On the Spirituality of streams and fish.

So today i put my line in the water for Erie steelhead for the first time in a year. I only caught one fish, decent sized, but not amazing and this was still one of the best days of my life. I had forgotten, or at least allowed to fade in my mind, the joy of a trout that one cannot fit ones hand around. At the end of any succesful battle of man versus fish comes the inevitable decision of consumption versus conservation. I prefer to think of it as consumption versus fairness. The fish gives me only its best effort no matter how cruelly I may have deceived it. There is nothing more beautiful to me than holding an exhausted fish, just slightly submerged in the recovery position, nose pointed upstream to run water over its gills and provide it with oxygen, thrust it upstream in the water two or three times, then release it and feel its muscles twitch driving it out into the stream again, essentially no different than when I found it. I love fish better than most people. My best for their best, simplicity, honor, honesty. No lies, no bullshit. Man, fish, stream.

Zen at one and a half barge lengths

            I had recently become enamored with the idea of “peace around the next bend.” Which implies that perhaps life, like a river, meanders, and that eventually one of these serpentine portions will gracefully unroll itself before me with a peaceful utopia waiting, laid beautifully at my feet on the other side. I believe I became enamored with this because I am tired. Tired of endlessly living out of duffle bags and sleeping on boats in hammocks and tiny bunks. Tired of feeling that I have no fixed place in this world that is mine. Tired of Mariah, and so many others that I love so dearly feeling so far away all too often. I became enamored with this idea because I am scared all the time, mostly of rejection, breach of trust, and an apparently almost total lack of human gratitude and decency. I am afraid of every woman in my life because if thirty seven years of selfless sacrifice and hard work does not merit absolute and unyielding loyalty what can I give to obtain it? My trust of others is a small green shoot shattered in seeming perpetuity only to rise up again still poignantly aware of how badly each past betrayal hurt. I’m tired of being tired, tired of being scared, and most of all tired of being angry. Despite my hatred of all these feelings they are part of the boat that is my life. No matter my relation to each new bend I’m still on this boat. This boat is my ride. This boat is my life.

            I have finally realized that peace will not come around the next bend. Peace must come from within. Though the fatigue, fear, and anger may never fade completely, peace exists in a mind empty enough to evaluate every interaction, moment, new face, and trial as it comes. The bends obfuscate no magical solution. I found an analogy on a boat. Something magical happens about one and a half barge lengths out on a five barge length tow. All of the noise pollution of two 1500 horse marine diesels fades into an oblivion so beautiful it elevates the state of the soul. All of the roiling, throbbing, discontent of this diesel fueled beast fades off , slides right out of the mind, out of existence, and standing there in the sun with a breeze on your face life becomes shockingly simple, quiet, and serene. You know just what to do and set about it as you and 22,500 tons of coal and steel slip effortlessly through the water as if only your sense of purpose and contentment propel it. This feeling is peace, zen one and a half barge lengths out. I believe the analogy fits. All that remains is to find this place, removed just enough from the negative energy of my boat for peace to prosper.

This was all I got out of a five week hitch on the rivers. oh well, better than nothing.

Seated upon a coil of line

On the head of a towboat

Shrouded in the fog

That rose, interminable from the

Brown serpentine line of

That ancient river was a man.

Thousands of miles from what he loved

What mattered.

What granted meaning.

Eleven months gone now

In a blur of displacement

And commuting, punctuated

Only by notable highlights

And the stubborn ghosts

Of the past, their corporal

Form sticking stubbornly

To the secret inner workings of his mind.

The sanctuary violated.

A consciousness marred, yet subtly

Improved by the vagaries of

The world, and the callous, wanton

Hate the people that walked through it so frequently

And tragically, displayed.

So few are good to one another.

So he will float perpetually

In escape amongst the brown water,

Industrial ratchets, steel cable,

Kevlar lines, cheater pipes, and sweat.

He will cleave these tows in half

And force them through locks one

Cut at a time until the process,

The barges, each lock, and every inch

Of river becomes part of his soul.

And someday, perhaps, he will find peace.

Just around that next bend.

Masculinity musings

So, I am still attempting to finish the epilogue of my thesis while the duties associated with tow boating do their damnedest to pound me into the dirt. Despite this, something approaching a meaningful final thought has shaken free from the cobwebs in my head.
So much of hemingway's life is a case study in threatened masculinity. This is simply a paradigm of what it is to be a man that has failed to develop in any meaningful way since the mid 19th century. In large part in hinges upon our ability as men to provide for a family, dominate a workplace environment, and reign supreme over all threatening groups and social changes. This paradigm is, hopefully obviously, a total joke in our modern society, yet persists in the face of the clear conclusion that it does we men a great disservice.
There are very few if any jobs readily available, nothing that will make we modern men feel like masters of anything. The world is diverse and the heterogeneity rapidly increasing. Try as you might dominating much of anything is a feat approaching the Herculean. Opportunity to feel confident and assertive in any aspect of life is correspondingly waning.
Their is quite simply little if any meaning to be derived from the code and it is in sore need of rejection and reformulation.
Of course my example is going to innvolve boats. My former field of employment was tall ships sailing. In my experience I know of no other field in which so many men, insecure and culturally adrift made more obvious show of demeaning others to alleviate their own feelings of insecurity. This I believe is demonstrated in three basic ways.
1. Clubbing those less experienced and knowledgeable over the head with their experience in a self aggrandizing and callous manner. Little is more problematic to developing self confidence and a healthy, balanced, sense of masculine self worth than to be cut down by someone who obviously should, in light of their background, know and be able to do, much more than you.
2. Attempting to make other men feel inferior due to women outperforming them. Whether or not they should indeed do so based on background and and experience. This also plays directly into  outdated masculine paradigms predication on the idea the women are somehow innately inferior to men and hence you as a man are somehow "failing" at being a man by ever allowing a woman to be better than you at something. I met my girlfriend on my last boat. In one instance I was mocked when  she an able seamen, was assigned to be my assistant cook while I served as an ordinary seamen. The officer who informed me of this laughed and informed me this was funny because she both outranked me and "could probably take you (me) in a fight." I wonder if that was part of his selection process for picking a significant other, must be able beat her in a fist fight. I have to say that had never crossed my mind. Way to be progressive.
3. Isolating the younger and more fit/ attractive to compensatefor the negative effects of aging, ie mocking the reincarnation of what they used to be before they came off deck and got fat, old, and out of touch. Sorry, can't help it you can't diet and do some sit-ups.
These are each male on male crimes of the first order. The biggest hindrance to a positive change in the standards of conduct for being a balanced, confident, healthy male in this world? Tragically other men.

Five week hitch

Normally I work two weeks at a time on a Towboat. Then I go home. Due to a confluence of factors I opted to stay out for a five week hitch this time. I am three weeks in and have some observations and thoughts.
This will be the longest I have stayed out on a vessel since last sailing season when one stretch lasted approximately six weeks. From what I can tell at the three week point this will not even come close to being as destructive as those six weeks were for me. Nothing matches the savagery of brute labor combined with verbal and psychological flagellation. Also, five consecutive weeks may be just what was needed to elevate my decking game. Repetition sustained over long periods of time has always been my recipe for excellence.
Despite all the baggage, bullshit, anger, and regret that still crops up from time to time I miss the hell out of wooden boats right now. That may, or may not be almost entirely linked to the deck crew I worked with. I miss all of you. I still contend that the officers should kiss my ass.
I, as well as captains and pilots here, appreciate the level of seamanship I bring to the world of Towboats. So despite the fact I feel like I got short sticked in what I was actually taught, thanks I guess.
Time for a nap, we've been double locking a goodly bit here on the Champion Coal so sleep is at a premium.
Two weeks to go.

Story tidbit

So this is likely going to become part of a larger story, or be converted into a poem.

Sitting on the head of the boat, shrouded in fog that rose interminable from the brown, meandering, serpent Monongahela, I was thousands of miles from what mattered to me with only my memories for company. The last eleven months have been a blur punctuated by notable highlights and the ghosts of the past, their corporal form refusing to fade permanently into the background of a consciousness marred, yet improved by the vagaries of the world and its calous disregard for the men and women that people it.
It is August 2013 and I have three weeks left on the river.

Thanks Hank

Sometimes I really have to thank Bukowski for existing.

Bluebird

By Charles Bukowski

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the ****s and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?