[L, diary, ephēmeris] 1) BLOG

“And this, as I might have guessed, is how it is done. We give the Gods a name and they quicken in us, they rise in their glory and power and majesty out of minds, they move forth to act in the world beyond, changing us and it. So it is that the beings we are in the process of becoming will be drawn out of us. We have only to find the name and let its illumination fill us.  Beginning, always, with what is simple…

“This is the true meaning of transformation.  This is the real metamorphosis.  Our further selves are contained within us, as the leaves and blossoms are in the tree.  We have only to find the spring and release it…

“More and more…I have come to realize that this place is the true destination I have been seeking, and that my life here…is my true fate, the one I have spent my whole existence trying to escape.  We barely realize the annunciation when it comes, declaring:

‘Here is the life you have tried to throw away. Here is your second chance.  Here is the destiny you have tried to shake off by inventing a hundred false roles, a hundred false identities for yourself.  It will look at first like a disaster, but is really good fortune in disguise, since fate too knows how to follow your evasions through a hundred forms of its own. Now you will become at last the one you intended to be.’

 

"So I admit openly to myself what I have known in my heart. I belong in this place now. I have made it mine. I am entering the dimensions of my self.”

—David Malouf—
AN IMAGINARY LIFE

 

This post was begun in September of 2017 and abandoned, censored by an internal critic as too...critical:

"...while reading a FASO essay about committing to a life as an artist, I had an epiphany that segued with an earlier realization of no longer wanting to live my life as a 'Cruising' sailor, again. 

Elsewhere are the chronicled  puzzle pieces of life lived as a Cruiser, and how, after sixteen years of building and living aboard our boat, followed by eight years of sailing South and West through the Pacific, Bill and I came into a fulfilling combination of nine (the two of us) and eight (widowed) years of living at anchor in the Philippine Islands, Port Bonbonon, Tambobo, at the very bottom tip of Negros Oriental. 

It was in that latter time of making solo decisions when thoughts of no longer wanting to 'cruise' the world began to surface.  It no longer seemed as adventurous, meaningful way to live. Though I still felt fully committed to the community of people living lives aboard boats, it was the life of visiting foreign cultures as a tourist, sailing from anchorage to anchorage, skimming the surface of the lives and lands, that began to feel like a thin diet of hors d'oeuvres. Since arriving in the Philippines and the serendipitous creation of One Candle Schoolhouse, I  had, for the first time in my life, become an active participant of a stationary community.  However, very much like someone not able to fully commit to marriage, I've been on a tourist visa for seventeen years even though I had become more Resident than Tourist. Why?  As with the presence of children tipping the scales more than the sanctity of marriage to a Wanderer, I had been accepted into the lives of the families living on shore.  Through the students, and somewhat painful self-examinations, I'd begun to discern unexpectedly rich nuances of  a life lived fully within a different culture.  

Arguably, there were many other places to happily live out my life, but was there really any place BETTER?  Even if still on a tourist visa, not a committed resident, THIS place and I had evolved past the 'honeymoon' stage.  We have a history together.  We've become entwined, warts and all..."

This is where I will stop quoting from the aforementioned 'post-that-might-have-been'. What remains of it will be reborn within the next couple of posts. A legible transcript of the photograph above has been posted, which reiterates this post while providing transition into the plethora of other bottled-up 'wanna-be/NEED-to-be' posts not made during the past three months.  Bear with me.  Wonderful things have been happening. Lots of photos.