Pacific Ocean 3 April 2010 15.2543N 120.8036W
A boat’s gait has a very chaotic rhythm compared to a man’s gait or a horse’s gait. The rocking motion at anchor, which is very soporific, only works because you’re riding the anchor, which keeps the boat steady into the wind, and generally the boat pitches in one direction working like a baby’s cradle, rocking on a single axis. At sea the boat’s pitch, roll and yaw follow the prevailing swell, any localized wind swell, and the whim of the ship, depending on it’s point of sail. So there’s no good way to anticipate the exact next movement. You can often anticipate a general direction but precise direction and intensity are where variation occurs. When you’re awake, you deal with this variation by keeping your knees loose and ready to bend or extend to compensate for the next variation on the theme – extra loose if you’re pouring hot tea. But loose knees do not help when you’re lying horizontal. I think I’m discovering that for sleeping what’s needed is a loose brain, and now with days of dipping in and out of the sleeping state like that baby flying fish flitting from sea state to air state, my brain is indeed loosening up. That may already be apparent to those of you reading my lengthening sentences and topic digressions (or maybe you already thought it was loose, when I announced this adventure).
In that loosened state this morning I had an epiphany. Early in our courtship, I discovered that it was impossible to hold hands with Frank while walking. My epiphany today was the “why” of that challenge. His gait is a sailor’s gait, a random varying chaotic step. If you try to anchor him with a hand, be prepared to hang on tight, as his arm will never swing in cadence with yours, and even arm and arm, his torso will never rise and fall in cadence with yours. I have a lot of sailing experience but nothing near his sea hours. My own gait developed at an early age, straight fast and regular (to keep up with those lemon drops in the high sierras). While I was matching my stride to my dad’s, so I could slip rocks into that sidepocket (and lemon drops out of the other), without him feeling the tug of the zipper as his pack bounced along – Frank was working the foredeck for his dad, on their sailboat Mai Tai in Brittany, where tides and storms from the bay of Biscay increased the randomness of their boat’s pitching. My mom and dad sailed with me too then, but it was day-sailing on a P-cat in Alamitos Bay (or in the ocean but behind the breakwater where the water was pretty flat). I would crawl up close to the mast (the area of least pitching and rolling), curl into a ball, and listen to the wavelets echoing through the fiberglass – there was no dancing around on the foredeck in big waves for me. So you’ll probably only ever see us holding hands when seated. Sometimes I’ll attempt a fingertip to fingertip touch, but it’s an active sport keeping those fingertips aligned. For the safety of the bride, there was no dancing at our wedding either. You never know where his foot might fall. In the cockpit it’s every toe for itself (can you tell he just stepped on one of mine).
There’s an interesting passage in the “Log From the Sea of Cortez” where Steinbeck envies the time Darwin had, to do his collecting and perceive the “whole” (years compared to their weeks). To quote part (if you have it, somewhere in the middle of Chapter 8 – page 50 in my Penguin edition):
“And in the writing of Darwin, as in the thinking, there is the slow heave of a sailing ship, and the patience of waiting for a tide. We COULD not do this even if we could. We have thought in this connection that the speed and tempo and tone of modern writing might be built on the nervous clacking of a typewriter; that the brittle jerky thinking of the present might rest on the brittle jerky curricula of our schools…. ”
and later:
“We can look with longing back to Charles Darwin, staring into the water over the side of the sailing ship, but for us to attempt to imitate that procedure would be romantic and silly. To take a sailing boat, to fight tide and wind, to move four hundred miles on a horse when we could take a plane, would be not only ridiculous but ineffective. For we first, before our work, are products of our time. We might produce a philosophical costume piece but it would be completely artificial. ”
However, the passage I tortured the kids with yesterday was a deeply philosophical treatise on teleologic vs. non-teleologic thinking*. It takes place at Bahia Amortajada. They weren’t staring into the blue, but they were lazing on the beach suffering the biting no-nos (ancestors of the ones that bit us there) and I’m sure whiskey was being used as medication for the bites. They (including biologist Ed Ricketts), had a long discussion on the “manners and methods of thinking” (and on crewman Tiny’s career, but he decided that “decoratively disreputable saga” must remain unwritten). I wonder if Steinbeck considered his own log an artificial “costume piece.” Still the character of the writing definitely reflects the character of their six week adventure. And my own lengthening paragraphs are probably a reflection of hours with That Blue.
I think the flying fish are organizing an invasion; the quantity in each squadron, is growing rapidly.
The spinnaker is up, but our wind is not – we may have to check that prop earlier than expected.
xoxomo
*My attempt at the short definition: non-teleologic – “is” thinking or thinking expansively to include the “whole” vs. teleologic – addressing a specific cause and effect in absence of context.
I wonder if it’s having the reflective time that encourages this thinking about thinking, and that helps us examine the connectedness of all issues. Is the lack of that reflective time what is allowing our “modern” society to rely on rhetoric to defend our positions, resulting in simplification of all issues down to two sides. Short catch phrases with little thought or understanding are used to describe what should be very complex subtle relationships between ideas. I now have a justification for adding daydreaming to the Silver Lining Academy curriculum. And Darwin’s “Voyage of the Beagle” is next up on their reading list.