So out on The Spit there are a bunch of cool shops, tour companies, restaurants and so on. I stopped to have a walk around and despite usually being overly cautious with my keys because of its propensity to lock itself when I'm not paying attention, I finally did it. I locked the keys in the truck. Luckily it happened here around all these resources and not out in the snow in the mountains of California like I talked about in my February trip report. So I talked to the lady at the counter at Rainbow Tours, and she made some calls to see who around had something to help. A couple people wanted 40-50 bucks to unlock it, but the cab driver said he was around and would come by. When he showed up, apparently even the harbormaster was ready to be on his way, but the cab driver said not to worry about it, he'd just take care of it for me and he did. Nice folks down here in Homer.
Now that my keys were back in my pocket where they belonged, it was time to cure a previous injustice. Back at the Matanuska Glacier I had attempted to have some pizza. A couple slices here and there, or a whole pie, are fairly critical to my overall well-being. I didn't talk about this because it was too traumatic, but at a roadside eatery that said “Pizza” I stopped in for some. What came out was quite clearly just two small slices of what was until just a moment ago, a frozen pizza in a box from the grocery store. Don't do that.
Anyway, here I found a place called Finn's and I am delighted to report that it was excellent. Not only are the people excellent, the pizza, some of it with capocollo and basil and tomatoes, was superb. These slices were cheaper than the boxed pizza by the glacier. Recommended.
Maybe this is the way to live on a boat?
I went out the other road to find more views, and on the way out and back I had another crisis.
Sometimes I just can't stop it. Maybe you guys don't want to hear about it, or maybe some of you have felt the same way. Part of my journey is a less glamorous dive into my own mind water and perhaps what is visible when the ripples fade will be a reflection of a deeper humanity that someone reading this will share.
It was not merely a sadness, it was very nearly real dread. There were easy to identify questions like would this endeavor fail, would I be able to support it financially? But then how is the success or failure of this measured? Should it be? In a sense for me, the answer is yes. As much as sometimes I want to live as my favorite authors did....
No one should have any correspondence on a journey; it is bad enough to have to write; but the receipt of letters is the death of all holiday feeling.
"Out of my country and myself I go." I wish to take a dive among new conditions for awhile, as into another element. I have nothing to do with my friends or my affections for the time; when I came away, I left my heart at home in a desk, or sent it forward with my portmanteau to await me at my destination. After my journey is over, I shall not fail to read your admirable letters with the attention they deserve. But I have paid all this money, look you, and paddled all these strokes, for no other purpose than to be abroad; and yet you keep me at home with your perpetual communications. You tug at the string, and I feel that I am a tethered bird. You pursue me all over Europe with the little vexations that I came away to avoid. There is no discharge in the war of life, I am well aware; but shall there not be so much as a week's furlough? - Robert Louis Stevenson
....I'm not an organization, this isn't my job, but I have to show and prove I'm doing something good to change my world. I have to have a following, I have to post and share, and now bits of my self worth are being entangled in what people think of me and what I'm doing. How many likes, shares, comments. Perhaps it's just an artifact of having to be so active on social media, I suppose some take to it like an orca to the water. It's a curious time we live in. Connected and disconnected are all jumbled together.
There were some more obscure feelings as well. Lack of feeling of self worth, trying to tell myself "I am enough, I have enough" but in the moment, not being able to quite believe it. Intellectually I know that I'm generally a good person, and what I'm doing is a dream for so many. I don't discount that. My biggest fear based on my state of mind when I was getting ready to leave was what if after all this, being on the road, traveling full time, meeting new people, doing something positive, what if it doesn't work, what if I'm still not happy? You see where I'm going with this. It could very well just be a human thing, and this is my experience as living my own life in this great wide world full of other ones.
I like writing about it, I do. And I like that you all seem to care. I was talking about all this with a good friend in Colorado and while he had many good things to say to prop me back up, when I showed him this mural I said to him, “and why are there butterflies on this orca mural? Nothing makes sense.”
He replied, “I think the orcas are more out of place than the butterflies.”
“Which one am I?” I asked.
“Butterfly.”
“So I'm drowning,” I said.
“No, just learning to fly underwater.”
I told him that would seem wise the next day, and it does.
As Robert Louis Stevenson ( I promise I read other things, but I'm allowed to pick favorites) would say, “I may have the wrong idea of wisdom, but I think that was a very wise remark. People connected with literature and philosophy are busy all their days in getting rid of second-hand notions and false standards. It is their profession, in the sweat of their brows, by dogged thinking, to recover their old fresh view of life, and distinguish what they really and originally like, from what they have only learned to tolerate perforce.”
Or as Havelock Ellis would say "We cannot remain consistent with the world save by growing inconsistent with our past selves."
I am definitely a different person than I was when I was just preparing to sell the bus and get on with leaving. I can feel it. It was said of Renoir, "He never painted to-day quite the same as he painted yesterday."
I called this expedition Don't Throw Your Life Away for a reason. Of course it's about trash, it's about the problem we have with garbage, specifically around waterways because that's the goal of my project. But for me it is also literally about life and making the most of it with talking about trash and travel as a medium. And occasionally pizza.
“To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.” - RLS
What I really want out of this trip is peace. It may come from multiple sources, at odd times. I feel like I'm closer to it than when I started. I can at least see when these things change in my mind and have a shot at feeling them, understanding where they originate, and just letting them run their course.
"Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm." - I'll give you one guess
Then I found an old bookstore run by a funny Russian, got another book for myself, then went to go find a campsite up on a muddy mess of a road up above town, got lost, and after giving the Coopers and Bilsteins a good test, ended up coming back down and sleeping in a library parking lot anyway. Is that such a bad way to live?
No. It's not. Don't Throw Your Life Away.
