dreams and aspirations

Making notes out here on 7H porch yesterday afternoon. With new lightweight Xmas telescope, gazing out across Shell "Island" at a nearly invisible speck offshore: a large 4-crane ship's been sitting out there for several days, swinging at anchor, likely waiting for another ship to clear her berth at Port PC. She's maybe six or seven miles away, across the Bay and a couple miles offshore. Cannot read the name on her bow with my telescope, but I'm thinking she's waiting to enter port and load wood pellets for Tyne, UK. 

Yo ho ho ho, a sailor's life for me. BTDT.

Reading some fun books at the moment. Moving books in my church office Tuesday, came across J M Sweeney's Born Again and Again about his life growing up. Starting it at the office, seems I read it years ago, but brought it home to read again. Like others who've shared their journey, he was born into a fundamentalist Christian family, a year or so at Moody Bible Institute, stories about his training to "save souls". Not going there, but I'm in a chapter of Part 2, and he's still assigned to save souls in a Chicago suburb, but struggling with certainty, let it slip about later becoming an Episcopalian. Don't know if this is where he settles or whether he'll wander on off into agnosticism and beyond, like many who become disillusioned with their lives of certainty. Certainty is the worst sin when directed toward compelling other people to think and believe as you do, vice the godly lovingkindness of "caring for souls" by affirming and honoring the culture and birthright of others. JMS is easy reading and I'm enjoying it as January Lite. 

God willing and the Creek rise (knock on wood and wishing me long years to ward off the Evil Eye) and there's no Breaking News, this time next year I expect to need another two-month sabbatical of despair, depending on, and if so I'll again need some serious reading like the Russian novels and other books read Jan/Feb 2017. 

Another is Carlos Eire's Waiting for Snow in Havana, which I may've already mentioned. It's a book to read slowly so it doesn't end. Also recently that way was Andy Catlett: Early Travels by Wendell Berry. And these books by chef David Lebowitz in Paris. 

Also in the office yesterday and Monday, came across a couple of fictions that I got into eight or ten years ago and didn't finish. One* by Salman Rushdie, I didn't get much past the opening conversation between characters floating down from the sky after the plane exploded, maybe I'll resume, or save it for JanFeb2021. 

Also a thick and long, patience-required series-novel** that's centered in a building and apartment in Paris. I got into it and more than halfway through when something happened and I laid it aside and never picked it up or thought of it again, IDK, maybe Oct2010 heart episode unto Jan2011 Cleveland Clinic adventure and return to other things in life. May pick it up again when I'm in the office tomorrow and lay it aside also for 2021 escape into other realities as the world turns. 


Anthony Bourdain Remembered is a book of short remembrances of one whose tv show magically transported watchers from life's troubles for a Time. With a life that seemed enchanted, his work enriched the lives of others. His death was incomprehensible, at least to anyone who's never suffered from depression, and I wonder if he had any idea what he was doing to us as he slipped the rope over his head and round his neck. He was escaping something or someone, not unlikely himself, which I can understand. But from outside looking on, it made suicide look like an ultimate act of selfishness. 

The picture above is from a page early in the book. Notably and most timely, in Iran, with a couple of Iranians posting. Which might remind us in our government-stirred hatreds, that the nations of people we hate most at the moment are only humans and were once our friends and, like Vietnam, will be again, depending on who we bully and for how long. In my lifetime, being friends with Japan and Japanese, with Germans and Germany, would have been unthinkable. Iranians are the ancient Persians, humans, people, children, men, women, families like us, who would rather be friends with us than in the middle, as both they and we are, of governments who drive us to hate each other. Read the print on the picture page. And look at the news after Iran took their revenge for our killing their general: after all the screaming and shouting, signals were sent and missiles were not fired until we had time to clear out so that there were no human casualties, then Iran posted that they were not after continued escalation of hostilities. National pride was satisfied and self-respect preserved. 

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/he-fled-iran-as-a-child-now-hes-commanding-a-u-s-aircraft-carrier/?utm_source=marketingcloud&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Morning+Brief+1-8-20_1_8_2020&utm_term=

Bourdain himself has the last word in the book, large, attractive, sort of a living room coffee table volume to pick up and read a page or two. Anthony Bourdain:

"Travel isn't often pretty. It isn't often comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that's okay. The journey changes you: it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind."


In my own mind and memories, Bourdain well expresses a season of life. So does the ship waiting far offshore, almost out of sight. I guess you had to be there.

Ship now gliding by 7H at 3:23 Wednesday afternoon as I type. I'm guessing she's Oslo Bulk 355x60, from Limon now bound for Colon with kraft liner. We'll see if this stirs movement by the much larger ship offshore.

T

* Satanic Verses


** Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon