Thursday, March 8th, 2018
Press Play for mood music of this blog: David Gray – Sail Away
One of my favorite authors is John D. MacDonald, I only recently within the past year started reading his books. Classic reads like the Brass Cupcake and the Empty Copper Sea. The main protagonist is Travis McGee, a rough around the edges, but introspective gun-for-hire private detective. A self described “Salvage Consultant.” Travis is the last of the great knights-errant. He lives on a his yacht called The Busted Flush, named after a poker hand containing four cards of the same suit and one of a different suit, in the Fort Lauderdale Marina in Florida.
Travis drives a bastardized 1936 Rolls-Royce he’s converted into a pickup truck, & is accompanied by his best friend and next boat neighbor Meyer, a highly regarded economist. MacDonald’s concerns over the ecological destruction of Florida and his disgust for the greedy, corrupt forces driving it are reflected in his portrayals of villains McGee faces off and inevitably defeats.
“Travis McGee is the last of the great knights-errant: honorable, sensual, skillful, and tough. I canít think of anyone who has replaced him. I can’t think of anyone who would dare.” — Donald Westlake
My father once told me as a child that he wanted a sailboat to sail in. It was nothing more than a random comment 20 plus years ago. He’s had enough time to buy one but never has because of limiting beliefs he holds about himself and what he’s capable of. Transcending these same limiting mental habits is one of my life goals I continue to achieve everyday, by getting into college, getting a better and higher paying job at Facebook and keeping the promise I made to my son October 2016 to go adventuring in Hawaii by the end of 2017, last year. And we did.
Reading these noir Florida detective books has played a central theme in my life as of late which seems to revolve around large bodies of water and boats. I flew across the Pacific ocean with my kiddo for the first time December 2017. Seeing the endless stretch of waves beneath the wings of the airplane was magical. Standing on a cliff’s edge and watching the ocean stretch endlessly into the distance from the South East corner of the Big Island does something to a man’s soul. It fills you with possibilities, and the rusty chains of mental jail cells are broken as you roam freely as the seagulls.
Thoughts racing along the surface of the water, faster than the speed of light, filled with a wonderment, and the powerful curiosity that achieving your goals gives birth to, asking persistently, “What’s next? What’s next?!”
Perhaps Dad will never achieve any of his dreams for the simple fact that he doesn’t believe he can or will. I never felt like I adopted his dreams as my own, because we are very different people, growing up in different generations. And yet, 20 years later, I find myself fascinated with what it would be like to own and sail a yacht like a Hallberg-Rassy 94.
I remember the 1st time the ocean truly moved me on an emotional level. I was a reporter for the Accent Newspaper, when I was a student at Austin Community College. We competed in the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association with other colleges for front page news stories, news photography and other categories. I won honorable mention for my college in news reporting. The local swat team had been commissioned to tear gas bomb a car in the parkinglot of a hotel in Corpus Christi, Texas. It was a sight to see, I still can recall the vivid details of the canisters being shot into the car, purple smoke spewing out the car windows, as a mock news story event we competed for being the best reporter writing up a news story about this event, fictionalizing the circumstances.
One of the days there I went to the beach with my friend and fellow Accent news reporter Jenessa. We walked along the beach for hours, seeing and hearing the ocean waves hit the sandy shore. The sun beat down on us something fierce and we both got sunburnt, as it was a random urge we gave into instead of planning a trip to the ocean. But it was worth every second. Many hours later, after we had gone back to our hotel, I could feel the motion of the waves, rhythmically crashing against the shore, inside my heart. It’s hard to explain, it was as if, somehow, I, without intending to, internalized the giant movements of the ocean in synchronicity with my circadian rhythms. That was the first time I ever felt that way.
Standing on a cliff’s edge hundreds of feet above the south shore of the Big Island Hawaii, was another moment where the majesty of the ocean reach out and gave my soul a hug, in this quiet, powerful, sense of sentience. Smoking a cigar, my last night in Hawaii, on the northern tip of the Big Island in Kohala, watching the sun set on the ocean, with Maui in the shrouded distance, I felt the flame of possibility burn blue on the strength of keeping a promise. I plan on keeping more promises, especially the ones I’ve made myself.
While I cannot say the exact day I will get a sailboat, I know that this is part of the destiny I’ll choose for my future path in life. Whether or not I’m a real life Travis McGee remains up for debate. But like David Gray says, someday I’m going to sail away. Remington Brand typewriter on board, to type the stories inside me, my classical guitar to give voice to the songs I hear in the infinite poetry of the waves, lapping against the side of my sailboat.
Dolphin at Dawn