Astral Aviary

“I’m at sea!” he said.

He danced around on his driftwood deck and occasionally cupped his paws and shouted very loudly back to Maria on the shore.

“More waves,” or “More sun,” or “More fish!”

Out he sailed, out into the distant blue. Waves crashed against the raft. The sun beat down. Fish leaped across the bow and frolicked in his wake. What a time it was!

– The Zoom Trilogy (Zoom at Sea), by Tim Wynne-Jones (1997)

I mentioned that earlier in that day, when I first stepped on board the Hawaiian Chieftain for a brief tour, I had spoken with one of the crew, a young woman I will refer to as “B.” This self-guided, introductory tour of the boat cost a buck and it was well worth it. Take it if you get the chance. Here I was, just wandering about the upper deck, when I noticed “B” who was reading a book. She had dark hair, a round face, wore glasses, short 5 ft 3” perhaps and I guessed in her early twenties (she would turn out to be the ship’s gunner.) But reading a book was what caught my eye. Book reading is always a reassuring sign for me and at once I felt more comfortable. Someone I could talk with. Since I couldn’t ask for a date, I suavely asked her about what was life was like on board ship, isolated from land, all that. The ship people had an option: they could, as circumstances permitted, choose the degree of isolation that they wanted, more than most of us certainly, and my sense was they preferred the maximum possible isolation. The natural presumption of course would have been quite the opposite — that most if not all of the youthful crew as soon as they got the opportunity would flee the boat and head for shore to whatever wild excitements Westport had to offer. But that presumption would have been in error. Most, I came to understand, preferred to stay on the boat as long as possible. They did not view the isolation as a sacrifice at all. Another young lady I spoke with at the end of the voyage, a volunteer I will call “C,” age 17, actually did not want to return home that evening. Moreover, she dreaded her final year at high school, the prime attraction of what life on shore had to offer. She wanted to go to trade school as soon as possible. Get out and on with this whole life business, no prolonged adolescence for her. Who could blame her?

But back to “B.” She had no interest in current affairs, not because she was ignorant, but as a matter of choice. It was one of the things she was happy to exclude from her life. Sure, there was this thing called the internet but she could do without it as well. I looked around. What if someone overheard us? Then I noticed something strange. No iPods or the equivalent was visible, anywhere. No “music” blared, anywhere. The book she was reading (unfortunately, I did not catch the title) was all that she needed during this period between sailings. “C” for example, would go on shore to retrieve supplies, but as I watched her do so (this was some hours before the ship left the harbor), it was clear she did not like leaving the boat and would do so only when necessity required. In short, these young people much preferred this isolation to the rest of the world. There is the ship and there is the sea and there are your mates. What more could anyone want?

This provided me with the first insight into how their life, this mostly enclosed society on the boat actually worked. Like Zoom the seafaring cat, to be discussed shortly, they were at sea and that gave them all the joy required. People do need joy, we sometimes forget. Whatever it was that the sea offered, they wanted more of it, as much as they could take. Of course the isolation was relative — complete isolation in fact being impossible. Economic reality made sure of that, e.g. fuel prices and maintenance costs, the need for food, being prime examples. But from that which burdens our day to day existence, career issues, child care, politics, wearisome relatives, and the like, they were for the time free and were determined to do their best to keep it that way. They could hardly be said to be lonely, given the presence of their shipmates. Their free-floating comradery I came to see was genuine and as far as I could tell, all but frictionless. Why should they care about the rest of what artificially burdens us? That was our problem.

I pursued this. I asked “B” if she knew what was going on in the rest of the country, current affairs, annoying political races and candidates. I actually intended the comment to be light, something of a joke, but likely it didn’t come out that way. She shook her head, said she didn’t, giving me a look that suggested strongly: “Is there a reason I should?” I could only reply sadly, “You don’t want to know.”

The people I met were all nice, which sounds trite but it isn’t really. They are close, friendly, quite happy, and a joy to be around and the whole thing was quite infectious. Nice people also keep the information flowing and on board ship that is crucial. Which is a round about way of saying I too did not want to leave, a feeling that would grow during the course of the day. Except for that climbing about the masts stuff, I too was ready to run away to sea. Who among the sane would want to go back to the real world where parents/bosses are always on your case to keep up your grades or has nothing to offer you but performance review, and your family barely understands? For these people, especially the youngest, the sea represented all that illusory freedom of adulthood. The love of the life was real and the temporary freedom real as well, even if it could be argued it was still illusory.

One has to wonder how much we have lost since that world of the sailing ships, which was once the essence of this country, its founding industry, had vanished. Even at Barbara’s time (the 1920’s) only a few schooners still plied the seas and in generation they too would be gone. Another way of putting this, though it may be a historical stretch, is that WWI destroyed the age of sail; WWII hunted down and annihilated the survivors.

There are still be jobs at sea, of course, but except for the dangers, most of these jobs do not differ that much in structure from those on land. You get performance reviews and live for the paycheck. The freedom of the sea so desperately sought has receded far away. One is tempted to say the tide has gone out permanently. The sea faring life except for fishing trawlers and a few sailors manning pleasure yachts is effectively no longer a viable career path. Make-believe pirate fights such as between the Lady Washington and the Hawaiian Chieftain is as close as it gets. But what is vital to understand is that with these people the overwhelming attraction remains. When the opportunity arises, there are so many volunteers to serve on these vessels that they have to be fought off. That tells us something powerful about ourselves.

I didn’t want to leave. It’s absolutely true. What I felt was emotionally involving to a degree that is very difficult to express. Of course we have our jobs and our hobbies but this was something greater. At the end of the trip, I felt more integrated, physically and mentally in years. It’s all quite erotic actually though mercifully I couldn’t bring myself to bring up that question. If felt that just from standing in my corner of the boat before the mast, occasionally glancing to watch the progress of the mock battle, or watch and listen to these wonderful people around me.

On the downside afterward, it made me realize how much I had missed, when I passed on my opportunity to be a sailor of sorts in my youth because my mother forbade it. I had the opportunity but she freaked and I didn’t fight back, which is why I am the over-intellectualized weenie that I am and we never got along after that. In fact, after I left home we never saw each other ever again. So, yes, I envied them and fantasized about begging them to take me along, but I had had my chance and failed. How could I not envy them? Perhaps I came across as just this creepy old guy, though for the record I am not that old and not that creepy. But it was not to be then and it is not to be now. At the dock, I bid farewell to “A,” confident I would never see her again. Next year was a long way off. I’ll let you know if our paths cross again.

* * *

In the The Zoom Trilogy (1997) by Tim Wynne-Jones, his astonishing meditation — disguised as a children’s book — Gods, men, and the sea that binds them, he takes as a given that some of us are drawn to the sea and of those few there are a smaller group still that simply cannot be stopped from joining the life. These happy few will pursue their longing and at some point they will go. They will never resign themselves to what everyone else finds acceptable. Zoom, the titular cat, has a very comfortable life and though his friends do not understand him, he forgives them and remains on good terms with everyone. But he wants more. He is increasingly unsatisfied with his life on land to the point of desperation. The possibility of being a sailor for him, like for Barbara, involves not so much sensory overload but existential overload. Questions of his motivations in this context are unhelpful, likely meaningless. It’s elemental; it’s primary. Zoom and Barbara and these fellows will go to the sea that is that. Deprive them of the sea, and they cease to exist.

I recall once reading that land animals can be considered, in a sense, as mobile vessels of sea water. We left the sea, but the sea never left us. And for some that becomes an irresistible calling to return to our origin.

Some, again like Zoom, will become explorers and here the question of “Why?” becomes paramount, if no more easy to answer. All cultures, those that are not completely land-locked, have explored the sea but only a few can be said to have been obsessed by it. The Polynesians come to mind. So does the West. The difference for the West was that it served as an inspiration for the kind of scientific problems that were the equals of the problems posed by the sky and solving both, measuring time and space, were vital to the West’s spectacular progress. History says it was for the spice trade, but that was only the ulterior motive, a formal cause perhaps. Zoom will to sea, but once there he will go anywhere he can go, the efficient cause is unimportant. The sea is the true unmoved mover. All else is immaterial.

I do not know if the Egyptians viewed the ocean as having been created by the Nile’s flow, but given the way that their religion, art, and primitive science were unified, it seems highly plausible. Finding the source of the Nile would be equivalent to finding the source of the sea and therefore life itself. The source of the Nile would in fact be God or the God of Gods. Thus, despite their being bound to the land, it all might have made sense and would have been a quite Egyptian thing to believe (the Egyptians generally outsourced their sea voyaging). In Zoom Upstream, the conclusion to the trilogy, that is exactly what Zoom, along with his friend Maria, and her friend, Zoom’s Uncle Roy, does. They go in search of the Nile and whether they find it or not, they are not coming back.

* * *

Will the life survive? A hundred circles of the sun and everyone on board that ship that day will be gone. Me, well before. As mentioned, consider the one lady crewmember now 50 – how much longer can she maintain the life? Five, perhaps ten more years at the most. I suspect it is a thought that depresses her but it is also one she does not dwell on it. She has to be realistic about this, but she does not have to let the realization crush her. Among the rest, there was certainly a sense that this is as good as it gets. There was no sense of boredom or frustration, just eagerness to get on with it with this voyage and the next. If the sea would take them further, it is not so much a desire to escape, though there is certainly an aspect of that, but of a desire to go forward as a process of the life. To find something new and exciting, yes, of course, but as it stands they voyage not to expand their knowledge but to complete themselves. They are grateful that their parents support this, when that is a factor, in what must seem an odd and thoroughly impractical endeavor. Likely, those parents have wisely given up all hope of stopping this impractical foolishness and simply hope for the best. Someday they will return to port. Maybe.

One doesn’t want to sound pretentious about this, but pursuing the idea of the death of sailing having resulted from both world wars. And considering the theme of that unless the life can survive in some fashion, on land, air, or sea, the dynamic of our civilization can not much longer endure. Then it follows that the feeling may need water to grow and sustain it. Salt, sea water alone will do.

* * *

Glossary (From the Appendix to Dauber (1914) by John Masefield)

These terms are British in origin so there are different from the American terms. I will try to point them out in the altogether brief list of nautical definitions. I decided I would not get into the sailing ship type definitions. Best to look them up yourself. BTW, here is the website for the two ships: http://historicalseaport.org/web/index.html

Bells: . . . struck every half-hour in a certain manner to mark the passage of a watch. I do not believe that was done during the three hour voyage, but it is possible I missed the bells, being occupied elsewhere.

Bows: The forward extremity of a ship. We would just say “bow.”

Braces: Ropes by which the yards are inclined forward or aft. Generally, once set, the presumption is that they would not need to be changed, unless the ship had encountered rough seas.

Bunt: Those cloths of a square sail which are nearest to the mast when the sail is set. The central portion of a furled square sail. I think it was the bunt where a few sails experience their problem of not fully “furling.”

Buntlines: ropes untied by the crew people to free the square sails.

Bitts: Strong wooded structures (built round each mast) upon which running rigging is secured. The bitts was where I did my belaying of the rope as we shifted the sail from one side to the other. No one told me the name, however.

Clews: The lower corner of square sails. What they called the lower corner of sails that are not square I do not know.

Coaming: The raised rim of a hatchway; a barrier at doorway to keep water form entering. On a sailing ship, coamings never run out of style.

Dungarees: Thin blue or khaki-colored overall made form coconut fiber. I doubt anyone wears anything made of coconut fiber anymore.

Fish hooks: Slang for fingers. Working the ropes will give your fish hooks quite a work out.

Fo’c’sle or Forecastle: The cabin or cabins in which the men are berthed. It is usually an iron deck-house divided through the middle with two compartments for the two watches, and fitted with wooden bunks. Sometimes it is even fitted with lockers and an iron water-tank. I think this is true with no change on the Hawaiian Chieftain.

Gaskets: ropes by which he sails are secured in furling. Not sure if this terminology is still used, but it might be.

Halliards: Ropes by which sails are hoisted. How I came to dread that word.

Idlers: In essence, the support personnel. I think the volunteers would fall under that category.

Kites: The light upper sails. I think this term is still used.

Scuttle-butt: A cask containing fresh water.

Stow: To furl.

Take a caulk: To sleep upon the deck. This quite possibly still happens. There really did not seem to be a lot of room on the boat.

Yards: The steel or wooden spars (placed across masts) from which the square sails are set.

        The next night he made a boat form a wicker basket with a towel for a sail. Blown around the bathtub all night, he was as happy as he could be.

“He comes from a long line of sailors,” his friends whispered when they thought he was not listening.

Every night when other self-respecting cats were out mousing and howling at the moon, Zoom stayed indoors and sailed about in the dark. By day he watched the tap and dreamed.

“I’m at sea!” he said, twitching in his sleep.

– The Zoom Trilogy (Zoom at Sea), by Tim Wynne-Jones (1997)

There is nothing easy about operating a ship with sails. The statement should be self-evident, but filling in the details to make it precise is where it gets interesting. Sailing is a highly technical field, has been since the beginning, and like any other requires a depth of knowledge of its subtleties and peculiarities, not to mention large amounts of sheer physical stamina and brute force. It’s not for dummies or weaklings. Our ancestors deserve our deepest respect for being able over the centuries, millennia even (that’s a lot of trial and error, folks), to figure it all out. Without their efforts, we would still be huddled in small villages, knowing far less of the world around us than we do now of our galaxy. Nevertheless, while the details of sailing are numerous and unforgiving, and only experience under all the conditions the sea can throw at you will enable to you master them, each detail by itself is simple and can be readily understood. Unless you have experience, the more the better, you won’t be able to handle your part of the ship any better than I could, but at least you will better appreciate the efforts of those who do.

So let’s start with an introduction of what is required. I will once again turn to young Barbara Follett and her book, The Voyage of the Norman D. Note: she was at the time (age 13 recall) researching the technical aspects of sailing ships for a projected pirate novel which regrettably was never to be.

. . . There had to be ships, that was certain; but I found that I knew almost nothing about ships. So I laid the story aside a little while, turned to Webster, and buried my face in the dictionary. I looked up every nautical term that I could think of, whether I knew it or not. I looked up nautical words found in books I had read. I studied the list of nautical words and their meanings at the end of The Dauber*. Then the sails bothered me. I needed to know something about sails, and about different kinds of rigs, and about the fastening of the sails and the name of them all. So I turned to the word sail, and – lo and behold! Exactly what I wanted. Accompanying the word sail were two pictures, one of the schooner or fore-and-aft rig, and the other of the beautiful square-rig, each sail numbered and named below. I fell to work with great zeal, and learned topsails, topgallants, royals, skysails, jibs, staysails, and all the rest of them; I can reel them off now like second nature.

* I believe “The Dauber” refers to the poem-book Dauber by the great poet and failed Seaman John Masefield.

* * *

Once away from the dock, we moved carefully and slowly out of the harbor, passed the breakwater, following the Lady Washington the “pirate” ship we were going to be pursuing into battle. For the record, in the game to follow, we were designated the “good guys.”

As the captain explained it, here’s how the game would be played. Ideally, the object of the mock battle was for one of the ships (pursuer or pursuant), to cross the “T” of the other and thus bring the battle to a quick close. What crossing the “T” meant was giving a raking broadside against the stern (preferably) or the aft (not bad, but more difficult) of the opposing vessel. Naturally, in a real battle the effects of such a strike would be devastating: the stern being where the officers’ quarters were located, not to mention the steering mechanisms, ships charts, etc. Hitting the opposing ship from the front would be trickier but if the aim was true, the effects would be the same — victory. The enemy of course is well aware of your intentions and would be delighted to do the same to you. Both ships, therefore, have to take care of themselves first. The strategy of the game becomes to try and cross the “T” of the target ship, while steering as adroitly and moving as quickly as possible to hit them and prevent them from hitting you. The fastest most maneuverable ship would be the winner (a fact our ancestors were very much aware of during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812). The more comparable the ships, however, the more likely the battle would be reduced to a slugfest of mutual broadsides. Terribly romantic and also terribly wasteful. This accounts to the way the two ships work against each other, coming in fast to pull off the money shot, while moving out just as fast if doesn’t happen (and it won’t most of the time).

It appears to be a simple minimax game and it possibly is (left as an exercise for the reader, of course), one mixed with the dynamics of seamanship. An abstract description hardly does it justice.

Mathematical Note: In Paul Nahin’s recent (2007) book Chases and Escapes, his first example is the classic problem of Pierre Bouguer’s (1698-1758) called the “Pirate Ship Analysis.” In essence, the problem describes a pirate ship pursuing a fleeing merchant vessel. To model the problem, the assumption is made that the merchant ship is moving along a “vertical” axis on a grid (we’re simplifying here, of course), and the pirate is coming in from the side (presumably to avoid having his wind robbed by the sails of the merchant ship) and moving faster than the target. The solution to the problem results in the pirate following an asymptotic curve as he closes in on the merchant.

Interestingly, and rather obscurely, there is a modern (1991) version of the problem which has the sailing path of the merchant ship “inclined from the vertical by some angle.” This seems much more realistic. Not altogether surprisingly, the pursuit curve then gets quite complicated, which also seems more realistic. Since this problem was not solved (may not even have been stated) until modern times, it played no part in the history of sail.

Maybe I should have mentioned Bouguer’s problem to the captain. I’m sure he would have been fascinated.

* * *

As we made our way to the open sea, the weather conditions were just about right: light overcast, no fog, a wind strong enough for the sails so we could make reasonable headway, but not so much so that the water was a significant impediment to us. The waves appeared to be from one to one and a half feet in height at the very most. There was almost nothing in the way of white caps; the sea had a deep gray color. Given the nature of my eyesight, the light was still too bright for me, however, so I wore sunglasses throughout. Most did not. Most of the people on board sailed, if you will, right through it. No one became ill which is always good news.

In addition, and be sure to remember this, despite the overcast, I got a decent sunburn out of the experience. Elementary physics would have told me that, but I was experiencing sensory overload and had once again forgotten elementary physics.

First some background about the ship before we get into the sailing, as least my small part of it. Without going into the highly complex terminology, a sailing ship has sails front and back, right and left, and up and that’s it (I guess you might consider the rudder a sail of sorts for mathematical modeling purposes, i.e. if you were to put the thing on a computer, but to refer to a rudder as a kind-of “sail” to real sailors would only get you odd looks and at one time possibly keel-hauled.)

Now this assemblage of sails, ropes, masts, spars and so forth forms a three-dimensional array, a network in fact. My guess from my observations was that each crewman tended to work in one of eight possible areas or modules– front or back sails, deck or mast, right or left. Ideally, the goal would be to master all eight areas and once integrated, the crewman would then have sufficient understanding to go anywhere as the need required. This is indeed how it would have been in the old days, and crewmen would have begun learning the craft very young: a captain in his twenties, even his late-teens was not unheard of. Sailing in the old days, of course, was a profession that was both highly dangerous and physically demanding. A forty-year old sailor on a sailing vessel would be a remarkable rarity, though one is known to have travelled with Magellan in his great and terrifying voyage in the early 16^th century.

In fact, one of the woman sailors on board was celebrating her 50^th birthday, so things have changed.

This youthful (for the most part) structure of the crew was approximated on the Hawaiian Chieftain. The Captain for example and his quartermaster (his brother in this case) were in their late twenties, early thirties at most. Unlike sailing ships of the past, there were a number of volunteers. These people came from all over, and did their work as I soon found out for the sheer love of it. True sailors on board as well, but they were on contract, typically for six months. But the love for what they were doing was no less. As one told me, what more could a person want and get paid as well? But not paid very much, it should be noted. Possibly a hundred dollars a day at most for skilled sailors, essentially minimum wage when you consider the hours they put in. It truly is love that drives them and keeps them on the ship.

* * *

Once at sea, the captain made the announcement that if any of the passengers’ wanted to assist the crew, now was the time to volunteer. This would have been a fine time for me to find a place to sit down and just watch the “battle” unfold. This time, however, I did no such thing. I wanted to be a sailor, at least an apprentice one, for a few hours. I knew nothing, but boldness born of folly moved me past caring. Here is Barbara again elaborating on the problem facing the would-be sailor:

Then I realized that I didn’t know much about rigging and ropes – the uses, the names of them. I found just what I wanted under the word ship. It was a picture of a ship in diagram, showing all the principal ropes, spars, and yards. There were close to two hundred [my emphasis] figures in all, but I settled right down to business and learned just about everything: lifts, braces, clews, stays, backstays, sheets, ratlines, tops, caps – the whole works. I don’t know how many exciting hours I spend at my dictionary, digging into a perfect treasure-trove of nautical words. I never in my life realized how many nautical terms there are.

— Barbara Follett, The Voyage of the Norman D.

In my case, ignorance was a kind of bliss, a narcotic that could lead one into all manner of difficulties. As noted, normally I happy to let others do the work while I supervise and make comments, but by now I found myself so completely caught up in the business of running the ship, its people and mechanics, I could not help myself. I had to be a part of this, whatever it was. Even at the risk of making an utter and dangerous fool of myself, I could not let this chance go by. So when they asked for volunteers, I volunteered, presenting myself at once to the lady who would be my guide. She had one of those pull-down sailor “watch caps” on her head and it became the distinguishing item that I tagged her with (she was the only one of the crew I recall wearing one).

Since I wish to maintain everyone’s privacy, I will refer to individuals by capital initials. My teacher/coach/instructor was “A.” “A” was a charmer, a blond girl I guessed to be about 5’8,” likely in her early twenties though possibly in her late teens, and was altogether striking in terms of energy and straightforwardness and dare I say patience. I was taken by her at once. Had she asked me to be the practice anchor I would have agreed to it. And, my luck still held, my secret hope was realized: I would get to work with the sails! It was all too romantic for words, and without any of the unpleasantness about climbing up on the masts and such.

She quickly explained my assignment: I was to work one of the sails (with my partner, a much larger, stronger, more skilled, and irritatingly smug volunteer. At the appropriate time the command would be given and from one side of the mast to the next, the sail would be pulled. At that moment, whoever had the sail tied down would release it, while the other would then pull on the sail, dragging (this was quite new to me, I had no idea such a maneuver was ever done) it over the spar, until it could be tied down by the other guy. This final tie-down step was referred to as “belaying.” Belaying was a standard process used throughout the ship whenever one wanted to tie down a rope. It always meant tying the rope in a figure 8 clockwise for three turns, then a final pull and twist to secure it.

As far as moving the sail itself, there was regular tug and the “bowing” tug, a more elaborate maneuver that I avoided – you grab the rope, brace yourself against the mast, and then using the full of your weight, pull at the rope out and down. I stuck with the basic garden variety tug. I was okay, it was great exercise, of muscles I seldom used, but more often than not I was hopeless. In fact, my first attempt at pulling on the rope caused me to fall and land ridiculously on my rear. No damage done I’m sure you’re relieved to know. Even if I had landed on my head, I’m confident no damage would have been done. But I discovered that all my gym work had all but been in vain when I stepped on board. But I thrilled to the struggle.

Later, I realized it would have made considerable for sense for me to move several feet away from my position to give the sail a tug at an angle. That might well have worked much better than my lame efforts, which almost invariably required help. My smug partner and I went through the exercise about a half dozen times during the course of the “battle.” He never needed help from me.

So a sail moving in the wind gracefully from side to side is a wondrous and romantic sight, but it was not to be my lot. As I came to understand my assignment, we were simply dragging the sail from one side of the yardarm to the other, but why I was not sure. If there was some kind of design flaw, it was not immediately apparent and I kept my thoughts to myself. I should mention at this point and once underway, there was very little opportunity for chatting on ship. People were always rushing about for one reason or another (the Captain warned us about this right from the start). Indeed, time flies very fast on board ship, you get into a zone which I question any other job can provide.

Like the lame school boy joke, I did indeed stand there for nearly three hours before that mast, never leaving it, pretty much totally absorbed with it, but more to the point, never wanting to leave it either.

Dangerous to over romanticize what they are doing, but what we are talking about is a tremendous psychological high that keeps on giving. Working at the grocery store, doing homework and preparing for life in corporate America just wouldn’t cut it for these people and who can blame them. This is their life, this is the life, and I think everyone on board would agree with them.

While I was standing there waiting for the next big moment to shift the sails, I overheard two girls talking about what they would do if they should get married. The implication was that there would be huge adjustments which would have to be made to the life, even if they should marry someone who was also a part of it. Given the circumstances under which this conversation was taking place, this was a remarkably sober assessment of what lay ahead for them. Obviously, should they marry they would likely marry someone like themselves, but far from solving the issue, it would serve only to compound the problem. The whole business of children, house payments, and work-a-parent living would hit them and the life would go down without a bubble to mark its passing. For some, like the 50-year-old female sailor, this would unquestionably be too high a price to pay. For others a variation of how traditional sailors solved the problem would be the answer. For most, the life and all that it means would have to be forsaken.

One night, when a leaky tap filled the kitchen sink, Zoom strapped wooden spoons to his feet with elastic bands and paddled in the water for hours. He loved it. His friends shook their heads. “The sea is in his blood,” they said.

— The Zoom Trilogy (Zoom at Sea), by Tim Wynne-Jones (1997)

H.L. Mencken wrote that it is the little things in life that make it unendurable. In what follows, I want to offer the thought that it might also be the case that it is the little things in life that make it both pleasant and pleasurable, in a phrase, “worth living.”

* * *

I generally have only a slight interest in small town festivals. And any aspect of those festivals involving, as they frequently do, getting dressed up in funny costumes and acting goofy with like-minded individuals some of them drunk, mortifies me. It was never my thing, even when in very restricted contexts I did participate in such, some years ago. So when my daughter expressed interest in the Westport Pirate Festival last year (2007), I agreed to take her there, but did so reluctantly. Frankly, I viewed it as little more than a movie tie-in mixed with Unemployment Town boosterism. I agreed because I was quietly confident it was only going to be a one time thing for her, the Pirate Phase of her life to vanish with that summer. So I went with it.

My lowered expectations for the most part were meant. As for the festival itself, the booths were more reasonable priced than I had come to expect from such events. That would have been sufficient. But at one point as I watched from the shore a mock pirate battle between the Lady Washington and her companion ship (I did not know the name of it at the time), I found the experience quaint, to be sure, yet oddly moving in a way, more intriguing than I would have guessed. And I found myself regretting I had missed it. I had made an effort and it hadn’t worked out and we all know how that number goes. Everybody grows up, grows old, moves on.

One year later we were on the road again to the Washington Coast, the town of Westport once more our destination, and while there was no Pirate movie in sight, I found myself being oddly resigned to the whole thing, to the extent of almost being in anticipation of it. I kept it muted, of course. My daughter’s enthusiasm which had never waned helped, but that could not have been the whole of it.

I am not sure why, but certainly the feeling gnawing inside of me was that I was determined to get the most of this odd experience. And more to the point, it was worthwhile for me to do so. I vowed this time I would do my best not to be a passive observer, admittedly my preferred mode. How that would work out in practice I was unsure. But if it meant anything, I quickly decided it meant I would make a more determined effort than last time to sail on the Lady Washington or (I now had a name) the Hawaiian Chieftain. As noted, the previous year I had completely failed in my uncertain efforts. I simply could not find who to ask or what to do. Lost, an not even at sea. As I came to learn, the process for securing a boarding pass to one of the ships is not well-defined and while the people concerned do their very best, and were uniformly considerate and helpful, mistakes and process failings do occur. This year the conflation of the manifests for the two ships was the issue du jour. All of which led up to the sea-shaking conclusion of: if you want to get on board, be determined, pro-active, and prepare to wait.

To an untrained eye, as mine certainly was, the two vessels appear the same, but they are not. One was the Hawaiian Chieftain, a square topsail ketch. The other was the Lady Washington, not a ketch. I am unsure what these designates imply technically but will attempt an explanation at some point. For those of you who have not seen the movie, the Lady Washington was the vessel which Captain Jack “commandeered” with his friend Will in the original Pirates of the Caribbean. This is not the real Lady Washington, of course, but a replica of the historical boat — the large metal structures on deck, the ship’s engine and refrigerator being important clues. In any event, the original one sank in the Philippians in 1798. According to the well-known online encyclopedia, the Lady Washington was originally a sloop, but has since been refitted as a brig. I won’t pretend I am familiar with the differences between those two types, either. If impatient, feel free to look the classifications up yourself.

Upon arrival for the next several hours, I wandered the docks, generally content, trying to find out how to clinch the deal. I wanted to sail the Lady Washington. Now what? The first thing I did was take a quick tour of the Hawaiian Chieftain (cost 1$) and had a brief, enlightening conversation with one of young crewmembers. The conversation was interesting enough (more on that later), but more fascinating to me was that not once did I hear a radio or obnoxious equivalent blaring. The young person I had a brief conversation with on board the Hawaiian Chieftain was actually reading a book. With her and the others I spoke with, there was never a sense with anyone I spoke with that they were somehow missing out on what the rest of the world had to offer by being in Westport. All of which is to say, it did appear on the whole that the people here were different in some way I did not grasp.

By nature a nervous, impatient person, for once those two defining characteristics were muted while I hung around Westport. Maybe there really was a feeling, albeit temporary, that I was very far removed indeed from the one I had left and was all the more grateful for it. I was beginning to sense that a new world was opening before me.

Now, I live in what might be considered a sea town as well, if you think of Puget Sound and part of the sea and I sometime have my doubts, but the atmosphere here was much more open, utterly lacking in pretension, frustration, or resentment. Even politics seemed to have been abandoned, perhaps even expelled, from this quiet town. Of the hundreds of cars parked along the piers, I observed only two festooned with the name of a presidential candidate, something extraordinary in this election year.

Was it Brigadoon I had wandered into? Or was this Last Stop Westport?

After that brief tour of the Hawaiian Chieftain, I was more determined than even to hitch a ride, though I have to confess, I had a nagging feeling of diminishing hope. I had so little hope in fact I had neglected to bring a camera, something I would come to regret. But in the late morning, after about an hour, I located the van that was owned by the group Historical Seaport which maintains the two vessels. Naturally, there was no one in the van, but it was a start.

After about another hour, an elderly gentleman in an authentic costume (well, I thought it was authentic) showed up and I was able at last to ask some questions. The gentleman informed me that I would have to go to Pier 8 and wait approximately another hour, and then I might have a chance to purchase a ticket. I appreciated his honesty. I also appreciated the sign on the van that informed me for an adult of my classification a ticket would be $60. I did not have $60 cash on me, but I did have a debit card. Of course by then I had learned, believe it or not, that not all establishments in Westport, rather few of them actually, would accept debit or even credit cards.

Finally, after another hour at Pier 8, a queue began to form. Most of these people already had tickets of course and it was beginning to look like the odds of me becoming one of them were slight. It was just at that point, when I had all but given up hope that a miracle occurred. Somehow the manifests for both ships for the 2:00 sailing, and the 8:00 sailing as well, had gotten combined, confused, conflated. As a consequence, no one knew for certain who or where any of the passengers was supposed to be, so in essence the whole boarding process was starting over. As I waited, a few would-be passengers left at that point, stating they would be back once things got straightened out. But that was a serious mistake. I stayed right where I was and waited. I was getting good at it. The closer we got to 2:00, the closer I knew the ship people were going to say to hell with it, and just put on the number of passengers the ships could hold (my guess: around 30 passengers each, along with around 10 crew). Thirty passengers translated into ~$1500 and given the maintenance and employment expenses involved, it made all the economic sense in the world to fill the boat up and get out of there if they possibly could. Failing bad weather or other unsafe conditions, there would be no cancellation. A few minutes later, the young man (who looked startlingly like a young Orlando Bloom), one of the two who were handling the situation, had accepted my debit card (!) and I had my ticket. Ticket #1 it was, if you can believe that. It was 30 minutes to departure and I was giddy with excitement.

I will spare the reader a description of me making a fool of myself over the next 30 minutes. All I can say is that if you can forgive me, I can forgive myself. Silly as it sounds, I had this feeling of leaving the world behind, of warping out to some distant galaxy not just the coastal waters outside the harbor. I did not want to miss that boat.

Once on board things moved faster, if not exactly fast. First it was announced that the ship was going to attempt to leave the dock without power, just as it was done in the old days. So we all crowded to the port side away from the dock and, you guess it, waited. No doubt there were considerations of fuel saving involved in doing it this way, but I strongly suspect there was also a what-the-heck-let’s-give-it-a-try-aspect to the decision. One could not help but notice the level of confidence among the crew and the captain reflected that. We were go.

At this point let me state that the crew appeared to be equally divided, male and female. The ages were roughly late teens/early twenties for the girls; and late twenties/early thirties for the guys. That it is only approximate and yes there were exceptions. One crewperson in fact, no doubt a remarkable exception, was celebrating her 50^th birthday.

Note on word usage: if “girls” and “guys” offends, I regret that – certainly not my intent – but I find the terminology efficient and will not change it for the purposes of this travelogue.

        The first step in departure was unfurling of the sales. I tried to watch from the deck without doing something to my neck the whole sequence of scrambling up the rope ladders and releasing the sails one by one. I will admit right here this was not the job for me. My dread of heights and falling ensured that. Instead, I recalled Barbara Follett’s description of herself among the rigging in her classic memoir, “The Voyage of the Norman D.” The terminology in the description that follows is, I believe, undated. It was written some eighty years ago. It could have been written this day.

“. . . here mother accosted me: “Oh, don’t go up there! You scare me to death.” I overlooked her entirely, and laid my hand upon the shrouds. Upon the shrouds! I felt a little thrill go through my hand. Next minute I was over the taffrail. “You don’t dare, do you?” she continued. “Watch me and see,” I replied. Then I pulled up on to the ratlines. The emotions and sensations of that moment are indescribable. I was starting my career as a sailor. I was already in the rigging, and I hadn’t been on the ship for more than twenty minutes! And only yesterday, before that talk with my sailor friend, it was a far-away dream, pretty nearly impossible to accomplish. Things had shaken about strangely. I was in the rigging! Up and up I went, hand over hand. I could have gone much faster without a quiver, but I was so taken by it that I went slowly. I felt the rigging sway beneath my weight. Fascinating! The shrouds were getting closer and closer together, and the ratlines, therefore, shorter and shorter. I was a few steps below the crosstrees. I never believed, never in this world, that I should be able to go more than halfway up. Yet up I went, and the ratlines were so very short that I could just wedge my feet between them. Next moment I had reached out an arm, put it over the crosstrees, braced my foot on the iron futtock shrouds, and pulled myself up. There I was, sitting on the crosstrees, one foot braced up the futtock shrouds, the other foot dangling in midair, sixty-five feet about the deck.”

* * *

I have no doubt that Barbara’s excitement was shared by the girls as well (were they too starting their careers as sailors?) as they scrambled up the rigging of the Hawaiian Chieftain that afternoon, but there was also the fact that this was a job. When one of the sails had snagged, it was apparent that at least one additional crewmember was required to go up and assist. Unlike Barbara’s impromptu display of bravado (if I recall correctly, she was 13 when she experienced what she wrote in that passage), it was decidedly against the rules of ship discipline just to bolt up there. There is, no doubt about it, an element of running-away-to-join-the-circus among the crew, but it is only an element. The rules of discipline on board this vessel, manned by both professionals and volunteers, are fairly informal but they are real. I suspect the consequences of flaunting them are severe: e.g. prompt termination upon the return to the dock. In the case of the sail snagging, one of the girls on deck asked permission, which was quickly and duly given; up she went and the problem was solved in but a few minutes.

Note: snagging sails does seem to be a continuing problem with these vessels, reflecting no doubt the reality of the operations of any sailing ship. In many cases, I observed, the sails would mostly but not quite completely unfurl, though the example above was rare. In fact, however, it could get worse then that, as I was to discover to my dismay.

Most of the difficult of writing, as Tom Wolfe and others have observed, is finding material. I’m starting to question that notion, or at least enhance it. There is so much material out there on the interwebs, it is easy to get into a reactive mode, as many writers are doing. That mode quickly becomes quite boring. The point being that there is also a danger in too much readily accessible material. It’s easy and it’s fun to play with, but it also leads to severe laziness and shallow thinking. And from there it leads to despair which is certainly part of the problem I have these days as I struggle to summon up a desire to do something more in depth and intellectually challenging.

Nevertheless, in an effort at least to keep up my writing exercises and certainly against my better judgment, I will now go with what I recently found and comment on something called the “Loser Letters,” written by Mary Eberstadt, an author. While I have little idea who this person is, I know enough to dread the thought of encountering her. I came across her stuff at the National Review Online (“NRO”) site (there is of course much more about her thoughts and publications if you search on-line) and probably the less said about that site the better. I am sure she would be very upset with me, should she read this, insisting that I say nothing about her writings unless I have read the whole of them, i.e. “The Loser Letters,” and in depth, many times. But I have to protest. The burden of salesmanship (forget about proof) is not on me. She has to persuade me to indulge in her writings and this she has failed to do. No doubt any more than I have now persuaded her to read my stuff.

Note: By picking on “intellectuals” (i.e. public purveyors of values, so I guess that is the correct term) on the Right I am aware I am pretty much immune from violent criticism and/or threatened abuse, the preferred style of discourse these days. Lord help me were I to pick on the corresponding types on the Left, though I might do so at some point just for fun.

In any event, the problem is that I find these “Letters” unreadable. I have tried. I have tried three different “letters” and was unable to complete one. It was as if the very words themselves were shooing me away, threatening to call the cops, demanding that I look elsewhere as if I were observing some distasteful private act. I found the tone of the Letters so shrill, so lacking in reason and direction, so utterly boring in their shrieking intensity that it became impossible to finish the chore. Even words like “the” and “a” soon became unendurable. Indeed, “chore” hardly seems to express it. How about “torchore?” Ho, ho. There was nothing resembling an argument in these “Letters,” no attempt at engaging a dialogue with the reader. No exposition (which I think the author believes is something one would find on a fair ground) is to be found. Anywhere. Charm too has been banished. Neither wit nor its good friend grace were anywhere to be seen though I tearfully called out for them. If they ever once intruded upon the author’s ruminations, I was not informed of the fact. Worse, I feared that by looking too intently I might stumble upon their remains. G.K. Chesterton* Miss Eberstadt most emphatically is not, a fact that troubles her not in the slightest. Indeed, it appears it might well be a source of pride. I might also add that there was a distinct lack of intelligence exhibited in these Letters but that observation would most certainly be ignored if it were not considered redundant. No one cares about that. There was, in short, a pronounced lack of subtlety and literary seduction, the technique being something along the lines of a 40-something woman demanding you marry her to prove you were not a commitment-fearful jerk. If I had been married to her writings for twenty years I could not have found them more unendurable. Soon thoughts of straying entered my mind. Soon a divorce petition would be formulated.

*I understand they were written “in the style” of C.S. Lewis’s the “Screwtape Letters,” which I have not read. I have read some Lewis, but nothing this garish. If the “Loser Letters” were indeed intended as an imitation, or homage, then for shame of him. This is not the C. S. Lewis I knew.

This is why I dislike being negative.

So what is this thing that like a boulder is being hurled down upon the hapless reader? The gist of it is that the author is assuming the voice of a recently converted atheist – that is, she wasn’t one before but is one now (hence the word substitution of “Loser” for the Supreme Deity.) Unfortunately, following along with the conceit, there are a lot of things she has not yet worked out, and like many of us when we find ourselves in an intellectual quandary, yells out her dilemmas at the top of her voice in hopes of getting something along the lines of a rational echo back. On the face of it that would seem an altogether vain hope. The author rapidly proceeds to confirm that fear, with gusto.

As an example, one letter is about art, the idea being that all great art is religionist (my expression, not hers) and this somehow speaks of the existence of God, a kind of aesthetic “Gotcha!” As I started to drown in that realization, a thought bubble escaped me that she should really talk with Paul Johnson about this, but it was too late and I was flushed away in the current. No art prior to B.C. and precious little afterwards that was not based on you-know-who? Really. Doesn’t an extraordinary claim call for extraordinary evidence? Evidently not.

Another letter might be considered metaphysics, but I hasten to add that is only my interpretation. Yours may differ. It appears to be a kind of existence argument which would certainly fall under the category of metaphysics, but with Eberstadt’s writings who could ever be certain? I actually thought of reading it aloud to my cat to see what she could make of it, but in the end mercifully refrained. The notion expressed is that since so many people are impervious (if not downright bellicose) when it comes to challenging their belief in God, there must be something, somewhere, somehow that exists that we can label Such. This might be considered the reverse of the hard problem in consciousness studies, i.e. where we struggle to understand how subjective experience can arise from objective (physical) processes. Here, we struggle along with the author to grasp how subjective experience leads to reliable conclusions about the ultimate objective (non-physical?) process: God.

We struggle and we fail, author and reader together.

And so it goes. As noted, these are not arguments and to be fair it is far from clear that she thinks they are. Who could possibly say what they are? And this strikes to the heart of my concern: these “Letters” obviously will impress neither side of the debate in the slightest. If you believe in God, you will find them pointless and redundant. If you do not believe in God, you will find them bizarre and silly. Yet a few people, very few, apparently all concentrated over at National Review Online, seemingly can’t get enough of them.

Let us stop and take a breath. It is not possible to argue against a non-argument. And one doesn’t, typically, want to respond in kind against non-arguments – i.e. get into a theological shouting match. Life is short and for those who engage in such arguments that statement as a caution needs to be taken literally. There are religionists, or so I am told, who take such matters most seriously. Probably contemporary Catholics are not among them, though the few Catholics I have encountered and/or read, have been quite bellicose about in their affirmations (once again the NRO is a good source of examples) against non-believers or “heretics” (does anyone use that term anymore? It was once quite popular). To be fair, a rather nasty female Protestant once tore me a new one as well.

This difference between religionists and non-religionists must never be negated or ignored.

Here’s what I mean. I could send a letter to Professor of Physics X at the local university say, informing him that his theories are ignorant, lame, and as a consequence, he should go boil his head and trouble us no further with requests for funding. I could, and irritated as he well might be, the odds of him (and his friends) tracking me down to kill me in some grotesque fashion are slight. When we consider religious matters rather more caution is required. Were Mary Eberstadt to suggest a date, again only for illustrative purposes, prudence would require I swiftly and firmly decline and change my phone number.

So how does one reply to this sort of thing? I have faith, with absolutely no reason to back it up, that a reply, if only a slight one is warranted to Mrs. Eberstadt. This person went to all this trouble, so let us give her the minor courtesy of not ignoring her; however she might be deserving of such. Indeed, let us consider her to be of the highest and most moral character. God exists, she has persuaded us of that, now what? The problem is that even if we accept her “Letters” in full and without complaint, suppose in our wildest flights of fancy an editor were to actually make them readable, they would tell us nothing. They give us no clue as to the moral character of God or how we would even ascribe meaning to such a notion or how we would begin to determine it. They give us no hope of how we would ever confirm our feelings, that is communicate in human language with this transcendent super-being, and arrive at reasonable conclusions With no hope for a personal God — the prior conditions must be satisfied first — which religion must offer at some point to believers. With no hope of grasping or confirming the meaning of any communications (absolutely crucial) should they actually materialize from God. With no reason a priori to believe any degree of goodness in this Being (who might turn out, should all prior issues be resolved, to be quite dreadful and no fun at all), we are lost and spinning our prayer wheels. Faith, the all purpose grease for the sticky facts of existence, can only take us so far, which is to say, nowhere at all. That is why religionist bores always add the adjective “True” to “Faith”, as if truth and faith fit together hand in glove. We have to at the very least at some point be able to argue that my faith is not only truer but in some sense superior to yours. And here’s why. So there.

All this would have no immediate affect, of course, but over the long run it might lead to additional converts, etc. to one’s given faith and I guess that would be good thing. But faith in God is not God. Belief in God is not God. It seems obvious when one states it that way, but you would be surprised how many people are confused on that point and refuse to concede it. Yes, an aspect of faith may well be an essential aspect of human psychology, that I will admit, but it is an enormous leap, utterly unwarranted no matter how vociferously Mrs. Eberstadt carries on about it, to then conclude she or anyone has plucked that apple from true belief from eternity and will now consume it before your doubtful eyes. Such vanity.

This belief, this faith, might be viewed as the obverse of Kant’s thoughts on the knowledge problem: Because the evidence of the senses give us no insight into things as they are, what on earth enables us to conclude that no evidence from the senses enable us to draw conclusions about things that are not – i.e. in this universe, in this reality? This is not a veil but an iron curtain of ignorance that Mrs. Eberstadt and her ilk are drawing across our senses.

I am confident at this point that she would be in a sputtering rage, telling me that religion and history are inseparable and that West Civilization was based on Christianity, and it worked out rather well for a while didn’t it?, and thus here is the long sought True Faith. Surprisingly, there is a lot in that statement that I have sympathy with. Building an atheistic civilization – it’s hard enough building an atheistic life – is going to be supremely difficult. It may well be, considering how human beings are presently constituted, impossible. So you see, Mrs. Eberstadt and me are actually in agreement in a way. But the tension between scientific reasoning and theistic ranting has to be resolved at some point and as human beings the issue has been thrust upon us by the most severe events, and it is not longer possible to ignore the problem. We either rise to this supreme challenge or give up.

I would like to think we would at least make the attempt. Or shall we, Mrs. Eberstadt, let a difficult situation become a disaster due to the panic of non-adults?

I recently read an article in New Scientist (5/30/08) about brain scans that were used to predict “how our brains respond to any noun.” How this apparently works (and I don’t fully understand it by any means and this was only a popular article) is that the software “guesses a word’s meaning from its occurrence in a huge volume of internet text, and then builds a . . . picture of the word based on the brain’s reaction to other words.” [Emphasis added.] Note: Our thanks to Google for once again helping out on this.

Hazy, yes, but let’s run with it regardless. We’re dealing with very simple words, i.e. ,”concrete nouns.” The key is that the software calculates “how often each concrete noun . . . occurs next to 25 common verbs, e.g. ’see,’ ‘hear,’ ‘move,’ and ‘taste.’ Remarkably, the “25 verbs are fundamental enough to capture the meaning of any concrete noun.” [Again, emphasis added.] That is indeed quite remarkable.

The article concludes with the comment: “Less clear is how the brain responds to abstract nouns . . . Adjectives and even phrases will present even more of a challenge.” No doubt.

What intrigues me is what will happen when the program starts to get into really abstract nouns, such as “homeomorphisms,” or “field” (in physics or math.) My guess that is that a similar structure will prevail, but the surrounding words that are the key to its meaning it will no longer be verbs. What I am asking is this: given the overall similarity, what will function in the place of verbs? What will be the “anti-verbs,” if you will. I could of course be completely wrong in my guess — which can hardly be termed a conjecture at this point — but it strikes me as being of great interest regardless. The brain does manage the feat of that we can be certain. But many more people are familiar, conversant with language than they are with fields (third meaning!) with large numbers of abstract concepts. So how, given the above, does a mathematician’s brain convert a verb into an anti-verb? Very few mathematicians are good writers, it should be noted, perhaps needlessly.

Is there a specific brain chemical involved? There has to be at some point, though that can hardly be the full story. If there were, one might imagine a world where English majors could be provided with a drug that would make them “math-able.” This would truly be a huge advance for civilization — to empty the language departments by transforming them into institutes of mathematics. Since I kind of straddle both worlds, not very well obviously, it would be nice to choose at last which direction I could go to exercise the full of my potential.

I know which one I would choose.