Chattanooga, Tennessee
What is it about traveling that makes me want to write? It’s only when I’m traveling that I feel like I’m living. Being static in a place is entering stasis: I cease to be able to function. I’ve always said that I’m happiest when I sleep in a different bed every night. It’s the truth, sadly. I don’t know why it is I can’t be content when I’m stationary.
Maybe the dorm did it, how we had to change rooms and roommates every quarter, carefully packing up our clothes and toiletries and moving to another room down the hall, with a new closet, a new bed, a new comforter. Kids are adaptive, they say. So now I have to have a new space about every fifteen weeks, or I start clawing my face off. No wonder my favorite thing about sailing is having a home that moves. My bed can stay the same, but my view can change. It’s perfect.
Now I’m slowly emerging from my winter cave, coming out of hibernation, finding out how to take the next step, move on to my new place. I’ve been trying to figure out how to break my big news to the assembled public without risking jinxing it, similar to the way I was unwilling to start my Appalachian Trail journal before I actually took my first step. Tomorrow I fly from Chattanooga to Boston, and ten days from now I fly to Nassau. By myself.
What am I feeling? Sheer, abject terror.
I still don’t quite know why I feel the need to go. Maybe it has something to do with Secret being my only earthly possession and my only financial asset. Maybe it’s my endless longing for something new, some new adventure, a new superhuman challenge for which I am anything but prepared. Maybe it’s wanting to finally have some time to myself, and where better than off the coast of a deserted island? Or maybe it’s just wanting something good to come out of this disaster.
There are still many details to be worked out. As of right now, my plan involves getting off the plane on Colonel Hill, and, if all else fails, walking to the Church Grove dock and rowing the dinghy, with my stacks of gear, the seven miles to the boat. I hope those who were my friends will still be my friends, and I can at least hitchhike, but this I know: I have legs. I have arms. I’ve walked 3000 miles. I can make it to my boat.
That is, after all, what this adventure is all about--self-reliance. Autonomy. I’ve been accused in the last four months of being self-pitying, of acting like a victim, of blaming my problems on others rather than taking responsibility for them myself. So I’m stepping out, and I’m taking a risk. My current mantra is, “leap, and the net will appear.”
When we left Marion last time I wrote about how happy I was to be leaving it in my wake, which wounded some people. It's not that I don't love this country, or my friends and family, it's just this is so, so where I don't want to be. I want to be with Secret. I’ve wanted to be with Secret for months now. The question has been do I want to be with Karl or with Secret more? I know long-term I don't have to choose between the two, but the process of doing all of the repairs and sailing may take months. Do I want to spend that time away from Karl? And do I really have the courage to do that by myself?
I still don’t know, but I’m following my path as well as I know how, and I pray that my faith will be rewarded.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
Monday, March 24, 2008
Set it off
It’s obvious that I’ve been having a hard time blogging. It makes me wonder, all the time, why I participate in this bizarre and exhibitionist art. Making decisions in public, going through anguish-causing times of public grief--why do I choose to share this with anyone? It’s been hard for me to admit to even my own family how difficult my path has been to find this last month.
I’m reading a new book right now: The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, an Afghan writer. I’ve been looking forward to reading it for a long time, and had requested it from the library. It begins innocuously enough, two boys at the peak of boyhood, and then it drops down into horrific depths. Much darker and more vivid than I had expected. It’s still, though, the story of how to be a good person, how to right wrongs, how to grow into the person your parents want you to be. I feel much like the lead character, deeply flawed, trying to find the present amid the past.
The worst thing about all of this (well, definitely not the worst, not even close) is that I know how much it would help for me to write, but I can't write without being honest about my feelings, and my feelings open me up to all sorts of criticism. Namely, why don’t you just get over it? An answer that is far easier to ask than it is to answer.
I’ve begun feeling like the man in that legend: (Wasn’t it even an Aesop’s fable?) a farmer and his son are taking their donkey, laden with fruit, to the market. On the way they get passed by a man who criticizes the farmer for forcing his poor young son to walk. So the farmer’s boy climbs on the donkey and they continue on. Then a woman passes by who tells the farmer he’s too easy on his son, letting the boy ride and not riding himself. So both the farmer and the son ride on into town. Then a third person passes by and tells the farmer that he should be shot for over-lading his donkey like that. The farmer and his son end the story by carrying their donkey into town.
I’m like him: if I try to please everyone I’ll please no one. I have a hard enough time being happy by myself, with myself. So the only answer is to “turn my eyes to the hills, whence cometh my help.”
I’m reading a new book right now: The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, an Afghan writer. I’ve been looking forward to reading it for a long time, and had requested it from the library. It begins innocuously enough, two boys at the peak of boyhood, and then it drops down into horrific depths. Much darker and more vivid than I had expected. It’s still, though, the story of how to be a good person, how to right wrongs, how to grow into the person your parents want you to be. I feel much like the lead character, deeply flawed, trying to find the present amid the past.
The worst thing about all of this (well, definitely not the worst, not even close) is that I know how much it would help for me to write, but I can't write without being honest about my feelings, and my feelings open me up to all sorts of criticism. Namely, why don’t you just get over it? An answer that is far easier to ask than it is to answer.
I’ve begun feeling like the man in that legend: (Wasn’t it even an Aesop’s fable?) a farmer and his son are taking their donkey, laden with fruit, to the market. On the way they get passed by a man who criticizes the farmer for forcing his poor young son to walk. So the farmer’s boy climbs on the donkey and they continue on. Then a woman passes by who tells the farmer he’s too easy on his son, letting the boy ride and not riding himself. So both the farmer and the son ride on into town. Then a third person passes by and tells the farmer that he should be shot for over-lading his donkey like that. The farmer and his son end the story by carrying their donkey into town.
I’m like him: if I try to please everyone I’ll please no one. I have a hard enough time being happy by myself, with myself. So the only answer is to “turn my eyes to the hills, whence cometh my help.”
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Was born with roses in her eyes
I’m beginning to feel like a hothouse flower, trying to flourish in the dead of a Northern winter. It’s as if someone took an orchid and transplanted it into the woods of Marion and wondered, “Hmm, why isn’t this orchid doing so well?” What orchids need are greenhouses, and greenhouses cost a lot of exactly the things we don’t have enough of and shouldn’t be using anyway: money and fossil fuels. Heat? Big, bright incandescent sun lamps? Long, scalding hot showers? Warm, dry socks hot from the dryer? All of these things that the the hardy scrub pines and snow drops of New England have learned to survive without. (Okay, so maybe orchids don’t need socks. But they need those fabric cover things.)
I always forget that I’m predisposed to warmth both by genetics and by upbringing. My mother’s Greek, and I read recently in Mother Earth News that darker-skinned people absorb even less Vitamin D from the sun than lighter-skinned people. Almost all Americans are Vitamin D deficient anyway, from too much time indoors and too few fresh fruits and vegetables, so people inclined towards warmer climates genetically (like Mediterranean islanders) are even worse off than all of you Scandinavian types. Combine that with a childhood spent in the hottest place on earth, and I’m in a pretty bad way.
Bangkok really was judged the hottest place on earth while I grew up there, when they averaged for winter and summer temperatures and day and night-time temperatures. It got down into the seventies at night one week a year. Now I fantasize about weather like that--always sunny, always hot, with a sun that goes up every morning at six and sets every night at six like clockwork. With humidity that hits you like a brick wall every time you go outside. Actually, I don’t even know if I could deal with weather like that anymore. I’m too much of a wimp after spending time in the cold.
The real problem with Vitamin D deficiency is that it causes exacerbates the symptoms of depression, something I’m prone to anyway in the winter. I’m trying to cultivate myself as I would a hard-to-grow plant, to keep myself happy and content even in the bitterest of chills. My new attempt on that front is the $10 down jacket I finally bought for myself last night at the L.L. Bean Outlet. I had been making do with a vest for the last two winters. I had forgotten how cozy it is to go outside in the cold when you actually have your arms covered--Karl and I even went for a little beach walk today. Still, even though it’s ten bucks, I feel guilty for allowing myself to spend that much money on something that was for my own comfort in the cold and not for the boat. It paints the difficulty of this choice in brutal colors: do I invest my time and money in staying in Marion, or do I invest my time and money on going to the Bahamas.
The anguish of that choice gets worse by the day. I can buy a one-way ticket from Boston to Nassau on February 26 for $145. I can buy that ticket right now, this minute. The ticket’s ready to purchase in another browser window as I type. I found the price last week, and I haven’t been brave enough to close the window yet. I refresh the page every day, just to make sure the fare’s still there. Our Canadian friends called on Thursday, letting me know that they’re in Georgetown and when they leave they’ll be heading to Crooked Island. Everyone who sails knows how tough it is to coordinate time on sailboats, but I bet they arrive just about on the 26th, and if anyone can help me rerig the forestay, it’s Marcel. But you know when that is? Nine days from now. How ready am I to face the boat alone?
Obviously I’m having a tough time being honest on here about that decision-making process after some of the comments I got with my last post. I love that people care about our journey and my decision, but it can’t be solved with a simple go or don’t go. Am I ready to leave Karl for an indefinite period of time? What does that mean for our relationship? But what does it mean for us if I stay?
In all of this, I need to nurture myself and keep myself from the depression that sneaks up on me like cold frost. I drift through days in a daze, trying to make my way from one hour to the next. I’m working on it. I have my tools, my weapons to keep the demons at bay. If I let them win, I won’t be able to help anyone: neither Karl nor Secret.
I always forget that I’m predisposed to warmth both by genetics and by upbringing. My mother’s Greek, and I read recently in Mother Earth News that darker-skinned people absorb even less Vitamin D from the sun than lighter-skinned people. Almost all Americans are Vitamin D deficient anyway, from too much time indoors and too few fresh fruits and vegetables, so people inclined towards warmer climates genetically (like Mediterranean islanders) are even worse off than all of you Scandinavian types. Combine that with a childhood spent in the hottest place on earth, and I’m in a pretty bad way.
Bangkok really was judged the hottest place on earth while I grew up there, when they averaged for winter and summer temperatures and day and night-time temperatures. It got down into the seventies at night one week a year. Now I fantasize about weather like that--always sunny, always hot, with a sun that goes up every morning at six and sets every night at six like clockwork. With humidity that hits you like a brick wall every time you go outside. Actually, I don’t even know if I could deal with weather like that anymore. I’m too much of a wimp after spending time in the cold.
The real problem with Vitamin D deficiency is that it causes exacerbates the symptoms of depression, something I’m prone to anyway in the winter. I’m trying to cultivate myself as I would a hard-to-grow plant, to keep myself happy and content even in the bitterest of chills. My new attempt on that front is the $10 down jacket I finally bought for myself last night at the L.L. Bean Outlet. I had been making do with a vest for the last two winters. I had forgotten how cozy it is to go outside in the cold when you actually have your arms covered--Karl and I even went for a little beach walk today. Still, even though it’s ten bucks, I feel guilty for allowing myself to spend that much money on something that was for my own comfort in the cold and not for the boat. It paints the difficulty of this choice in brutal colors: do I invest my time and money in staying in Marion, or do I invest my time and money on going to the Bahamas.
The anguish of that choice gets worse by the day. I can buy a one-way ticket from Boston to Nassau on February 26 for $145. I can buy that ticket right now, this minute. The ticket’s ready to purchase in another browser window as I type. I found the price last week, and I haven’t been brave enough to close the window yet. I refresh the page every day, just to make sure the fare’s still there. Our Canadian friends called on Thursday, letting me know that they’re in Georgetown and when they leave they’ll be heading to Crooked Island. Everyone who sails knows how tough it is to coordinate time on sailboats, but I bet they arrive just about on the 26th, and if anyone can help me rerig the forestay, it’s Marcel. But you know when that is? Nine days from now. How ready am I to face the boat alone?
Obviously I’m having a tough time being honest on here about that decision-making process after some of the comments I got with my last post. I love that people care about our journey and my decision, but it can’t be solved with a simple go or don’t go. Am I ready to leave Karl for an indefinite period of time? What does that mean for our relationship? But what does it mean for us if I stay?
In all of this, I need to nurture myself and keep myself from the depression that sneaks up on me like cold frost. I drift through days in a daze, trying to make my way from one hour to the next. I’m working on it. I have my tools, my weapons to keep the demons at bay. If I let them win, I won’t be able to help anyone: neither Karl nor Secret.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
The only girl I’ve ever loved
Well, no one believes that I should fly to the Bahamas. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, I am just a girl. Girls can’t do anything by themselves, let alone fix engines and hank on sails and install forestays.
No one’s ever believed that I could do anything like that alone, including myself. I still don’t, which is probably the reason I don’t have a ticket in hand right now. Sure, I know it’s ambitious, but isn’t that the whole point? To strive, to seek, to find, not to yield, and all that crap?
In National Geographic, a couple of months back, there was an ad for an unnamed giant software company who was sponsoring some crazy female solo adventurer. She was a real professional adventurer, unlike me, the poser. She was kayaking down the major rivers in Africa solo, and there were pictures of her, pushing off from some unknown village, countless black children staring after her dumbfounded as she paddled her brightly colored over-loaded kayak away through the muddy water. She’s also biked the length of Alaska, hiked the perimeter of Madagascar, and done countless other things I can’t quite recall. I want to aspire to at least that level of bravery.
Still, though, do you think her family’s in favor of her adventures? Do you think when she was eighteen and said, “Hey, Mom, do you think it’s a good idea if I go kayak through the heart of the African wilderness by myself?” her mom was like, “Sure, honey, whatever you want”? Do you think her college boyfriend said to her, “Run off to Madagascar for six months, sweetie. I’ll be right here when you get back”? Do you think her high school guidance counselor thought it was a great idea? No. In fact, what they probably all said was, “Maybe you should think about a nice safe job with some security. Something like chemical engineering, perhaps.” So did she listen to them? Hell no.
So what do I do? Am I brave, and foodhardy, and stupid enough, to be like that unnamed girl, or am I too cowardly, too much a creature of public opinion and home and hearth? I just can’t figure out if this is yet another example of me demanding too much of myself, asking for unrealistic superhuman feats. Should I just bow to the tide of public opinion, surrender Secret to her flooded fate, and go get one of those nice, safe jobs? Maybe as a waitress, or at the local West Marine, or as a management trainee at the new Borders in the next town over. Yes, I too could be one more person chewed up by the cogs of capitalism, one more person with dreams sacrificed on the altar of pragmatism and fiscal responsibility, one more person living one of Thoreau’s lives of quiet desperation.
Obviously, I know what I should do. I believe I know what God wants me to do. I don’t believe decisions should be made based on fear, ever, and if I decide to huddle safely under my electric blanket, with my computer, and my music, and the detritus of American consumerism beginning to gather around me in huge heaps, fear will be the basis of my decision. It should be me and Secret against the world, baby. If I decide to fly down and I did manage to repair Secret by myself, with what help I could cobble together from Crooked Islanders and fellow cruisers and sympathetic visitors, if I did manage to sail her back to her home port single-handed, it would be something I could be proud of for the rest of my life. When I was thirty, this, THIS, is what I accomplished, this huge, gargantuan thing.
Sure, I could die. But I’d be one of the ones who thumbed my nose at conventional wisdom and lived bravely, fearlessly, and foolishly. Is it worth it? More than that, do I have the sheer audacity to simply tell my family and friends, “I’m doing this no matter what. You can either support me or get out of my way.” Am I one of those people who can resist the tide of public opinion to accomplish great things, as all great people do?
Honestly, I don’t think so. I think you, humble reader, are going to get a whole slew of agonized posts about how much I hate my new job. And I will hate my new job. Because I know it’s not what I’m meant to be doing, not the Herculean task to which I have been called. I did hike the Appalachian Trail by myself, at least for a while, before I hitched my wagon to Karl’s star. But how much else have I ever accomplished? I graduated from college and got a degree at an insurance company, of all places, rather than pursue my dream of writing. I worked in Chicago for five years, all the while putting off what I thought of as my real life. Here I sit again, at the crux of another of these decisions. How often had I had the courage to pursue what I truly want? Not often. I don’t even have enough courage to submit an article for publication.
It comes down to belief in myself. Great artists, great adventurers, great people all have a fundamental belief in themselves, whatever happens. I don’t know where they get that. I don’t know what kind of reserves of internal strength they manage to find, or where they manage to find them. But they do. I don’t have that belief in myself, despite all my bluster. At the core of me, it’s simply not there. How do I find it?
No one’s ever believed that I could do anything like that alone, including myself. I still don’t, which is probably the reason I don’t have a ticket in hand right now. Sure, I know it’s ambitious, but isn’t that the whole point? To strive, to seek, to find, not to yield, and all that crap?
In National Geographic, a couple of months back, there was an ad for an unnamed giant software company who was sponsoring some crazy female solo adventurer. She was a real professional adventurer, unlike me, the poser. She was kayaking down the major rivers in Africa solo, and there were pictures of her, pushing off from some unknown village, countless black children staring after her dumbfounded as she paddled her brightly colored over-loaded kayak away through the muddy water. She’s also biked the length of Alaska, hiked the perimeter of Madagascar, and done countless other things I can’t quite recall. I want to aspire to at least that level of bravery.
Still, though, do you think her family’s in favor of her adventures? Do you think when she was eighteen and said, “Hey, Mom, do you think it’s a good idea if I go kayak through the heart of the African wilderness by myself?” her mom was like, “Sure, honey, whatever you want”? Do you think her college boyfriend said to her, “Run off to Madagascar for six months, sweetie. I’ll be right here when you get back”? Do you think her high school guidance counselor thought it was a great idea? No. In fact, what they probably all said was, “Maybe you should think about a nice safe job with some security. Something like chemical engineering, perhaps.” So did she listen to them? Hell no.
So what do I do? Am I brave, and foodhardy, and stupid enough, to be like that unnamed girl, or am I too cowardly, too much a creature of public opinion and home and hearth? I just can’t figure out if this is yet another example of me demanding too much of myself, asking for unrealistic superhuman feats. Should I just bow to the tide of public opinion, surrender Secret to her flooded fate, and go get one of those nice, safe jobs? Maybe as a waitress, or at the local West Marine, or as a management trainee at the new Borders in the next town over. Yes, I too could be one more person chewed up by the cogs of capitalism, one more person with dreams sacrificed on the altar of pragmatism and fiscal responsibility, one more person living one of Thoreau’s lives of quiet desperation.
Obviously, I know what I should do. I believe I know what God wants me to do. I don’t believe decisions should be made based on fear, ever, and if I decide to huddle safely under my electric blanket, with my computer, and my music, and the detritus of American consumerism beginning to gather around me in huge heaps, fear will be the basis of my decision. It should be me and Secret against the world, baby. If I decide to fly down and I did manage to repair Secret by myself, with what help I could cobble together from Crooked Islanders and fellow cruisers and sympathetic visitors, if I did manage to sail her back to her home port single-handed, it would be something I could be proud of for the rest of my life. When I was thirty, this, THIS, is what I accomplished, this huge, gargantuan thing.
Sure, I could die. But I’d be one of the ones who thumbed my nose at conventional wisdom and lived bravely, fearlessly, and foolishly. Is it worth it? More than that, do I have the sheer audacity to simply tell my family and friends, “I’m doing this no matter what. You can either support me or get out of my way.” Am I one of those people who can resist the tide of public opinion to accomplish great things, as all great people do?
Honestly, I don’t think so. I think you, humble reader, are going to get a whole slew of agonized posts about how much I hate my new job. And I will hate my new job. Because I know it’s not what I’m meant to be doing, not the Herculean task to which I have been called. I did hike the Appalachian Trail by myself, at least for a while, before I hitched my wagon to Karl’s star. But how much else have I ever accomplished? I graduated from college and got a degree at an insurance company, of all places, rather than pursue my dream of writing. I worked in Chicago for five years, all the while putting off what I thought of as my real life. Here I sit again, at the crux of another of these decisions. How often had I had the courage to pursue what I truly want? Not often. I don’t even have enough courage to submit an article for publication.
It comes down to belief in myself. Great artists, great adventurers, great people all have a fundamental belief in themselves, whatever happens. I don’t know where they get that. I don’t know what kind of reserves of internal strength they manage to find, or where they manage to find them. But they do. I don’t have that belief in myself, despite all my bluster. At the core of me, it’s simply not there. How do I find it?
Saturday, January 26, 2008
There’s something happening here
I think for a while there I was just going through the motions of living without actually living, without being able to be fully present in whatever was going on at the moment. I’m beginning to feel like I’m returning to myself. out of deep fog. My book of the week is Awakenings, by Oliver Sacks, another random book chosen out of a Powells.com recommendation. They were actually recommending Musicophilia, his most recent book, but I do this obsessive-compulsive thing on my library’s inter-library loan site where I go back and request the earliest book published by the author. This means I end up with very random library books that show up in the form of phone calls from the library telling me that my book is in. I love it.
The right book always seems to appear at the right moment. My last book, The Thirteenth Tale, was a recent debut novel by someone in the neo-gothic tradition. It was great--just pulpy enough, not too pulpy--to carry me through the last week at the hospital. This new book, Awakenings, is all about the nature of illness and the nature of the medical profession. It’s about this bizarre sleeping-sickness that swept the world in the 1920s. I had never even heard of it, nor had I heard of the miraculous effects of this drug that brought people out of their sleep-like states. I feel a little bit like that’s what’s happening to me, that I’m beginning to wake up to the reality of things as they stand now. I stand at the crux of this decision: do I need to go back to Secret by myself and try to complete her repair? Or do I need to get a job for a month or two to carry us through this difficult time?
I’m trying not to think about it too much. I’m trying to have enough faith that whatever the right decision is will be made clear. When God closes a door, he opens a window? Right? Can I get an Amen?? I’m also trying not to thing that my faith is actually faith and not dreary fatalism. If nothing else, this situation has done wonders for my church attendance.
I am having a hard time writing, too, which is odd considering how much time I have on my hands. I’ve begun to explore the World of Blogs that exists on the internet, the so-called Blogosphere. It’s a bewildering place. I don’t have the sense of isolation that I did when I was scribbling in my little notebook anchored off deserted islands, feeling like it would be months before anyone would read of our arduous adventures. Instead, here, blogging is a thing, something that one does, a blogger something that one is. I find myself trapped on blogs that evaluate the current state of Britney Spears’s underwear or lack thereof, or blogs where girls talk about their weight-loss or lack thereof, or innumerable addictive blogs that chronicle baby doings. It seems so removed from my little notebooks where I’ve scribbled daily depressive missives about our lack of progress.
It makes the prospect of “freelance writing,” my presumptive career, that much more difficult. Is blogging freelance writing? Not if I don’t get paid for it. How do I get a job writing? Is it too much to demand that society provide me with employment doing what I love? Or should all that society offer me be a job at the corner convenience store?
The right book always seems to appear at the right moment. My last book, The Thirteenth Tale, was a recent debut novel by someone in the neo-gothic tradition. It was great--just pulpy enough, not too pulpy--to carry me through the last week at the hospital. This new book, Awakenings, is all about the nature of illness and the nature of the medical profession. It’s about this bizarre sleeping-sickness that swept the world in the 1920s. I had never even heard of it, nor had I heard of the miraculous effects of this drug that brought people out of their sleep-like states. I feel a little bit like that’s what’s happening to me, that I’m beginning to wake up to the reality of things as they stand now. I stand at the crux of this decision: do I need to go back to Secret by myself and try to complete her repair? Or do I need to get a job for a month or two to carry us through this difficult time?
I’m trying not to think about it too much. I’m trying to have enough faith that whatever the right decision is will be made clear. When God closes a door, he opens a window? Right? Can I get an Amen?? I’m also trying not to thing that my faith is actually faith and not dreary fatalism. If nothing else, this situation has done wonders for my church attendance.
I am having a hard time writing, too, which is odd considering how much time I have on my hands. I’ve begun to explore the World of Blogs that exists on the internet, the so-called Blogosphere. It’s a bewildering place. I don’t have the sense of isolation that I did when I was scribbling in my little notebook anchored off deserted islands, feeling like it would be months before anyone would read of our arduous adventures. Instead, here, blogging is a thing, something that one does, a blogger something that one is. I find myself trapped on blogs that evaluate the current state of Britney Spears’s underwear or lack thereof, or blogs where girls talk about their weight-loss or lack thereof, or innumerable addictive blogs that chronicle baby doings. It seems so removed from my little notebooks where I’ve scribbled daily depressive missives about our lack of progress.
It makes the prospect of “freelance writing,” my presumptive career, that much more difficult. Is blogging freelance writing? Not if I don’t get paid for it. How do I get a job writing? Is it too much to demand that society provide me with employment doing what I love? Or should all that society offer me be a job at the corner convenience store?
Friday, January 18, 2008
Marion, Massachusetts
Karl was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday. We’ve been back at his mom’s house a full 24 hours now, and I feel like a light’s been turned back on, as crazy as that sounds. I’ve been remembering our first couple of weeks together back on the Appalachian Trail in Virginia. Our second week together was at Trail Days in Damascus, the big trail festival a quarter of the way through. I couldn’t write then the things I can write now: how one night, at a campfire, Karl wandered off with another friend and I had this mysterious feeling like someone had turned off a light. We were outside, by a fire, in the darkness, under the moon and stars, and I kept looking over my shoulder, thinking “Who turned off the light? Wasn’t there just a lamp on?” When Karl came strolling back, I breathed deeply--the light was back.
That’s how I feel now. I don’t think I realized just how afraid I’ve been this last month. I’ve been making my way through every day on the edge of terror, afraid to even acknowledge my fear, unable to put it into words. If I say it aloud, it will be true. The fear manifested itself as a very odd emotion for me, anger. I don’t generally get very angry, but I kept erupting these last weeks, once at the doctors in Chattanooga, another couple of times here at how powerless I felt to get around, to stay on top of all the paperwork, to wrestle with the telephone calls. One operator at MassHealth, well-meaning I’m sure, told me that they weren’t covering Karl’s Chattanooga hospital stay because he didn’t have a “life-threatening illness.” I hung up on him. I’ve dealt with it now, consulted with doctors and insurance advocates, and we’ll appeal the decision, but at that moment I pushed over the edge.
My dreams keep haunting me. I’m happy sometimes that I can process that way, in my sleep, although I think if I told a therapist honestly everything that goes on in my head while I dream I’d be put away. I remember another dream I had that same week of Trail Days. Karl and I had been together nine days, so it must have been May 13. In the dream, Karl was shot in the chest and bled out while I held my hands against his heart. I kept thinking, “at least we had nine days.” I’ve had similar dreams over the last couple of weeks, one in which half of an unrecognizable decomposing corpse was kicked around the middle of a road. The last two nights that he was in the hospital, I wasn’t able to sleep at all. I lay awake for hours, watching the clock, 2:30, quarter to four. It was easiest to sleep, if the least comfortable, when lying an arm’s length away on the hospital cot, able to reach over and squeeze his elbow.
The last two nights, since he’s been back, I’ve slept deeply and dreamlessly. He’s sleeping too, right now, most of the day and most of the night, but I’m thrilled just to sit next to him and listen to him breathe, to watch the vestigial meningitis-related grimaces he still makes, to watch the smiles and twitches cross his face. We even looked back and laughed last night about the one night when his brain actually went, that one terrifying night when I thought I might be losing the Karl I love forever. He remembers everything he said that crazy night, when he was so honest and so alone and so lost. A nurse said to me that day, off-handed, “Sometimes these things are reversible and sometimes they aren’t.” The statistic from when my brother had viral meningitis kept floating through my head: forty percent of people with meningitis have brain damage...
So now I hope I can keep my scary dreams away for a little while longer, that I can begin to sleep again. Visions of Secret still float at the edge of my consciousness, and I have to keep remembering the roots of this blog, that for us casting off doesn’t mean sailing but ridding ourselves of attachments: to the idea of perpetual health and invulnerability, maybe, to that precious boat, even. Nappy did call, though, and said he and his wife are praying for us. Secret, he said, is still fine, bobbing away at anchor. I pray she can make it through a couple more weeks of winter gales. That’s all we can do now, hope and trust that whatever path we should take be made clear.
(A link to the post I made the day Karl and I first began hiking together. You’ll notice I then took two weeks off. And that, my friends, is a picture of the infamous tree, under which our history was written.)
That’s how I feel now. I don’t think I realized just how afraid I’ve been this last month. I’ve been making my way through every day on the edge of terror, afraid to even acknowledge my fear, unable to put it into words. If I say it aloud, it will be true. The fear manifested itself as a very odd emotion for me, anger. I don’t generally get very angry, but I kept erupting these last weeks, once at the doctors in Chattanooga, another couple of times here at how powerless I felt to get around, to stay on top of all the paperwork, to wrestle with the telephone calls. One operator at MassHealth, well-meaning I’m sure, told me that they weren’t covering Karl’s Chattanooga hospital stay because he didn’t have a “life-threatening illness.” I hung up on him. I’ve dealt with it now, consulted with doctors and insurance advocates, and we’ll appeal the decision, but at that moment I pushed over the edge.
My dreams keep haunting me. I’m happy sometimes that I can process that way, in my sleep, although I think if I told a therapist honestly everything that goes on in my head while I dream I’d be put away. I remember another dream I had that same week of Trail Days. Karl and I had been together nine days, so it must have been May 13. In the dream, Karl was shot in the chest and bled out while I held my hands against his heart. I kept thinking, “at least we had nine days.” I’ve had similar dreams over the last couple of weeks, one in which half of an unrecognizable decomposing corpse was kicked around the middle of a road. The last two nights that he was in the hospital, I wasn’t able to sleep at all. I lay awake for hours, watching the clock, 2:30, quarter to four. It was easiest to sleep, if the least comfortable, when lying an arm’s length away on the hospital cot, able to reach over and squeeze his elbow.
The last two nights, since he’s been back, I’ve slept deeply and dreamlessly. He’s sleeping too, right now, most of the day and most of the night, but I’m thrilled just to sit next to him and listen to him breathe, to watch the vestigial meningitis-related grimaces he still makes, to watch the smiles and twitches cross his face. We even looked back and laughed last night about the one night when his brain actually went, that one terrifying night when I thought I might be losing the Karl I love forever. He remembers everything he said that crazy night, when he was so honest and so alone and so lost. A nurse said to me that day, off-handed, “Sometimes these things are reversible and sometimes they aren’t.” The statistic from when my brother had viral meningitis kept floating through my head: forty percent of people with meningitis have brain damage...
So now I hope I can keep my scary dreams away for a little while longer, that I can begin to sleep again. Visions of Secret still float at the edge of my consciousness, and I have to keep remembering the roots of this blog, that for us casting off doesn’t mean sailing but ridding ourselves of attachments: to the idea of perpetual health and invulnerability, maybe, to that precious boat, even. Nappy did call, though, and said he and his wife are praying for us. Secret, he said, is still fine, bobbing away at anchor. I pray she can make it through a couple more weeks of winter gales. That’s all we can do now, hope and trust that whatever path we should take be made clear.
(A link to the post I made the day Karl and I first began hiking together. You’ll notice I then took two weeks off. And that, my friends, is a picture of the infamous tree, under which our history was written.)
Monday, January 07, 2008
Boston, Massachusetts
I've put off posting this blog entry for too long, without quite knowing how to begin or having the courage to say in words what has turned out to be true. On Christmas Eve, I took Karl to the emergency room in Chattanooga with a severe headache. It had come on when he arrived, and was accompanied by fever, exhaustion, vomiting, and a complete lack of appetite. It turned out to be a kind of rare fungal meningitis.
He was released three days later and we decided to postpone our return tickets to the Bahamas in order to return to Massachusetts where we have health insurance and doctors. On the way back up he had a relapse. He's been now in the hospital here almost a week with no end in sight. Even once he's released, the doctors say he'll need a two-month course of hardcore anti-fungal drugs.
Obviously, my first concern is Karl's health and the second Secret. That being said, I dream every night of her. One recurring dream ends with three of us, who I don't know, plunging into crystal blue water, laughing, swimming to where I can see Secret nestled securely in an empty bay. I wake up in horror and fear, and gather my shreds of courage around me like a blanket.
I turned thirty this week. Everyone remembered--my family sent exquisite packages, Sally gave a card, and Karl, at one in the morning, reached over from his hospital bed to hold my hand where I lay on my cot next to him and said, "Happy birthday Melissa." I couldn't ask for a better present than that. Still, I feel like everything I love and have worked so hard for has been taken away. I was so close to grasping the dream, to holding it tightly in my hand, and its dissolved in my fingers.
It's at times like these that I'm glad I didn't name this journal "The Voyages of the Good Ship Secret" or some other such inane thing. I named it Casting Off for good reason. I can only believe that this is happening because I haven't cast off enough, haven't sacrificed enough, because God knew I need more things stripped away: my pride, my ambition, my sin.
I can only believe that I'm being punished for something. But maybe that's just New England at this time of year bringing out the worst in me. Perhaps there is simply too much Indian blood and too many whale bones scattered among the foundations of these cities. I've started dutifully taking St. John's Wort to combat my Seasonal Affective Disorder, but I'm not sure it's working. I keep wondering if it's named such after St. John of the Cross's dark night of the soul.
Why? I keep asking myself. Why now? Why here? What can it mean? Does it mean anything? Or does nothing mean anything and it's all a great big magician's trick? The cloth is whisked away and ta-da! Everything's disappeared. God as the great malevolent illusionist.
Have I traded all my hope for a lie? I can't believe that, so I don't. I'm writing late at night, alone. I don't know if these thoughts are fit for public consumption. It could be so much worse. I should be grateful, not angry. Karl's condition is completely treatable. He's only weak, not dying.
One of Karl's friends, on our drive up to the hospital, told me a story of another friend of his who's been diagnosed with bone cancer. His ribs are dissolving. The doctors say there's no point in even giving him chemotherapy until the pain gets too bad. It's only a matter of time for him.
By comparison, my complaints seem insignificant and selfish. Things could be so much worse. We have families and friends who love and support us. We have each other. We have our memories of the last four years. And we have hope. Or I try to have hope. I fight to have hope that one day that'll be me diving into the water to chase Secret again.
At church on Sunday, I kept breaking into tears every time the priest said, "Grant us thy peace." Grant me thy peace, Lord. As impossible as it is to imagine.
I remember the words of Keats: "Fled is that vision. Do I wake or sleep?"
And I cling to the words of the ancient Christian mystic, Dame Julian of Norwich, who says, "All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well."
He was released three days later and we decided to postpone our return tickets to the Bahamas in order to return to Massachusetts where we have health insurance and doctors. On the way back up he had a relapse. He's been now in the hospital here almost a week with no end in sight. Even once he's released, the doctors say he'll need a two-month course of hardcore anti-fungal drugs.
Obviously, my first concern is Karl's health and the second Secret. That being said, I dream every night of her. One recurring dream ends with three of us, who I don't know, plunging into crystal blue water, laughing, swimming to where I can see Secret nestled securely in an empty bay. I wake up in horror and fear, and gather my shreds of courage around me like a blanket.
I turned thirty this week. Everyone remembered--my family sent exquisite packages, Sally gave a card, and Karl, at one in the morning, reached over from his hospital bed to hold my hand where I lay on my cot next to him and said, "Happy birthday Melissa." I couldn't ask for a better present than that. Still, I feel like everything I love and have worked so hard for has been taken away. I was so close to grasping the dream, to holding it tightly in my hand, and its dissolved in my fingers.
It's at times like these that I'm glad I didn't name this journal "The Voyages of the Good Ship Secret" or some other such inane thing. I named it Casting Off for good reason. I can only believe that this is happening because I haven't cast off enough, haven't sacrificed enough, because God knew I need more things stripped away: my pride, my ambition, my sin.
I can only believe that I'm being punished for something. But maybe that's just New England at this time of year bringing out the worst in me. Perhaps there is simply too much Indian blood and too many whale bones scattered among the foundations of these cities. I've started dutifully taking St. John's Wort to combat my Seasonal Affective Disorder, but I'm not sure it's working. I keep wondering if it's named such after St. John of the Cross's dark night of the soul.
Why? I keep asking myself. Why now? Why here? What can it mean? Does it mean anything? Or does nothing mean anything and it's all a great big magician's trick? The cloth is whisked away and ta-da! Everything's disappeared. God as the great malevolent illusionist.
Have I traded all my hope for a lie? I can't believe that, so I don't. I'm writing late at night, alone. I don't know if these thoughts are fit for public consumption. It could be so much worse. I should be grateful, not angry. Karl's condition is completely treatable. He's only weak, not dying.
One of Karl's friends, on our drive up to the hospital, told me a story of another friend of his who's been diagnosed with bone cancer. His ribs are dissolving. The doctors say there's no point in even giving him chemotherapy until the pain gets too bad. It's only a matter of time for him.
By comparison, my complaints seem insignificant and selfish. Things could be so much worse. We have families and friends who love and support us. We have each other. We have our memories of the last four years. And we have hope. Or I try to have hope. I fight to have hope that one day that'll be me diving into the water to chase Secret again.
At church on Sunday, I kept breaking into tears every time the priest said, "Grant us thy peace." Grant me thy peace, Lord. As impossible as it is to imagine.
I remember the words of Keats: "Fled is that vision. Do I wake or sleep?"
And I cling to the words of the ancient Christian mystic, Dame Julian of Norwich, who says, "All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well."
Friday, December 07, 2007
Bridgewater, Maine
Temperature: 18°F
“If love can be and still be lonely, where does that leave me and you?”
I’m sitting at the dining room table at the house in Bridgewater, looking out the three large front windows at the newly plowed white driveway, the dusting of snow on the pine trees, the empty birches, and the broken-down goat shed out back. Under his pine tree, the wolf-dog, Shadow, paces around on his chain. That dog’s keeping me sane--we go on two-mile walks in the snow every day. We had seventeen inches of snow on Tuesday, and since then I’ve been plowing through in my boots and crampons, beating a path in the shin-deep snow.
The physicality of it reminds my muscles of the work they did on the Appalachian Trail. Walking even that small amount makes me miss walking, makes me remember when walking used to keep me sane, when walking used to be what I did for a living. The best part of being here would be the walking, hands down. I push myself a little farther every day, into the untracked snow, the wolf pulling me forward, sniffing the new smells on either side of the woods, tracking voles and moose and deer and partridge. I like seeing the world through a wolf’s eyes, imagining the two of us as a lean pack, hunting together through the northern waste.
The crazy thing about Shadow is that he really is eighty percent wolf. Karl got him when he was just a puppy from the previous owner of the land, who bred wolves and huskies. I don’t know how you end up with eighty percent, but he did all sorts of crazy cross-breeding, the way animal breeders do, and ended up with dogs that are mainly wolf, toned down a little with the husky blood. Shadow is the smartest dog I’ve ever encountered. I swear he understands English, to the point where Karl thinks I’ve gone a little off--I explain things to him the way I would talk to a three-year-old. The first day I walked with him I showed him my crampons and told him I was trying out a new system, that he had to be careful. Since then he slows down when he feels me slipping on ice.
He’s like my sled dog, and he knows how to take care of me. One of Karl’s neighbors up here, Slim, says that people actually ski like that, with a single dog. He thinks I could train Shadow to do it. I think so too, although training a dog is never been on my list of personal ambitions. Shadow, though, is like fallow soil. I feel like I could teach him to spin a beach ball on his nose in about a week.
It’s a perfect example of how I feel about this beautiful place. All the things we could do here! Can and press apples, grow tomatoes and flowers and basil, raise goats and chickens, harvest wood and build things, have a farmstand, train dogs, learn to cross-country ski, take some graduate-school classes at the neighboring universiy. But the million-dollar quesion is: do we want to do these things? That’s why I feel so ambivalent about Karl selling the land. It’s such a great back-up plan for if we sink the boat. But if we’re never going to come back here and really invest in the earth and the community, is it fair to let it sit here and rot? Every time we leave, Shadow watches us with baleful eyes. Karl talks to him every time we leave, and I hope he understands to a degree, but he’s still just a dog. All he knows is that when we leave he’s kept on a chain again. You can explain things to a person, but not to an animal. It breaks my heart.
The realtor came by yesterday morning and Karl listed the property. The compromise is that he listed it at a high price in a bad market, so it probably won’t sell. If it does, it might be such a financial windfall that it would be worth it to part with the place. It just throws all of our plans into question. Maybe we should back up here and cruise Maine and Nova Scotia, one of the plans that Karl’s always talked about. Maybe somehow we can have both dreams. I always want everything, though, and it’s just not possible. We can either have the tropics or we can have the snow--we can’t have both. Every choice we make precludes another one. Soon I’ll be thirty, and the story of my twenties will have been written. I will have done the things I’ve done, and no others.
The necessity of making choices has always been my least favorite thing about life. Not so much making the choices, but but that each choice means another one can’t be chosen. Each choice blacks out the option of its alternative. It’s so final. As final as death.
(The quote at the beginning is Townes Van Zandt, the best country singer of all time.)
“If I had a flying schooner, I’d sail into the light of day,
If I had your love forever, I’d sail into the light of day...”
“If love can be and still be lonely, where does that leave me and you?”
I’m sitting at the dining room table at the house in Bridgewater, looking out the three large front windows at the newly plowed white driveway, the dusting of snow on the pine trees, the empty birches, and the broken-down goat shed out back. Under his pine tree, the wolf-dog, Shadow, paces around on his chain. That dog’s keeping me sane--we go on two-mile walks in the snow every day. We had seventeen inches of snow on Tuesday, and since then I’ve been plowing through in my boots and crampons, beating a path in the shin-deep snow.
The physicality of it reminds my muscles of the work they did on the Appalachian Trail. Walking even that small amount makes me miss walking, makes me remember when walking used to keep me sane, when walking used to be what I did for a living. The best part of being here would be the walking, hands down. I push myself a little farther every day, into the untracked snow, the wolf pulling me forward, sniffing the new smells on either side of the woods, tracking voles and moose and deer and partridge. I like seeing the world through a wolf’s eyes, imagining the two of us as a lean pack, hunting together through the northern waste.
The crazy thing about Shadow is that he really is eighty percent wolf. Karl got him when he was just a puppy from the previous owner of the land, who bred wolves and huskies. I don’t know how you end up with eighty percent, but he did all sorts of crazy cross-breeding, the way animal breeders do, and ended up with dogs that are mainly wolf, toned down a little with the husky blood. Shadow is the smartest dog I’ve ever encountered. I swear he understands English, to the point where Karl thinks I’ve gone a little off--I explain things to him the way I would talk to a three-year-old. The first day I walked with him I showed him my crampons and told him I was trying out a new system, that he had to be careful. Since then he slows down when he feels me slipping on ice.
He’s like my sled dog, and he knows how to take care of me. One of Karl’s neighbors up here, Slim, says that people actually ski like that, with a single dog. He thinks I could train Shadow to do it. I think so too, although training a dog is never been on my list of personal ambitions. Shadow, though, is like fallow soil. I feel like I could teach him to spin a beach ball on his nose in about a week.
It’s a perfect example of how I feel about this beautiful place. All the things we could do here! Can and press apples, grow tomatoes and flowers and basil, raise goats and chickens, harvest wood and build things, have a farmstand, train dogs, learn to cross-country ski, take some graduate-school classes at the neighboring universiy. But the million-dollar quesion is: do we want to do these things? That’s why I feel so ambivalent about Karl selling the land. It’s such a great back-up plan for if we sink the boat. But if we’re never going to come back here and really invest in the earth and the community, is it fair to let it sit here and rot? Every time we leave, Shadow watches us with baleful eyes. Karl talks to him every time we leave, and I hope he understands to a degree, but he’s still just a dog. All he knows is that when we leave he’s kept on a chain again. You can explain things to a person, but not to an animal. It breaks my heart.
The realtor came by yesterday morning and Karl listed the property. The compromise is that he listed it at a high price in a bad market, so it probably won’t sell. If it does, it might be such a financial windfall that it would be worth it to part with the place. It just throws all of our plans into question. Maybe we should back up here and cruise Maine and Nova Scotia, one of the plans that Karl’s always talked about. Maybe somehow we can have both dreams. I always want everything, though, and it’s just not possible. We can either have the tropics or we can have the snow--we can’t have both. Every choice we make precludes another one. Soon I’ll be thirty, and the story of my twenties will have been written. I will have done the things I’ve done, and no others.
The necessity of making choices has always been my least favorite thing about life. Not so much making the choices, but but that each choice means another one can’t be chosen. Each choice blacks out the option of its alternative. It’s so final. As final as death.
(The quote at the beginning is Townes Van Zandt, the best country singer of all time.)
“If I had a flying schooner, I’d sail into the light of day,
If I had your love forever, I’d sail into the light of day...”
Monday, December 03, 2007
Presque Isle, Maine
Presque Isle, Maine
14°F, with a windchill of 5°F, snow showers
We’re here in the neighboring “big” city to Bridgewater, at another one of thesee small-town libraries that so graciously provide internet access. I must say that Northern Maine is as close as you can get to the Bahamas in the States as far as access to services goes, although it’s worlds away weather-wise. Still, though--northern Maine has pharmacies, hardware stores, and libraries with wifi, even if they’re thirty miles away over icy roads from Karl’s homestead. I’m having a great time up here, fighting my Seasonal Affective Disorder by taking long icy walks with the wolf-dog, Shadow. At least I have been once I figured out how to wear crampons on my beat-up old green Doc Martens.
Twenty-four inches of snow are forecast for tonight, so it might be a while before I can post another update. In fact, I’m worried about getting back down to Boston in time to catch my flight to Atlanta. I hope the roads will clear enough for the buses to run sometime in the next week. It’s nice to feel, though, that our trip is winding down. Slowly, we’re ticking off all people on our to-visit list, and when I get back down south I’ll be that much closer to Crooked Island and Secret. That’s our last stop... I’m still hoping we’ll be back for a tropical Christmas.
The best part of being here? How much writing I’m getting done. There’s nothing else to do up here.
14°F, with a windchill of 5°F, snow showers
We’re here in the neighboring “big” city to Bridgewater, at another one of thesee small-town libraries that so graciously provide internet access. I must say that Northern Maine is as close as you can get to the Bahamas in the States as far as access to services goes, although it’s worlds away weather-wise. Still, though--northern Maine has pharmacies, hardware stores, and libraries with wifi, even if they’re thirty miles away over icy roads from Karl’s homestead. I’m having a great time up here, fighting my Seasonal Affective Disorder by taking long icy walks with the wolf-dog, Shadow. At least I have been once I figured out how to wear crampons on my beat-up old green Doc Martens.
Twenty-four inches of snow are forecast for tonight, so it might be a while before I can post another update. In fact, I’m worried about getting back down to Boston in time to catch my flight to Atlanta. I hope the roads will clear enough for the buses to run sometime in the next week. It’s nice to feel, though, that our trip is winding down. Slowly, we’re ticking off all people on our to-visit list, and when I get back down south I’ll be that much closer to Crooked Island and Secret. That’s our last stop... I’m still hoping we’ll be back for a tropical Christmas.
The best part of being here? How much writing I’m getting done. There’s nothing else to do up here.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
En route from Marion, Massachusetts, to Bridgewater, Maine
434 statute miles
50°, dropping to 30° in the course of our journey
We took the bus today up north, up, up, heading up into the big county Karl is named for. On the trail his trail name was “Big County,” not just because of his physical stature, but also for Arookstook County, the biggest county east of the Mississippi. He has a farm up here, 120 acres and a three-bedroom house. When I first met him, I was utterly confused by a 26-year-old with his own land avec horse. How many 26-year-olds do you meet like that? Since then, the place has become a little bit of an albatross around our collective neck, but it’s still an amazing place to come back to. A reminder of what we could have if we decided to settle down.
That’s the worst part of being here, feeling torn between two places. On the one hand, I can feel how much our families want us here, how much they’ve missed us, and how much we’ve missed them. And on the other hand, I see my picture of forlorn Secret on the hard every time I boot up the computer. The picture mysteriously appeared as my computer background when we were first back in the States, and I’ve left it ever since as a reminder of what we’re going home to.
We showed up finally at Snow Road at about ten, left off by the side of the road by the bus like some kind of drifters, picked up by Karl’s dad at Bridgewater center, the post office. Snow Road doesn’t have that much snow on it yet, just a couple of inches. The beaver pond’s full of water, and the land stretched out to the horizon in all directions, featureless and empty and beautiful. The sky is huge up here above the potato fields, framed by pines. If I could only survive the cold.
We immediately booted up the computer and began showing off our pictures to Karl’s father. I feel like such a dork sometimes, like a hippie couple from the seventies: watch our slide show! I don’t know how else to get across the magnitude of what we’ve experienced, though, and even then I’m not sure it does it justice. We’ve come so far and changed so much since we’ve been here last, and here the place is, still the same.
Thanksgiving was great, too. My brother came down from Somerville for the night before Thanksgiving and the morning of, and I enjoyed being able to spend at least some time with some of my family in addition to Karl’s. After Thanksgiving, Karl’s mom began to put up Christmas decorations and play Christmas music... It’s a reminder of just how much time has passed. I’ve also been working on the article I posted here way back when. I’m finding it difficult to come to any closure, though I am proud of myself for plugging away at it at all.
I still feel so betwixt and between. I know that visiting our families is a necessity, but it’s expensive, and it’s taking time away from all these other pressing concerns. I know that’s ludicrous. Maintaining relationships with the people we love is more important than anything else we can do. I just feel a little lost in all of these other people’s houses in all this travel. I just have to keep pushing through to the light at the end of the tunnel, our little house that we pray is patiently waiting for us.
50°, dropping to 30° in the course of our journey
We took the bus today up north, up, up, heading up into the big county Karl is named for. On the trail his trail name was “Big County,” not just because of his physical stature, but also for Arookstook County, the biggest county east of the Mississippi. He has a farm up here, 120 acres and a three-bedroom house. When I first met him, I was utterly confused by a 26-year-old with his own land avec horse. How many 26-year-olds do you meet like that? Since then, the place has become a little bit of an albatross around our collective neck, but it’s still an amazing place to come back to. A reminder of what we could have if we decided to settle down.
That’s the worst part of being here, feeling torn between two places. On the one hand, I can feel how much our families want us here, how much they’ve missed us, and how much we’ve missed them. And on the other hand, I see my picture of forlorn Secret on the hard every time I boot up the computer. The picture mysteriously appeared as my computer background when we were first back in the States, and I’ve left it ever since as a reminder of what we’re going home to.
We showed up finally at Snow Road at about ten, left off by the side of the road by the bus like some kind of drifters, picked up by Karl’s dad at Bridgewater center, the post office. Snow Road doesn’t have that much snow on it yet, just a couple of inches. The beaver pond’s full of water, and the land stretched out to the horizon in all directions, featureless and empty and beautiful. The sky is huge up here above the potato fields, framed by pines. If I could only survive the cold.
We immediately booted up the computer and began showing off our pictures to Karl’s father. I feel like such a dork sometimes, like a hippie couple from the seventies: watch our slide show! I don’t know how else to get across the magnitude of what we’ve experienced, though, and even then I’m not sure it does it justice. We’ve come so far and changed so much since we’ve been here last, and here the place is, still the same.
Thanksgiving was great, too. My brother came down from Somerville for the night before Thanksgiving and the morning of, and I enjoyed being able to spend at least some time with some of my family in addition to Karl’s. After Thanksgiving, Karl’s mom began to put up Christmas decorations and play Christmas music... It’s a reminder of just how much time has passed. I’ve also been working on the article I posted here way back when. I’m finding it difficult to come to any closure, though I am proud of myself for plugging away at it at all.
I still feel so betwixt and between. I know that visiting our families is a necessity, but it’s expensive, and it’s taking time away from all these other pressing concerns. I know that’s ludicrous. Maintaining relationships with the people we love is more important than anything else we can do. I just feel a little lost in all of these other people’s houses in all this travel. I just have to keep pushing through to the light at the end of the tunnel, our little house that we pray is patiently waiting for us.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Somerville, Massachusetts
Weather: 36°F, light snow, with a windchill of 30°F
Yup, it’s winter, folks. I know it’s still allegedly fall, but if the windchill is below freezing, it’s winter in my book. I woke up this morning on Peter’s futon, and looked out onto a gray street, closed in by fog. After my rather melodramatic, sleep-deprived post of yesterday, we had an even slower and more exhausting trek on the train into Boston. The most depressing part was pulling into South Station an hour late, but still five minutes before the last commuter rail left for Middleborough, and then being stopped on the tracks just long enough to wait for the MBTA train, our train, to pass us outbound. Argh.
So after an exhausting 26-hour sojourn around the great lakes, we had to hop a red-line T to my Harvard Square, yet again, and trek the mile to my brother’s apartment, where I pray we aren’t wearing out his and his roommates’ welcome. I made French toast this morning as a palliative, and it is always great to see Peter. Even with all our exhaustion, we managed to get in two discs of The Office before we drifted off into a Steve Carell-spiced slumber. Today we head back to Marion (via two more trains and a truck) for Thanksgiving. And that gives you just a taste of our travel-weary ways over the last month.
The sad part is that we’re not even half done. We still have treks to make to Chattanooga and Maine.
Later...
South Station, Boston, Massachusetts
At the apartment this morning, Karl finally dragged himself out of bed, asked about trains, and we had a frenzied forty-minute dash including a one-mile walk through damp, messy, slippery snow and a twenty-minute T ride that was supposed to be fifteen, only to miss our train at South Station. I am consoling myself with a clementine and with free public wifi. Still, argh. It seems to sum up our travel travails in general. Travel just involved travail, I know, but it’s becoming far too exhausting.
Now we have a two-hour wait in the frigid climes of the vast public train station, surrounded by tempting, expensive coffee, magazines, and food. All of this is beginning to wear on me, and I want to go home. Home to my own French press coffee pot, my own slowly rusting RV stove, my own skillet, my own icebox, my own slow breakfast over New Yorkers and a blue-green view in hot sunshine. I love my family, I love my friends, and I hate, I absolutely hate, the cold. I hate snow, I hate slush, I hate the way wind drives through my clothes, I hate how my nose and chin turn red and my ears numb, and I hate how all of my body’s mucus gathers flows out of every bodily orifice every time I go outside. I’ll survive, I know, I always do. Probably by holing up with books, my usual method.
Yup, it’s winter, folks. I know it’s still allegedly fall, but if the windchill is below freezing, it’s winter in my book. I woke up this morning on Peter’s futon, and looked out onto a gray street, closed in by fog. After my rather melodramatic, sleep-deprived post of yesterday, we had an even slower and more exhausting trek on the train into Boston. The most depressing part was pulling into South Station an hour late, but still five minutes before the last commuter rail left for Middleborough, and then being stopped on the tracks just long enough to wait for the MBTA train, our train, to pass us outbound. Argh.
So after an exhausting 26-hour sojourn around the great lakes, we had to hop a red-line T to my Harvard Square, yet again, and trek the mile to my brother’s apartment, where I pray we aren’t wearing out his and his roommates’ welcome. I made French toast this morning as a palliative, and it is always great to see Peter. Even with all our exhaustion, we managed to get in two discs of The Office before we drifted off into a Steve Carell-spiced slumber. Today we head back to Marion (via two more trains and a truck) for Thanksgiving. And that gives you just a taste of our travel-weary ways over the last month.
The sad part is that we’re not even half done. We still have treks to make to Chattanooga and Maine.
Later...
South Station, Boston, Massachusetts
At the apartment this morning, Karl finally dragged himself out of bed, asked about trains, and we had a frenzied forty-minute dash including a one-mile walk through damp, messy, slippery snow and a twenty-minute T ride that was supposed to be fifteen, only to miss our train at South Station. I am consoling myself with a clementine and with free public wifi. Still, argh. It seems to sum up our travel travails in general. Travel just involved travail, I know, but it’s becoming far too exhausting.
Now we have a two-hour wait in the frigid climes of the vast public train station, surrounded by tempting, expensive coffee, magazines, and food. All of this is beginning to wear on me, and I want to go home. Home to my own French press coffee pot, my own slowly rusting RV stove, my own skillet, my own icebox, my own slow breakfast over New Yorkers and a blue-green view in hot sunshine. I love my family, I love my friends, and I hate, I absolutely hate, the cold. I hate snow, I hate slush, I hate the way wind drives through my clothes, I hate how my nose and chin turn red and my ears numb, and I hate how all of my body’s mucus gathers flows out of every bodily orifice every time I go outside. I’ll survive, I know, I always do. Probably by holing up with books, my usual method.
Monday, November 19, 2007
En route from Chicago, Illinois, to Albany, New York, currently between Rochester and Syracuse
982 statute miles
Weather: 50°F, some light snow in the trees as we pass
I’m continuing to read “The Spell of the Sensuous” as we cross upstate New York by train. Today’s chapter focused on oral cultures and their intrinsic, synaesthetic connection to the earth. He talks a lot about aboriginal Australians, members of the world’s oldest living culture, and their birth--instead of being merely conceived physically, they arise from the spirit animal tracks that criss-cross the land, from the literal footsteps of the Spirits who walked across Australia laying spirit seed that rests dormant in the earth until someone’s mother feels an awakening in her womb at the exact site where the spirit animal stepped.
When an aboriginal woman becomes pregnant, the clan elders get together and decide which footstep the baby is most closely tied to. The track is remembered by elaborate song, each set of spirit footsteps paired with a couplet of a poem. That person, when born, becomes that couplet, and that piece of land is their birthright. When they die, they return to that piece of land so that their spirit can once again meld back into the soil and become one.
I can’t imagine a connection to the land that intense. I don’t suppose any of us can. I watch the narrow trees rush past the train’s windows, and the contours of the landscape are meaningless to me. I’ve never seen them before, chances are I’ll never see them again. I’m moving too fast to understand the ground, the birds, the brush. It’s all beautiful, but it’s silent.
In front of me, behind me, next to me, people are watching computer-generated DVDs on their laptops, playing video games on their cell phones, listening to iPods. They don’t even see the silent earth we’re whizzing past. It’s invisible to them.
I suppose my connection to the earth is more tenuous than most. I don’t even have a home country, a home state, a home city. Wandering through the streets of Chicago this last week reminded me of the trails I’ve walked through the city these last ten years, each step a memory. But I don’t belong there the way an aboriginal belongs to a particular piece of earth. I don’t belong anywhere. I’ve uprooted Karl successfully, too, dragging him along in my endless wake as we wander far from his true home turf. He truly belongs in New England. Its seasons echo in his body, its landscape speaks to him in a way it doesn’t speak to me.
Maybe it’s why I’m so drawn to the sea--featureless, changing, vast, empty. A blank canvas, terrain where no human belongs. I like teh story of Ulysses, our last true story, the last story from when our culture, too, was oral, tied to the earth. Back when we meant something other than desolation. Ulysses spent ten years trying to find home. I’m trying to do that, too. The only part that doesn’t ring true is the happy ending.
I kept apologizing to my hip Chicago friends for our “homeless chic”--Karl’s raggedy hair and beard, my patched jeans and old ratty sweaters, clothes from thrift-store bins and ancient basement-mildewed cardboard boxes, holey socks and shoes, stained tee-shirts. Perhaps being somewhere that was home to me, however briefly, reinforced how thoroughly homeless I am again, my only shelter a little fiberglass house bobbing forlornly thousands of miles away. I don’t like living out of an ultralight backpack and a giant Turkish purse, never able to costume myself correctly or feel the comfortable familiarity of a local. I used to be able to do these things.
Still, though, I thrive on the existential edge that not belonging brings to my existence. Everything is uncertain, everything new, everything exciting. I can’t be an aboriginal. But maybe I’ll wander forever like Ulysses, searching for my lost couplet, my lost song. And when I finally do, I can lay my bones to rest on my lost piece of earth.
Weather: 50°F, some light snow in the trees as we pass
I’m continuing to read “The Spell of the Sensuous” as we cross upstate New York by train. Today’s chapter focused on oral cultures and their intrinsic, synaesthetic connection to the earth. He talks a lot about aboriginal Australians, members of the world’s oldest living culture, and their birth--instead of being merely conceived physically, they arise from the spirit animal tracks that criss-cross the land, from the literal footsteps of the Spirits who walked across Australia laying spirit seed that rests dormant in the earth until someone’s mother feels an awakening in her womb at the exact site where the spirit animal stepped.
When an aboriginal woman becomes pregnant, the clan elders get together and decide which footstep the baby is most closely tied to. The track is remembered by elaborate song, each set of spirit footsteps paired with a couplet of a poem. That person, when born, becomes that couplet, and that piece of land is their birthright. When they die, they return to that piece of land so that their spirit can once again meld back into the soil and become one.
I can’t imagine a connection to the land that intense. I don’t suppose any of us can. I watch the narrow trees rush past the train’s windows, and the contours of the landscape are meaningless to me. I’ve never seen them before, chances are I’ll never see them again. I’m moving too fast to understand the ground, the birds, the brush. It’s all beautiful, but it’s silent.
In front of me, behind me, next to me, people are watching computer-generated DVDs on their laptops, playing video games on their cell phones, listening to iPods. They don’t even see the silent earth we’re whizzing past. It’s invisible to them.
I suppose my connection to the earth is more tenuous than most. I don’t even have a home country, a home state, a home city. Wandering through the streets of Chicago this last week reminded me of the trails I’ve walked through the city these last ten years, each step a memory. But I don’t belong there the way an aboriginal belongs to a particular piece of earth. I don’t belong anywhere. I’ve uprooted Karl successfully, too, dragging him along in my endless wake as we wander far from his true home turf. He truly belongs in New England. Its seasons echo in his body, its landscape speaks to him in a way it doesn’t speak to me.
Maybe it’s why I’m so drawn to the sea--featureless, changing, vast, empty. A blank canvas, terrain where no human belongs. I like teh story of Ulysses, our last true story, the last story from when our culture, too, was oral, tied to the earth. Back when we meant something other than desolation. Ulysses spent ten years trying to find home. I’m trying to do that, too. The only part that doesn’t ring true is the happy ending.
I kept apologizing to my hip Chicago friends for our “homeless chic”--Karl’s raggedy hair and beard, my patched jeans and old ratty sweaters, clothes from thrift-store bins and ancient basement-mildewed cardboard boxes, holey socks and shoes, stained tee-shirts. Perhaps being somewhere that was home to me, however briefly, reinforced how thoroughly homeless I am again, my only shelter a little fiberglass house bobbing forlornly thousands of miles away. I don’t like living out of an ultralight backpack and a giant Turkish purse, never able to costume myself correctly or feel the comfortable familiarity of a local. I used to be able to do these things.
Still, though, I thrive on the existential edge that not belonging brings to my existence. Everything is uncertain, everything new, everything exciting. I can’t be an aboriginal. But maybe I’ll wander forever like Ulysses, searching for my lost couplet, my lost song. And when I finally do, I can lay my bones to rest on my lost piece of earth.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Warrenville, Illinois
I've finally posted our Crooked Island pictures, so head over to my pictures site to check them out. Make special note of my pictures of Little Maddie, our friend Maddie's doppelganger whom she sent with us on the boat. We were supposed to take her around the world: unfortunately, we only got to the Bahamas. We're staying at the Levis tonight, watching old episodes of Lost until all hours.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Oak Park, Illinois
I feel like doing my sister's gimmick tonight. Here's my subject line (taken from a Bob Dylan song, which one to be discovered by vous): "She's everything I need in life, but I can't be swayed by that..."
Hello, everyone. Long time no see. I'm feeling a little guilty about a long absence, but we've also been on the road A LOT. I spent a week with my brother in Somerville, Massachusetts, while Karl slaved in the icy cold cranberry bogs of Carver for a week and a half. Then we spent another weeks (including Halloween!) with Karl's nephews, and hopped a 24-hour Amtrak to Chicago to spend some time with my niece and sister.
We just spent a fantastic evening playing "Settlers of Cataan" with my sister and her husband. Settlers of Cataan is the best board game of all time. And I know I'm a dork for saying that, but I love board games. I've also played a lot of cribbage with Karl's mom, and taught my brother and his roommates how to play Bahamian dominoes. It may sound like nothing, but it's amazing how much we need this focused time with the people we love. I feel like I'm a plant getting rain.
The travel doesn't end here, either--we take a train back to Boston, another train to Middleboro, and a truck back to Marion for Thanksgiving, and we still have a trip to Maine to arrange. It's difficult to catch my breath. Or, more aptly, it's difficult to keep my breath caught and at the same time pay the focused attention to my family that I want to. The stress of not being with Secret is wearing on us, too. Tropical Storm Noel gave me a lot of nightmares.
Emotionally, it's weird to be wandering my old stamping grounds. I visited Oak Park for the first time probably ten years ago. It's the first place I had my own apartment, it's the first place I really felt like my own person. I've criss-crossed these roads over the last decade, with different people, in different years. It's the closest thing I've had to a home.
I feel bad for not chronicling my gut reactions to our return to this country. I guess I did to some degree. But all sorts of things have been floating around my head lately. I'm reading this amazing book entitled The Spell of the Sensuous, written by a sleight-of-hand magician who won a Fulbright to study traditional magic in Bali and Tibet. He was a philosopher, and he tries to figure out, philosophically, what's caused the modern disconnect with the physical world. It's really brought my time here into perspective. Why are we so separated animals and the birds and the plants and the earth in this country? Why am I so much more connected to all that on the boat? What caused that?
Somebody's gotta to tell the tale. I guess it must be up to me.
Hello, everyone. Long time no see. I'm feeling a little guilty about a long absence, but we've also been on the road A LOT. I spent a week with my brother in Somerville, Massachusetts, while Karl slaved in the icy cold cranberry bogs of Carver for a week and a half. Then we spent another weeks (including Halloween!) with Karl's nephews, and hopped a 24-hour Amtrak to Chicago to spend some time with my niece and sister.
We just spent a fantastic evening playing "Settlers of Cataan" with my sister and her husband. Settlers of Cataan is the best board game of all time. And I know I'm a dork for saying that, but I love board games. I've also played a lot of cribbage with Karl's mom, and taught my brother and his roommates how to play Bahamian dominoes. It may sound like nothing, but it's amazing how much we need this focused time with the people we love. I feel like I'm a plant getting rain.
The travel doesn't end here, either--we take a train back to Boston, another train to Middleboro, and a truck back to Marion for Thanksgiving, and we still have a trip to Maine to arrange. It's difficult to catch my breath. Or, more aptly, it's difficult to keep my breath caught and at the same time pay the focused attention to my family that I want to. The stress of not being with Secret is wearing on us, too. Tropical Storm Noel gave me a lot of nightmares.
Emotionally, it's weird to be wandering my old stamping grounds. I visited Oak Park for the first time probably ten years ago. It's the first place I had my own apartment, it's the first place I really felt like my own person. I've criss-crossed these roads over the last decade, with different people, in different years. It's the closest thing I've had to a home.
I feel bad for not chronicling my gut reactions to our return to this country. I guess I did to some degree. But all sorts of things have been floating around my head lately. I'm reading this amazing book entitled The Spell of the Sensuous, written by a sleight-of-hand magician who won a Fulbright to study traditional magic in Bali and Tibet. He was a philosopher, and he tries to figure out, philosophically, what's caused the modern disconnect with the physical world. It's really brought my time here into perspective. Why are we so separated animals and the birds and the plants and the earth in this country? Why am I so much more connected to all that on the boat? What caused that?
Somebody's gotta to tell the tale. I guess it must be up to me.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Marion, Massachusetts
Hey, everyone. I'm sitting right now at Karl's brother's house, with his nephew named Seth. Write hi, Seth.
hi
What do you want to talk about, Seth?
Seth wants to talk about the jellyfish yesterday at school. Here are the facts he learned:
1. They don't have ANY bones.
2. They eat shrimp.
3. I went to a lab where the jellyfish live in a big tank.
4. The lab was at Tabor.
(Seth wants me to be done now.)
seth
sam
hello
Those are Seth's words. That's all for today, folks.
hi
What do you want to talk about, Seth?
Seth wants to talk about the jellyfish yesterday at school. Here are the facts he learned:
1. They don't have ANY bones.
2. They eat shrimp.
3. I went to a lab where the jellyfish live in a big tank.
4. The lab was at Tabor.
(Seth wants me to be done now.)
seth
sam
hello
Those are Seth's words. That's all for today, folks.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Marion, Massachusetts
Weather: below freezing????
We’re beginning to feel the persistent crush of time. It’ll be a full week that we’ve been here come tomorrow. I can’t quite believe it. We’ve got a lot accomplished, but I feel like only a little tiny dent has been made in the pile. If I want to see my family and friends, I’m going to have to start lining up everything weeks ahead of time, and, as everyone knows, planning is not my strong suit.
One frustrating thing is that the kind neighbor here with wireless internet access has wisened up and password-protected it. Good for him, bad for us. That means the nearest email access is the local coffee shop or library, both more than a mile away. Not really 24 hours a day online as I had envisioned. If we’re going to order things on eBay and have them shipped, we need to do it now. Not to mention the return tickets we haven’t bought yet.
Yikes. Did I mention that already? We don’t have return tickets, and we’re heading into the busy season in the Bahamas. We had some idle dream of hitching a ride as crew on a sailboat, some brave captain going offshore to Bermuda and ending up at Georgetown or some such place. But if we’re going to do that, we need to get on it right away too. (Seriously: If any Ranger 33 or other sailboat owner knows of someone heading offshore to Florida or the Bahamas in November or December, we’d love to crew. Please email me or post a comment.) I’m sure we can find a cheap ticket somehow--flying standby or taking a bus to Florida--but it’s just freaky to have not planned our departure yet.
It makes this visit feel too permanent. We can’t stick around too long, as much as we’d love to. We’re having a lot of fun here, and I begin to feel the clutch of family and community again. We took the kids to a fireman’s parade last Sunday, and we’re taking them to a dirt-bike race this Sunday. I love being able to cook in a full kitchen again, and curling up on the couch with Karl while we watch a movie isn’t so bad either. The Red Sox are trying not to bomb yet another post-season, and everyone’s talking about it. There is something to be said for fall colors and roaring fireplaces and roasted fowl. I feel the tug of roots, those little tendrils that drift down from my shoes and struggle to find a place to dig into the dirt. Try as they might, I keep ripping them up and carrying away with me to the next place. They stay short and stunted.
My roots are in the boat, now. She’s waiting for me to come home.
We’re beginning to feel the persistent crush of time. It’ll be a full week that we’ve been here come tomorrow. I can’t quite believe it. We’ve got a lot accomplished, but I feel like only a little tiny dent has been made in the pile. If I want to see my family and friends, I’m going to have to start lining up everything weeks ahead of time, and, as everyone knows, planning is not my strong suit.
One frustrating thing is that the kind neighbor here with wireless internet access has wisened up and password-protected it. Good for him, bad for us. That means the nearest email access is the local coffee shop or library, both more than a mile away. Not really 24 hours a day online as I had envisioned. If we’re going to order things on eBay and have them shipped, we need to do it now. Not to mention the return tickets we haven’t bought yet.
Yikes. Did I mention that already? We don’t have return tickets, and we’re heading into the busy season in the Bahamas. We had some idle dream of hitching a ride as crew on a sailboat, some brave captain going offshore to Bermuda and ending up at Georgetown or some such place. But if we’re going to do that, we need to get on it right away too. (Seriously: If any Ranger 33 or other sailboat owner knows of someone heading offshore to Florida or the Bahamas in November or December, we’d love to crew. Please email me or post a comment.) I’m sure we can find a cheap ticket somehow--flying standby or taking a bus to Florida--but it’s just freaky to have not planned our departure yet.
It makes this visit feel too permanent. We can’t stick around too long, as much as we’d love to. We’re having a lot of fun here, and I begin to feel the clutch of family and community again. We took the kids to a fireman’s parade last Sunday, and we’re taking them to a dirt-bike race this Sunday. I love being able to cook in a full kitchen again, and curling up on the couch with Karl while we watch a movie isn’t so bad either. The Red Sox are trying not to bomb yet another post-season, and everyone’s talking about it. There is something to be said for fall colors and roaring fireplaces and roasted fowl. I feel the tug of roots, those little tendrils that drift down from my shoes and struggle to find a place to dig into the dirt. Try as they might, I keep ripping them up and carrying away with me to the next place. They stay short and stunted.
My roots are in the boat, now. She’s waiting for me to come home.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Marion, Massachusetts
At some random person’s house yesterday, I felt a weird but familiar feeling. It was the feeling I used to get when I was a kid and we were on furlough--that feeling of strangeness and pride, that I’m putting on a show, that I belong elsewhere and this is a break from real life. When I was a kid we came home from the mission field every two years for a summer--sometimes two months, sometimes four. Other missionary families only went home every four years, and then stayed in the States for a full year. I was always glad we didn’t have to do that. At least we could go to the same school every year.
It was such a familiar feeling, though. I used to feel it every summer we were here, all summer. The strangeness of the food. The peculiar enchantment and ubiquity of television. The vertigo of being around unknown people who haven’t the vaguest conception of the places I’ve lived or the things I’ve seen. I feel like we’re on a traditional furlough and it’s disorienting to me to find that I’ve created a life for myself that so closely mirrors that of my childhood.
We joke, half serious, about being missionaries all the time. We’re teaching people to live like lilies, we’re sharing the good news that Christ has proclaimed freedom to the captive and sight to the blind. These are the things I believe. These things are why I’m doing what I’m doing, why I’m following this narrow and windy path, precarious cliffs beat with giant seas down below. I said to my brother on our first day here that I worried our families didn’t understand the boat is “a realistic long-term life choice.”
He said, “It is?”
We’ve had some immense challenges this first year, but, coming up on our first anniversary, some amazing successes. Without having sailed before, we made it past the harbor considered the southern terminus of Bahamas cruising, in the wrong season. We persevered through having thousands of dollars of equipment lost, a huge chunk of our budget. We successfully stayed within our means for a full year. Where we’re heading is easier--places we have contacts and work, with a boat that’s better equipped, and with a crew that is more experienced. We’ve only just begun.
It was such a familiar feeling, though. I used to feel it every summer we were here, all summer. The strangeness of the food. The peculiar enchantment and ubiquity of television. The vertigo of being around unknown people who haven’t the vaguest conception of the places I’ve lived or the things I’ve seen. I feel like we’re on a traditional furlough and it’s disorienting to me to find that I’ve created a life for myself that so closely mirrors that of my childhood.
We joke, half serious, about being missionaries all the time. We’re teaching people to live like lilies, we’re sharing the good news that Christ has proclaimed freedom to the captive and sight to the blind. These are the things I believe. These things are why I’m doing what I’m doing, why I’m following this narrow and windy path, precarious cliffs beat with giant seas down below. I said to my brother on our first day here that I worried our families didn’t understand the boat is “a realistic long-term life choice.”
He said, “It is?”
We’ve had some immense challenges this first year, but, coming up on our first anniversary, some amazing successes. Without having sailed before, we made it past the harbor considered the southern terminus of Bahamas cruising, in the wrong season. We persevered through having thousands of dollars of equipment lost, a huge chunk of our budget. We successfully stayed within our means for a full year. Where we’re heading is easier--places we have contacts and work, with a boat that’s better equipped, and with a crew that is more experienced. We’ve only just begun.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Marion, Massachusetts
I’m curled up in front of the gas fireplace in the big room at Karl’s mom’s house, the only room in the house with heat and the only place I’m comfortable without a stack of blankets. I joked before we left the Bahamas that the heat was going to bother me, but I hadn’t really believed it. “I’ll adjust,” I thought. “It won’t be that bad.” But it is. It was 35 degrees this morning before the sun came up, and almost no one has their heat on. I’m dying. I feel like I’m being a very rude guest, but I don’t know how to control it. We stopped by one of Karl’s friends houses today who had the window open while he smoked a cigarette, and I felt atrocious as I piled on every bit of clothing I had: down vest, wool sweater, massive knit scarf, lined cap, gloves. I look like I’m dressed for February in the Arctic.
They say, although I don’t know whether to believe them, that people who grow up in cold climates adjust successfully to warm climates, but people who grow up in warm climates can never fully adjust to cold ones. Something to do with the thickness of blood. That seems rather far-fetched, but I’m experiencing it now. After eight years in Chicago I had figured out winter pretty well--lots of fatty food and television and crouching by radiators. Well, maybe not fairly well. I just can’t believe that I’ve lost all of my acclimatization in one lousy winter. I feel just as bad as I did the first winter at college, when I would feel my body temperature drop and turn up the radiator in my room full-blast for weeks on end. I can feel it happening again now--I’ll be perfectly fine in my down and my wool until all of a sudden my internal temperature plunges and I can’t get warm no matter what I do.
If this is how hard Karl had it when we first got to the Bahamas, I completely understand. That adjustment was hard for me, too. It was hotter than I expected and I didn’t understand why it was so hard for me to deal with, without a bimini or a fan or any shade. We managed to rig a tarp pretty quick, but throughout the whole month of August we survived without any cover for the boat. I really hate the shade. On lunch breaks back when I was in the working world, I would always sit in full sun and come back into work sweaty. It was worth it for the contact high. In the Bahamas we walk around half naked, here we can’t move without being swaddled up to our necks. We experienced the heat in a whole different way down there, a different character of heat, a different consistency. Here, the cold is just as insidious, a constant presence, nipping at the ends of my fingers and toes.
I forgot how much of a constant battle it is for me here, how much emotional energy being cold takes up. I’m afraid to go outside because of the cold, afraid to move once I find someplace that I’m warm. I’m bewildered by all the layers I’m supposed to be wearing--what’s too much and what’s not enough? I feel like I’ve gained twenty pounds just because I’m wearing puffy coats instead of bathing suits and sarongs.
I read a fantasy novel when I was a teenager, once, a love story between a girl who was claustrophobic and couldn’t go under the shade of trees, and a faun who was agoraphobic and couldn’t come out into open spaces. They could only be together at the border between field and forest, where they would walk, one in sunlight and one in shadow, hand in hand. Sometimes I worry that Karl and I could end up like that--me with the heat and he with the cold. I hope we can find some middle ground, a border between sunlight and darkness.
They say, although I don’t know whether to believe them, that people who grow up in cold climates adjust successfully to warm climates, but people who grow up in warm climates can never fully adjust to cold ones. Something to do with the thickness of blood. That seems rather far-fetched, but I’m experiencing it now. After eight years in Chicago I had figured out winter pretty well--lots of fatty food and television and crouching by radiators. Well, maybe not fairly well. I just can’t believe that I’ve lost all of my acclimatization in one lousy winter. I feel just as bad as I did the first winter at college, when I would feel my body temperature drop and turn up the radiator in my room full-blast for weeks on end. I can feel it happening again now--I’ll be perfectly fine in my down and my wool until all of a sudden my internal temperature plunges and I can’t get warm no matter what I do.
If this is how hard Karl had it when we first got to the Bahamas, I completely understand. That adjustment was hard for me, too. It was hotter than I expected and I didn’t understand why it was so hard for me to deal with, without a bimini or a fan or any shade. We managed to rig a tarp pretty quick, but throughout the whole month of August we survived without any cover for the boat. I really hate the shade. On lunch breaks back when I was in the working world, I would always sit in full sun and come back into work sweaty. It was worth it for the contact high. In the Bahamas we walk around half naked, here we can’t move without being swaddled up to our necks. We experienced the heat in a whole different way down there, a different character of heat, a different consistency. Here, the cold is just as insidious, a constant presence, nipping at the ends of my fingers and toes.
I forgot how much of a constant battle it is for me here, how much emotional energy being cold takes up. I’m afraid to go outside because of the cold, afraid to move once I find someplace that I’m warm. I’m bewildered by all the layers I’m supposed to be wearing--what’s too much and what’s not enough? I feel like I’ve gained twenty pounds just because I’m wearing puffy coats instead of bathing suits and sarongs.
I read a fantasy novel when I was a teenager, once, a love story between a girl who was claustrophobic and couldn’t go under the shade of trees, and a faun who was agoraphobic and couldn’t come out into open spaces. They could only be together at the border between field and forest, where they would walk, one in sunlight and one in shadow, hand in hand. Sometimes I worry that Karl and I could end up like that--me with the heat and he with the cold. I hope we can find some middle ground, a border between sunlight and darkness.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Marion, Massachusetts
Today we settled into life here. It’s so fun playing with the kids and getting caught up on their lives. Seth, the younger brother, especially seems to have grown. He’s on the verge of reading now, able to write his name and two other words (“cat” and “dot”) and can pick out letters in any books. He pulled out our card from last year (we gave him our beat-up old truck as a going-away present) and spelled out the letters for me. I can’t believe how much taller and older he seems.
Jacob, the older brother, has matured, too. He’s the one who loves Yu-Gi-Oh and we spent a couple of hours tonight poring over the online interactive demo of how to play the game. He’s been collecting cards for years but we’ve never figured out how to actually play, and I feel like he might finally be ready for it. Of course, my ulterior motive is that I love games. I don’t just play dominoes for grins and giggles, after all.
I had a blast tonight taking over the kitchen at Karl’s brother’s and making a huge pot of crock-pot chili and a giant salad with homemade dressing. I went to the grocery store for the first time and spent thirty dollars almost exclusively on fresh produce: red grapes, a giant head of romaine lettuce, beautiful tomatoes and peppers and alfalfa sprouts. They may be farmed with pesticides and shipped zillions of miles, but modern American produce is one of the world’s wonders. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed just being able to jaunt into the grocery store and picked up what I need for dinner. It was fabulous.
I loved having the boys help me too. I told Jacob that he was making the chili and I was just going to chop up the veggies for him--he added the beef and the beans and tomatoes and a magic spice blend he put together from the spice cabinet and fresh-picked jalapeno and serrano peppers from the garden. Then Seth helped us make a fresh dressing for the salad with rosemary from the garden and balsamic vinegar and pepper juice. The boys loved it. Maybe I’m having a little twinge of maternal instinct, here and there...
Jacob, the older brother, has matured, too. He’s the one who loves Yu-Gi-Oh and we spent a couple of hours tonight poring over the online interactive demo of how to play the game. He’s been collecting cards for years but we’ve never figured out how to actually play, and I feel like he might finally be ready for it. Of course, my ulterior motive is that I love games. I don’t just play dominoes for grins and giggles, after all.
I had a blast tonight taking over the kitchen at Karl’s brother’s and making a huge pot of crock-pot chili and a giant salad with homemade dressing. I went to the grocery store for the first time and spent thirty dollars almost exclusively on fresh produce: red grapes, a giant head of romaine lettuce, beautiful tomatoes and peppers and alfalfa sprouts. They may be farmed with pesticides and shipped zillions of miles, but modern American produce is one of the world’s wonders. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed just being able to jaunt into the grocery store and picked up what I need for dinner. It was fabulous.
I loved having the boys help me too. I told Jacob that he was making the chili and I was just going to chop up the veggies for him--he added the beef and the beans and tomatoes and a magic spice blend he put together from the spice cabinet and fresh-picked jalapeno and serrano peppers from the garden. Then Seth helped us make a fresh dressing for the salad with rosemary from the garden and balsamic vinegar and pepper juice. The boys loved it. Maybe I’m having a little twinge of maternal instinct, here and there...
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