echo

[note #18]

When you live on a boat, strangers will come up to you and say, I always wanted to live on a boat.

Then why don’t you? you answer, but you know why.

To live on a boat (at least the boats I lived on) you must keep the ocean out, until nearly every waking hour is spent doing just that. The radio is always tuned to the weather, you always wonder if the pump will fail. You measure the wind without thinking, by looking to the tops of the trees—if you glimpse the underside of each leaf then the harbor will be thick with whitecaps.

This boat, it must fit inside your head, until every other thought is pushed to the corners. In this way it’s good to live on a boat, if you have a lot to push to the corners. All you have to think about is anchor, radio, treetop—this is all you can think—treetop, radio, pump—for years on end.

Save the hard stuff for another day, a day when you are ready to open it.