Becalmed
I re-read two books within a couple of months, Moby Dick, and Two Years Before the Mast. If you haven’t read either, I highly recommend both. If you think you have read them, they are amazing and worth another read.
Both books had a word that they shared. The word is Becalmed. When I mention this word to most people, they say,
Oh, that sounds nice.
It isn’t nice at all.
When a sailing ship is becalmed, it is because there is no wind, and there is no current. It is stalled.
The ship is motionless on a windless glassy sea.
At first, sailors take advantage of this time. They work on the ship, they caulk the planks, they repair the sails. Then they turn to art. Scrimshaw and other carvings, other projects. Sarah and I saw in a whaling museum a whole room filled with swifts, a yarn device, made of whalebone the sailors had made for their wives. Hundreds of them.
After sometimes weeks of repairs and crafts, the sailors start going bonkers.
Desperatel they would take out any boat they had and try vainly to tow the ship to find wind or current.
They felt despair. Or they felt numb.
There is a line from Treasure Island.
"Bring me a noggin of rum, bring me two! I'm becalmed on a sea of troubles and I need some wind in me sails."
I’ve gone through a few years feeling becalmed.
The death of the yarn store was depressing, and I was depressed for a couple of months. I think rightfully.
I had never really experienced procrastination before, I had always put it off. Then it forced itself on me. It still lingers. Therapy helped.
There have been some important deaths that have taken away the wind, Sarah’s cancer stopped the current for a while.
And there was an enormous sense of waiting. I didn’t notice at the time, but Enzo’s birth, then Eve, then Zephyr, did away with that feeling of waiting.
The kidney infection in 2012 cleared up some cobwebs, but left some subtle brain function glitches that exaggerated being becalmed.
COVID eased the pressure of procrastination, but replaced it with lessened oomph. Which is part of what feeling becalmed is. If it wasn’t for my yarn bombing friends, I would have difficulty finding any of my creativity.
There is the metaphor that life is like a river. In this process of writing these stories, my paddles have brought up silt and muddied my river. Now there are rocks in the water.
The famous plastic island is actually located becalmed in the actual doldrums, out in the sea. Sometimes, not too often, I have felt like I am a floating bit of stuff in the plastic island.
The becalmed feeling has improved, but lingers.
"Becalmed upon the sea of Thought
Still unattained the land it sought
My mind, with loosely-hanging sails /
Lies waiting the auspicious gales.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow