This is it, then

Words cannot express the experience of meeting my fellows these last three days. Perhaps the best way to sum it up is to say that I suddenly met 39 other people who were just like me except if I had different passions. And I think I can speak for all of us when I say that people like us are not abundant in most walks of life. Spending only a few days together is painfully short but I feel now as though these people were there with me my entire year. I might not be excited for going “home” (whatever that means), but I cannot wait to push forward into the future with other people who also know without a shadow of doubt that they will change the world.

Anyways, I can’t say more than that without it becoming even cheesier and more trite. I can’t explain this conference. Sorry guys, you just had to be there. I will be flying back to St. Paul in a few short hours. And to leave you, then, I’ve summed up the main themes of my Watson in a brief essay. Bear with me one more time, if you will, and let me tell you about the current.

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You don’t have to see it, you just have to hear it and you’re home (Pipaluk, Qeqertarsuaq)

I bring a certain current, a certain life from the sea with me (Peter, Guam)

To know an island is to know the sea that surrounds it. Yet the sea, even in its permanence, is never constant. The discord of static and dynamic determines island culture. Change is unthinkable and certain. Like the sea, island people are static and dynamic, either staying forever or venturing far. The people that threw themselves into the unknown, gambled their lives on the waves, these were my people. With them I explored the concepts of identity, of culture, of being lost, and of coming home.

I went into this project thinking my main focus was to be the people of the world’s small islands. But I realized the thing that truly fascinated me was not simply the fact of living on an island, how this changed the culture and identity of the people, it was the sea itself. The sea as an entity, indescribable and contradictory, yet “home” and identity to so many people. What does “home” mean, then, for one such as this?

How do you define yourself if you live in an environment that is always changing? Islanders take their identity from the sea as well as the land. Even those who never leave the land will claim an oceanic identity. Yet there are two halves to every island culture: the people that stay and the people that go.

我们是海洋人 — We are sea people (Maraos, 蘭與)

In the center you find the people that stay. These people were born on the island, they are the central “culture” and the middle of society. In their lives these people experience very little change. Like the sea itself, these people will always be there. The people that leave, these are the seafarers, the adventurers, the hunters, the fishers, the sailors, those on the fringe, never quite accepted to the center. Their status is separate, whether higher or lower, and they are the sudden change — the squalls, the storms, the inclement weather.

It was these people that go that grabbed my attention. Even if they did not know why themselves, they were for some reason drawn to the sea. A young hunter sat in his house in Greenland with me, staring out the window at the ocean the entire time we talked. The sea was dangerous, the sea can kill, but the sea also feeds him and his family. Home was a place he could always hear the ocean, a place he could always keep the waves in sight.

You need to see the real Greenland, where the hunters and fishers go. (Nuka, Qeqertarsuaq)

The peopling of these islands, even, could only have been done by this second half of society, by the people that go. The heritage of all, then, was that of the seafarer, however distant this lineage. A shared cultural memory of seafaring, wayfinding, exploring, defined even the most sedentary of people that stay. And this dynamic, this splitting of the culture, pervaded each island I traversed: Qeqertarsuaq, Chios, Guam, Lanyu, Bahamas, Faial, the Greek islands. These places that shared so little on the surface were not so different from each other.

I wanted to follow in these footsteps, to cast off from the islands and lose myself to the sea. And in my own trans-Atlantic crossing I found myself more utterly than I have ever done in my life. Not once did I think of the fact that I was surrounded by water, far from any available land or assistance, interacting with only 13 other people. Even in a storm with waves over 35 feet, winds at force 10, hail, rain, and hands that stayed numb for days, I felt at home more completely than I have felt for a very long time, perhaps ever.

When we see the sea then we can breathe (Marie, Qeqertarsuaq)

Everyone who lives near the sea, anyone who makes their life at sea, they know this. You depend on the sea but you can never trust it. A fickle lover. The sea inspires peacefulness, calm, lazy days of sun and wind; it rains destruction and fear. You cannot plan anything when life depends on the sea; periods of abject boredom and lying in wait are a fact of life. But in a moment you must be ready for days of wakefulness and activity, precision, endurance, and bravery. To make a home at sea is to make a home in chaos.

This idea of home, of the sea and its relationship with humanity, nothing challenged my conceptions more than the three months I spent in Chios, a Greek island 10km from the Turkish coast. I did not plan to volunteer with refugees while I was in Greece but I found myself thrown into the path of this work and I never looked back. If there are any people to be described as “those that go,” it is these people. And if a concept of home or identity is somehow to be gleaned, who better to do so from than those who have none?

When they broke the boats they broke Greece (Takis, Chios)

The story of Chios is one of identity destruction on all sides. Refugees try to grapple with cast-aside cultures, religions, families, human decencies; volunteers attempt to reconcile their concepts of identity with the horrors they are facing; and Chios tries to salvage Greek seafaring culture, threatened by incoming refugees, internal division, and EU regulations and sanctions. For the umpteenth time, Chios is the forefront of a refugee crisis, caught in the middle of larger powers’ disagreements.

I once sat on a beach with some Turkish friends who said they liked to come to Chios because you could just watch the world go by and no one ever cared about you. In the event of the apocalypse, they said, they would come to Chios. But they were wrong. It’s the angry, forgotten places where the desperate search for identity swells to action and violence. Since that conversation there have been riots, fights, mobs, and fire. There have been warships and NATO ships and Frontex stealth boats and helicopters. The coming apocalypse, whatever it may be, will not leave the edges of the map to their own devices. Small islands are the front lines of the world’s crises: war, refugees, poverty, and climate change. It is these people who witness the great rifts of change, both in society and in the climate; there is little denial in such a place where the stark facts of existence and the strive for subsistence are laid so bare.

I have been thinking about the underlying reasons I chose to apply for the Watson. My main mission was not to answer my questions, not to see the world, or open my horizons. It was to find, somewhere in a far-flung place, a reason. A reason to hope for humanity, to find a reason to believe in something other than a front-row ticket for assured destruction. Did I find this reason? Can I succinctly articulate it for you? Of course not.

But what I may have found is the framework for a reason. A course I can set, a wind I can harness. Likely, I will never fix the things I fight for or bring about as much change as I wish I could. But it is only the people that go – the squalls, the storms, the inclement weather – who bring change to the world. They read the swirling , You never quite know where the wind will take you when you set a course, buffeted by waves and pulled by the currents, but if it is strong enough it will bring you far. The course may take you through storms with waves piling above your head and only a toy-sized boat to bring you through, the course may rip your health and safety from you, but in the end you will be somewhere completely new.

Of course, if there is wind we can go anywhere (Sebastian, Ithaki)

Storm

The night is always darkest before the dawn. Yeah. There’s gotta be some truth to this f***ing saying if people say it so much. … Right?!

All through that night I clenched the tiller, bracing against a 40-degree tilt, the constant battering of waves, the rush of water over the gunwale at my feet. Eyes wider than wide I stared at the waves coming from my left side, neck fixed in the crooked position of the vigilant. Cold. And wet. And cold. Wet again. One AM, two, three… Just a few hours until sunrise. Dawn would mark 24 hours since we left land. And sunrise, I kept telling myself, would bring a lull to the roll, a hush to the towering sea, a moment for eyes to be closed.

But sometimes all that comes from the dawn is the ability to see with horrific clarity.

It was one of those moments where you can see everything too clearly. The physical surroundings — turquoise cerulean waters rising above our heads, frothing white cauldrons pouring across the deck and slamming our shoulders, the endless sprawl of hard-glinting waves in the new-day’s sun — as well as the imminence and terror of the near future. You really think, in these moments, that it must all be a bad dream. That the universe is playing some terrible joke on you somehow, that this could not possibly be real.

Keeping course over waves the size of houses in a 17-foot sailboat required all our strength — reefing, trimming, desperately keeping the Naama from being subsumed by cresting waves. After 24 hours of wakefulness, of steering, of reefing, of desperately holding on, my body shook with exhaustion. I couldn’t feel it shaking but when I looked at my hands, in the brief moments I took my eyes from the waves, I could see the tremors.

Four hours since dawn and we met each other’s eyes. Looking for reassurance, perhaps, that the other person felt more confident than we did? Or perhaps looking for the assurance we gave each other — that neither of us knew with any certainty if we could make it through this storm. Neither of us said anything in that moment, troubled eyes met troubled eyes and positions were resumed. Disbelief would sum up the thoughts running through my mind rather than fear. Panic was beginning to dig a foundation in my stomach, yet that was less about the current situation than what I believed could be our only option: that we would not be able to make land and would have to sail back and forth across the waves until the wind died. Thirty-foot waves and rocky cliffs do not make for safe landing. And in a region known for storms lasting up to 4 days, a two-man sailing boat with hand-repaired sails, no electricity, no ability to access the outside world… Fatigue, I knew, would be our downfall.

Alert as we were even 30 hours in we could, if we made no mistakes, survive. Even at this point we were reaching dangerous territory; our food and water was stored inside the cabin, which we couldn’t open without leaving the boat vulnerable to almost certain wreckage by marauding waves. A handful of peanuts and a sip of water was left to us. Even entering the cabin would shift our weight, leaving the boat less balanced against flattening winds. We were in it for the long haul.

There was one instance I will never forget. Building wind reduced my ability to steer and just in the moment of reefing the sails we met with the largest wave in that whole endeavor. Miles of water suddenly stretched below my feet, somehow the trough of the wave was unimaginably far beneath us. And behind my head reared the mocking crest, soaring upwards, casting us into shadow, slamming our hull, tilting us to an impossible angle, crashing to the opposite gunwale, and moving on, insatiable. It left us soaked, breathless, and somehow unsunk.

From the deck of a boat there is a strange distortion in the waves. Somehow they look both smaller and larger than you know they are. On the deck of the Avontuur we braved a 5-day storm with wind force 10 and waves up to 40 feet. The 48-meter ship careened from peak to peak, climbing the side of the waves and plunging over the other side. Sometimes there is nothing to do but grip the rail and wait for your feet to find purchase again. Sometimes there is nothing to see on either side but walls of water. And sometimes the waves bring you close enough to reach out and caress them. And yet from the deck of the ship you cannot appreciate their true magnitude in proportion to your insignificance. The entire world has been reduced to this miniscule window of inhabitability in a hostile environment.

When we made our miraculous landing that day, after 36 hours against the waves, our disbelief in what we’d just experienced somehow lessened the relief I knew we should be feeling (Or perhaps that was the hours of adrenaline-filled wakefulness). Already he was anticipating our next brush with such a storm, was claiming his certainty that we would have been fine the whole time. And I couldn’t brush the fact that we had been incredibly lucky to come through this, to find safe harbor, and somehow still have a functional boat. And I wished then, as I do now, that someone else had been out there that day with a video camera. That they had caught the moment that wave swallowed us whole and spat us out half-drowned. If only to truly see how small we were next to the raw power engulfing us and to really know how close we’d gotten.

Whoops!

It’s hard to keep a blog updated when you live on the waves. Sorry, all, for my inattentiveness!

I’ll be back in a place with more reliable wifi access for the last two weeks of my Watson year (YEAH, I KNOW). I’m sure I’ll have some updates and reflections and photos to share as I prepare my final presentation for the upcoming conference.

 

The Avontuur — Excerpts from the sailor’s journal

The best way for me to share with you all my experiences from sailing across the Atlantic on the Avontuur is to post some excerpts from the journal I kept during my two months at sea. For a little background, the Avontuur is a 1920’s traditionally-rigged, two-masted gaff schooner. She’s 44 meters long with a dangerously small keel and shallow draught for a ship to be taken across the Atlantic. Especially as a cargo ship…. But that is beside the point. We all survived, right??? Haha, anyways. The whole idea is to ship cargo without using fossil fuels so the ship is equipped with wind and solar power and powered only by sails (mostly) and human-power. No winches or anything, we hauled all those ropes right over the pins by brute strength. My arms and shoulders are a bit bigger than they were in February but you’ll never hear me complain about something like that!

We were a crew of 14 (although some of the members did change halfway through) and we sailed from the Caribbean to Germany. I joined the crew in the Bahamas. They had taken organic coffee from Honduras after a lengthy voyage across the Atlantic from Germany and made their way to Roatan and then the Bahamas. After the Bahamas we sailed straight for the Azores, a one-month voyage. Then we stopped in the U.K. and Helgoland before our arrival in Bremen on April 22nd. All of this is online and all over the German news. Apparently we were a big deal or something. Haha!

On the ship we all lived in 80-cm bunks in a very small room. No such thing as privacy, the only thing between you and the others was one of the worst-constructed sets of curtains yours truly has ever seen. They broke multiple times a day. But we all adjusted and made it work. I mean, you have no options, really! The worst part was maybe that we were sailing the North Atlantic at the tail end of winter and the ship was built for coastal sailing in the tropics so it has literally no heating. A steel egg on a freezing ocean. MMMMM, that’s what you want. Wet, cold, and cramped. Life was broken up into 4-hour shifts of work and rest. Everyone had 8 hours of work per day split up into two shifts. You would have 4 hours on watch, 8 hours off, then four more hours on. My watch was 8-12, which was really the most normal watch in terms of a sleep schedule.

It would be impossible for me to communicate exactly what life is like onboard. But I hope that through these journal entries maybe you can get a glimpse of it. For some reason my photos aren’t uploading right now but they will come!

 

2/22/17 — Wednesday, Grand Bahama Island

First full day onboard the Avontuur. I arrived last night and we went to a bar and got nice and drunk and woke up at an ungodly hour. I’m a little shaky from exhaustion, hungover(ish), and too much strong coffee. Although I wish there was more coffee around now… Today we have a day off (haha, first day is a day off) so I’m going to explore the island with some of the boys on the boat. Looks like conditions have been somewhat less than ideal. But there is nothing new about bitching at the captain and life onboard. Everyone is still here and seems to be mostly enjoying themselves. Mostly… We shall see how this whole thing goes!

 

3/1/17 — Wednesday, Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida

WHAT AN EVENTFUL WEEK. We are now 3 days into our crossing to the Azores. Apparently we are far ahead of schedule (already??) and breaking speed records for the ship. The captain — Conny — is in an undimmable good mood. I don’t know how to write about the week spent in the Bahama slums getting to know the crew. It seems like nothing and everything happened at the same time. Just as we do relatively little but somehow never have enough time onboard. 

Well, anyways. It was a hot, drunken week of work, play, embarrassment, laughter, the whole nine yards. And now here we are. I am on watch with the other two North Americans — Jake and Lewis — and the captain. I am trying to —— [the pen fades off here, must have been distracted by something]

 

3/2/17 — Thursday, Atlantic Ocean

I earned a lot of points last night during our sudden maneuvers to reef the schooner sail, lower the main, and furl the jibs. Mainly these points were earned by climbing out onto the bowsprit in pitch darkness with the boat rolling and tossing over the waves and helping Jake dowse and catch the flying jib. Klaus [the bosun] hugged me and said, “Excellent.” Later he came up to me and said, “That’s living!” He now suddenly likes me a lot. Both he and Conny were terrified that I was so gung-ho about strapping myself into the harness and going out on the bowsprit at night. I mean, okay, this is probably fair considering it’s my 4th day at sea. But hey, go big or go home, right??

 

3/4/17 — Friday, Atlantic Ocean

I think today is March 4th but honestly I don’t really remember. I should really take a nap but I’m just too wired. Being part of the captain’s watch means lots of action and excitement, which is both exhilaration and exhausting. Now that we’ve all finished lunch people are quiet, doing their own thing. Winds and seas calm today, slowgoing even with full sails. In the last few days we’ve been through rapid weather changes, including a squall that whipped us into an unintended jibe. The learning curve is steep but I absolutely love it. Today Klaus told me I should consider “sailor” as a future career. So far I don’t sleep much but I feel fitter than ever. I expect it’ll catch up to me one of these days…

I am so unbelievably happy, sitting here beneath the staysail, looking down the ship as it glows against the midday sky, rolling to reveal a sparkling-grey sea behind and beneath and before. There is no one around except the 12 of us and no way forward but wind and sails and hours of work. Maybe later we will be tired and frustrated and sick of each other but for now we are happy. I don’t really know what else to say except that I can’t remember being this happy in a long long time.

 

3/4/17 — Saturday, Atlantic Ocean

Right, so. I was wrong about the date yesterday. Time is weird on the ship…

I am so tired. I never seem to be able to sleep, what with commitments an all turns of the clock. This is not sustainable. But the last few days have been such exhilirating watches followed by so much happiness that I really couldn’t give two shits about sleeping more at the moment. I keep deciding not to sleep when I really should. Oh well!

We’ve run into a storm gusting up to wind force 10. Swells are over 30 feet high, you feel as if you can reach out and touch the wave as it arcs up over your head. The deck pitches to the point where your feet leave the “ground” and I can’t count the number of times I’ve thought, “Welp, this is it, then.” Conny and Klaus have us jumping everywhere to try and manage ship and course. Last night my bofdy was trembling from exhaustion and even while asleep everything hurt. Jake, Lewis, and I have settled into a decently happy watch. And by “decently happy” I mean “delirious and ridiculous.” Suffice to say we have a good time.

 

3/5/17 — Sunday, Atlantic Ocean

Wind force 10 continues! It is cold, cold, cold out there. Jake and I were singing for hours today to keep our minds off the ludicrous weather conditions. We’ve (I’ve) written a new, sea-shanty version of “You Are My Sunshine.”

 

3/6/17 — Monday, Atlantic Ocean

Another 24 hours aboard the ship out of time. The Worst Watch again bore through the most brutal weather of the day and night — freezing rain and biting cold. We pulled Avontuur out of the storm, set the sails, and got back on course. We don’t seem to have blown too far off, although perhaps a touch closer to Bermuda than intended. I was stuck at the helm nearly 4 hours in freezing rain this morning. My hands are swollen from days of freezing and being unable to warm up properly after the 4-hour watches. But I had time to write a new song for the Worst Watch’s performance when we reach Horta.

 

3/9/17 — Thursday, Atlantic Ocean

Just got the wake up call to lower the mainsail…

Today we had the first captain’s reception. Basically this means we have to clean the trainee compartment and make our bunks look nice so the captain/first mate can approve of us and then we all get cake and one alcoholic drink (one drink per week, we are so screwed when we get to port!). After it was over, Klaus asked if I wanted to climb the mast so Nanna and I scurried up the shrouds to sit on top of the schooner mast for a couple of hours. It was absolutely gorgeous up there. We watched the sky and sea go by and talked, enjoying our distance from the rest of the crew. Hard to find a moment alone here!

 

3/15/17 — Wednesday, Atlantic Ocean

Time is rolling on faster and faster. A month has passed since I left Taiwan but only 10 days since the force 10 storm? What?? How have I only known these people for 3 weeks? Not possible, it seems. One more week between us and the Azores. Being on land will be strange…

 

3/17/17 — Friday, Atlantic Ocean

Not a lot of time for introspection these days. I love it. Finally outside my head. I want to sail and be happy forever.

 

3/18/17 — Saturday, Atlantic Ocean

We will reach the Azores on either Tuesday or Wednesday, just a few days from now. Probably on the 22nd of March. I can’t believe nearly a month has already passed since I joined the Avontuur. I have no regrets in doing so, I knew this was the right decision. Honestly, all I want to do is sail forever. And I’m learning loads. The captain and bosuns have taken me under their wing and been training me, which is exactly what I wanted. Today Conny started teaching me about navigation. I mean what with all the instruments and stuff it’s not so difficult but it does require knowledge of weather, climate patterns, atmospheric changes, geography, etc. Actually my studies with Campbell are really serving me well here. Knowing what the ITCZ was and how to explain Hadley cells earned me a lot of points in the captain’s mind.

I knew a lot of this stuff in an abstract sense but it’s so much more exciting to use it practically. For example, longitudinal lines are (of course) not parallel, they converge at the poles. This means that the distances between them are not equal all around the globe. Duh. But on a chart the lines are made to be parallel so you have to use another chart that shows the convergence. And then if you’re talking about distances between two points you take the cosine of the latitude because that tells you the proportional reduction in distance you need. Like at the equator and the 90th meridian you would have a mile of 1:1. But if you go up to the 38th parallel the curvature of the earth means pushes the meridians closer together. And because the earth is (kind of) a globe, you can use trig to figure out the distances. All that stuff. Anyways, I guess it’s just really exciting to me to understand 100% why you need to use a cosine in a real life situation. Not that I’m explaining it to you very well at the moment. You’ll have to chalk that up to exhaustion and the medium. I’d explain it better if I were showing you with a paper and pencil.

But he’s also shown me how to measure the direction and force of the wind and adjust the compass course to show true course based on wind variation of the ship, magnetic deviation, and… shit I’ve forgotten the third one. I’m f***ed with exhaustion right now. Anyways, the course over ground is not the same as the compass course so you have to calculate the actual course you’re taking based on three different factors. And then you use all this to chart your position and figure out which course you need to take to get to where you need to go. This is where the second chart comes into play, the one that shows the convergence of the meridians. If you drew the shortest distance between the two points on the regular chart it would look like a parabola and then you would sail a much longer distance. But if you draw this line on the adjusted, more accurate chart then you can figure out a better heading and even though the line will eventually look curved on the normal chart it will still be the shortest distance.

And we talked as well about pressure systems. I knew that wind comes off the pressure systems from high → low in a vortex but what I didn’t realize is that it nearly always leaves the high pressure system at an angle of 15 degrees, meaning you know generally which direction the wind is going before you reach the high pressure system. Provided you know where the center of the system is, of course. And it re-enters the lower pressure system at 15 degrees as well. Too tired. That’s all for now.

 

3/21/17 — Tuesday, Atlantic Ocean near the Azores

Jake and I were out on the bowsprit tonight and it started rattling and vibrating almost like it was telling us to get off now! Just before the last two hours of frenetic activity we saw a dolphin shooting through the bioluminescence. It was like some mystical being flying through the darkness, like a dragon or a celestial object. Funny how the closest thing I can compare the ocean at night to is the heavens. Conny was so excited about it he raced to the fore with me to look under the bow for more dolphins. We didn’t see any but that was when he noticed all the maneuvers we had to do.

I’m still learning loads about sailing and Conny’s been teaching me about navigation. No one on this ship is the world’s best teacher, including him, but I’ve already learned a lot. So far I’m minorly hopeless at plotting our position on the chart. You would think this would be the easy part. Instead, I seem to have a good eye for wind force and direction, the drift of the ship, and calculating the difference between the course and the magnetic compass course.

Yesterday Lewis, Jake, and I came up with our second song for the Horta performance. We are calling it “An Ode to the ‘Best Watch.’” The Best Watch is the one immediately before us, Gus, Sebastian, and Klaus. It’s the best diss track I’ve ever written.

In the afternoon I taught the Worst Watch how to do TM and we sat in the cargo hold and meditated together. Actually it was really wonderful. Afterwards we hopped out on deck and Jake taught us some clogging steps! I tried to teach him swing dancing but I must admit I’m not the best dance teacher and it was proving a little difficult. Who cares, though, we had a great time.

Then last night we were on watch. Things were quiet for a bit and we were just talking like normal. It was only after that that the wind died completely and suddenly we were just drifting through the sea with flapping sails. Headed in the entirely wrong direction, we managed to jibe and backtrack a bit. Guillaume, Jan, Jake and I, after completing nearly every maneuver possible in a frenetic manner, cleared the deck and sat on the cargo hold for a while. The sea surrounding us was calm, glassy, and the stars winked from overhead. All was quiet around the panicked crew members raising and dowsing and jibing and tacking. The next two hours consisted of absolutely nothing to do. We lost our marbles for the umpteenth time and chased each other around the deck singing our ridiculous songs at the top of our lungs…

Today we were again in the doldrums. Swimming in the North Atlantic!! It felt wonderfully frigid! I was in a mite too long, though, and got a touch of hypothermia… No worries, I have particularly effective ways of warming up! 😉

 

3/31/17 — Friday, Atlantic Ocean, past the Azores

Back at sea. I realize I’ve written nothing in this journal since before we made land. But now I am exhausted and having trouble sleeping so I’m hoping writing helps to knock me out.

So, the Azores. Where to begin… F***. It seems like we were there for a year. I don’t know where to begin. Peter Cafe Sport? The song competition? Working on the ship? An apartment with Sebastian? Dinner with Jake and Nanna? No way to get it all down…

The Azores are a magical place. Horta will forever be somewhere special to me. Maybe someday I’ll go back and find that wine bottle on top of the hill.

We met with Tres Hombres just before we left. They dashed into the harbor to meet with us and the crews commingled and had a couple of drinks. Nanna and I jumped on board and helped square the deck after they moored in front of us. No one wanted us to go but Conny was absolutely positive we had to leave or else we’d run into bad weather. Ah well. For a moment there were two sail cargo vessels next to each other in Horta, right next to the square where Lewis and I painted the Timbercoast logo and all of our names. Good luck for us on the rest of the voyage, then!

 

4/4/17 — Tuesday, I suppose (I write a lot of these after my watch, which ends at midnight)

I haven’t been writing enough about the actual sailing! Hopefully my current lack of total exhaustion is a sign I’m readjusting to the sea schedule. In the last few days what have we done?

We sailed over 185nm in less than 24 hours, a new ship’s record. This breaks our earlier record of 183nm in 24 hours. Every day we raise and dowse sails so it all starts to really blur together, to be honest. Reefing, hauling, shaking, dowsing, raising, climbing, sewing, tying, other assorted assignments. My hands are destroyed. I worry a little about the confluence of sailing and playing piano… are these mutually compatible passions if one destroys the tools of the other??

The other day we lost the flying jib halyard when it wasn’t fastened while we dowsed the sail. After trying unsuccessfully to retrieve it with the boat hook, Conny decided to leave it until morning. But then I got word from Sebastian that it was so close to coming completely loose from the block that Gus had to climb the mast at nearly 3am to go retrieve it and fasten it to something. Yikes! In the end it was good that we lost it, though, because otherwise no one would have noticed how nearly-destroyed the jib halyards were. We spent the morning dowsing the jibs to repair the halyards.

It all started because we found out that the downhaul of the forestaysail broke on the new stay Jake made for the boom. We had to take the sail off the boom completely and now we fix the sail on the pinrails on either side. Works fine but it’s damn annoying to take the sheet over the boom every time we tack or jibe. Plus any time the sail is flapping you suddenly have a violent sheet nearly decapitating you.  But hey, what’s a little more danger?

Today started early with Nanna waking us at 5am to raise the mainsail. Yeesh, couldn’t they wait an hour or two? After a usual bizarre and hilarious watch with the Worst Watch (involving a rather lengthy period of gorilla impersonations) I spent a couple of hours on deck sewing. Not my main talent but months on the road have seriously improved my mending and darning skills. It may not be the prettiest stitching you ever did see but it won’t break in a hurry.

The forecast continues to be crap. We seem unable to run into good wind for any length of time… Drifting towards the English Channel.

 

4/6/17 — Thursday, Nearing the English Channel

I miss making music. My hands are a mess. What I would give for a piano or an orchestra rehearsal.

Today I am sick of men and sailors.

 

4/13/17 — Thursday, English Channel

We are steadily drifting in what some would call “kind of the right direction.” We were suddenly informed today that we were not, in fact, going to Brixham. Long story but basically Timbercoast is a bit of a shit show. Anyways, we have to resupply so we stopped in Torquay. It was supposed to be an overnight but Conny ran around and rounded us all up (rather rudely, I must say) to shove off before dark. We were all a few pints in at that point (the North Americans maybe a bit more, seeing as we were sort of kind of not allowed in the country…) and setting sails went surprisingly well under the circumstances.

Have been trying to work on plans for what I’m doing after this voyage. Predictably, my original plans were scrapped halfway through so who the f*** knows what’s going to happen.

 

4/15/17 — Saturday, 1:15 A.M., the North Sea

Today (well, technically yesterday but whatever) we sailed past the cliffs of Dover. It was surprisingly magnificent, actually. I never was super interested in making that a priority but I guess we can cross it off the bucket list now. Today I pulled out all my notebooks from the Watson journey so far and I realized I have learned and done so much. Funny how at times it feels like I’ve done absolutely nothing. I can’t believe this whole thing is almost over.

We floated on through the English Channel (well, okay, the engine was on for a bit to get us out of the doldrums) and we’re now flying north up the British coast between the U.K. and Belgium. Soon we’ll be north of the Netherlands, where the forecast is NW wind at 6-7. This would allow us to change course and shoot across to Helgoland by Monday or Tuesday, a full 3-4 days ahead of schedule. A couple of days there and then onto Bremen for the arrival. I can’t believe that’s only one week away. I’m excited and sad at once.

Later…

Today was a day of early rousings and much hauling of ropes and sails. It is cold and windy and the shallow chop and truncated troughs remind me of Lake Superior. Today is a day that reminds my why I want to do more sailing. Today I feel alive, with blood on my hands and the wind biting my face. My frosted feet bound across the bowsprit, it is a heady exhilaration. Today I am happy in my favorite way. Yet the good wind means less time at sea – the ever-present dilemma facing the seafarer: a wish for good wind and sailing means you get to land faster. But a brief flash of wind to fly us to our destination far surpasses a boring day of drifting or making 3 knots.

 

4/16/17 — Easter Sunday, the North Sea

We are mere hours from Helgoland. Anticipated arrival is middle of the night or early morning. We are so close we’re intentionally going only 2 knots. It is horrendously boring. The North Sea is cold and windy.

The sun is out and it is a brisk Easter Sunday. Eggs are painted and hanging in the galley. We sang “This Little Watch Of Ours” to hand over the watch today (set to the tune of “This Little Light of Mine”). It was one of our best hand-overs to date.

———————

I didn’t write much more about the Avontuur after that date. We arrived in Bremen on April 22nd and there was a big hullabaloo and the boat was swarmed with wellwishers and news crew. The crewmembers were either greeted by friends and family, for those who had them, or shunted to the side. We couldn’t get off the ship, there were so many people. None of us had slept more than about an hour the night before, what with it being the last night and completely mishandled maneuvers. Then we were all-hands the entire day, since sailing down the Weser river is not exactly the easiest task.

We were exhausted, starving, and really not accustomed to so many people. Especially not so many people on our ship! I mean, really, people were touring the trainee compartment, which was our bedroom. We just sat there in shock until we managed to get into the galley and make some eggs. Then everyone hid for a while as volunteers hoisted the coffee out of the cargo hold and biked it to wherever it was supposed to go. I admit, at that point I really didn’t care where the coffee was going. I just wanted a beer and some good food and a shower. Finally, those three things did happen. But it was a few days of anxiety, confusion, sadness, goodbyes, and beer. After about three days most of the crew had dissipated and I, too, went on my merry way.

And now here I am. Would you believe it, I’ve found myself in an intentional community in Greece. Brought here by a musician. You travel the world to find new things and there you go right back where you started. Funny how things work, eh?

Anyways, things feel very strange now, being off the ship. I don’t know what to make of it but I know my future will hold more of the sea. Perhaps immediately. As I said before, my original plans failed to pan out (you really can’t rely on sailors, I mean really). Since it’s hard to make plans while you’re in the middle of the Atlantic things have therefore been a bit slowgoing. But I’m on a bit of an approved “vacation” now (although really, where I am now is a small island with a strong seafaring history and a freaking intentional community, it’s quite up the alley of my proposed project). As soon as I know what’s coming next I will, of course, plunge forward. But for the time being it’s not so bad to live the slow, island life for a minute.

Maybe I can channel the spirit of Odysseus or something… I mean he is from here, after all.

 

Ship’s Log — Hello from the Azores!

A month at sea hardly felt like a month. I expected to be pining for land and other people, or at least to notice that I hadn’t seen land or anyone other than the 11 other crew members for weeks. But I didn’t. Being at sea with these few people was the happiest and most natural thing I’ve done for some time. After a brief taste of land and the comforts of a real home, we’ll have to see what the ship feels like, but I’m optimistic. We landed in Horta, Azores a few days ago and have been exploring the island (must come back to the Azores!) and getting ready to make way again. After this we head up to the Bay of Biscay (yikes!) and the North Sea (yikes!) on our way to Bremen, Germany. We’ll stop twice more, once in Brixham, UK to drop off some coffee, and once in Helgoland just because.

I’ll admit, I did much less writing than I intended. A happy soul makes words fall flat, I say. Not much I can do about that, I suppose.

I don’t have a lot of time to transcribe all my writing at the moment. We leave in the morning and suddenly I realize I have so many things to do before we’re off the grid again. Funny how important it all seems when you are at sea to do these things and then when you’re on land you don’t quite remember what it was you needed to do (and yes, I made lists but still). I will mention an enormous storm with 35-foot waves and wind force 10 our first week out from the Bahamas, the world’s best watch (nicknamed the Worst Watch), and an epic singing contest. Not to mention hauling ropes and learning navigation and awful food and close friends (hey, let’s all live in the same room!). In lieu of my notes (which will be uploaded at some point, I promise), here are some photos from the last month of my life:

Jan and Guillaume up the mast

Sails upon sails

Not many directions to look on the ship except up

On watch during bad weather – Klaus and Sebastian

Caught in the rain in the Bahamas (more on the Bahamas later…)

Jake sees land!

Ready to set some sails

The newest addition to the island of Horta, created when a volcano erupted in 1957. And Jan, enjoying the view.

Sebastian wants me to stop taking pictures and decide which direction to walk in

The Avontuur

Exploring Horta

Vinho verde, a cow pasture, and a beautiful view

Coming back to the Azores someday

Don’t worry, the fireworks are a whole 5 feet from your face

Guys, I have some bad news.

…….

Yeah, you totally thought that was about the title, right? Oh my god, what happened to her face?! Don’t worry, my face is just as awesome as ever (lol). The bad news refers to the illness, bad weather, and abrupt timeline changes that resulted in me being unable to return to Lanyu. I was supposed to be there for the Flying Fish festival in the first week of February but a confluence of forces kept me from going. And then I suddenly found out I was to leave Taiwan nearly 10 days earlier than I had planned! So I packed up my things, sighed a little bit, and hit the road again.

But! Before I left I made up for missing the Flying Fish Festival by going to the fifth most dangerous festival in the world, the 盐水疯跑!

Yes, this one does have something to do with the title. Which, in turn, has something to do with the fact that the pictures and video I have are slightly misrepresentative in that they are taken from a bit further back than I often found myself.

So let’s rewind for a minute. Assuming you didn’t click the above hyperlink about the festival, the Yanshui Fengpao festival stems from the early 20th century when a cholera epidemic broke out in Yanshui (Saltwater Town), a small town north of Tainan. Monks from the Wumiao Temple processed through the streets with palanquins of various deities while massive “beehive” fireworks were lit off at the end of the parade. The fireworks were meant to be cleansing and it was thought they would help rid the city of cholera. Nowadays the festival is held on the last day of the Lunar New Year (yeah everyone else just celebrates with lanterns and pretty lights and these guys are like “CLEANSING THROUGH FIRE IS THE ONLY WAY.” I like these people).

Tens of thousands of people take to the streets during the festival, which becomes a heaving mass of bodies, gods, palanquins, and “beehives” of fireworks (huge wooden frames lined with bottle rockets that get rammed through the unyielding crowds). Before you go everyone warns you to wear protective gear, including helmet with full-face visor, towels, jackets, gloves, and padding. The towels are to put under your helmet so stray rockets don’t go zooming up inside and hit you in the face. Oh yeah, getting hit with a firework is good luck so people try to get hit as many times as they can. Honestly, though, I don’t know which was more dangerous, the crowds or the rockets. I came away with equal bruises from both. The moment I was nearly pincered between a palanquin and a mass of hysterical bodies worried me more than the many moments I found myself staring directly into a wall of thousands of rockets. Left a bigger bruise, too.

Oh my god, it’s about to start

Helmets and smoke, that pretty much sums this up

Here we go…

Also ran into this OG with four 2-month old sugar gliders chilling on his hat while navigating the crowd on a hoverboard. Oh yeah, and he was about 80

The festival lasts an ungodly amount of hours. And the weird thing is, you’re completely exhausted, battered, and drawn and then they wheel out another beehive and suddenly you find yourself in the confusing position of figuring out how to get as close as possible to the things that are exploding. While this is happening, music is blaring and large, normal fireworks are being lit off continuously. It is a mass of color, light, sound, and smells that assault the senses beyond comprehension. Small wonder it is a religious/spiritual affair. It’s not hard to make the leap into appealing to a higher power when the back of your mind is wondering why the hell you are standing right here and just passively observing the fire making its way down the fuse.

WordPress won’t let me upload videos unless I pay for it, sorry guys

It’s funny, though. I got the email that I would need to leave Taiwan early just before another round of golden fire washed over me and it was the perfect way to bring in the New Year. I knew that even though going to the Flying Fish festival would now be impossible, I knew that it was time for the next challenge. You see, at times I found myself bored even while being literally blasted by rockets (I have holes in my jacket to prove this. And, you know, welts and bruises. The usual). And I think it’s because Taiwan, while wonderful and fascinating, had not felt as challenging as the rest of my journey. I would like to return to Taiwan someday, but when I headed out to the airport it was without the sense of sadness and finality I had felt leaving other places. Because those other places still had more to teach me and Taiwan maybe had lessons that can wait for another time.

And I realized the reason I had chosen this project, the reason it had come to me in that moment of clarity and fusion, was not because I was interested in seafaring. It was not because I wanted to know how a place defined a person. It was the other half of the question. On an island you have two halves to the population, the group that leaves and the group that doesn’t. The reason I found so many answers in Greece was partly due to the fact that I was spending all my time with people who had left. And in Greenland it had been the same, the deepest understanding of the place and culture surrounding me came not from the people who had lived there all their lives but from people who had gone out, been outsiders, and come back.

Of course, this concept was not new to me. Anthropologists have known this for a long time. What was new was understanding why seafaring was such an important question to me. Sailing, canoeing, kayaking, all of these things are the most extreme forms of leaving (nowadays you could harken it to space travel, perhaps). You are putting yourself in a small craft and going out into an environment in which humans have never been designed to live. And you are living in that environment for weeks and months at a time by sheer force of will and determination. To quote Pirates of the Caribbean (one of my favorite films, I must say), you are showing the world what you can do, “by the sweat of [your] brows and the strength of [your] backs” (side note: I originally wanted that to be the title of my Watson project but I was discouraged from doing so. I still think it’s a pretty awesome title).

All these cultures and places I had set up were people who, yes, often had many elements of their traditional seafaring culture still in place. But even in the Pacific, all these traditions are coming from a bottleneck of one small island and many indigenous islanders will be the first to tell you they are just trying to figure it all out themselves. I wanted to do something that was moving forward, that was an extreme challenge, that was getting lost in the physical sense and putting myself into that environment I was never supposed to be in.

So I began looking more earnestly for opportunities to sail. And I found some. One, Timbercoast, is a sustainable shipping company, taking cargoes of coffee beans around the world without the use of fossil fuels. They and several other companies are spreading awareness of one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases: container ships. For a fee, you can sign up to be a trainee on one of their voyages. I explained my project to them and they, like me, believed it was an excellent fit. They agreed to let me on their upcoming trans-Atlantic voyage in a historic trip shipping coffee from Honduras to Germany (since I can’t go to Honduras, I’m meeting them in the Bahamas).

So, everyone. Starting Monday I will be the newest addition to the crew on the Avontuur! I am vascillating between nerves and excitement. One way I knew I picked the right next step is that when I sent the email confirming my position my stomach was twisted into knots.

It’s going to be an adventure, no bones about it. All I can say is, bring it on, universe. I’m ready.

To My Watson Fellowship…

I am losing my mind.

Being a world away is tearing my insides from the walls of my abdomen, wrenching my strength through my clenched jaws with the ruthless hands of helplessness and isolation. I don’t blame you for this, how could you know the rules of the game would coincide so horribly with the history of the world? Yet requiring me to sit outside the circle at this critical time is the hardest thing you have yet asked of me. And I think we can agree that perhaps that is saying something.

“What does it feel like to watch your country fall apart?”

A friend from home asked me that the other day. And though I had known I was doing just that, having the question asked so pointedly rendered me speechless.

How is one supposed to move forward with anything other than fighting against the coming tide? What good am I doing for the world sitting in this small corner of Asia and pursuing a project that, while fascinating and exciting, is not going to be my focus in life much longer. I find myself nauseatingly impatient, restless, and fractured.

“But you cannot do anything so just don’t worry about it.” 

Many of my friends from abroad are growing tired of my increasing obsession – however morbid – with the changing political sphere, with the terrifying speed and intentionality behind this coming new world order, and with my own disjointedness and inaction. I should just focus on being happy, on doing things I like, on things I can control. Thinking and learning about things beyond my control will only make me unhappy. Most of them don’t understand the sense of compulsion, of responsibility, of need to stand on the right side of history. To the surprise of many of them who are staunchly anti-American (and yes, European friends, I am looking at you!), I dearly love the United States. I have and always will be a patriot.

Does that mean I believe in the nationalist ideals purported by many of the extremists these days? No. Does it mean I believe the United States to be a truly amazing nation with a history to be proud of, with a global impact to be cared for and wielded responsibly? Does it mean I am proud to be American? Of the many opportunities I have been granted because of my birth? Of the wonderful things my country has made possible in the world?Yes, that is what it means. You know what, the U.S. has done some truly horrible things. I know that. To love the United States for its spirit, for it’s forward movement one has to be informed of our missteps, of the past we would like to forget, of how far we have yet to go. It is the responsibility of Americans to continue the practice of the incredible things, to protect that legacy in the face of lunatics intent on starting the next world war (no, I am not being hyperbolic).

On November 9th it appeared my country had betrayed me. My sense of self, sense of purpose, already so fragile just hours from leaving Chios, were shattered again. And I have spent this past quarter picking up those pieces, rebuilding them into the new direction I will live my life. That same friend from home who asked me how I felt watching my country fall apart expressed her concern over the events shaking the foundations of global existence in the last few weeks. Do we put our dreams on hold? She asked. Do we consign ourselves to years of school when we should be out fighting in the streets?

In short, which to put first, our country or ourselves? I couldn’t answer her, as that question is not one to be decided externally. The only thing we could conclude was that our new search for the next step in life included determining what tools we would need to forge our way in these uncertain times, whatever they may be. For myself, I have always known my life was to be lived in order to positively impact the globe, not just provide happiness for myself. The world seems to be calling now. It is time. Begin the journey. Don’t look back. Make no mistake, the events transpiring in the U.S. are not American problems. They are global problems.

To those who say one person cannot make change, fine. One voice crying in the dark does very little. But if everyone around is silent, that voice becomes a rallying point for other lost souls in that very same darkness. Many voices are now crying out and not one person can afford to be silent if we want to come through this alive and intact. One person can make a difference. One person has power. Just look at Trump if you want to see how one person can change everything. I may not be the President of the United States but it is my civic duty as a global citizen to wield what little power I have against him.

I don’t want to look back on my life and remember months of inaction in these critical times. I don’t want to be across the world while new movements and political parties are taking shape in my country, crucial to the future of the world, let alone my own. What’s keeping me away is the belief that I should see this through. That the consequences for breaking contract are too great. And yes, they are great. And no, I don’t want to end my Watson. Going home is not an option from any perspective. But damn it, I don’t want to look at my life 10 years from now (or perhaps 5, given the rate of change these days) and make excuses to myself about why I wasn’t there.

To my Watson Fellowship, I love you. I love your crazy, infuriating, heartbreaking, exhilarating, joyful, earth-shaking trajectory. You have taught me more than I thought possible and destroyed any expectations I had about where you would take me. You have shown me the hope for the future of humanity in the face of total darkness and destruction, you have led me to people I never knew existed and now can’t imagine not knowing. You have aged me beyond the capacity of the 8 months in which you’ve been underway, and I wouldn’t trade my decision for anything. But right now, dear Fellowship of mine, I really hate you.

Excerpts from the Journal of a Watson Fellow

January 17, 2017 — Tuesday, The Island of Lanyu, Taiwan

Only a couple of hours and what have I learned? 

• Lanyu and Batanes Islands (Philippines) -> very similar language, very similar boats
• Batanes’ boats are short, not tall. Maraos thinks this is because of the Spanish influence in the Philippines
• “我们是海洋人” — We are sea people
• New canoes are built all the time, but at the discretion of women -> they need to provide enough taro to fill the boat
• Boats are built in secret NOT for same reasons as in Micronesia, but because the Tao think that saying something outright invites inito (sp?) (evil). So a man will build a boat and then suddenly put it outside and his fellow villagers won’t know he’s built it
• Six “family groups”/tribes/villages on Lanyi
• “We are independent” — NOT Taiwan (他从来台湾 — “He comes from Taiwan”)
• 小兰屿 (Little Lanyu) — There is always a smaller island! A sacred place for catching 飞鱼（flying fish)
• FLYING FISH IS LIFE 
  • everything revolves around canoes and flying fish
• Dance like the Maori Haka to ward off evil and encourage each other
• Canoes always made of 21-22 pieces of wood
• If canoes are made by a family they will be intricately carved but if made by one person they are simply white
• It used to be that a tree was planted for sons when they were born and upon reach manhood they would climb the mountain, cut the tree down, and make a canoe 

Later

Walked about 10 ft down the road and already met a bunch of people who seem excited about me for some reason. Talked to them for a while about my project and next thing I know I’m being whisked off on the back of a scooter to see a freshly-carved canoe. After that we’re back on the bike, headed to meet some friends of this guy. As we’re zipping up the hill I realize I have no idea what his name is. Ah, well. He seems trustworthy.

They seem eager to share information about seafaring and canoe-building, interestingly enough. Although they’ve already compared me to the Japanese on account of the whole anthropology thing, which is a comparison I’m not sure I want in this case.

January 18, 2017 — Wednesday

The Flying Fish Festival starts in February. The fish make their way around the island, meaning each village celebrates the festival in succession, beginning with the 红头乡村 on the east coast. I have been invited to return in February after the Chinese New Year. 

Restrictive food taboos! Even though they live near the ocean, they only allow themselves to eat certain kinds of foods and specific fish (mainly flying fish). Hui-Nien tells me their food culture revolves around the land even though they are seafaring people (taro is king). In contrast, the Amis (who are coastal people but not seafaring and live on the “Big Island” of Taiwan) eat everything and anything. Why is this the case? 

Later 

Dinner with Syaman Lamuran, who got his PhD in Wisconsin(!):

Fish: for women (can’t eat fish for men, better for pregnancy, softer, less bones); for men (can eat the woman fish); for elders (somehow “special”)

Names:  The first name indicates familial relationship — “Syaman” means “father of,” etc. When tracing lineage you must look down the family tree, not up. Thinking towards the future, always. Names change throughout lifetime as family grows and changes.  Last name is the first name of firstborn child. This name must encompass abilities and traits of the child as well as the family as a whole. Child is named after 6 months.

January 20, 2017 — Friday

Lanyu is interestingly focused on agriculture. It seems that perhaps their diet could be more varied if they didn’t have such strict food taboos. WHY these taboos? Does it have to do w/not being on a continental shelf? Less coastal habitat — harder to fish? But then, why only certain types of fish? Perhaps isolation of Tao people means less competition and therefore increased capacity for food taboos? Why are seafaring cultures so superstitious? Because their survival is based on something they cannot even have the illusion of controlling? Yet so many of them claim to hold the secrets of the sea… And on the other hand, many readily shed their old ways for safer, more efficient ways of seafaring and oceanic subsistence. 

Perhaps agriculture dependence mitigates arrogance of the seafarers on Lanyu. Perhaps it is a response to the high winds and typhoons that so often plague this hunk of rock. And they can afford to be selective about which parts of the plant they eat whereas perhaps the Amis, their coastal counterparts, cannot. What will the Amis say about the sea, I wonder… 

我们是海洋人– WE ARE SEA PEOPLE. A fierce pride. A common identity. I become much more accepted when I identify myself as a fellow islander, a “sea person.” It’s as though in their eyes I know some knowledge so intrinsic only one who knows it can even guess at its existence or begin to attempt an unfolding of it. 

Kindness of strangers. Hospitality. Aloofness. Arrogance. Pride. Belonging to the sea. 

I did not realize how far I had allowed myself to become removed from the sea. I remember so many Inuit telling me of feelings of despondency, of emptiness, of sadness while abroad. But of not even fully recognizing that there was a hole in their chests until they were again confronted with a body of water and suddenly become complete once more. Like coming home to Lake Superior. Like tramping the strangely lonely beaches of Lanyu, simultaneously tropical and barren, wintry and warm. Hearing the gentle slush of too-blue waters and the heartbeat of the world. Feeling that place in my chest, so bereft these last two months of anything worthwhile, suddenly filled again. This is why. I finally answered my own questions on the many plaintive cries of lonely nights and hot frustrations. This is why we do this. 

And in the next few weeks when I return to Lanyu I will again affirm my purpose. And looking forward to the next 6 months I can promise myself the feeling of cresting each wave, the wind in my hair and salt on my tongue. Be that in the South Pacific, the Caribbean, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, or some miracle combination of them all. One never can tell where the sea will take you but I’ve found it’s best not to argue. 

January 21, 2017 — Saturday (I am 13 hours ahead of the United States)

Coming to me on the small, bright screen of my window to the world, in this clinging yellow room – bare of furnishings, locked by storms – on this chunk of lava made alone by the wind and waves; coming to me in the world of fellow disbelievers an ocean and continent away, somewhere in my past and present, it feels a fiction. Would that it were.

There are few places further one could go than a tropical island in a far-flung sea, let alone one constantly whorled in the lonely winds who have no other mountains with which to dance. But it is no less true here than there. Or than in the few places further, for that matter. Continuing to flick through the articles, one after another of terrified journalists all saying the same things, won’t make it less true. And however much I want to postpone the words that will mar this page, come they must. 

On November 9th I couldn’t bring myself to write the events. “I will know,” I said to myself, “I will remember this day.” But it wasn’t just that. To write the words myself, in this book, was to make it real. Inescapably, horrifyingly real in my heart of hearts. But reality will continue to plod on (or perhaps something more than “plod”) whether I acknowledge it or not. And as everyone my age knows well enough by now, “Fear of the name increases fear of the thing.” So form your secret societies, your defense leagues, kindle your hope and guard your knowledge. For Donald J. Trump is the President of the United States. 

Hello Again

Welcome, welcome, one and all to the beginning of Lane’s Watson Season 2, also known as “A Crash Course in Professional Homelessness.” When I last left you all I was taking a period of introspection and planning and also some time to get my head back on straight. The last few bits of my journey may not have been fun but they were necessary and now here I am, the traveler’s itch back in my feet, stories on my fingertips, and a new island before me.

I’ve resurfaced in Taiwan. While some of this next leg of the journey will involve seafarers, not all of it will. In my introspection, I realized that my questions have become larger than my original project can contain. My experiences to date have brought me to new questions, such as the fate of indigenous communities around the world, particularly vulnerable island communities, the commodification of culture, the relationship between a conqueror and the vanquished, and how all these things tie together into one’s identity. What does it mean to be who you are? Who gets to decide what makes us who we are?

How do we face the moments when we are desperately trying to eradicate parts of ourselves that seem indelible? Or when we scrabble to hold onto the fragments of what defined us when those fragments have been all but obliterated? And when we do manage to pick up the shattered pieces, does the shattering itself change the structure of the image we put back together?

I’ll continue to let my guiding themes — seafaring, islands, the human relationship to the sea — define the general arc of the second half of my Watson. I have many exciting adventures waiting in the wings for me but let’s focus, for now, on Taiwan.

My brief forays so far have been exciting and promising (and have convinced me that my 8 years studying Chinese were not a waste of time). I’ll be doing some more traditional ethnographic-style research here, with interviews, observation, and as much participation as I can pull off! Taiwan has 16 indigenous tribes, 42 indigenous dialogues, and an amazing set of rights and protections for these people. Yet, half a century ago, the indigenous people were cordoned off in internment camps rife with violence and persecution. How did this transformation take place? How has that changed people’s perceptions of what it means to be indigenous, of who they are?

Who knows! Not me, yet. I’ll let you know, although maybe some of you will be less interested in my more theoretical musings and more interested in my misadventures. I assure you both will abound.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Hobey ho, let’s go!

 

One Minute

It’s time for a period of introspection. In light of that, I’m taking a hiatus from the blog, the project, just things for a minute.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, if you celebrate another holiday this month then enjoy that one. If you don’t celebrate a holiday this month, have a great December anyways.

I’ll see you all in 2017.