Tissue Paper Plans

Ed note: We have been criticized in the past for philosophical and political musings on what was supposed  to be a voyaging blog, but true voyaging is not just about the boat, the travels, the weather, or the practical methodology of cruising. True voyaging is about the human spirit and its desire to explore and to gain knowledge and wisdom through new experiences, the rest of it just accoutrements picked up along the way. As a result, you will often find philosophical musings here on The Retirement Project. if it's not your cup of tea, then scroll on by. The next practical post should follow shortly.

Things are a bit slow on First Light. It has been a few days since our latest visit to the OR and everything is going well. A few weeks from now is the post-op doctor's visit where the cast and stitches will be removed and an assessment made as to how things are going. The plate and screws are far stronger than the bone they are supporting, making the condition of that bone and how it reacts to the the surgery the deciding factor in recovery.

With the history of this trip in mind, any plans we make for departing are written on tissue paper that is then left out in the rain. Even each day's plan is more of the make-it-up-as-you-go variety. There is a vague idea that we might be leaving Oriental around the end of July or early in August. That will leave roughly eight weeks to make it to our scheduled haul out north of Annapolis. We will have spent more time in Oriental than traveling this trip. Not exactly what we had in mind when we pulled out of St. Louis back in April.

It is tempting to be discouraged. Life-threatening cardiac arrests, a pace maker install, multiple broken bones, surgery for plates and screws? Not exactly a cruising dream. Between challenging boat projects and  completely unexpected medical issues, this is a trip that will be long remembered as one to forget.

Our life is full of good people who have stepped up to help out any way they can, and we are grateful for every supportive offer and thought. Many have allowed that “everything happens for a reason”. It is a common meme spoken with the very best of intentions, usually after the original misadventure has passed and the aftermath is being brought under control. But it is a meme I don't happen to share. 

I think things just happen. “Reason” is something we read into an event after it happens to try and make sense of it all and to take comfort in the idea that someone (or something) far more capable and knowledgable than us, is in control. But when I look around I see little reason to think that is the case. What happens, happens, often without warning or obvious reason and usually outside of our control. (Not always, but usually.) All we do control is how we choose to react to what has and is happening.

The decisions we make in the present moment will help form the moment that is about to pass. We play a role (small as it might be) in the continuous flow of things happening that stretches back to the beginning of time. A flow that (in my humble opinion) has no ultimate goal or predetermined path. Rather It is a continuously unfolding experiment which just happens to include our human experience of being self aware and making decisions. Beyond that, pretty much everything is a mystery.

Every decision we make is done so with a scant amount of current information, usually near zero understanding of history, with no idea (or often thought) of unintended consequences, and with little clue as to what will happen next in the physical world and cosmos. The dinosaurs went about their business for 250,000,000 years then were destroyed by a big rock that fell from the sky. Tornados, lighting strikes, floods, hurricanes, wild fires, wars, the rise and fall of empires—we have about the same control over such events as did the dinosaurs over a wayward asteroid.  

This river-like flow of events (to use a common metaphor) is very “messy” in human terms. It is full of cross currents, back flows, eddies, rapids, rouge waves, and storms. The best we can do is simply accept what happens in this moment while making our tiny bit of the cosmic experience as positive as we can for ourselves and those we care about. It is also helpful to keep the upcoming moment in mind so as not to make it worse than need be. When we are making those choices, if possible, it might be helpful if we include the rest of the human family as “those we care about”. We might even throw in the rest of the biosphere that is this little island in the dark, the one that we all ride through the cosmos, as something to care about as well. If everything does “happen for a reason” that reason can only be to give each of us, in this present moment, a chance to live up to, and strive to be, the best excuse for a human being as we can manage.  On First Light, and at this moment, that means being patient, being grateful for the support and aid that has flowed into our lives from all directions, and making plans written on tissue paper that has been left out in the rain.

Getting away

We are in Saint Louis for a couple of weeks. It had been too long since we had seen Daughters Middle and Youngest, their collective 6 of our grand kids, other family, and friends. Modern life is what it is, and it is hard to imagine living any other way than on our floating tiny house, wandering where we can when we can. Still, the days of extended family groups / tribes living together for a string of lifetimes, generations overlapping, is an image that has its attractions. Being surrounded by kids and grand kids, involved every day in the unfolding of their lives, and having them involved as mine unfolds, is certainly a life well lived. How does that compare to the experience of a larger world, knowing and learning from people who are not “my tribe”, and seeing a little bit of life and our place in the cosmos through a different lens? It doesn't really, they are two radically different ways of living. One chooses and, whatever the choice, will always have moments of wondering if it was the right path to take.

Whenever we are back “inland” and visiting like this, there is this feeling of being reconnected, though inundated might be an equally good description. Living on the boat, particularly when we are working like we are, is very much an ascetic lifestyle. Creature comforts are few, accented by times of outright discomfort when the weather turns foul. Lightning, when it is around, is a real and present danger. Kintala recently escaped a strike only because the boat next to her has a mast several feet taller. We walk to the bathhouse rain or shine, day or night. And I work outside, pretty much regardless of what the weather is doing. We are even more exposed to “outside” when riding to an anchor or mooring ball.

Here, in the city, we go outside, but we don't live there. “Outside” plays across the front windows like a sport’s show on bar TV. Some color and motion but no one is really paying any attention. Phase of the moon, state of the tide, time of sunrise, sunset, moon rise and moon set, all unknown and unimportant. And I mean really unimportant. None have any effect at all on the lives being led. Days go by and no one cares if it is hot or cold, raining or blazing sun, with winds topping 30 knots or it being dead calm.

There are many, perhaps a majority, who see that as one of the most positive things of modern life. We have conquered nature, made ourselves comfortable from her shenanigans except for the most extreme examples. That used to sound right, but I don’t know that I lean that way any more.

Occasionally, I drop by John Michael Greer's blog. His is an interesting take on the universe and, as a result, I have spent a little time reading up on the mythology. It turns out that living on the boat, close to nature, with a lot of time spent in the cockpit breathing deeply of the natural world we find while riding to anchor, all sounds very like his descriptions of Druid meditations. They take the idea of magic a bit more literally than seems likely to be true. But is it really that far removed from the impulse to petition a deity to do something or other? (These days those so inclined always seem to call on the deity after the hurricane strikes or the terrorist attacks, which seems a bit backward.)

I also wonder if the Druid's magic, or that of any other mythical ideology, is actually pretty closely related to those moments that brush by while standing watch far from land on a star filled night. Maybe, if one looks at it from the other side (so to speak), “magic” isn’t a matter of us changing something that is going on in the cosmos to our liking. It could be that "magic" is allowing the goings on of the cosmos to change us, shaping our journey here to be useful and eternal. Perhaps the reason the modern world is so lacking in wisdom is that we have cut ourselves off from the source, from the cathedral of the cosmos that is the foundation of our being.

In any case, getting away for us also means coming home. And leaving here will mean going home. There is something pretty special about that, something I haven’t fully grasped.

Maybe, someday, I will.