Sailing lessons

I got an email recently about sailing without blame.

I imagine the sailing crew working together, hoisting the mainsail, securing the jib to the leading edge, tacking efficiently to follow the course of the wind and all smiling as the warm moist sea glistens on their working bodies. Everyone is fit and tan from the energetic sun and the boat glides smoothly over a calm sea.

I’m going to need some lessons. Or a new manual to follow. I have no idea what I just said.

What I end up doing is nothing like my imaginations. It resembles more of a cobbled together soap box, filled with leaded glass and gun powder on a metal frame that generates sparks while I drag it along the asphalt looking for an ocean to launch it in. I have long since kicked out any crew willing to assist me out of fear of losing them first to a better boat. I desperately thought I had abandoned this slip a long time ago and cannot figure out how to unlock it from my hitch.

Then, I seem to stall out…like now…

It’s time … meme needed to get me started …

Saw it on my blog-friend’s page, and you can get the original here. I need to get out from under my rock, and write something. Anything. Here is a start…

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1)  You are facing an epic journey. You may choose one companion, one tool and one vehicle from any book or film to accompany you. Or just one of the three. It’s up to you. What do you choose?

I would bring my familiar with me. My familiar is my late-cat, Monroe Jerome. We would not need tools nor a vehicle – we’d get by just fine.

2)  You can escape to the insides of any book. Where do you go, and why?

When looking to escape and not find a cure for my aching soul, I run away into a world of intrigue and covert action – spy novels. I love Robert Ludlum, Ken Follett, Frederick Forsyth and David Baldacci.

3)  You can bring one literary character into your current life. Who do you choose, and why?

Miss Jane Pittman because until this very moment in searching for information on non-fiction books, I thought she was a real woman. Her strength and wisdom through an entire people’s struggle is not only mind-boggling but much needed for my own simple stretch of life. I read the book as a kid and took the title literally until this day.

4)  Sacred Voices: Essential Women’s Wisdom Through the Ages by Mary Ford Grabowski is my go-to book. I could read that book fifty-seven times in a row without a break for food or a pee and not be remotely bored. In fact I’ve already done that but it wasn’t fifty-seven times. It was sixty-four.

5)  Of all the literary or film characters that made an impression on you as a kid, who was the most enviable?

As a kid, I don’t remember the feeling of envy. Maybe I have manipulated memories now that I am a “grown-up” and truly do battle with envy, but as a kid? The closest I can come, I think, is Rizzo from Grease. So wanted to be that tough chick with a voice that could belt out my worst things

6)  Of all the literary or film characters that made an impression on you as a kid, who was the most frightening?

Poltergeist. Absolutely, the Poltergeist in Poltergeist. And those damn red pig eyes and flies from Amityville (book, not movie – never could see the movie). And I still have trouble at the beach thanks to a certain shark (both versions.)

7)  Every time I read _________________, I see something in it that I haven’t seen before.

This one was hard for me – I honestly don’t reread many books. Sacred Voices is a book I’ll randomly flip open to find a passage that may be exactly what I need to read and a few others.

8)  It is imperative that _________________ be made into a movie. Now. I am already picketing Hollywood for this—but if they cast _________________ as _________________, I will not be happy. I will, however, be appeased if they cast _________________.

Another one that is hard – I cannot come up with a book that should be made into a movie.

9)  _________________ is a book that should never be made (or should have never been made) into a film.

Last hard one – shouldn’t squelch anyone’s artistic voice as far as literature and film goes.

10)  After all these years, the _body bag of her friend in school_ scene in the movie _Nightmare on Elm Street_ still manages to give me the queebs.

11)  After all these years, the _final scene in The Color Purple_ still manages to give me a thrill. To see Celie “meet” her children after all that happens, I cannot help but be filled with hope and joy and purple.

12)  If I could corner the author _Alice Walker_, here’s what I’d say to her one minute or less about her books : somehow, someway, I relate to so much of what you write about. The spiritual journey is somehow familiar and I don’t want to know why, but I do want you to know that it reaches across so many misunderstood lines to me.

13)  The coolest non-fiction book I’ve ever read is The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear by Paul Rogat Loeb. Every time I flip through it, it makes me want to save the world with my mighty pen and voice. I can, you know, and so can you.

Oh, I’m sitting here singing the where-did-I-go blues

there lurks a shadow in the distance
a thick black shape huddled behind a wall
solid brick mortared of earth and steel
unmoving impenetrable and built for war
a battle waged by antithetically heroic deeds
selfishly seeking shelter from flaming shrapnel
stealthily laying mines around the foundation
once thought to be weak prior to reinforcements
proven to be formidable beneath fault lines
separating miles beneath the false crust
to the red hot molten core
where there lurks a shadow


Some days I wonder where I’ve gone.

I have that not-so-out-of-body experience and see myself being grown-up and responsible, holding down a great job I love doing; talking openly and honestly with my spouse and children freely trusting in our mutual love and path with each other; and taking care of myself through healthy exercise, sleep and consistent creative efforts. I look at that woman and think, who the hell is she? When did I become her? Where did that terrified girl afraid to speak up, speak out and speak from within go? How did she turn into this other woman I barely recognize? I intuitively love and admire her which swells more of the same deep within my ribcage to create a celestial cycle of cultivation.

No sooner has my out-of-body self returned to its home, do I look back in anger as I see myself again in the lonely position of feeling abandoned, isolated and unsure of all the gifts the woman of the first part surely cherishes and sustains. I question my every move, sabotage my relationships, health and capabilities. I stop writing. I stop talking authentically. I stop sleeping soundly. I stare at that woman and think, who the fuck is this now?! Where the hell did the other one go? What in the bastardly blazes happened to chase off the supposedly cool and collected one leaving this puny bitch in her place? I immediately loathe and despise her destroying any chance of reasonably apparent reconciliation with my other true self.

That’s the pain wherein the wandering wonder woman that I am often finds myself. I am both truly the confident, self-loving soul of the created universe AND the whimpering, self-abhorrent object of the limited ego.

It can be difficult to embrace such a super-sized, double-wide trailer of a woman sometimes.

Unfortunately, them some times is now.