The SS Relentless

hello, stranger -

here’s something that came up the other day:

when i first washed up out here i was invited by a friend to attend a class – if you want to call it that – where we clipped pictures out of magazines and glued them to a piece of poster board to create a collage of the life we wanted to have happen.  a vision board, as it's called.  and as i was desperately trying to make sense of things at the time, it seemed like a pretty reasonable way to spend an afternoon.

so i clipped out images of travel, adventure, romance, a couple of beautiful homes and a set of wedding rings, and even some little kids in the background.  i even managed to find a lighthouse from back east to stick on there.  snippets of a successful life, as i saw it.  and there some other stuff on there as well, like a couple of cameras, a picture of a frying pan with eggs, some tomatoes in a home garden, and a few other things i guess i felt were a little more readily achievable.

and for reasons that currently allude me right now i stuck an illustration of a prowling cheetah smack dab in the center, where i – for some other mysterious reason – also glued some bacon to its mouth.  maybe i was feeling artsy at the time, or at least a trying to be a little funny.  i recall being the only guy in a room full of middle aged women, so it’s very possible i felt like hamming it up a bit.

don't judge though – we had about two hours to sort through a pile of discarded magazines and cut and paste the roadmap to our lives.  mine came out looking chaotic, colorful, jarring, rewarding, and pretty enigmatic all at once.  not exactly a relaxing pleasure cruise, per se, but fitting in its own way i guess.  and since i'm the only one who punched the ticket for this crazy ride, i'm okay with that.

so far, at least.  but when i came across this thing the other day and pulled it out of it’s hiding place in the closet, it gave me pause, and a long moment to reflect.  and i’m sorry to report that the only thing i can tell for sure that’s manifested since that afternoon of trying to channel the cosmos is one of the cameras and the skillet with the goddamned eggs.

which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the power of the vision board for me, but who’s to say how the universe works…  maybe everything else on there is still just a work in progress, and the life of my dreams is right around the corner.  or maybe there’s a hedge fund bro down the way who somehow scooped up all my karmic rewards and is enjoying a white water rafting trip with a hottie in a bunny suit right now.  or maybe when everyone else in the class had their eyes shut and were channeling their intentions into their vision boards i shouldn’t have been peeking around and thinking about my escape plan to get out of there and go watch football with my friends and a cold pitcher of beer.

the only thing I can say for sure is that since i first pulled that thing out and dusted it off, i’ve also dusted off a lot of the thoughts and memories that went into its creation in the first place.  thoughts about how much has happened since then, and about how much life has changed as well.  and thoughts about how much i’ve changed with it.

if you were to see this thing and read it like a text – up to down, left right, – you'd see that it ends with a picture of a boat cruising along at sunset.  nothing huge or fancy, just a little center console fishing boat like the ones we grew up seeing in the harbor every day.  like the kind i’ve dreamed about owning since i was a kid.

and my god how i wish i was out on that boat right now.

it couldn’t seem further away right now, of course.  i'm sitting here on my porch this Saturday morning in the desert, writing and drinking a michelada to properly close out a late night that really wasn’t worth it.  it’s probably not the best decision i could be making, but also not my worst, historically speaking.  and the good ones have been outnumbering the bad a lot lately, so i figure what the hell.

besides, the sun isn’t high enough to chase me back inside yet, and i have another full weekend of work ahead, so i might as well enjoy a myself while i can, and pen this thing out.  and there’s a reality to face about that boat - as there is with the rest of the picture i’d put together those years ago.  and whether the cosmos is interested in pitching in or not, its high time to start manifesting the shit out of things.

everything has its season, to be sure, and the time i spent out here patching myself up and fixing what got broke so long ago has been well worth it.  no house can stand for long on a cracked foundation, and i’m grateful i’m in damn better spot than i was, and i never want to lose sight of that.  but if that fishing boat seems like its a thousand miles away, then at least tomorrow i want it to feel like it’s only nine hundred and ninety nine, because time’s a-wasting and i’m dying to be out on the ocean again.

and maybe someday i’ll have that boat, or a yacht even.  maybe it will just be a dinghy, or even nothing at all.  i guess there’s a part of fate we can’t control, and lord knows i’ve had my share of bum luck and crappy disappointments.  but when i look at that collage of pictures now, these years later, all i really see is a picture of a locked door, put together by someone who was half-heartedly hoping someone or something else would come along and hand him the key.  but seems to me that some doors only open when we end up kicking them down, and that requires the kind of leg strength that sometimes can take years to develop.

so i’ve been doing my time, and i know you’ve done yours.  and i know that everything you’ve had to deal with and go through has just given you the resilience you have. so i guess my only hope in sitting here and writing to you this morning is that if you ever feel like things are all at once overwhelming and out of reach at the same time -  like the way i did when i woke up today - then just remember you’ve got a friend you can count on way out here in the West, with a lighthouse glued to a piece of poster board to remind him of home, and help keep him pointed in the right direction.

besides that, there’s not much to report from this little part of the world, other than it’s hot and the cats are getting big, and that things are - slowly but surely, anyways - moving along.

that’s it for now, be good and i’ll be in touch again soon.