The Edge Of The Unknown

I have managed for many years to drift along in what I can only call a very satisfactory way, dodging reality and getting bored from time to time. The trouble is this  near death experience has thrown into stark relief the cracks in my life. I write this essay with some trepidation as I don’t really know how to “make every day count” but I feel some obligation now to do just that.  Only boring people get bored, right?  How could I get bored?  Marking time till retirement...that rabbit hole I was so eager to start down in 2021. 

And in the midst of these musings I’ve had conversations that have illuminated my thoughts. In conversation with my oldest friend in the US whom I met on my Vespa voyage of exploration in 1982 we were talking last night (instead of writing this blog) and I mentioned Anthony Bourdain whom I admired and whose last shows illuminate my Sunday nights in rehab. For my friend the late chef was no more than a loud New Yorker and I wanted to correct that image but it soon came clear there would be none of that.  In her mind he was no more than that. This despite the fact both myself and another traveler friend both thought highly of him. Nope, no change no way no how. Her mind is closed no new opinions wanted. 

This brings me to Meg Cabot a well known author among youngsters and fans of her book and film The Princess Diaries. I knew of her thanks to the Key West Citizen but I was not drawn to descriptions of her books. I am not the demographic. So I’m lying in bed, as you do in my situation when Luis the handyman drops a package in my lap. And this author who has your average giant publishing empire to handle has taken the time to package some books and write the most personal and kind, dare I say flattering note to me and packaged it all up and figured my address and mailed it all off in good order. Bit of a head spinner really. So now I’m trying to write this damned page forgetting she actually reads it. The weirdest thing is I started into one of the books and I like it. How about that? Once again my closed mind is forced open. There is no end to it. I tried to say thank you by Facebook an uncertain medium so let me say it here untrammeled by gatekeepers and the vagaries of giant corporations. Thank you. 

I got chocolates puzzles and games from Internet friends and my wife’s cousin in Chicago Lyn whom we visit from time to time but never enough. Plus I got a rather fun read from a visitor who dropped in unhappily while I was at the doctors. Check this out:

I think all this ebullience and lust for life sits badly with some people.  I rather fear I have put one friend in the lost category in my pursuit of abundance. It’s not all good marching through daily life like a bull in a china shop and I don’t recommend it. The trouble is when you are in my position finesse gets lost at the wayside. Somewhere in this process I need to find the brakes I’m thinking, and I will need to slow down but right now I’m alive and I don’t want to waste a minute.  Fear or trepidation have no place in my life. Not helplessness neither.

I often think back to a morning driving to Big Pine when I saw a car stop in the highway and drop some trash on the ground. I reached the spot after they left and found a tortoise upside in the road condemned to die. I did the right thing but I knew not whence it came so all I could was put it in safety but not put it back home poor thing. I figured the car was loaded with future serial killers and hoped for the best for them too. Torturing animals doesn’t make me like you actually. Being a tortoise in bed unable to help myself much puts me in mind of that day. Yet I still want to live fully even here. 

And that brings me to Webb Chiles. I have come to terms with the idea that an icon of my youth can be a close friend in my later life as unlikely as that sounds. He has written some of the most personal and illuminating literature of sailing in small boats that you can find. https://www.amazon.com/Webb-Chiles/e/B001H6IYIQ   Webb is closing in on his sixth circumnavigation by boat and he has taken joy in not making it easy for himself. He has sailed most of the way round the planet in an open boat, he sailed Cape Horn in an unsuitable sailboat prone to failure, he has been jailed in Saudi Arabia for an accidental landing and he nearly drowned when his boat sank off Florida.  He describes his life as going to the edge of human experience and sending back reports. 

Webb and I keep up a lively correspondence and he brings the outside world daily into these four walls. Which is the greatest gift all these packages gifts letters and communications bring to me. I cherish them all.  Webb paid me the compliment of reversing the journey. He’s not a man given to flattery so I believe him and feel encouraged to keep on keeping on, adding his remarks to the heaps of notes encouraging me in this time of tedium and repetition. 

“You are going through experience beyond mine and you are doing what I have professed to do:  go to the edge of human experience and send back reports.  Your reports are excellent.  Whatever else you think you are, you are an artist.” 

All of you need to know my sense of myself is wobbly at the moment and if I have offended I am sorry and if I have encouraged I am glad. If I have taken you over the top and shown you worlds you don’t want to see I apologize for my nature often leads me to excess. Maybe I  am an artist. That’s a new one for me to think about. 

He doesn’t care.  I’m just his Dad and he flopped on me. Lovely.