To The Hill

Ah, the passage of time.  Tonight is the night - a quick trip to Ottawa to connect with old friends and classmates down through the years.  A chance to reflect on the past, present and future.  The status of dreams, and what remains to be achieved.  To consider your own path amidst so many other options, as to how life might (and yet still could) go.

The end of the sailing season recently as well.  Wondrous sunset Saturday night on McNab, fulfilling the destiny of the cannon for some bottles of summer past, and in time/place to catch a truly wondrous shooting star.  Walking old trails and old campsites and only the 2nd pilgrimage to the old lighthouse.  Then last night, a slow quiet one alone in the harbour, a soft and warm breeze floating you about.  How grand to listen to Hot Fuss for the first time in awhile just outside the NS Power HQ that went up on your watch.  How crazy that you can quickly search the emails and identify Tuesday, November 1, 2005 as the day you woke up hungover and bought All These Things That I Have Done for the first time.  4,348 days, to be precise.  Man. 

The comments in the prior post about finding a way to continue are not wrong, but the sense, increasingly, is that the true escape should come not after the big 4-0, but before.  It needs to happen soon.  It is later than you think.  Anon, good nurse.  Et cetera, etc, &c...  Enjoy the next few nights.  Have some good conversations and write down the revelations.  The countdown continues.  147 baby.
   

It should be said...

Talked with HW this aft.  Straight-forward and to the point, no real concerns or opposition to the idea, as uncomfortable as the initial launching into such discussions can be.  Just what you would hope for, in terms of reaction and result.  Occasions which suggest - is there more you could try to do to stay, even for a little while?  Conversations with Connors and Hayes reinforcing the point.  Some of these people, these partners of yours, are quite stellar.  I have so many broader hopes and dreams, fears and concerns, impulses and objections.  How to thread the needle, run the table, do the right thing, make the right call.

The beautiful thing about the timing of the Bark is the distance, the open space, to consider decisions.  That's why the prior post may be wrong about whether to approach Levena formally too soon.  Take the drive, check out the place, see some whales and stop off at Mush-a-mush with some junk for a last sunset.  Spruce up the condo and put it on the market for a limited time and see what happens, but still have a plan to see out 2018.  The plan 40 is alive and well.  The question is when it starts, officially.  MFA could wait until 2019.  Ahab's could start as a side project.  Options.  Choices.

Remember the closing down of summer.  The red skies.  The endless aching wondering.  What next?

A One-Time Special Assessment

Back from holiday, to slow-goings at the office and a fairly outrageous communication this morning addressed to "the unit owners of HCCC 89."  A general meeting in the near future to be called to raise even more funds.  Which - combined with the Isles de Madeleine trip - has me thinking, even prompting a call to the real estate agent to get the possibility of a condo sale pre-departure up and moving.  It would be interesting to see what reaction a listing from mid-October to mid-December might trigger.  Meeting arranged for Monday, but no reason not to spend the weekend preparing the place on that very assumption.

In that spirit, quite funny to join another (pointless) call this afternoon to discuss the (static) state of affairs on the Blank file, and for Hayes to make the comment about the likelihood of a large home mortgage preventing you from going anywhere.  Ha.  Truly worth laughing out loud about, in the entire life context.  Exactly the reason to move forward.

Off now to teach the class.  Funny how things get overheard, the clerk whose daughter did not make the waiting list wondering aloud about whether you will be around for Energy Law next year, along with the lunch with the newest associate (another with last name, appropriately, meaning hope).  Served as perfect prompts to check in with the ENR leader (and sailor) about next Spring plans.  Support confirmed.  Now just the MP/CEO to go.  Email late tomorrow?  Perhaps.

It is all coming together.

And Me, I Sing For Tomorrow

Wow, Magdies, you have been a treat.  The double ferry from NS makes you a bit difficult to reach, so all the more inspiring as a secret escape.  Seems like much longer than the allotted days since early departure from Hali on Saturday morning - an always promising sign.  Perfectly content with how it all unfolded, from the crib highs and lows, packed restaurants and seal, kitschy boutiques, assorted accommodation, stolen canoe, dodgy block wood for the campfire, morning coffees, local home brews, and memory of the sea photos.

Most of all the colours - of the sky and cliffs and dunes - and the freshness of the air - relaxed and tranquil - and the people.  Such a contented atmosphere, a real treat to see and interact with a few up close.  Serge and his choice among the best of his three CDs, Julien the carpenter/photographer (Montez!), Mr. Loi and his Apple orchard and French compliments, Poet's alley and Porta del Sol and work started not to win a living, but...

In such an environment, the cow ledge option at another end of the world destination does not seem so crazy.  Starts, instead, to resemble an ideal.  A path forward, dreamt and articulated, emerges.  Slowly.  It looks something like this... 

OCTOBER - first visit/meeting with (hopefully) morning whale tour.  Access to financials and airing of potential plan with owners, to test feasibility of idea for both resto and airbnb.  Tell MS/HW about Bark.  Gym/7/stairs.

 

NOV-JAN - prep and file MFA app, meet with Stace about Prince St, and Tsu about potential acquisition.  Moby Dick marathon in New Bedford.  Incorporate.  Banking.

FEBRUARY - tax / RRSP decisions. 

MAY - Offer?  Decision on MFA?  SC in water.  Condo to market?

JUNE - close?  39th birthday present.

JULY-SEPT - Notice.  First 2 weeks at King's.  LEARN from L and S.  Ideas and preparations for relaunch in 2019. Agent to oversee Airbnb and decide about close date for season.

OCTOBER - Nepal.

How wonderful.  Depends on nerve, enough hours to stay respectable, and luck that no one else has the same thought in the next while.  It starts something like this, in 2.5 days...

"Hey Lav."  Heh.  Not for the first time, I wonder.  Thanks for (reinforcing) the idea, you lovely Iles.  Just imagine re-reading this, if you could pull it off for realz.  Courage.

Annually Adjusted Replies

Friday.  Pre-Magdalen.  So much cleaning to do at home.  But first a steak, and some wine, maybe a few bottles of wine.  And a reading of the bootleg copy of On the Road just printed.  Another lonely one.  As you cement in your mind the need to break free.  More so after listening to concerns about due diligence research on the splitting of cables, on the reading of a 64 page screed of reiterations from the perennial enemy in these regulatory matters.  To what end?  Soon, the end, I think.  Tick tock.

Need to dwell upon some themes, get a new notebook, begin outlines, complete a portion of the portfolio.  Time will move fast.  Today I realized it has been three years, not two, since JBM's car accident.  How quickly, etc.  A 50 year old MP from cancer recently.  Others who, though tangential, illustrate the dangers, the running out of room, the narrowing of gaps, the closing of windows.  The peak time, not for work, but for the life's work.  If you know what I am saying.

Let us go now.  More to report, to follow up.  But here, on this closing down of summer night, this sunset to come on September's 15th day, make the resolution.  The end of July, 2018.  Less than a year.  One more annual adjustment.  Then, to China and Nepal.  And then?  And then, without support and without fallbacks, without plans and without commitments.  Right where you need to be to succeed.  Everything leading to this - this thing that must be done.  All of it, having brought you there/here by this long and straight and true and inevitable sequence of events.

Right right right.  Write write write.

"The Sequence of Events"

The title a phrase that seemed to lodge itself in my head mid-way through the Hip documentary tonight.  Reflecting on last summer and the two concerts.  Reflecting on the inspiration of the Kerouac scroll and the Open Road's 60th from last month.  Reflecting on 1280 and lives past as you host an old unrecognizable roomate law student at the firm, and others in class.  Reflecting on career and destinations with Matt over Chinese food at the Wall, dreaming of the first return since 2009 and the first months of the thirties.  The sequence of events.  That has led to this point.  The point of no returning.  The point of reckoning.  The point of divergence.  The point where the levee breaks, the leap is taken.

"We want to be it."

The poet returning, at the right time.  Enough time, to sort matters, to make it happen.  The first step with the Bark.  Then the acceptance at King's to force things.  The sale of the condo.  The purchase of the writing shack.  The start of a commitment to art.  To creating, something (in this time of destruction):

"That night, in a letter, she wrote: 'After the bare requisites to living and reproducing, man eats most to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he has really existed.  He leaves his proof on wood, on stone or on the lives of other people.  This deep desire exists in everyone, from the boy who writes dirty words in a public toilet to the Buddha who etches his image in the race mind.  Life is so unreal.  I think that we seriously doubt that we exist and go about trying to prove that we do."

Those Steinbeck lines.  The Chaplin perfection.  The near end of the sailing season.  The Magdalens and Ottawa to come.  The mentor and teaching and board chairmanship all wrapping up as year end approaches.  All telescoping into and toward that one perfect Hemingway paragraph, as you try to get it right.

All these events.  The sequencing of them.  Brewing.  Culminating.  The biggest of decisions, the choice of and for full freedom, no regrests, made possible because of time and necessity.  Without a mind to the long term, and yet with the far-away eyes on the longest term.  Everything guiding you along to that moment, perhaps.  The end is in the beginning, and all that.  Toward a search for words that sing made possible only by the cutting loose of ties.  It can and will and must be done.

The wheels, Babu.  The wheels are in motion.  Don't get distracted from the goal.  When you are so near the end.

Zhang Family Homeland

How did that afternoon of nothing but dreams of China pass so quickly?  More and more convinced of the necessity of the China/Tibet/Nepal plan for this time next year, as you initiate the Plan Pre-40.  The Hallelujah mountains in Zhang look an intriguing sight to combine with the long sought after return to Yangshuo.  With a year's notice, can you find someone, not yet met, to take that journey down the Li River with you?  Wouldn't it be something if you could?

As the summer months conclude pass, the insatiable need for something new is as strong as ever, and growing by each lazy day.  Signs abound.  How about just now, the firm reception with the guy introducing himself as a first year who was an old roommate at 1280.  Memories, haha.  Hope Yang responds to the email from today.  Let's put this plot in motion for real.  Get those wheels spinning, Babu.   This time next year check back on this message on this date, remember the sun out the old office window, the trip to see the Hip documentary and reception afterward, and all that followed. 

And then keep moving ever forward.

Of Sharks and Oral Histories

And so the summer has ended with the start of another school year, the nights a little cooler and the thoughts drifting to dwell on the hurricane and harvest season, and another winter ahead.  Last weekend finished up with a farewell to the Europa, from the Ovens as planned, and this past Saturday provided some preparation for Drake's swell on Mellow Yellow.  Some surprising success in the hunt for sharks, too, although the search continues for the tooth.  A day that will stay with me for a long time to come, says the mill manager, who ultimately retrieved his laptop from the rap-playing cigar boat where it had surprisingly found its way from DYC in a roundabout rescue.

Work remains slow.  The loss of the mentee today another sign of the dwindling responsibilities presaging the firm departure and the charting of new courses, new dawns.  The suspicion remains that the complete break is required, if only to force a change to the stale routine.  In order to get a chance at a more complete and "well rounded" life, to quote the interviewer in the random Irvington oral history discovered this afternoon.  The motivation is lacking to fully begin the new hobby.  Such a difficult thing to do, to change.  But done it must be / be done it must.

The days have all the feeling of a farewell tour pre-bark.  The Shear visit past, the trip to the Magdalens and Ottawa fest upcoming.  What else to be explored before the sign off in February?  The fact that the inspiration is hard to find is perhaps the best proof of the shake-up required. 

To be discussed...     

Ketch

Visit of JMS and family and dog coincides with visions of a Southern Cross quest to see the Bark Europa in Lunenburg as it heads due South.  After a windy trip to the backside dock at McNab's and a fun few hours of rambunctuous kids, managed a sunset escape Ocean bound, destination unknown.  The moon lighting the way with wonderful (if too strong at times) following winds driving you forward over glistening black water.  Call made at 10 pm to duck into the safe haven of a Harbour rather than chance the ledges and beyond solo after midnight.  Wise choice, surely, and bonus of a new mooring ball for our girl - Xanadu.

Up early this morning for the Sambro lighthouse check, a good recon mission and wise choice not to tempt fate too much in an initial docking.  Next year, institute a two week plan in which you sail to Mahone Bay one weekend and then back again the next.  Consider it done, and plan it around a stop at Sambro now that you know the route.

Ultimately, a lazy day here in Wreck Cove, but no regrets in spending one aboard atop the watery part of the world.  There will be lots of that next March.  How to truly savour it as it passes will be the test.  Passing up the long slog to Ernst makes sense as well in providing a chance for Al to see the Bark with you on its way out.  Definitely need to hit up the Ovens and the same bench where you watched the Picton Castle depart just under two years ago.  You had a plan then, and time has made it real.

I love when it does that.