Entry 29 4.4.11

Entry 29, April 4, 2011, 3:02pm (ship time)

I'm sitting in the South Pacific lounge (deck 6, all the way aft) watching the tango couple rehearse. It is a very different type of tango than I was learning in Michigan last summer. For now I'm calling it "show tango," although I'm sure it probably has a proper name.

The key difference is that in show tango the routine is worked out beforehand, while in the social tango I was studying in Ann Arbor is improvised. I suppose that this is a necessity in a tango production -- there can be no mistakes, no miscues, and so everything must be worked out in advance. The company is particularly risk-adverse when it comes to entertainment, and I suppose this is for good reason (you wouldn't want to see any mistakes in a stage show after paying thousands of dollars for your week long cruise, would you?). I imagine it as the dance equivalent of my job on the boat -- play the part, get the paycheck.

The couple are an excellent pair of dancers. The way he lifts her reminds me of the way sensei would throw in Judo class -- totally effortless (the difference, perhaps, is that sensei's throw was irresistable -- by the time you realized what was happening, you were headed to the floor no matter what). The ease with which they dance makes me think that they have been partners for a long time. That was the case with the last couple as well -- they were married, even. I wonder what it must be like when your life, professional, and business partner are all the same person.

Show tango is mostly open embrace, instead of social tango's closed embrace. This makes the more flashy intricate moves possible, and is a contrast to social tango which is (at least in my experience) mostly closed embrace due to crowded dance floors. It can be very impressive to watch, as it seems like the dancers can read each others' minds (due to the predetermined nature of the routine). Still, I think it loses a bit of the magic when the improvisation is removed. There is no element of danger, no possibility of failure, and no possibility for unexpected brillance . . . it is the difference between music recorded in the studio and music recorded live. I've always liked the live recordings better, because the small technical imperfections are usually accompanied by moments of spectacular beauty. I wonder if a tango couple has ever forgotten their routine in the middle of a show and had to just start dancing, and if so I wonder if the audience could tell the difference.

The musicians (and by extension, dancers) that I really respect are the ones who can play the same music every night and make it sound just as fresh and dangerous three months into the gig as it was the first night. In other words, the ability to make any music sound good at any time. I don't know how to do that yet, and I only know a handful of musicians who do.

Visible from the windows in the lounge are the cargo docks of Cartagena. I'm watching the huge cranes unload container ships while listening to tango music, and it is a strangely appropriate accompaniment to the process. The cranes themselves are massive, as tall as the tallest building in Lansing, and move along the pier on steel tracks like a huge railroad car. Each one has a moving gondola and lifting unit that slides in and out above the ship, with a cradle hanging from eight cables. This cradle can grab an entire shipping container as easily as your hand picks up an apple. It is a bit like watching a dance, as the process is not as simple as you might think to lift and move a shipping container. A forty foot container suspended from six stories of cable becomes quite a pendulum once you get it moving, and so the crane operator must move the lifting apparatus very precisely at the apex of the swing to cancel the container's momentum. It is as if the crane and the container are dancers, and so the tango music goes well with it.

Entry 28 4.3.11

Entry 28, April 3rd, 2011, 10:30pm (ship time)

The dedication to "A Purpose Driven Life:"

"This book is dedicated to you. Before you were born, God planned this moment in your life. It is no accident that you are holding this book. God longs for you to discover the life he created you to live -- here on Earth, and forever in eternity."

I am already working very hard to suppress my cynicism and inborn snark. This is going to be a long read.

I'll give it this, though -- it gets straight to the point. Three pages in it asks this question, "How do you discover the purpose you were created for?" which happens to be the exact question I was asking myself two days ago after reading about Herschel. It then postulates two potential solutions, either A: guess, or B: ask God. This is all well and good, except for one thing: it assumes that we were created for a purpose. What if we weren't? It is very comforting to hear from someone that we were created for a purpose, but as of yet in my life I have yet to see any proof.

"Purpose Driven Life" anticipates my reaction. In the second chapter ("You are not an accident") it says:

"If there was no God, we would all be "accidents," the result of astronomical random chance in the universe. You could stop reading this book, because life would have no purpose or meaning or signifcance. There would be no right or wrong, and no hope beyond your brief years on Earth."

To which I respond, "Excellent. That's exactly what I've been pondering. I can't wait to see how he proves that isn't the case!"

Next paragraph:

"But there is a God who made you for a reason, and your life has profound meaning!" And that's where it stops.

I am underwhelmed. Simply telling me that there is a God is not really going to convince me that there is one. I can only conclude that this works with people who already want to have faith but are afraid to for some reason. When assured by someone else that there is in fact a God, they are able to draw strength from that and embrace a lifestyle they already hoped to achieve . . . which is lovely, of course, but it doesn't help me much.

I'm noticing two main themes to this book so far. A: you should have a purpose, and B: that purpose should be God. I'll all for the first -- it's what I feel lacking in my own life (refer to the Herschel post). Warren will get no argument there from me. It's the second one that's giving me trouble.

I will say this -- the book is using the term "attachment" a lot, something that I read about in Buddhist and Zen teachings as well. They all warn against attachment, that it takes one farther away from the larger picture. Furthermore, they both describe a larger picture that exists inside of one's own mind. Warren cites several examples of men who were materially poor but rich in understanding, and I think Lao Tzu would agree with him.

Perhaps this is a clue that these ways of thinking are all coming from a common source. I sure would like to finish this book and see a unified spiritual theory, but perhaps that's wishful thinking.

Later:

Suffered a quick bout of homesickness tonight on the back deck. I knew I was due for a bit of it eventually, but it still took me by surprise. I think the weather brought it on, because instead of thinking of the home where I grew up or of campus, I found myself thinking of the summer I spent in the house on Eureka Street after graduation. I was remembering that first real summer night in June, lying on my bed with the box fan in the window, trying to get cool enough to sleep (and failing miserably). The humidity, the sound of the crickets, the occasional puff of wind in that huge strange tree that overlooks the place, the orange glow from the streetlamps . . . if Nate, Spiegel, or Eli are reading this, that was a year well spent, guys.

But I am also realizing how far from home I am. There is a small island of people here on board the Lady G that speak my language, but except for that I am stranded in a totally alien landscape amongst strangers I can barely communicate with. I am on my own in a way that I never have been before, and now as I'm settling into routine I finally have time to think about that. I've seen stars in the sky that I've never seen before (this blew my mind). And you know what? It's a good thing, being out here. I may miss home, friends and family, but this is what needed to happen.

Entry 27 4.2.11

Entry 27, April 2, 2011, 6:23pm (ship time)

Sea day today. I enjoy the last day of this cruise, because after three days of wandering around lollygagging between each island at night, the Lady G is finally steaming somewhere with some purpose again. We're headed West at about 17 or 18 knots right now, but the ocean is coming in long rolling swells from almost directly astern which give the ship a strange loping movement underfoot, with small rolls port to starboard that last a very long time -- always more than five seconds, sometimes almost ten.

I have a friend on the ship named Amelia. She's a South African girl who works in the spa department, and we've been sharing books back and forth. This is a common practice among the crew members who enjoy reading, as an unread book is a precious commodity on a ship. Anyway, South Africa is a surprisingly religious country (maybe not surprising to some, but it was surprising to me) and so her most recent loan to me is "The Purpose-Driven Life." For those of you not familiar, this book claims to ". . . help you understand why you are alive and reveal God's amazing plan for you, both here . . . and for eternity" and was written by Rick Warren, a pastor from California.

"But David," you might ask, "why would you read such a thing, as you are an agnostic? Surely you can't believe all that God tripe." I'll admit I raised my eyebrows a bit when she handed it to me, but here's what Amelia said: "I'm not trying to convince you. I'm not sure about it myself. What I am trying to do is challenge you." And by Jove, if there's any way to get me to read something, it's to frame the situation as an intellectual challenge.

And a challenge it will be. It would be quite easy to read this book as antagonistically as possible -- to follow every sentence with a sarcastic retort in my head, to get halfway through and dismiss the author as a worthless hack, and then to rationalize the entire situation as proof that I not cut out for a life of faith. But if I truly am open-minded -- a quality that I claim to value -- then I need to be able to read what he has written and consider it just as seriously as I consider the Tao or anything else I read or hear about life and its big questions. Warren didn't right the book for no reason just as Lao Tzu didn't write the Tao te Ching for no reason. This will be difficult, as my knee-jerk reaction to Christianity has always been an across-the-board rejection.

I don't know why this has been the case. Perhaps it was just an instinctive contrariness, an attempt to create self-identity by rejecting the social norm. Perhaps it is the vibe I get from Chrisitianity itself, because some Christians feel very deeply that everyone needs to think the same way as them (the whole "no one comes to the father except through me," bit). This speaks to me of an insecurity or a neediness in the church as a whole, because if the story really was universally compelling you wouldn't need to convert anybody -- they'd all join up immediately. Many of the world's older, more mature religions don't feel the need to convince, argue, exhort, threaten, or otherwise influence anyone to modify their thinking. In fact, I've heard that students of zen are extremely reluctant to talk about their own spiritual journeys, as they feel that every answer is so personalized that to tell another would be to derail the other's development (something I would do well to remember!).

But it is time to put that aside. I am going to assume that Warren deserves the same level of respect that I would afford Lao Tzu until something convinces me otherwise. The only way I can learn is if I let myself be teachable.

Which brings up the deeper, more surprising (to me) reason why I don't want to read this book. The cover says "Bestselling nonfiction hardback in history" and "30 million copies sold." On the back it says Warren is "One of the 100 most influential people in the world." Truthfully, I am afraid that it will change me. I am comfortable with who I am, and I am afraid this book will "tamper with" my intellectual and emotional machinery. I don't want to let anyone else "under the hood," so to speak.

But it is time to put that aside as well. If my own systems of thought are sound, then a challenging point of view will serve only to enrich them. If they are weak, then they deserve to be knocked down and replaced with something stronger. A twofold challenge, even opening this book -- humility and courage.

But enough of this. I've been spending far too much time arguing at the cover. Time to open this sucker up.

Warren divides the book into forty sections and recommends that you read one a day (hah, a forty-day spiritual journey. I see what you did there, Pastor Warren . . . slick, very slick). I do not have that much time -- Amelia signs off before the Atlantic crossing. I'll probably read between three and five a day, and document my reactions as part of this log. Stay tuned . . .

Entry 26 4.1.11

Entry 26, April 1st, 2011, 8:16pm (ship time)

My friend Ben, the trombonist and assistant musical director, was mentioning yesterday that he planned to go to "Little Bonaire," the imaginatively-named island off of Bonaire (main city is Kralendijk, if you're interested. We're still in the Dutch Antilles). I asked if I could tag along (having missed Bonaire last voyage due to training) and so found myself rubbing sleep out of my eyes at 8:30am (ship time, Bonaire is one hour ahead) this morning.

The plan was to walk a half an hour to the rental shop and rent sea kayaks and snorkel gear for the day. Little Bonaire is about half a mile from the mainland and is reputed to have the second best snorkeling in the world (behind Cozumel) and so I was excited. Unfortunately, due to wind, they weren't renting kayaks (although it was a perfect day for sailing) and so we snorkeled off the main island. It was amazing.

There were several wrecked piers nearby that served as our focus point for the day. The coral was growing thickly on them, meaning that the fish were hugely plentiful and varied. I can't really describe what it was like to someone who has never been snorkeling, but I'll try -- imagine that feeling you get when looking out the window of an airplane at the ground below. Now, instead of trees and fields, you have gently ridged sand and protrusions of rock and coral, and instead of tearing through the air at hundreds of miles an hour you are leisurely drifting along, more like the Goodyear blimp. The water is crystal clear down to thirty or forty feet, and the ripples of sunlight tear across the bottom whenever the sun slips from behind a cloud.

The fish were everywhere! You couldn't look at a single spot and see less that twenty fish. There were lots of parrotfish, biting at the rock with their beaks (you could hear it through the water as a sharp click-click). Schools of small silver fish darted around, numbering in the hundreds or thousands, and we didn't just see these schools, we swam through them! Solitary trumpetfish prowled about, snouts almost as long as their body, and darting through the squads of less maneuverable blue fish (each larger than my hand) seemingly out of spite. Christmas tree worms peeked out of crevices, disappearing in the blink of an eye if you snapped your fingers in front of them. I saw a flounder, disturbed from its resting place, scoot along the floor for a bit before setting down again on the sand, two protruding eyes the only sign of its location among the sediment. I'm pretty sure these are the fish that start life with their eyes on either side of their head, and then switch halfway through (one of the eyes gradually moves across their body) which sheds new light on Ariel's friend in "The Little Mermaid" (he's going to be a lot less attractive when his left eye starts migrating across his face).

It was a riot of colors, shapes, and sounds. I think SCUBA certification may be in my future, as this was the closest thing to being able to fly that I've ever experienced. It was only limited by my ability to hold my breath once I was totally submerged. A good late-morning/early afternoon.

And I only got a little bit sunburned! Probably due to the three coats of sunscreen I administered over the course of the day. Forget sunburn, my brother would have literally burst into flame today.

Next cruise, I am thinking of renting a small sailboat. I saw plenty of sunfish out today, along with the bigger ships (including a few two masted schooners). It would be really lovely to rent an FJ, pack a lunch, and sail over to Little Bonaire. The beach looked soft enough to run a small boat right up onto it from the surf, although I've never done this before so perhaps this is actually a really bad idea.

The rest of today's post is a fairly introspective. Indulge me, if you so desire, or skip it if you'd rather read about tropical locales and shipboard life.

I continued my reading today. I spent a few hours on the back deck reading about William Herschel, the brilliant German expatriate musician-turned-astronomer who discovered Uranus with a reflecting telescope of his own design and construction. After closing my book, I ventured out onto the fantail and was not a little disappointed to see that the bright fluroescent lights here block out all but the brightest stars. This brought me back to my self somewhat -- I had been as absorbed in the book in much the same way that Herschel became absorbed in his telescopes.

I must admit I feel jealous of Herschel, riding through the English moors, staring up at the glittering sky, much as I feel jealous of Joeseph Banks (the first of the great explorers to be described in this book). With Banks, it was quite a simple thing, the longing to explore strange new places (my current situation, where instead of strange new worlds I am discovering strange new restaurants, is far from disagreeable . . . but . . . but . . . !). My jealousy of Herschel, though, comes from a different direction. I am jealous of the single-minded passion that he had for his work.

William Herschel did many things in his life. He was a virtuoso violinist, organist, and composer. He was in the army. He was a self-taught student of mathematics. However, when he discovered astronomy in his thirties, it grabbed his attention so thoroughly that he was able to push himself to levels of devotion that the mere dabbler would find too demanding to accept. This is what drove him, desperately homesick, to live in England for six years by himself, traveling alone and teaching music to feed himself. It was this devotion that led him to make his own telescope mirrors when the existing technology was insufficient (a highly dangerous process involving molds made of horse dung, rare copper alloys and white hot molten metal). It was this passion that kept him out every night for six to seven hours at a time, shouting out observations to his sister Caroline (who really receives far too little credit). It was because of his devotion (and his sister's help) that he was able to acheive something.

I feel that my own passions are spread too widely to succeed in any one area. I have many areas of study (music, writing, etc.), but in none of these fields would I consider myself an expert, much less a master! Indeed I am barely functional in most of them. What I am missing in all of these pursuits is what Herschel has -- the burning need for absolute mastery of an art.

This is a public log, I know, but I am not asking for support or reassurance that "No, you're really quite good at ____." No one else can give me what I'm looking for. I'm searching for the key, the catalyst that will bring everything together.

I know the potential is there. Looking at my own interests, I can see some underlying patterns -- clues, even, to what might be my eventual purpose. I am a constructor of systems, first and foremost. As a kid, I constructed machines, real and hypothetical. I invented societies and planned moon bases. Now I write music, and stories. Whatever work it is that finally puts everything together for me, it will probably involve ordered creation, or system-building, of some sort.

The other clue I have comes from music. I love the blues -- not just as an idiom, but as a concept. A music that exists to heal . . . now there's something worth being good at. I know that whatever my work in life is, it will not be some sterile construct existing in isolation, beautiful only in its harsh artificiality. It has to be something that means something to someone.

As a side note, I am sitting next to a galley vent, and they've been cooking sticky cinammon pastries for the past hour. It's driving me crazy.

Here's the point: I feel like I am waiting for something. I feel like I am waiting for something to come and unite all of these disparate shards of glass in my head into a solid, sharp crystal -- a project, or discovery, or a goal that I find compelling enough to pour my entire self into. I don't feel that I am wasting my time -- surely all of these things I am learning will be useful in some way (Herschel talks about "sightreading the sky," and about how his extensive training in playing Bach and Handel organ works prepared his mind for playing the many parts of the night sky at once. Surely he could not have discovered Uranus without first being trained as a musician. I'm serious.). Maybe it is something I am already doing, but I am not in the right place as a person to do it to my maximum potential yet. Maybe it is something no one has ever done before, that only someone with some strange combination of skills that I just happen to possess could stumble across and make great. Maybe it is something I've never heard of, but by learning what I am learning now I am preparing my mind to think in the ways necessary for such an endeavor.

Musically, I feel unfocused. I have not found my voice -- to put it differently, I don't know what I want to sound like. This leaves me in an awkward place. I work hard to sound good, but I am always working hard at someone else's sound. There is no way that a desire for professional competence can inspire the sort of fire I need for absolute mastery by itself -- it has to serve a higher purpose.

Maybe this is just a cop-out, a way to rationalize not dealing with my own musical inadequacies, a trap delaying me on the road to artistic virtuosity. A manifestation of some sort of fear -- perhaps the fear of hard work. I'll have think about it more.

In the meantime all I can do is to continue working at improving everything I do, in the faith that someday that moment will come when my purpose is illuminated and everything flashes together into focus. I need to be ready for my Herschel moment. Perhaps it will never come (a depressing possibility), but perhaps it will.

Good lord, did I just use the word "faith?" What is this world coming to?

Entry 25, 3.31.11

I managed to catch the Curacao pontoon bridge in action today. The whole bridge, mounted on pontoons, swings to one side to allow for ship traffic (the vessel I saw pass through was an elegant two-masted schooner). Instead of using cables and winches, as I orginally assumed, the farthest pontoon out on the bridge has a pair of old Catepillar diesel engines mounted to it, each running what is essentially a large outboard propeller. The whole setup is controlled from a little shed on the end of the bridge.

Unfortunately I got so observe this entire process while on the wrong side of the bridge from the ship (!). It was an anxious few minutes, but I left myself enough contigency time that I made it back just fine.

Curacao must have made a very defensible port back in the day. The bay inside Willemstaad stretches back at least a kilometer, and about the same distance in either direction inland. The channel, though, is less than 200 yards wide, and the Dutch had built large forts on either side of it with huge cannon. Any ship inside was totally safe from any naval threats . . . the only possibility would have been landing troops and storming the forts (simultaneously and from opposite directions) by night. This may have been possible, but there are no other landing points as good as the harbor at Willemstaad anywhere nearby, and you would have to march over land to get there.

The only other option I can see is carrying ship's cannon over a mile inland to the tops of two large hills that overlook the bay and shelling whatever vessels remain inside from there. However, the garrison could easily storm this position, and unless you have enough troops to defend it you'd lose the cannon. It is a possibility . . . you'd have the advantage of high ground. The most vulnerable period would be when the cannons are being moved from the landing point to the hills.

Clearly the only conclusion that I can draw from this discussion is that I read too many works historical fiction set during the Napoleanic wars.

Entry 24 3.30.11

Entry 24, March 30th, 2011, 8:21 (ship time)

Today I finished what I think is my last training, and boy what a finish it was. The crowd management training is about three hours long, and my impressive hangover probably didn't help. I actually did the thing Spiegel did Sophomore year, where he started getting drunk again the day after a party. Waaaaayyyyy too much whiskey last night, Rob (the lead trumpet player here on the G) kept buying me cups of Jameson (at $2 a cup, I am a spectacularly cheap drunk). Anyway.

We did get to watch some impressive footage of the Oceanos, a Greek cruise liner that sank off South Africa. This was used as an example of what NOT to do in a disaster, as the crew and officers abandoned the sinking ship in the middle of a storm at three in the morning without telling any of the passengers that the ship was going down. The passengers, of course, figured it out for themselves, particularly when a few crew members asked for women and children to participate in a lifeboat "drill" . . . in the middle of a storm at 3am with no electrical power. By the time four lifeboats were gone, though, there wasn't an officer left on the ship. The cruise director and entertainers ended up having to organize the rescue, leading to one memorable scene where a South African Coast Guard official asked over the radio for a man's rank and he responded, "Uh . . . guitarist?"

I've done some research into the Oceanos disaster myself, as I heard about it maybe a year ago while looking at youtube videos of sinking ships (doesn't everyone do this? right after looking up failed rocket launches and right before looking up dams collapsing? There's an amazing series of photos out there of a huge earthen dam in the United States (Idaho?) being undercut and then totally collapsing in a massive surge of water. But I digress). It is unclear exactly how the flooding started, but it is known that there was a failure of the cooling water intake for the diesel engines and some sort of small explosion. The water immediately flooded the engine and generator rooms, cutting off all electrical power and propulsion from the ship. At this point the watertight bulkheads should have kept the ship afloat (they can be closed manually from several locations even without electrical power here on the Lady G), but in the generator room there was a hatch cover that had been missing for some time. The water flooded through this opening into the sewage tanks on board, quickly filling them and continuing upwards through the Oceanos's sewage system. Even then the ship should still not have sank, as there is a sewage system cut off valve that can be used to isolate the tanks in this sort of situation, but on the Oceanos it had recently been removed while in port to repair one of her sister ships and never replaced. The ship began to flood via the sewage system, a pretty disgusting prospect no matter how you look at it.

What I had not seen before was much of the video footage that they played for us during the training. Several of the guests (including the guitarist) had video cameras and got some amazing footage of the inside of the ship flooding compartment by compartment. At one point a crewmember can be heard yelling at the camera "Stop! No! No cameras! No cameras!" but the man escapes without getting his gear confiscated. There is also some crazy footage of the rescue; by morning, the ship was listing between 45 and 60 degrees to starboard and the forecastle was totally submerged, making the launching of any remaining lifeboats totally impossible. The 200 remaining guests had to either be airlifted off by helicopter or jump into the (shark-infested) ocean. One man slipped off of the helicopter cable and fell a hundred feet into the ocean, but luckily survived. In fact, there were no fatalities at all, quite lucky considering the cowardice of the officers and crew.

Anyway, enough about training. Summary of today's lesson: don't abandon the passengers to certain death.

I'm watching the lights of Aruba disappear astern right now. Last time we were in Aruba I missed it due to training, and today I only had about an hour ashore. I got out and walked the shoreside strip, and let me tell you -- buying a rolex in Cartagena and buying a rolex in Aruba are two very different experiences. Casinos, expensive botiques, corny restaurants, submarine tours (seriously) . . . the part of Aruba I saw caters to the "priviledged enjoying their priviledges." One of the hotels had a stream flowing through it into the ocean.

Next time I look forward to actually getting some beach time. The water here (even next to the pier, where in Columbia it would be filthy) is crystal clear. I could see fish reflected in the shine of the streetlamps. The weather was gorgeous as well, reminiscent of one of those perfect summer nights in California that I remember from being a kid.

The view as we're leaving, though, is pretty spectacular. The ship docks right downtown, among the hotels and casinos. The pier is protected by a long, narrow spit of sand with one lonely tree on it that serves as a natural breakwater. They must dredge the channel, because the Lady G is sliding right by the strip less than two hundred yards from shore.

Earlier I saw a sailing class in sunfish straggle by between the ship and the spit, close hauled, with someone who was obviously the instructor looping back and forth in a powerboat giving instructions like a protective mother duck. One pair of students had obviously picked it up more quickly than the others and was way out in front, while most of the boats were clustered together, having a merry time of it trying to steal each other's wind (you can do this by sailing close to a boat on their windward side, effectively blocking their sails with your own). There was one poor pair of sailors, though, that was really struggling -- they would do okay for a bit, and then fall either too far into or away from the wind, over-correct, and either end up in irons or slam-jibing so hard they capsized the little boat. Luckily they never got the thing all the way upside down, as I hear that can be a lot harder to right (you can't just climb up on the centerboard). I don't know if they ever made it, or had to get towed back, but I bet they are the best in their class at righting a capsized sunfish.

Tonight is a crew formal on the back deck, a "Black and White" party. Gotta go work out and study some Spanish first, though, so I'm out for now.

Entry 23 3.29.11

Entry 23, March 29th, 2011, 10:52am (ship time)

I'm sitting on the back deck, looking out over Santa Marta and waiting for lunch to be served in the staff mess. We're in Santa Marta today, after spending yesterday in Cartagena. Strangely enough, there's also a tugboat (the Don Nicola) here which was in the port of Cartagena yesterday. I'm sure that it is the same one, as it has "Cartagena" painted on it . . . perhaps one of the tugs here broke down.

This is a heavily industrial port, we're actually moored at a coal loading dock carved into the side of a cliff (I may have mentioned this before, I'm not sure). The company headquarters is on the top of the bluff -- a low, two story building, white with blue trim. The building itself trickles down the side of the mountain, connected with walkways and exterior stairs, finally getting to the pier with a long stairwell threading its way through the whispy trees that cling to the slope beside it. Most of the free space near the water is taken up by several large mountains of coal and the bulldozers that move them around. The concrete pier juts out from the rock, but not very far -- I assume that the water deepens quickly here, because the pier is only perhaps twenty or thirty yards wide and we are pulled right up next to it. There is also a curious loading gantry about four stories tall, mounted with the end nearer to us on wheels while the other is anchored on a pivot among the mountains of coal. This way it can fill the entire length of a vessel evenly, something that I can imagine is important for an ocean-going vessel.

The story I was referring to yesterday was that of Joseph Banks, the intelligent, confident, and rich young Englishman who signed on to Cook's expedition around the world as a botanist at age 25 instead of taking the customary young rich socialite's trip around Europe. Most interesting so far is the account of Banks in Tahiti, an island in the South Pacific that when first discovered was known as "Paradise." The Endeavor, Cook's ship, stopped there for several months to observe the transit of Venus across the sun and measure it, a vital step in determining how far the Earth was from the sun. Banks, although a botanist by trade, became the principal ambassador, translator, and student of Tahitian culture aboard ship, and his writings represent one of the early recorded anthropological studies. He participated in Tahitian culture in a way no one else on the crew did -- sleeping in their villages, participating in religious rituals, and living among them for days at a time. When the instruments for measuring the transit of Venus were stolen the night before the measurement was to take place, he was the one who followed the thief seven miles inland and negotiated for their return via Tahitian custom. All of this was recorded in his daily journal, which was never published during his lifetime but has since been revised and released in a few different forms (the official report of the expedition, commissioned by the British government, was published in three volumes by an editor who clearly had no experience in any matters relevant to the expedition and spends most of the time moralizing against a Tahitian people whom he has never met).

Banks' story continues to interest after his return to Britain. It was rumored that he was to be engaged on his return to a Harriet Blosset (who he had seen much of before his departure three years earlier), but this never materialized. In fact, he didn't contact her at all for the first week after he got back; instead, she had to call on him to finally get a straight answer. To be fair, he was still dealing with the death of half the ship's company from Typhus in Indonesia, but it seems safe to say that Banks struggled with reintegration into British culture.

There's more to the story, of course -- scandal, gout, a king, and Banks becomes president of the Royal Society eventually -- but if you really want to know, go read the book. I, however, am finding myself envious of Mr. Banks. Yes, I am on a ship, and yes, I am going places I have never been before, but this is no journey of exploration. The Endeavor was headed to places that no Englishman had ever been to perform experiments no human had ever completed . . . whereas here we are ferrying the Columbian middle class around for a week getting them drunk.

I am comforted by the thought of another book I was reading before I left, "Two Years Before the Mast," by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. His voyage was a purely commercial one as well -- a young Boston law student, having trouble with his eyesight, signed about a vessel bound around Cape Horn for California with a cargo of various goods. This was no voyage of exploration, either, but he turned it into one -- an exploration of his own character, as well as the world of the average sailor. Perhaps I can do something similar here as well. The thought keeps me optimistic.