The Ship Of Fools

 

The last days of August and the first few of September are like no other time of year...they are a whisper... not really summer anymore... and not yet autumn... but the smell and the feel and the overall vibe.

First of all thank you for reading and I hope you had a fantastic summer. I know I did even though it had its ups and downs at times... but c'est la vie.

I want to give a special thank you to everyone who has been reading along since September 2015 and of course everyone who joined in along the way... time flies... I started this just to get some ideas and memories recorded... but one thing always leads to another somehow especially with me and now here we are.

At the beginning of the summer I was reflecting back on my days in school when we had a summer reading project and a book report due on the first day of school in September...  If I'm writing a report I generally read the book and put sticky notes with notes on the pages I want to refer back to. I always liked getting the reading and additional research done fairly quickly and writing a rough draft and then making edits or additions... and then sending it off to be professionally typed.I got into this habit at a very early age thanks to my favorite uncle growing up.

In the summer of 1965 I chose the  Katherine Anne Porter book The Ship Of Fools ... it was first published in 1962 and we had a fairly good copy of it on our bookshelf at home ( a little secret)... I read the book the previous spring and submitted it for approval  for my report in May.

At the end of July that summer the movie was released... I had already finished my paper... and I used some of the insight from the film for my oral report if I was chosen to do so (One person per class was selected... I was)

The film directed by Stanley Kramer with a stellar cast Ship Of Fools Imdb was depicted much as it was written in the book... considering it was filmed close to the end of the code years in Hollywood... but I digress... If you have not read the book or seen the movie... I highly recommend  both... if you have previously read or viewed it... I highly suggest you revisit it... I did both during the summer.

Because of the book and the movie I have used a certain phrase over the years perhaps hundreds of times.... "Dancing on the deck of the ship of fools" (That was the title of my paper)

The ship acts as  floating model of 1930's society with a diverse ensemble of nationalities, classes and ideologies in the shadow of fascism as Hitler is coming into power in the thirties Traveling from Veracruz Mexico with a brief stop in Havana Cuba before continuing on to Bremerhaven Germany. Katherine Anne Porter took the exact voyage in 1931 and kept a detailed journey of the trip that formed the foundation of her novel.

The title is taken from Plato's philosophical metaphor representing humanity sleepwalking  into a catastrophe fueled by personal prejudices and willful blindness.

Another from my outside research when I was writing the paper I learned the the phrase "Ship Of Fools" is a powerful allegory used to describe the British transportation of convicts or those who were considered "undesirable" to Australia  from 1787 until 1868... the original term and meaning is from a 15th century satire about a ship crewed by ignorant people. Historians and writers apply it to the British convict ships to highlight human misery, administrative incompetence and perceived foolishness and moral failings of the passengers and their keepers... in the allegory the ship lacks an capable captain leading to chaos and death from withheld food and medication... on a journey to nowhere. (there is much more to this if you are interested in doing a little of your own research)... but those who survived the Australian voyages built  a nation and laid the social and economic foundations of modern Australia... maybe it's possible for the United States to to the same thing.

In the end of the book and the movie... the passengers disembark and return to their ordinary lives oblivious to the terror of the Nazi regime about to unfold walking blindly toward the Holocaust and World War II.

The final line of both stories mocks human compliancy and denial in that people are perpetual fools who refuse to open their eyes to the repeating historical atrocities until it's too late...

Suffice to say this book report and a few others I wrote raised a few eyebrows when I was younger I wrote a few other spellbinding reports that included The Holocaust and  the  internment camps in the United States and the broken treaties with native Americans...(all the things we were not taught or in any real depth or truth in school)...so there you have it and here we are again... 

The last ten years have been my least favorite of my entire life... the last two in particular... I don't know any other way to say this  without just saying it... I don't know if I'm going to live to see the end of where we are right now... If the tide turns fairly soon... I will... but I'm not holding my breath... what I am doing it making my day to day world as happy and peaceful as possible yet still being informed and involved... I'm never, ever going to stick my head in the sand and pretend none of this is happening even though not enough is being done about it... but I will say that sometimes it's very beneficial to take a step back and go for a quick dance on the deck.... (wherever that may be)

The artist Bansky wrote something recently that has stayed with me...

"WE WERE ALL HUMANS UNTIL RACE DISCONNECTED US, RELIGION SEPARATED US, POLITICS DIVIDED US, AND WEALTH CLASSIFIED US"

Tomorrow is not guaranteed... so we need to work with the materials we have today to make what we want our individual lives to be or as close to it as possible... But it's really important to remember everything we have in life is borrowed and temporary... we don't get to take anything with us when it's over. 

Tom Hardy said something in an interview once and I think about him and what he said quite often...

"Some people don't understand that sitting in your own house alone in peace eating snacks and minding your own business is priceless"

I've been thinking about some of the people I'm going to miss until I take my last breath and some of the incredible gifts they left with me... Your life is only as good as the people you surround yourself with...you always win when you move through your life authentically and honestly.

As I was reflecting on people and places and ideas... sorting through all of it the good, bad and ugly... all of the mistakes and misconnects  were eventually the portal to something  else... usually discovery... One of the best things that have come from me taking the reins of my life again and not dwelling on every distraction being thrown at me and keeping me awake at night wondering... is that I've returned to a more peaceful place... especially at night because I've found something to ground my feelings...

I don't think we sometimes give ourselves enough credit for the fact of what we deal with on a daily basis...in any given day we are absorbing and dealing with more information than our parents processed in a month... notifications, opinions, outrage, disasters, advertisements and just the noise of modern life... don't get me wrong in spite of every single thing going wrong right now I'm happy to be alive and part of most of it.

I think we all deserve a regular reset and knowing that with all the commotion there have been some truly phenomenal moments in our lives that we loved and savored... we need to take time to appreciate each and every one of those we encounter because we can't assume those moments and experiences will be unlimited.

I realized one night this past summer in the middle of the night... I'm responsible for finding and building my own inspirations and recharging   my energy from it. It's very easy to let it slip away with the endless routines we are sometimes tied to... We need to make time to find the people and the things that feed our mind and soul and give us our buzz back... or as my new tattoo says... "Keep The Vibe Alive"

There are so many things in the world right now that I'm worried about... I'm giving some of them the thought and reverence they deserve... but the others (the distractions) I'm putting on pause for the time being... worrying about them won't make them better or go away... but I'm not letting a lot of things that used to keep me awake at night  have any meaningful impact on my daily life and happiness... There are many, many things and people in life I've had to let go of... good and bad... but someone told me last year something that changed the way I feel about most of it  right now... "Let go or get dragged"

Now before I go to sleep at night... or if I wake up I remember and feel gratitude for the people and places I've loved... I'm happy that I'm finally the type of person who shows up when I need to...and remembers important things that matter to other people...and that I can freely give to most people without calculating the return in my head... with this I'm moving through my day with a certain kind of grace and style I did not have when I was younger... I was able to find this portal because I like to spend some of my time alone... not to escape but to come back to the parts of me that I risked losing in the noise of the world the way it is now.

I was reading through some of the other things I've written here recounting different periods of my life and thought about some of the impressions I've given. A big part of who I am now... is who I am not anymore... for my entire adult life people have seen me as either warm and friendly or cold and distant...some people have said I was quiet and reserved and others often said I was outgoing and ebullient...I realized that I have been all of this and still am... I'm still the same person...but some people have seen the two different sides of me depending on how they treated me. 

As the years have gone by and I've made my  circle of people smaller and more (I guess the best word is) exclusive. I learned something important about the people I let go along the way...None of the people who have tried to belittle or insult me live the kind of lives I admire... and that is enough closure for me... and maybe most importantly...I'm at the age that I don't need more of anything really... I need less of what really does not matter.

Since the start of this blog 16 years ago I said I was going to avoid bringing politics into my writing... I was wrong to say that... politics is part of each and every aspect or our lives every day and ignoring it or avoiding it won't make it better or go away...But I'm still going to try to focus on some of the more positive and joyful things in life.

One of the things I am most proud of in my life right now... as a  three time non-Trump voter... I was not duped... I was not conned...From the very beginning I knew he was classless and had the brain power of an amoeba  (I met he and his first wife in 1986 at a party)... I knew he was immoral without a drop of human decency... I've known all along he was abusive and a con artist and thief... what I did not know was that 77 million Americans were so fucking stupid.

This administration has destroyed so much and taken away so much... I'm not sure it's possible to put it back together again...But for those of us who do survive this particular voyage on the ship of fools we are going to have to ask if it's more realistic to start over and create hopefully a better world and system... for now...the things they can't take away are the what  we have learned and the people and ideas that will be forever alive in our hearts...and what every lesson has taught us up until now... or the dances we have already danced... we don't have to accept the way things are now... but we need to learn to work with them and deal with them.

Thank you for reading... I'm going to leave you with one more thing...

People come and go in our lives... but the person in the mirror will be there for the rest of our lives...be good to that person and love and respect that person... oh and one more thing... let's all stop worrying so much  because...

Please join me in October.

I'll be talking briefly about how I almost met Dolly...

and...