A Carribean Promise

Recently we had the good fortune of sailing across the entire expanse of the Caribbean Sea - east to west – some 1200 NM - in our Norseman 447. We left The British Virgin Islands on a Saturday morning arriving in Panama some 7 days later. A 1200 NM odyssey across ancient, uniquely blue water, following ages old trade winds, and 16th century European trade routes.

Prior to this trip, I, like most people, looked upon the Caribbean as being constrained to the touristy islands of the Lesser and Greater Antilles, and the Bahamas. And I, like so many visitors, had always conjured up romantic ideals of Spanish galleons, pirates, and their fierce individualism, set amidst a background of reggae and 1970’s Jimmy Buffet music. For me it was a playground, a place for wild times relatively unencumbered by the rules of home. And when not partying, I expected a slowed down pace of island life, world class beaches, and Ya-Man, with a tendency to reduce it all to two-dimensional fantasy and cliché.

Even to modern sailors, myself included, the Caribbean has been more about its touristy destinations and myths than about its 1 million square miles of blue ocean, its ancient trades, its 7000 islands, and its many shorelines that include South and Central America. It is a huge area of incredible diversity, rich history, and beauty. The Caribbean is immense, diverse, alive, and relatively unknown – and I would argue, worth a fresh look. 

As we sailed along downwind day after day in following seas - as have countless sailing vessels before us – we foolishly joked that gentleman (and gentlewomen) never need tack (while we secretly jumped up and down as children in our excitement as to the ease of our point of sail, speed and comfort). Yes, it can be quite active sailing, especially off the Colombian coast, with huge following seas and high winds, but other than adjusting reef points we never changed our tack, point of sail, or sail plan. 

But despite near perfect conditions night watch alone on a boat a sea can still be a soul-searching experience – in fact it’s one of the reasons I sail. And somewhere out in all that immensity I began to realize how narrow my thinking had been all these years as to how I thought of the Caribbean, and parts of my life.

The Caribbean Sea formed 130 million years ago as the supercontinent Pangea broke apart to the north and south forming a basin overlying the newly formed Caribbean tectonic plate. Beginning 80 million years ago this plate began to be pushed in a north-easterly direction by the thick, massive South American plate, smashing it into the North American plate to the north and east. These collisions resulted in volcanic activity that formed most of the Lessor and Greater Antilles islands and many of the mountains and volcanoes of Central America and northern South America – a process still going on today. 

Humans first arrived in the area around 8000 years ago making the region one of the last to be settled on the planet. The indigenous people came from Central and South America by boat and then spread throughout the entire region south to north in waves until they were widely dispersed by about 5000 years ago. The Bahamas were probably the last lands on earth to be populated as recently as 800 AD. European explorers arrived in 1492 with their disease, violence, and exploitation, wiping out most of the indigenous peoples in less than 100 years. 

Piracy in the area began almost immediately after the Europeans arrival in the 1500s, coming to a violent end by the 1830s - mirroring the slave trade – a massive and brutal kidnapping campaign and subsequent enslavement that brought nearly 5 million Africans to the region beginning in 1517 and not ending until the mid 1800’s.

It is interesting that Caribbean history includes South and Central America as playing such vital roles: for millions of years geologically, and for millennia regarding its human history. And yet is not considered part of the Caribbean by most. Colombia and Panama, in particular, were some of the original sources of its indigenous people. Both areas were vital to Spanish trade and plunder and as such its ships prime targets of piracy. And yet when so many of us say the Caribbean we mean to speak of the Antilles and Bahamas - tropical islands, rum, Reggae and Buffett.  

For seven days and nights we sailed on. The Southern Cross beckoned in the south-western sky - a constellation not visible to most of us in the US and thus symbolic of exotic southern seas and shores. As I saw it the iconic Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young song came to mind – and I knew intimately for what they said.

‘When you see the Southern Cross for the first time

You understand now why you came this way

Cause the truth you might be running from is so small

But it's as big as the promise

The promise of a coming day’

On the fourth night with winds to 35 knots in 10-12 foot seas, cruising along at 7.5 knots, it hit me. Three AM on watch, alone in the darkness, surrounded by hundreds of miles of empty ocean in all directions, hearing the night’s wind and ships noises in response – the immensity and true nature of the Caribbean hit me. To port lie Colombia and its incredible mountainous jungles, beautiful beaches, and historic ports, to starboard Cuba and the Greater Antilles, ahead lay Panama and Central America and aft the Lesser Antilles – all with shorelines bounding this immense, ancient, Caribbean Sea. 

My thinking until that moment had been quite cliché. But the only thing cliché in all of this was my limited imagination. So many of us try to reduce the excitement of each coming day to the mundane and familiar in an unconscious attempt at feeling safer. But once again the sea reached out and taught me in the darkness of a late night watch the utter folly of such limited thinking, replacing it instead with the danger, beauty, and truth, of a coming day. 

From the mountains and rainforests of Central and Northern South America, to the coral atolls of the Bahamas, to the volcanoes of the Greater and Lesser Antilles, the Caribbean Sea touches them all and all of it I would argue is the Caribbean.  Alive, fresh, rich, verdant, diverse, and so much more than I had ever realized.

Upon making landfall in Bocas Del Toro, Panama – itself originally settled by African immigrants and built in the Caribbean style - I felt I had tied east and west together as one in my mind. The Caribbean is a beautiful ancient sea – and its shores – all of them – Caribbean. 

And as I sat back in my cockpit at the Red Frog Marina in Bocas, beer in hand, reflecting on the trip, I realized we all tend to get into ruts in our outlook, in our lives. We narrow our thinking and repeat patterns because it feels easier, safer. But in doing so we rob ourselves of so much of life experiences, and limit our possibilities. Going to sea in a sailboat with the inevitable 3am watches is the best way I know to deliver oneself from a tendency to the mundane, from our self-made traps and narrowness of mind, opening our minds to new experience and perspective and enriching our lives.

With my new-found perspective on the Caribbean I have opened myself up to greater possibilities and experiences both in my approach to the Caribbean and in my life. Now full of energy tinged with an edge of fear I am determined to explore all of the Caribbean – most of it neglected in my mind’s eye all these years. I plan to begin by exploring the San Blas islands. From there on to Caribbean coastline of Colombia – not as separate countries but as a part of the greater whole – the Caribbean. I hope to explore Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana as less travelled Caribbean sailing destinations – sailing to weather because I must from Bocas Del Toro and perhaps partly as penance for my years of narrow-minded cliché.  From there who knows. But one thing I do know – being at sea in a sailboat is inevitably a soul-searching experience, painful at times, but nearly always results in a fresh, wider, and more truthful perspective, beautifully restoring the promise of a coming day. 

The Scientific Method

It is not anecdotal evidence. It is anecdotal information. 

Lots of anecdotal information is not evidence. 

Lots and lots and lots of anecdotal information is still not evidence, not even a little bit. 

Got it? 

But, but? 

Nope, not even a little. It's just not. So just stop. 

Stoppppp, enough, don't care about your uncle Harry or the friend of a friend or the rumor heard everywhere.

Not evidence.

To Allow Moments

"We live our lives of human passions, cruelties, dreams, concepts, crimes and the exercise of virtue in and beside a world devoid of our preoccupations, free from apprehension—though affected, certainly, by our actions. A world parallel to our own though overlapping. Call it 'Nature'; only reluctantly
 admitting to ourselves to be 'Nature' too.
 Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
 our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
 an hour even, of pure (almost pure) 
response to that insouciant life:
 cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing
 pilgrimage of water, vast stillness
 of spellbound ephemera on a lit windowpane,
 animal voices, mineral hum, wind
 conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering
 of fire to coal—then something tethered
 in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch
 of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.
 No one discovers 
just where we’ve been, when we’re caught up again 
into our own sphere (where we must
 return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)
—but we have changed, a little."

Sojourns in the Parallel World by Denise Levertov - 1923-1997

Beautiful, sublime - truly. 

But there are not parallel worlds. There is only our one universe - all the rest is make believe. 

And there are no destinies - there are only moments.

For now, we are only allowed brief moments of resonance with our universe - and then returning to what? A patch of gnawed grass, thistles, and make believe? Parallel worlds? Can a world be comprised only of empty human construct - tethers, distractions, and fantasy?

Religion, nation, wealth, status, ‘success’ - shallow human construct all – a cacophony of ignorance and false promise - all of it - originally invented as societal glue so the few could control the many. So, complete strangers once known only to their tight-knit clans would for the first time, fight side by side for god, for nation, for money. All to ensure that the few had their 'power', their 'wealth', their kingdoms and city-states - all at the expense of the many.

If nation were real where did the Soviet Union go? If people stopped believing in the dollar - it becomes worthless. Status, 'success', religion, wealth, power - make believe, all of it. Nothing more than glue to construct false worlds, benefitting mostly the sociopathic and those seeking control, while serving to drown out angst, emptiness and isolation, and our longing for something more. Like mice on a wheel, ants in a line - busy, busy, and going nowhere. 

Resonance with our true universe - how it soothes the soul and frees the spirit - reduced by society and construct to secret, stolen moments.

You say destiny – I say illusion. You say spheres – I say you have too generously assigned a third dimension. You say breaking free - only to return to a patch of gnawed grass, thistles, and make believe? That is not breaking free - that is merely stretching the tether.

Our constructs have served their purposes. It is now long since time to abandon them and to merge with our one true ancient, immense, diverse, and incredibly beautiful universe. 

To allow moments - to become lives. 

When Stupid Got Cool

They say the CDC has a credibility problem. As does the Federal reserve, the FBI, the media - all of it, the courts, environmentalists, the EPA, elections, science and scientists, historians, authors, books, on and on all the way up to and including the truth. The truth has a credibility problem. Alternative facts indeed.

Yea, no.

It's the people who have the credibility problem, ever since stupid got cool. 

Oh yea, the price to pay

Hurricanes destroying everything in their path, washing homes out to sea, while flooding the rest, is god's vengeance against southern, white, bubba-headed, climate change denying, Trumpies. Exactly as AIDS was god's vengeance against gays. As Iraq was god's vengeance against Muslims. As poverty is god's punishment against brown immigrants. And so on and so on and so on.

How does it feel bubba?

Allahu Akbar

Big

The Artemis spacecraft just recently reentered earth's atmosphere traveling at 25,000 miles per hour. That's one trip around the entire earth every hour. 

That's 6.9 miles per second. Pretty fast. 13.4 times faster than a bullet. 

Traveling at 25,000 mph it would take Artemis 115,000 years to get to the nearest star 4.3 light years away. 

There are trillions of stars. 

Bubba Boo

A texas guy once said to my sister and her husband, as he spat tobacco juice on the ground, “Faggots wear Levi’s.”

Why yes, they do. And so do women, children, boys, girls, men - white, black, brown, red, yellow.

Barney wore them once - but he was a devoted, purple, nudist. 

I've seen Levis on a chimp, on a pimp, on a man with a limp.

I've seen them short, long, and on people's arms.

I've seen them as dresses - maxi, mini, and in betweeny.

I've seen them on a Gox.

I've seen them in a Box.

I've even seen them used as Gox Box Socks.

But I have never ever seen faggots spit tobacco juice.

Faggots and all real men don't spit.

Spitting, is for texans. 

Treat The Illness - Never the Patient

'The House of God' by Samuel Shem (Stephen Bergman), published in 1978, is a satirical novel written to call attention to the abuse and dehumanization of physician trainees. It is incredibly sexist, oversexed, and over the top, things one can begin to forgive when it's put in historical perspective - the 1970's. Nevertheless, it is an incredibly immature, self-indulgent, and two-dimensional novel, that its author and millions of physicians and physician trainees thought hilariously clever. 

It wasn't clever, not really. And in the end the book just served to contribute to medicines long, proud, tradition of self-aggrandizement, pomp, showmanship, and arrogance.  

Whereas the book sets out to expose the effect medical training has on its trainees - abusing them until they become dehumanized and two dimensional - exactly as their trainers had become with their training - all in an attempt to properly numb them to the abuse heaped on to their patients by western medicine's fundamental approaches to illness. But despite the authors original intent, the book somehow manages to do the opposite - evoking the sort of legend heard in frat houses and basic training camps - thank you sir may I have another?   

In the end it serves to lionize America's ridiculous approach to medical training and to care - making it legend, instead of indicting it. Whereas it is true training is different today, perhaps in part due to this book, doctors are nevertheless no more humane, no less callous, no less arrogant and certain in the face of ignorance, and no less two-dimensional, than ever before. Long hours and disrespect were never the issue. It was and still is medicines fundamental approach to patients that dehumanizes its trainees - something the book failed miserably at pointing out.

At the time of its publication giggles and laughter emanated from call rooms all across the country as medical students and interns read it's pages with glee - wow I'm a part of this insanity and that's cool, learning along the way that being clever, stuffing your brain with facts, and towing the party line was much more important than humaneness, wisdom, or compassion - all the while learning to ignore the dehumanizing effects western medicine's approach has on patients. It made them more famous in a funny and clever way - despite the book revealing their collective sociopathy. 

Black humor has to be a part of medical care if one is to hang on to even a shred of humanity, but 'The House of God' used it to glorify a band of brothers (and one female) traumatized to callousness, serving to encourage an underlying dictum seen even today in the halls of academia - that clinical medicine is nasty and beneath 'real' academics. That patients really are gomers, obesity and most chronic illness is to be ridiculed, that doing is the go-to when the talentless meet suffering humanity - testing, operating, just one more round of chemo, one more course of antibiotics - all much more important than quality of life or often, even dignity.

The House of God never really taught us anything new. It lionized black humor, pedigree, arrogance, and heartlessness, in medicine, and helped to cement a culture of inhumanity in the delivery of medical care while enshrouding it in legend. But arrogance, certainty in the face of ignorance, callousness, and an approach that involves treating the disease not the patient is a long sorted one, well-established for millennia in medicine - nothing new - and if anything, the book just made it worse. 

A Good Place To Start

Science is truth. 

Religion is faith - divisive, limiting, ignorant, and used as justification to act on our worst impulses.

Art resonates and reflects the relationships found in frequencies, colors, textures, and media, as determined by the physical laws of our universe. 

Nation is imaginary. Make believe, infantile, empty human construct. 

Music is mathematical - resonate with the universe's periods, cycles, and patterns.

Money, wealth, consumerism, power, prestige, 'success' - all empty human construct leading to isolated lives, harshness, and soul sucking ignorance.

There is an ancient, grand, and glorious universe rich with the truth of you to be discovered, explored, and experienced. 

To do so all you need do is look away from the shallow human constructs that have so shaped your life, all your life, and come to know, really know your universe. Art and music, mathematics and physics, good places to start.

Norman Rockwell Where Are You?

As I have worked across the US these last 8 years, I have discovered some interesting things about its people:

1. The smaller the town the meaner and more ignorant the people.

2. The uglier and harsher the environment the uglier and harsher the people.

3. At the heart of conservatism lies fear - of nearly everything. 

    a. Fear of change from imagined historical norms.

    b. Fear of the unfamiliar - people of color number one.

    c. Fear that their way of life will be taken from them.

    d. Fear that their stuff will be taken from them. 

    e. Fear of their own failings.

    f. Fear that they will fail even more when faced with change.

4.  There are good people everywhere - there are just more of them in the more urban, or the prettier and/or more educated areas of the country.

5.  Conservatives tend to be mean and more likely to:

    a. Cut you off in traffic.

    b. Tailgate.

    c. Gawk but keep moving at accidents - not the ones who get out of their cars and help. 

    d. Lie

    e. Feign religiosity to cover heartlessness and to empower their selfishness. 

    f. Mistreat people when they perceive little risk of blow back.

    g. Lack a sense of social responsibility - denying climate change even when they know it's real, refusing to help those in need - immigrants, refugees, the poor, the traumatized. Ignoring the suffering of others. Using 'fierce independence' to cover for selfishness and a lack of empathy. 

6. Major corporations in this country are obsessed with profit, do not really care about their customers except as to keep them coming back, and lack a sense of social responsibility. Think of how badly the airlines treat you now, and how much worse they would treat you were they not so heavily regulated as just one example. 

7. People are more than willing to exchange richness of life, intimacy, uniqueness, and soul - for convenience, cost, and to avoid the unfamiliar. Chain restaurants and coffee shops, strip malls, and cookie cutter homes, come to mind.

8. Americans love war, violence, violent competition, and all things military.

9. Americans hate 'losers', old people, and anyone too different from themselves. 

10. 'Justice' predicates for the most part on the almighty dollar and that's ok. 

Of Emails and Misogyny

But, but, what about her EMAILS!!!