Again from the Sea

Considering I spent just two days on the water and two nights on the boat (both nights tied up at the dock in SC) my title must seem pretentious. Yet each time I sail my experiences are different, I come back to a different world, and this time, instead of feeling relaxed and energized, I'm feeling a bit lost back at home, with just two days to prepare my summer online class, clean house, and hit the road for So Cal.

And while I missed my wife, frankly, it's hard to come back too. The bill I forgot to pay which is ten days late now, the plane flight for our son on our credit card which we forgot to pay off earlier...all this hit me with sudden (dare I say gust-like force) and we weren't home together this morning long before she had to run. In short, I don't feel reconnected to her, and since I struggle with intimacy and feeling comfortable in close situations, tragically, much of the time, my mood is lower than I'd expect after two days sailing, and my time yto blog about it even more limited than usual. Well, I've seen feelings swing from low to high, back and back again, all in one day. Feelings. As complex as our own blend of the rational and animal.

This was my first time sailing as 'skipper' and (while everything eventually worked out) I would make a few recommendations: one, don't sail the first skipperage with people one hasn't sailed with before; know the crew and their abilities and have two or three other competent sailors aboard. And two, always ask closely to see how much experience a person truly has before handing him the helm.

It turned out that one of the two I went with (and they were very pressed to only have the three of us on board; another mistake because it cost me twice as much to sail as it should have) does in fact know how to sail well, and navigate; though his knowledge of terminology is not strong, he learns terms fast and helped me with my docking and undocking under power, a skill-set where I am weak and one of the reasons I tried so hard to sail before my vacation. The other person, his partner, whom he assured me 'is a great, sailor, better than me' cannot sail at all. This is fine if I had known it ahead of time. This person, while performing a simple maneuver, tacking, passing the bow through the wind to head of on another course, kept turning the wheel so that the wind, a fresh 16 knots by then, came directly aft and bloody near tore the freaking rigging from the mainsail. As skipper, everything that happens is my financial responsibility (up to the three thousand dollar deductible) and I was pretty pissed though I tried to handle it well. Had I known this person couldn't sail, I would not have given them the helm even to tack.

Sailing is not rocket science. In fact, it's probably easier, and certainly safer, than driving on the freeway, but bit mistakes can be made and this person nearly made one. Pretty exciting for my first day; then this peson got seasick, and I was fighting it myself probably in part because my nerves were so high strung!

Anyway, the second day was wonderful. The two of use that could sail sailed the boat, and we went west, deeper into Monterey Bay, overcast all day, the water dark and firm, otters, seals, sea birds I don't know, and dolphins appearing here and there. It's such a beautiful place.

The other cool thing was that my bareboat instructor, a man I've befriended, took us into the SC Yacht Club Friday night and we had a drink and a nice dinner (and my friends, to their credit, bought me dinner). It was my first time in a yacht club and that particular one is very low-key, chummy, paper napkins and placemats, but we sat with one couple, my friend and his wife, who had spent six years sailing around the world and another, his friends, who just got back from a three year trip. I don't ever see myself doing that, but it there were fascinating stories about everything from lightning to video rentals in south america (the mold eats the tape, apparently, or something). All in all, it was quite an honor to be there. My ex-instructor and new friend is something of a local legend, has sailed his entire life, won one very high profile and notorious race, and been in SC for 25 years (minus the six abroad). I don't know why I like him so much, but I do, frank and earthy as he can be.

Ah, sailing. The only that that holds me back from ocean sailing is some sea sickness. Not as bad as some people, but enough to be an issue. The SF Bay, of course, doesn't really do that to me, or hasn't yet, even in the big chop. It's those long, big Pacific swells...up, up, down, down, down, down, up, up...it's quite a feeling, even with meclizine. I tried that scopolamine patch and I cannot tolerate it at all. It messed with my vision; I even saw flashes of light when I was laying in bed trying to fall asleep. Yeah, not good. And oddly similar, though still distinct, from the SSRI reaction. Two drug classes which could do me much good, perhaps, are not for me.

Somehow, writing about my experience is helping me feel centered. Even with such a short trip, when I got home last night I couldn't believe how big our house felt, how wide the rooms were, how oddly square the angles. It felt alien. And surely, the sea motion was still with me. I learned a lot about sailing this weekend, and about crew. I grew. That was why I went, but overall I prefer having a skipper to being one, I think. The difference, when chartering a boat where only one credit card is on the line, is enormous.

And still I have to take my wife sailing. She went the first two times I went, two years ago or three, and hasn't gone since.

I tend to pursue interests out of balance, I know. I'm trying to keep other things going here, hiking, gardening, if I have the gumption to haul all our gear south which is iffie) scuba. Sailing is powerful, it effects relationships and individuals in a special way, and apparently there are entire books on this subject. I want it to bring my wife and I closer together, to bring me closer to my true self, the one that lies beneath all the ritual and fear (and it does relax me, a critical feature for anyone with my symptom set). I'm teaching a summer class just to pay for my new gps and vhf radio, and to pay for more sailing trips.

But why, why, why, why, why, why, aren't things easy for me when it comes to relationship? I dreamed about my ex, Estella, night before last and woke with that old strange longing, longing to feel accepted by her, forgiven, loved, redeemed, friends again. We managed to keep such distance between us, she never felt permanently mine if I think deeply, I believe much of my pull towards her was her detached, aloof, cold inacessibility. White rage beneath an opaque blond and enigmatic beauty.

The fact is it takes all of us a long time to get over our psychic wounds. It takes those of us with ocd longer. Which makes those who have abused me as adults all the more damned in my eyes. God speaks for himself; I'm talking about my own feelings. Not very mature, or charitable, but there you go. I also bear responsibility for not processing things more fully, true, but I do try and do more than many people with no mental disorder.

My own marriage has gotten stronger every year. It continues to do so in crucial ways, though other things remain challenges. The times when I feel I love my wife as a person, as a being or soul I know so well over a decade of life together, apart from any obsessive issues on my part of human shortcomings on her part...those are special times and I crave more.

I know I'm dragging on, but another thing: because of my fears, the simplest task is loaded with anxiety and tension. That's why when something relaxes me I go piggy-wild to get more of it. Sailing fits here. But oh the glory of feeling close. Near. Nestled to my wife's calm body, close to the Great Garden, the Landscape which is her varied being; like sailing in Monterey, two miles off Aptos, softly pressed to the lip of the vast out-heart of the Pacfic, whose diminished ripples roll, lift and set me, faint echoes of its far-off chambers.

Yes, I owe Eliot for the chambers diction. Think what he borrowed.

It is hard, frankly, when after a decade all the pixie dust is worn off my lover, off my self for that matter, when at 41 my hair is more gray than brown, age spots have appeared on the back of one hand and near one eye. The radical elation of youth is gone. When I was young, I thought if I had this or that experience, became this or that thing, I would know ecstasy without end. Completion. The infant sleeping at the breast. Now I crave only times of peace beneath the fear. I look for simpler, less dramatic joys. I know that all pleasure comes with complex association, often eventual sorrow or loss, that whatever looks I had are fading, the strapping forever-health of my barbarian youth, when I drank from milk cartons of egg-nog and gasped like a pirate, is gone. Now I have heartburn, worse eyes, too much body hair and fat around my waist.

Many middle-aged men take great joy in their children, and perhaps I should let that come closer to me. I think my son is wonderful, but I rarely call him son out of respect for his father and he never calls me dad or father. Just Troy. That will probably not change, but perhaps I could try and feel more of my appreciation for him. I don't know. I think of Eccliastes. I want to reject, and do reject, the blank emotional nihilism, the biological determinism, of Crane or London, while at the same time seeing it appear in the texture of my skin.

Am I 'stepped back' from my faith? Yes. Not rejecting it, but outside its experience these last few days. It happens.

This has been quite a ramble, and truthfully, I don't even have time to go back and make anything of it. It has been good for me to write. Certainly the days of my greatest physical health were, in my case, lonenly, frustrated, poor, and much more anxious and depresssed than I am now. The forties are supposed to be a good decade. They are, I'm sure, if one lets go of the value-set of the twenties and thirties!

Love to all.

I am hoping for another pleasant sail, soon I hope, with my wife sitting in the cockpit, enjoying herself, finding herself and parts of me and us also in the sea.

Why did John of Patmos say the dead in the sea would rise first? It is an absurd idea. I have long asked myself that question, though. Not in a morbid sense, but wondering what it was about the sea which led him to say that. For surely, the ocean holds a power deeper than even fear itself. I am trying to pull my mind free from Monterey Bay even now without automatically lapsing into the other.

It is like waking from an unaccustomed afternoon nap, hot, in a strange place, or emerging bleary from a long novel. Only more thorough. I believe most people call this recreation.

I truly must go. Again, peace and God's grace to all. May we know it more deeply.