Through the Haze

—05.03.2000—

In preparation for my upcoming trip down the English Channel aboard Elde with Jack and Dom, Hans has lent me a copy of The New Glénans Sailing Manual, a comprehensive and informative volume published by a French sailing school. It often waxes philosophical. Take this paragraph:

“The sea, they say, reveals the worth of the man. Put it another way: the sea offers everyone a chance to prove their own worth. They will find themselves mysteriously changed from the moment they set foot on deck, seeing everything with a fresh eye, finding themselves unrecognizable simply because they are becoming their true selves. A ship may return to port carrying a different crew from the one that left. Such is the mystery of the empathy between the ocean and [man].”

Nice, huh? Makes me want to sail to France.

——

Had a bath today after belt sanding and painting Jon’s other boat the Shadow. Laying on my back so as not to sand below the waterline—the anti-fouling paint on the bottom of the hull fouls the belt sander—I ended up covered in fine gray primer dust. My hair was gray; my skin was gray; my eyelashes gray. I hadn’t realized the state I was in and walked back up the path from from the boat shed to Elder greeting holiday-makers as I went. I was mostly greeted with unsteady smiles.

Actually, bath is too grandiose a word. Jon told me the other day that their soak-away, into which all of the gray water from the house runs, was overflowing and to use as little water as possible. I filled up the tub to the depth of an inch or so and washed myself in that shallow puddle. In the end I had to cheat though, using a puddle’s worth for my body and a fresh puddle’s worth for my hair, which I’m getting cut on Friday, by the way. My crazy afro is a magnet for all manner of airborne particulates and takes forever to clean, so off it comes. And I’m done with looking like an escapee from an early-seventies action film.

—05.04.2000—

Depressed today, house sitting back on Gugh. Why depressed? Mainly because I think I’ve short changed myself. I was happy in the shed, having meals with Hans and doing what I liked. Here I have to feed the cats, water 600 plants, and sleep in a bed so saggy, it thinks it’s a hammock. Patricia also asked me to keep working on the wall in the back garden, which isn’t exactly how I wanted to spend my last week here.  

——

I have mixed feelings about leaving. I’ve met so many nice people who are all involved one way or another in the goings on of the community. They feel like an integral part of the fabric. It’s so nice to see. Still, when I think about staying, I’m doubtful. Could I give my heart to England? I’m don’t know. Even if I could, I wouldn’t be able to buy a house, only lease from the Duchy. What about San Francisco, making things happen there, and turning my L-Dopa Design studio into a cultural arbiter? That appeals but I’m still at a loss. The last few months on Scilly, I knew what I was doing. Now I have to make decisions again. Oh well, I’ll head up to Kent, sail back down the Channel, and see what I think.

——

Had a great time at the pub last night with Andrew and Lucy, Nikki, Jemma, her mother, sister, and Ellen and Bryce’s friend, Anwyn. Jemma’s family is negotiating with the owners of the Post Office Shop to buy their lease. If it works out, which it looks like it will, they will all move to St. Agnes. Even though I had met Jemma’s mom before, tonight she was sitting with one daughter on either side and I paused while introducing her to Anwyn, “and this is—wait—are you all sisters?” Peels of laughter spilled out over the table, especially from Gillian, Jemma’s mom. It was the big one-liner of the evening. She does look as young and beautiful as her daughters—I wasn’t trying to be cheeky. Anyway, it set a fun tone for the evening.

——

It’s dark, black, and hazy tonight. The moon is blank as slate and the stars have forgotten to come out. Leaving the Gugh house and proceeding by memory through the front garden, I heard a bell toll. It was the buoy marking the Spanish Ledges, whose ringing was being carried on a rare easterly wind from beyond the backside of the island. The bar lay broad and flat tonight forming an s-curve between here and St. Agnes. I walked back and forth across it a couple of times head full of thick.

—05.05.2000—

Today I’m on St. Mary’s to find some salt water soap and a floppy canvas hat for the sailing trip. I had no luck with the soap and tried my luck at Rat Bags, the sailmakers on the quay in St. Mary’s, regarding the hat. Fiona, one of the women that mans (womens?) one of the sewing machines there, was in the women’s crew that won the world championships last week. She’s really cute in a slightly Irish way: long, wavy, red hair, delicate face—anyway, I congratulated her. She was all smiles. And she’s gonna make me a hat. :)

—05.06.2000—

I had a nice conversation with Liz today sitting on the lawn on Gugh up by the other house. She went straight for the heart, asking questions aimed at finding out who I was beneath the veneer of the everyday. Why am I not married yet? What’s more important, the freedom to roam or putting down roots? Why are you frowning? I told her that I was crap at relationships, but that I was hoping to put roots down soon and that I was frowning because I wasn’t sure what to expect of the coming sailing trip. The urge to spend part of the summer here and then get back to work is pretty strong at the moment. And part of me would like to stay here for the summer and get to know whoever shows up. The island really is self filtering. I tend to meet only the nicest people here. The prospect of spending all summer on a boat with a couple of guys I might not get on with has me feeling uneasy. Funny that I was so gung-ho a few months ago. Oh well, go with what you know (or feel in your gut at least).

Later in the evening found me sat on that same spot on the lawn. The tide was in and I watched St. Agnes through the haze. It looked gray and gauzy in the fading light, as if it were part of some great mystery, as if it had just appeared, only to stay for a moment, before vanishing again.

—05.07.2000—

Thick fog. I can’t even see St. Agnes from Gugh. Ellen, Bryce, Jon and I went to St. Martin’s earlier today. It was my first time there. We spread out a picnic at the base of the navigational daymark on the eastern side of the island. As a navigational aid, the daymark is, I imagine, quite good at its job. Seen as architecture, it looks funny, fanciful, and doesn’t quite make sense, like something Phillip Stark would have come up with in his early days. It stands three stories high, a cylinder topped with a cone. It’s twenty-odd feet in diameter, and painted in four alternating bands of red and white. It’s perched on top of a cliff all by itself. It’d make a great house. “Yeah, I live in the red-and-white-striped rocket at the top of the island. Why don’t you drop by sometime?”

——

The other day Cinders, one of the cats, left me a present just inside the conservatory (the enclosed patio): a dead bird. I say it was a bird only because I could identify a beak among the wreckage. It was really more of a loose collection of innards that looked like they’d been thoroughly turned inside out (as opposed to gift wrapped). I idly wondered where the feathers were. Today I found them strewn across Patricia’s bathroom floor.

——

It’s going to be a busy week. There’s so much I’d like to do before I take off on this sailing trip. Yikes—I can’t even think. Must make a list...