish in a box, fish in a van

Jessie — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 00:08:59 +0000

Greetings from a semi-sunny loading dock in Salinas, California.

San Francisco Dock Walk

Jessie — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 22:02:34 +0000

Wood dock, sunshine, fishing boats, diesel, secondhand smoke, fishy salty air, xtra tufs, cute fisher boys. I’ve never seen this side of you, San Francy, but it makes me love you even more.

Merry Christmas from Idaho

Jessie — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 17:20:48 +0000

There really is nothing like waking up to a thick blanket of snow on Christmas morning to instantly turn you into a giddy kid.

I Totally Have a Boner for the Washington Monument!

Jessie — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 02:01:11 +0000

I won’t tell you how I feel about the Capitol Building.

And greetings from Washington D.C. (in real time for once)!

Greetings From: A Shipyard in Belfast, Ireland

Jessie — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 20:02:46 +0000

We took a really good guided tour of Belfast city on a double-decker bus starting downtown. We first stopped by the Titanic Quarter which, at that time, they were still developing with plans to capitalize on Belfast port being the building site of the doomed behemoth. A couple of rusty cranes used in Titanic creation still stand. As our very charming Irish tour guide explained to us (in his seeexxxxyyy accent) – the Irish may have built it, but there was an Englishman driving. Heh.

Originally written about here (before the days of Instagram):

Of ancient pubs and hooligans…

Greetings From: Tombstone, Arizona

Jessie — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 04:55:49 +0000

Home of cowboy actors and Birdman Patches. The American Southwest is a bizarre and beautiful place.

Greetings From: The Ruins at Tulum, Mexico

Jessie — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 09:43:42 +0000

There was one place at the ruins of Tulum where I couldn’t see other tourists. I could stand on the rocky bluff, overlooking a small, white-sand beach, and beyond that stretched bright and varied blues of the Carribean sea and sky.
An ancient Mayan watch tower stood out silvery-grey on the opposing overlook. Light ocean breezes helped cut the warm, wet air. A fat-ass iguana inched across a hot volcanic-looking boulder. With the hordes of tourists pushed out of my mind, I could imagine the history.
Tulum was a prime trade center, due to its location at the convergence of maritime and land routes. Ocean boats could make trips along the coasts, apparently from as far south as present-day Honduras and Nicaragua.
Cargo and shipping and trade and boats and ocean. 1200 A.D., 2012, 2200. We will continue to trade with one another, and that root in history and travel gives me the satisfaction I crave in my day job. Without this short moment of unobstructed view, however, I might have passed by in a swarm of tourists, nodding and admiring the beauty, but oblivious to my clear and specific connection to these remarkable ruins.