He picked us up from the mayor’s house. We dropped off Brie at her place up Creek Street.

Let’s call him “The Philosopher.”

We go see the Chickens he is petsitting. He picks one up so I can pet it. That’s a little too much nature for me but the Chicken is surprisingly soft. Maybe I should be a vegetarian again. I have poultry compunction because that Chicken was so soft..

So, We go back to his place and  he has a bottle of wine. He says he is going to cook and offers for me to partake but I decline, explaining I have just eaten at the Mayor’s house. (He is the former mayor, actually). But I like saying it “I have just eaten at the Mayor’s House, I must decline.”

I like his apartment- he gives me a head’s up that there are two seating options- stool and bed. I don’t expect different because the seating options in my life are the same. But. I appreciate the head’s up, it seems appropriate. Especially since this is one of the only times we’ve hung out alone.

After coming into his apartment (everyone removes shoes here because rainforest) I am compelled to a wall of notes above a standing desk. I say something about “A Beautiful Mind”- see because I can actually be charming when the moment strikes. He lights a candle so I can see the writing better.. Candles heighten things, you know.

So he brings me a glass/cup of wine and we cheers. I turn back to the writing. He explains it to me, tells me more about his tour ’round the world doing a piece about New York City on street corners, in plazas and bypasses. Pretty cool, actually very cool. Fascinating. He is working on writing a book about this tour. And he uses the term Global Tour, maybe he opened for Beyoncé. But I don’t ask him that.

He heads to the kitchen to start on dinner. He’s provided me with his notes on yellow lined paper, loose leaf, in a stack. He seems to be getting his ducks in a row to write his book. He has “Guaté” on one page, “Istanbul” on another and “Marrakesh.” There are several more, but those are just some of the places he performed that I remember. In pencil writing, he has very neatly and intentionally organized his words to represent his thoughts and feelings of the place and his experience performing there. It looks like a type of creative organization of his thoughts before he begins to flesh them out into sentences. I can only imagine the first sets of notes he scribbled that I’m not seeing. This is the clean-cut, pressed and dried takeaways that have yet to be stacked into fleshed-out stories, told meticulously no doubt by his wordsmithing.

Something about this person makes me want to be more confident in my creativity and less aware of it at the same time. He is The Artist, between the two us, identifying so strongly as such. I identify as a wandering creative which is a different zip code entirely than The Philosopher. He’s also 39. I guess he’s had 9 more years defining the artistic wilderness.

I like him. We are both similar, in my view. We are both actors.

It’s always been my opinion that actors don’t date actors. There’s a competitive element there but mostly you speak too much the same language and want too much the same things. I know that some couples make it work but in my experience with actor dudes, there’s not a lot of room for air.

But this is Ketchikan and this is the Fancy Fisherman I set my eyes on before I even knew he was “The Actor, The Artist, The Philosopher.” Plus, I like him. I like hanging out with him. I noticed when I hugged him that he is wearing cologne.

I’ve been making a big stink about this guy all season. At the beginning of May, I called his office and invited him to the holiday party. Before you know it, half the town was texting him telling him he should come. It was at that moment this town shrunk to the size of a high school. Every time I saw him after that, I usually hid or ducked or waddled or pretended like nothing was going on. Like a bomb-ass lady. But we fast forward a few months and he is a fisherman working on the dock next door to ours.

Sometimes I see him greeting his guests with a sign when I am holding my Misty Fjords sign. Eventually we talk on the dock, eventually he invites me fishing, eventually I go, eventually I am reading about his book-to-be from the notes on his wall (oh, and feeling bad about eating chicken).

We talked about my upcoming move to Guatemala. I told him that I am really sad to leave Alaska. He asked me why. He’s told me before that Alaska will likely be a window in time, that I won’t return. I don’t know how he can divine that except he’s probably right. I mean, I’m more than likely not going to work here again. I certainly hope to visit but there are a lot of places I want to see.

I’ve migrated to the stool in his kitchen, I am keeping him company as he cooks. I ask if he enjoys cooking, he says “I didn’t used to but if you’ve probably heard the locals say: ‘Ketchikan restaurants make better cooks of us all.’ And it’s true..” I laughed, I hadn’t in fact heard that before. It would be apt for the Philosopher to introduce me to the axiom.

Back to it: He asked me why I’m sad to be leaving. I told him that I struggle to be present and he asked me why: I said I tend to be sad about the past and anxious about the future and in the process I’m taken out of the present! He asked me ‘Well.. maybe that’s okay for you. Maybe that’s just how you are.”

And I said “No! Because I don’t want to miss all of the exquisite things that are happening in the moment!” And then I said: “ya know?”

And he looked at me and laid down the kitchen knife at the same time walked over and said “Yeah I do” and the next thing I know he is kissing me.

It was the kind of moment that makes Barbra Streisand sing across the Staten Island Ferry.

Oh and these are the chickens: