Sailing - Again

Ya know, it's a little after one o'clock in the morning and I'm sitting at my keyboard in my birthday suit and the shampoo is still in my hair.  I didn't bother to rinse yet.  No matter, the shower will be there when I finish this, and I'll bet my hair will be none the worse for enduring the two hours or so I plan on sitting in front of my keyboard.  Ya just never know when you're gonna have to write.

My life can be measured in decades - and the years of those decades ending in "9" seem to dominate the period.  1969 was the year of the witch and close friends will know about that episode.  Discussing the witch will only give power to a force I have already dealt with and do not wish to re-energize. 1989 was the year I met Carolyn, and my life changed dramatically when that happened.  1999 was the year I took what would be the last job in a long and varied career.  2009 was the year we found out about Carolyn.  Even though I did not recognize it at the time, all these years were turning points in my life.

You may have noticed I skipped over the year 1979.  That year a friend introduced me to the music of Christopfer Cross - and one of the songs he wrote that got a bunch of air time a little later, changed my life.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQeqmNbA2Hs 

Every circumstance you can imagined had changed in my life between 1979 and 1983 - as it had in Chris's.  He will not know the change he brought to my life, but I remembered the song he wrote and when I found myself on the beach in Ventura, California I checked to see if he was right .  He had said "The canvas can do miracles.  Just you wait and see.  Believe me."  So I bought a boat.

 I also read a book around that time; it's title was "Dove."  The tale was one of a 16 year old kid who had sailed around the world singlehanded in a twenty some odd foot boat.  Well, now I had Chris's song, a twenty-six foot boat and a dream.  I learned to sail and took my little boat far out into the Pacific Ocean. 

I took it so far out into that Sea that a week or more would pass from the time I lost sight of land until it reappeared.  I dreamed of ocean passages - fame and fortune beyond my wildest belief was there in front of my fingers. So I did the natural thing for me at the time - I managed to get wasted and sank the boat.  Fame is such a fleeting thing.

But the dream did not die.  A couple of days ago I talked with a friend for several hours.  It was much as Lewis Carrol's "The Walrus and The Carpenter."  We talked "of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings."  We talked of many things, and I was reminded once more of the dream.  To sail around the world in my own small boat. 

It's nice to nourish a dream, and if my life really takes on more significance in the year of the decade ending in "9". that's when I expect it to happen.  2019. 

I'll be 74 years old in that year, so I hope that's the year the voyage ends, not the year it starts.  For sure the voyage will be made.  With my friends to encourage me, even though I have not named them in my will, I know it will happen.

And all of you - feed your dreams.  Make them last a while and savor them for decades.  They will keep you alive during hard times and will be your salvation when the hard times are finished.

Chris was right "The canvas can do miracles."  But I'm thinking there are more canvases than those that are hanked onto forestays.  There's a dream for everone.  Find it.