97. Straight to you

 

 

I travelled 16,618 km (103256 miles) to be with my wife. At least, that is the distance, as the crow flys, between Melbourne Australia and New Jersey. Of course, I made the trip five times before that final permanent one. Five times both ways; 166,180 km plus the final trip bringing the total to 182,798 km or 113,585.411 miles.

Any way you cut it, that’s a lot of travel hours; a lot of time spent jammed into undersized airplane seats listening to babies cry and people snore, a lot of time dashing through strange airports trying not to miss my connection, a lot of time being irradiated in body scanners and harangued by the TSA.

Add to that the heartbreaking farewells at the end of each of those five visits and the weeks of depression once I’d returned to Melbourne and the whole thing feels a little Homerespue; at the very least, it is an epic(ish) poem of devotion and unflagging determination.

Was it worth it? Was all the lost sleep, longing, anxiety, and sheer discomfort worth the final reward?

Absolutely.

Jersey girl and I recently passed the one year mark in our real life together. One year living under the same roof. One year living as a family. It has been challenging, rewarding, vexing, and, at times, downright confusing but mostly it has felt like home. We live well together. Our chemistry has survived close and prolonged proximity. If there was a honeymoon period, it is still very much in effect.

I wake up every day and thank the universe for this woman with whom I now share my world. She has shown me what true love and devotion really are.

And my new adopted country?

America, much to my surprise has become a strange fascination to me. I have felt myself falling in love with her too. Her seasons, her moods, her people, and her beating heart (New York) have captured me in ways and with an intensity, I never would have guessed could happen to me.

There is a feeling that anything is possible here, that you might discover who you truly are as this vast melting pot of ideas and cultures reflects your persona, your mask, back at you. America will not let you hide from your true self. She demands that you simply be – you.

Challenge accepted.

 

 

If you sleep always like this

 

 

This town where Jersey girl and I currently live is tiny, really tiny. It is more properly a village than a town. It was officially established as a turnpike village around 1806, however, tucked away in an almost forgotten corner is the original cemetery dating back to the mid 1700’s.

I’ve visited the spot once before back in the Summer but it was so overgrown with bushes and Ivy that it was hard to read the inscriptions on a lot of the stones. I remember thinking that this was a cemetery that kept its secrets well.

As I mentioned in the last post, my son has been visiting with us from Melbourne and a few days ago he and I went back to the small cemetery to take some photographs. Upon arrival, we discovered that the place had been considerably cleared since the Summer.

It was much easier to gain access to the stones and we quickly discovered something quite amazing. This tiny place holds the remains of not one but five soldiers of the Revolutionary War.

This was a great surprise to me. Even today the village population is far less than two thousand. At the time of the Revolution, this wasn’t even a settlement, just a collection of scattered farms. And yet, somehow, we have five graves of men who fought in (and survived) the great war for independence.

 

We even have a soldier born on the 4th of July.

 

 

Words and images are my own.

 

©2018

The Cascades

 

 

My son is currently visiting us from Melbourne and we’ve really been enjoying showing him around the county (it’s actually his third time here but there’s always more to see). He really seems to love the place (not to mention our proximity to both NYC and Philly).

Yesterday, he and I took a hike along the Columbia trail in High Bridge. I’d never done the walk in winter and was amazed by how different it all looked.

Several times along the way we came across little patches of wonder. I don’t think I ever realised before how beautiful mere frozen water could be.

 

 

The ice was very thick.

 

 

Words and images are my own.

 

©2018

 

 

 

 

 

We are alive

 

 

April Coda

 

Set it up

Strip it down

Watch the whizz-bangs Charlie

No time to sniff the clover

Fritz is on his merry way

 

Passchendaele to Steenvoorde

On down to Longuenesse

Somethin’s up but no one’s talkin’

Now it’s Rosieres and

Me boots are knackered

 

Strip it down

Set it up

Forgot me gasmask on the train

Sarge’ll have me taters

If the alarm goes in the line

 

From Nesle on to Béthencourt

Dug in by the rank canal

There’s bluebells by the water

Reminding me of home

What I’d give to see ’em all again

 

Load ‘er up

Swing her round

Targets on the slope

And five hundred rounds a minute

Ain’t hardly enough to count

 

Pullin’ out for Hallu now

Then back again to Rosieres

Sixty new belt boxes

Have got me feelin’ windy

Wish I never lost that flamin’ mask

 

Line us up

Strip us down

Too few to make four Companies

A into C and B into D and

Then there were just two.

 

From  Rouvrel to Castel

Dug in on the hillside

Sending lead over the valley ’til

A dreadful whistle plants

Wet red blooms in our pit

 

Lay me down

Strip my boots

They’re useless to me now

Drop me in a hole in Conty

They’ll remember me eventually.

 

 

For John Harry.

 

 

©2018

 

 

 

 

 

History never repeats

 

 

Regular readers may have noticed I’ve been a little absent on here the past little while. It’s not that I’ve run out of things to say so much as the problem of finding the time. I’ve got several projects on the boil at present all of which have necessitated this blog taking a bit of a back seat.

One project is a graphic novel I’m attempting to write and draw. This is a huge undertaking for me and has required my getting much better at programs like Photoshop. It’s quite a learning curve but I’m getting there slowly.

The other is one I now feel ready to share with anyone who may be interested. I have been researching the life of my Great Grandfather who died, 100 years ago this coming April, in the Great War.

Private John Harry Pate was a member of the Machine Gun Corps and tragically lost his life in the last year of the war. Very little has been known about him among my family and so the information I’ve been able to uncover has been a very valuable insight into who he was.

I’ve been at this off and on since 2004 and now feel I have amassed enough information to write a story of his life (as far as we can know it) and my personal journey through the archives, documents, and forums where the breadcrumbs of his story lay.

Yesterday, I created a blog dedicated to all this and have made several posts to give an idea of how it will all be unfolding.

https://johnharrypate.wordpress.com/

If you have an interest in history or genealogy, perhaps you’ll give it a little of your time. If you’re so inclined, I suggest you start with the ‘About’ page for a little context.

 

Oh happy day

 

In case you were wondering what Jersey girl and I have been up to of late…

 

 

Images from a variety of photographers and devices.

Be my wife

 

And that’s how that went.

These images and memories are ours, though, most were taken by ghost.chai.

To her door

 

 

Hercules

 

I just keep taking

Tiny little steps

Completing each part

Of this herculean labor

One task at a time

And now it is so much smaller

Less intimidating

More comprehensible

Than it was at the beginning

Soon I will take that final step

And it will carry me

All the way

To America

All the way

To her her door.

 

 

 

©2017

 

 

Winter in America

 

My son has been in Sri Lanka for the past four weeks with his University course. He’s been with a group of young researchers studying the interactions between local farmers and the elephant population. They are gathering data that will hopefully lead to a solution to the often dangerous situations that arise when these two groups mix.

Photographer here was one of my son’s fellow students.

He arrives home today and then in just three weeks, flies to the States to do some very similar work in a very different environment (and under vastly different weather conditions). In Massachusetts, he will be helping to monitor the reintroduction of the timber wolf to the North Eastern States.

I don’t think he has any idea what he’s in for. He has experienced a European winter on a visit to Italy but I doubt it was anything like this winter is shaping up to be. And he’ll be there at the coldest point of the season. I don’t mind admitting it makes me more than a little nervous.

It’s going to be quite a shock to his system to come out of the tropics and go straight into the polar vortex.

The good part of all this is that when he’s finished with his obligations he has two weeks of free time before heading back to Melbourne. This is great news for me as it coincides with my relocation to New Jersey. He won’t be spending the entire two weeks with us (he has plans to meet up with his housemate and childhood friend who will also be there at that time) but he’ll get to meet Jersey girl and the kids and I’ll get to show him around some of my favourite places.

I’ll take him into New York which I’ve never seen in the winter (I’m assured by Jersey girl that it is a frigid place not unlike the movie The Day After Tomorrow). I really want to see Central Park under snow.

It will be fantastic to have him there after all this time. It will be the first opportunity we’ve ever had to all be together as a family and that’s pretty exciting by anyone’s standard.

Words and images are my own except where otherwise stated.

©2016

85. You are everything

 

 

I’ve been remembering some things more vividly lately, little gems, exquisite moments. That long kiss in the ancient antiquities hall at the Metropolitan, holding you and talking in whispers on the couch as that first visit was coming to a close, pulling you into the backseat of your car at Philly Airport minutes after reuniting.

There are a thousand precious moments such as these. So many that they can blur together into a kind of amorphous sea of happiness. But, quite frequently, a perfect crystal of memory rises up and presents itself for my delectation.

Often these can be intimate, too personal to write about in any meaningful way. Some, however, are more innocent, though, no less potent for that. I think often of the day we wandered the back streets of Frenchtown just looking at houses and imagining a life shared under the roofs of several places that caught our eye and set us dreaming.

We did the same a year or so later in Bethlehem PA, a gorgeous place (in parts at least) that neither of us had trouble imagining as a future home. Yes, our dreams can be very domestic, even white bread; so what? You take your pleasure where you can find it in this increasingly insane world.

Our many drives along the Delaware River are another highlight for me. The countryside down through there is so gorgeous and the little towns and villages so picturesque that almost every mile is burned into my memory.

Our day with the kids on South Street in Philly, our OMG moment on South Street in Freehold, Ben’s Delicatessen in New York, Strolling the boardwalk at Asbury Park (and the Beach bar, oh, the Beach bar); so many memories that rise and recede, only to rise again.

All of this you have gifted me my beautiful Jersey girl; a life, a sense of place in an ocean of meaninglessness. And so I want to take this opportunity to thank you, to let you know how much you have given and how much it all means to me. I have no idea where the rest of this journey leads; I only know you are the only soul in the world I want to share it with.

 

Words and images are my own.

©2016