Sleep on a ship, it seems, is all about developing a system. Trial and error tells me my best bet is to use my pants as a pillow and curl up in my sleeping bag. This gives me both an adjustable pillow and a workable means to not overheat, as it tends to get pretty warm when you close the hatch.
All of which is to say I slept outstandingly well last night. I could get used to this.
Up at seven to provision the two ships leaving today, I spent the morning on supply runs. Heading out with a fellow deckhand was neat, as I got to get a sense of the kind of personality this life attracts--singular people with ambition, whose existence reacts volatility with a conventional job. I'm working with some pretty great people. Crazy, probably, but cool nonetheless.
We picked up a small palette of food from the local grocery store (or, as I call it, breakfast), a crate of eggs from the barn (or, as I call it, second breakfast), and a few pounds of fresh, live lobster (or, as I call them, flailing vengeful alien insects from the Great Beyond that will, in a pinch, function as third breakfast).
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| His beady eyes peer into your soul, and it looks like chowdah. |
Time to get to work.
The captain unveiled a long, full list, and I spent the next several hours cleaning what their was to clean in the galley. Call me crazy, but dishwashing is the best job I've had in a while.
Don't get me wrong, IT is lovely. And accommodating refugees is fulfilling, and every other job (yes, even--especially breaking rocks) has its virtue, but there's a level of mindfulness found in dishwashing that I really haven't found anywhere else. It's hard to focus on anything but the dishes and rag. If you let it, the world is reduced to two hands and the action of making clean what is sullied. In washing off a charred kettle, you can reduce your mind to nothing but the here and now, can fall into the harmony of the endless cycle of dirty and clean.
Or maybe I'm just a sucker they got to do the dishes on the cheap. Y'know. Either/or.
The rest of the day was mine, and as I relaxed atop the galley (that's right, kids. Send me five hundred miles north and stick me on a boat, and I'll still end up on the roof of something), I experienced the occasional curious soul asking questions about the ship. Three days of experience, notwithstanding, I still managed to provide some pretty useful answers.
My favorite was a lovely older woman who excitedly inquired about the ship and its rates. Then, as I told her my life's story (college, disillusionment, Google, phone call, Maine!) she laughed and told me with breezy reassurance that Jesus has a plan for me and my gifts.
Oh. Well. That escalated, and to make a long story short, I'm the proud new owner of a pocket-sized New Testament. I put it in my bag's front pocket, where I hope it won't start a fire when ti brushes against my copy of the Tao Teh Ching and start to sizzle. Not my cup of tea, but I was still touched.
A few of the crew and I took the little motorboat out on the bay, and i got my first look at these open waters. The postcards don't do its beauty justice; nor do they capture its size. A harbor full of ships that exceed hundreds of feet is dwarfed next to even one of the smaller islands on the Penobscot. A glance east reminds you that these islands are specks on a vast, churning ocean.
Be like water, advises Bruce Lee, the truncated version of a statement advising you to live as needed--as a small drop on a bamboo leaf, or as a churning mass of power and potential. Only on open water can I process the enormity of that statement, and this was a gentle reminder.
Another day of downtime tomorrow. Who knows? Maybe I'll find myself a copy of the Old Testament and we can get some fireballs up in this bitch.
I'm just going to leave this shameless plug here: I got published! Check it out here: http://matadornetwork.com/notebook/blood-ink-sarajevo/
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