[L, diary, ephēmeris] 1) BLOG

BEHOLD the not very glamorous sight of a yacht's companionway ladder! 

This is PIILAR's ladder and further views and information about the building and restoration of her is beginning to happen HERE, in this website. 

I had wanted to take an easy escape from having to write anything lengthy (while still profound, of course) by quoting from Todd Walton's post, LITTLE BIT OF TALENT, or, as I think of it:  EVERYBODY HAS TALENT. However, though Todd's blog post reverberates with my own beliefs (Mirror Neurons?), his view has a differently focused message to impart.  His is truly the best introduction to what we both believe--

• that the joy of being creative is an innate gift we all possess

• that we need to celebrate ourselves, our talents, and relish the freedom to express them without dismissive comparisons from ourselves or anyone else. 

Todd's way of introducing these concepts is to make it fun!  Easy.  Non-competitive.  Egalitarian. His post asks, midway, How do you like the concept so far?  responding himself, I LOVE IT--and so do I!  If we could all participate in his game show, we'd have begun the process of loosening the barriers we have that keep the world in turmoil.  This is the first step in how we become better people, live better lives. Keeping things simple and accepting, we can then learn that trusting ourselves to make mistakes is the only way to do anything better the next time. 

• No infant runs a marathon with their first step. 

• No individual is born knowing how to speak any language fluently, read comprehensively, write imaginatively. 

We stumble and sputter and blush and cry with disappointment when we are shamed by our failures to replicate an arbitrary social standard of perfection. But with each crude pencil sketch or clay ashtray, every deviated recipe, choice of clothing, selection and display of home furnishings, we explore who we really are, not who others have said we are (or want us to be).  We learn what has true value for us by not letting fear of failure or feeling foolish stop us.  We then begin to illustrate those values with the symbols of them that we surround ourselves with.  Me?  I love living on the water, on boats because they are so fluid and so challenging to one's sense of capability.  Survivability.

However, to some on boats who see my no longer interested in cruising, the desire to simply continue living aboard a sailboat home has a reduced stature.  No longer a sailor but a landlubberly houseboater. Sigh.

It's tough, not fitting in with the assumed correct way to draw, paint, or sculpt, design and decorate, wear or build.  Live.  It's more comforting to feel part of a community of like-minded people.  We need companionship, in varying degrees and forms.  Finding acceptance and the resulting transformative growth that happens within a community is everyone's natural right.  But 'One Size' CANNOT fit all.  Waste of time to try.

My cousin Vickie once said she dreamed of living in a house where  everything in it was something she had made.  I've never forgotten that inspiring vision of hers, and try to emulate and encourage others in, if not the same goal, their own version of such an ideal.

So there's the photo of PILAR's companionway ladder being refinished after many years of practical and spiritual pleasure, with many more future years ahead.  The ladder is just one of many personalized aspects of PILAR that I am looking forward to showcasing in this website.  Everything about the ladder was the result of trial and error education, fueled by a simple love of trying to figure out how to express a feeling of beauty, inside, into a functional application externally.