Crisp Night of the Full Moon

It has been almost two weeks since my last entry. I have continued my audio logs. The march of fall progresses as now we have the first frosts, red maple trees, and can see our breath. Not a whole lot of news from Shel. She is still looking for a place in our "big" city and says she will have her stuff out around November 1. I have missed her greatly but my girl is lost in her own fantasies-some about how truly awful I am and others about how truly wonderful she is.

I am still planning on leaving the island at some point. The details are a bit difficult as there is really no way to select a home on the other end-I really need to go there and look around. This will mean some time in a motel. I just hope I do really get some time with the kids or I might just as well stay put here.

At least the Canadian dollar has crashed along with the US stock market. This adds a few dollars to my pension on this end-actually discounting my rent by about 40% should the loonie stay down until the end of the month.

I spent a lot of time with my lady friend Mary this weekend. It is nice to be pampered by a lady again. She is a good cook and very spiritual and feminine. We went up to North Cape today to see the wind farm. She, born and raised on the island, had never been there. Its 60 miles from Summerside.

She has never been in a plane. She has been off island twice in 50 years. The tragedy of her island life-especially her childhood and marriage is a horror. But it is all too common a tale when individual lives here in the Maritimes are examined. There is pain and human suffering beside the red cliffs and pastoral beauty of the planted fields.

I really am not sure what will come of it. All I know is this chapter closes. Shel fades to a tragic memory, among the joyous glimpses of our storybook romance and marriage. The travels. The foods. The love-making. Her beauty. Washed away in a sea of red clay tears on a foreign beach-sunk deep into the red mud of the old clay roads.

Mary to give me solace in her maturity and simplicity. Mary to be hurt when I leave the island as she and a few others are quite in love with me. The enigmatic Yankee. A romantic warrior tossed on a exile shore.

Crazy Germaine is back. I have been gone all weekend. Jerry let him in. Its OK-but he can't stay here forever without paying rent. He rather takes over the living room and smokes in there. His English is so bad its hard to communicate. Hopefully he will make some fertilizer, sell it, and go back to the Magdalen Islands. Somehow I doubt it will all be that easy.

I had invited Shel over Sunday as I had some oysters and quahogs left over that Manny Gallant gave me. I never heard anything and continue to get cold, unfriendly mails. She claims to be coming over to organize this week. I am not sure why. So I asked her to give me a little warning. There is no way that she doesn't miss her life. She thinks she has improved, reinvented herself. She is now just another young girl with nothing, working a minimum wage job, uneducated, with a hollow future. It is a far cry from Arizona palm trees and a pool , no responsibility and no cares.

She will miss that as the years swiftly pass. I can reinvent all that rather easily. But there will be no Shel. Actually now I am unsure that we will remain the promised friends we agreed to be. It is really tough to lose a loved one. Death is an eye opening. I still miss my dad after 36 years. My mother, my rock and guide gone now just over 4 years. My beloved wife, gone on lies and tragedy now almost 5 years. But my best friend-alive and unrepentant, still breathes an easy breath while the tears of our souls rain on the lost hollows of the broken heart.

But I will still make the effort. I will email her with news of the travels. She shall be a central character in the novel. I hope she gives me an address so I can send her magnets and postcards. Perhaps she doesn't care. Never really did. Now I know why Germany lost a war they should have won. No quarter. No forgiveness. The savagery of the Hun. Blue eyes flashing, Blond curling. Blood flowing. Defeated.