Wrapping this up.

Steinbeck wrote, “We don’t take a trip…the trip takes us.”  Tho i’m not keepin’ Akimbo on the move, tho i don’t have another rendezvous to make, this voyage is not done with me…until i write these tho’ts down. While i haven’t posted an entry for weeks, i’ve not been idle.  I’ve been fixing Akimbo and re-entering life ashore with my community and son.  And i’ve been exploring my way to the bottom of another page, instead of across an ocean or to another island.  My clearest thinking happens in the morning.  That’s when threads of tho’t lead me to new horizons, or force me out of bed, at 3:30 one morning.  In Akimbo’s dark cabin i get out from under a heavy layer of warm covers, pull on yesterday’s clothes, slip on my fur-lined booties.  I bump the thermostat up a few degrees as i go by, i click on a dim cabin light.  At the stove, the burner sparks to blue flame, which i cover with the kettle.  I come and sit down here, in front of the keyboard, and get this far before the kettle whistles. 

Writing is a solitary endeavor, but my grist for it comes from heartfelt conversations with friends.  Walking with one, she asked  “So how’s it going?”  “Okay, but i sure have plowed thru a lot of tho’ts.  At the end of the 2010 trip i threw most of them away.  This time i want them to add up to something.”  “Why,” she asked. 

Now THERE is a question that i swore off long ago.  Whatever answer i found, “why” could be asked of that answer too.  It never ended, could make me crazy.  The only legit answer, so far as i could tell, was “why not?”  But by now i’ve met enuf of life and death to let go of that vow.  We ask why of mountaineers.  Of sailors, adventurers…of composers, dancers, artists and poets…and of ourselves.  Why do you do what you do?  And the way you do it?  For an adventurer sometimes the question sounds more like “What the hell am i doing here?”  But we’re all “here.”  We gotta do something.  Beyond food, clothing and shelter, we gravitate to what we feel resonant with, to something where we might find…meaning (or money, for some)…even if the thing we seek and the way we strive for it is meaningless.  Like sailing. Or climbing…

Or writing?  I replied to my friend, “Sure, i want to write something beautiful, something that will resonate with other people, something that will last.  But my best writing is when what’s coming out on the page surprises me.  When i ask myself, “where did that come from?”  When i find some insight or viewpoint that i didn’t know i knew.  When the unknown meets me there.  THAT is why i’m writing.”  “Good,” she said, “there’s no better reason.” 

“The most beautiful thing in the world is the mysterious,” Einstein said.  “It is the source of all true art and science.”  This quote comes to me from “North to the Night” by Alvah Simon.  It is the story of wintering in the Arctic aboard his 36’ steel sloop, an extreme adventure far beyond my ken and desire.  He addresses “why” as well as anyone i’ve ever read.  Aboard Akimbo, in that last week of sailing, the “mysterious” included torn sails, an exhaust leak, a fuel leak, a failing pump on the main engine, storms…in the meantime there was trimming sails, cooking, navigating, checking in with crew...  Some of this was not fun at all.  It demanded my attention, all of it, which is to say it was immensely entertaining.  A part of adventure is risking ourselves.  On the theory that every challenge presents an opportunity, we put ourselves where we will likely get more entertainment than we bargain for.   Where more might be required from us than we knew we had to give.  Where we remember that life is dear. 

For living is a tenuous thing.  Whether we face it or not, reality is constantly shifting under our feet.  On shore, in a 9 to 5 routine, this is easier to forget.  Or deny.  Still, “change is gonna come.” At sea, shifting reality is impossible to ignore.  And control repeatedly proves to be an illusion.  It’s not “man against the sea.”  Are you kidding?!  A losing proposition could not be more obvious.  But it’s us in dialog with something bigger than ourselves.  We go “out there”… whether it’s on an ocean or a mountain peak; on a dance floor or a stage; into the eyes of a lover, the arms of your child, or in conversation with a stranger… to discover what this is that we are part of and what our tiny part in it may be.  To explore an unknown it makes sense to reach beyond what we know, beyond our home, to something new.  Horizons call to sailors, but by definition horizons cannot be reached.  They recede…and beckon.  By keeping a horizon in sight, we keep the unknown within sight.  We let what we usually feel as a boundary between ourselves and mystery come close and sometimes blur.  We bring what is inside of us to meet and be met by what is outside.  In doing so we seek…intimacy.  (that is NOT the word that i tho't would end that sentence)

My favorite memory of this voyage?  Skinny dipping in the middle of an ocean, in incredibly clear blue water three miles deep.  I’ll have to count how many islands we visited.  If i fell into the “ADI” syndrome (“another damn island”) it was because i felt called home.  It was hard to leave the islands, the adventure, but after enuf time, it was harder to be so far from the people i love and the adventure of loving them.  No, not one of the islands is “just another island.”  Each is unique…like the rest.  Each day.  Each person.  Each breath, drawing us on.  Feeling between chapters in my life, the other day i reached into a bowl full of angel cards and pulled out “intention.”  Tyler asked, “So, what is your intention?”  I answered fast, so that i couldn’t think about it, “To take no one for granted, to appreciate every one.”  

It is irony that fills my sails now, that propels me on.  The irony that surprises me is this:  that the depths twin praise with grief, love with loss, pain with pleasure and in all of it i find myself grateful.  I catch my heart smiling and that feels new.  There is a TED lecture entitled “how to buy happiness”…turns out it’s by spending your money (or whatever your resources are) on someone else.  I am so enjoying loving my son and my friends, involving myself in their lives…and they are letting me in.  “THIS is where they know my name”…what luck!  What a welcome home.   Thank you cannot say enuf. 

A crew member, looking back at his leg of the voyage, wrote to thank me for what he now realized was a high point in his life. “Wow!” i wrote back.  “There you are thanking me...when it's me who thanks you.  It was a voyage made much more possible by the help i asked for and received.  Seeming coincidences led to the opportunity of making this voyage, and once it became possible, for me it became necessary.  I felt an imperative to not look back and wonder what it would have been like, wonder if i should have done it, could have done it.   Instilled in me since childhood, i'd tho't about it for too long...to only talk about it.  "Just (shut up and) do it."  So we did it, took care of it, lived thru it, got it done.  And on deep levels i simply got lucky.  Hinged on too many details, it could have really gone badly.  A distinct part of my luck was your help and encouragement.  Thank you.  I am relieved that no one was injured, and rewarded that your part in this means a lot to you.  Maybe remembering sailing to distant islands and across open ocean...will help us sail into our old age more at peace because we can look back and feel with a certainty that we lived.  
But maybe we knew it before, if we have loved.  For love is a voyage too.  And having loved, we should know we have lived.  
Socrates said that an unconsidered life isn't worth living and a few thousand years later Australian art critic Robert Hughes added that an unlived life isn't worth considering.  In the end, maybe the real risk isn't choosing to hazard ourselves.  Maybe it's choosing to not hazard ourselves.  

A toast to living a full and lucky life!”

(So that feels like a wrap to me.   But how can it be when i’m still here?  This trip that is life has taken me and is not done.  My eyes already look up for another horizon.  I've been filling pages trying to bring it into focus.  But that voyage will not be this one.  This one's done.  And i am grateful for it, for the ancestor it is to the next.)