The gentle pitter patter of rain pop, knock knocking on the deck above. Bob and Finbarr have gone home and here I am in Kenmare Bay anchored on the mooring of a 60 foot trawler that sunk at sea about a month ago on a delivery from Ireland to France. It is amazing in its own simple sort of way. Here I am tenderly edging my way home. Finbarr has proved a god send and a kind of inspiration. I sense in him a man who has lived much of his life with a sense of a public yet he is intensly indipendant. He told me an amazing story about him and his sister shooting rabbits with a 22 rifle. His IRA father taking the rabbits in to be traded for cash and returning home with a box of bullets and change for his two young hunters, a son and daughter only 8 years old. (or there about). A fisherman, a farmer, a marine biologist, a self sufficent home builder. All these themes go into making the man who on the surface appears a kind of impish rebelious madman. A man who is loves life. "Hey you come here!" he would say.
So back to me. I have been waying up the feesability of sailing the Indian Ocean. Is it the right way to go? I have to start making some serious millage if I am serious about Suez. Ireland. Portugal. Spain. Italy. Athens. Jordan. Suez. I am not really placing these goals before myself so much as trying to launch myslef on a personal journey that knows no defeat no no. This is the mojo, the set back was not being properly prepared. I now have to prepare in earnest. Get to suez and decide if I can go on. To keep going on to the next step to see if I can go farther but when can't you go back, when can't you return? When you're stuck in the duldrums or ITEZ which it is now called; out of gas, out of food and unable to produce water. Are there no more real risks any more? Never, but there is a point when you can't keep going forward. That enought has been delayed or postponed that you can't keep going. It is just mental roadblocks. The answer is to say yes. To pick up my challenge and to keep doing the things I believe in. To try to validate them amoungst others and not just myslef.
There is the challenge. The social accpetance and validation of the self reflexive will to power. So who am I, artist, gay vivant, sailer, reluctant adventurer? Abondoning friend. Emerging young man. 38 year old man reaching out for maturity? Oh an end to all that. This is the solipsistic wrant that is all the reason in the world to keep ones diary burried. Silent like one's personal doubts. To air them is to engage in a kind of personal sabotage at key inappropriate moments, however, here on this web page for anyone to read, sure why not. In person people sense what goes on in private. The truth has a way of spilling out. What am I doing here? I am daring to live, daring to do something different. To shape a part of me that seeks expresion but is wary to come forth. As if sailing across the Indian ocean will gain wisdom. Not really, I could stay at home and gain wisdom. So what is different about facing the challenge, testing the unknown? I hope I have the courage. I really do. That's what appeals to me about my journey home. My journing to the east. Bring on that last voyage home more directy west of London than east. In between, east or west many different lands.