Tag: decluttering
Disentanglement

Disentanglement

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Every Tuesday I connect with the kind and fun bunch of Rebel Writers. They meet face to face in a secret location in Hong Kong and write. I used to take part in those meetings face-to-face while I was living there. Now I can only connect from afar but I still enjoy to participate. In the end when you become a Rebel Writer, you will be one for the rest of your life.

So every Tuesday I get up on my boat check in with them and start my writing as well. This weekly appointment is what gets me writing no matter what, despite the fact that I am running against the clock to get in the water and get going. Having this sacred, personal moment of messing about with words has a healthy effect on my mind.

During last meeting we decided to video call for a little catch up. Also the daughter of one of the Rebels was present so I thought it was a good idea to give them a tour of my boat. I realized how messy my boat really was as soon as this idea left my brain, it converted in vibrating air captured by my microphone and was sent all the way to Hong Kong. All I could do was to justify myself adding that I am tearing apart close to 30% of the total internal space of the boat and that I was living in a construction site. Which of course is true and normal these days.

Despite the clarification I felt a rush of shame pervading my body and I tried pathetically to limit the visual of messiness through camerawork, with little success. Not even a square foot of the boat was tidy. I consider myself lucky I don’t suffer from the paralyzing, debilitating type of shame that would shut you down and make you stutter and say stupid things. I still held face and walked them through my messy yet very interesting boat.

The sensation of shame continued after the video call as my eyes were contemplating the explosion of boat parts and tools around me. I have been in this condition for a couple of months now, but even if I am used to my mess sometimes it exceeds my own tolerance.

The previous day I worked on my water tank in the v-berth, then rushed onto the boat to prepare the dough and toppings for our Monday pizza night at the boatyard, then worked a little more while the dough was raising, to again rush and pick everything up and carry it to the breezeway on the other end of the boatyard. When I came back it was dark already and with a full belly and first signs of a carb crash I went quickly to bed. The next morning I woke up to the mess of cooking and working and everything else.

In this particular phase of working there is no place onboard that stays the same. Things keep moving and shuffle around from one surface to the other. This happens even if the majority of my belonging are stuffed under the boat in the squatter camp, a sprawling of boat parts and materials that allows for great boatwork and creations and that also has a post-apocalyptic aesthetic, so appropriate during current times.

I am fortunate I got to be in a very private corner of the boatyard so my mess is hidden. Tranquility is parked stern to the edge of the property, against a fence with climbing vines and tall trees. My port windows face the North River and I can observe the marsh and boats at anchor from where I sit at my table. My only neighbor in a radius of 80ft (25 meters ) is Bill, who is a long time friend, solo sailor, inventor and “connazionale” (he is American and he also holds an Italian passport). He tolerates my mess and contributes with his own, although I have to say I am undefeated to this day.

For a coincidence of life I am right under the tree where four years ago Beta was spotted the last time before he decided to take a two week vacation from the boat. This tree dumps leaves, branches and staining berries onto my deck and used to block the sun from reaching my solar panel, but I still love it. It harbors a quantity of animals and insects that are my companions during my work days.

The boatyard is encased in maritime forest and it opens on a winding river that leads all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, separating Georgia from Florida. Its magical powers are beyond comprehension and the enchanted forest attracts a community of boaters that end up taking residence in the boatyard.

This special corner in this special county of this special state which is part of this special country is where I prepare my farewell. The Americas, North and South, have been particularly welcoming to me.

The people I met during my travels invited me in their lives with generosity and a sane curiosity for a man with a weird accent. They were able to make me feel important, even when I came empty handed. Here I met new fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters, teachers and peers.

From all the encounters I learned that we have one blood if we are willing to meet eye to eye and heart to heart. I received way more than I gave, and per the rule of life, whatever is left in the account I will pay it forward, wherever I may roam.

It is hard to detach from people that were so friendly and generous to me. I made this vow to follow the tides of life, those bigger than myself forces that right now are pushing me away from this land. I am also sure that the people who love me would be disappointed if I retreated from this call.

I thought it would be easier to leave, just pack the boat and go. But I am not just crossing an ocean for the sake of adventure. I am realigning and dealing with with this surge of mess around me, this puke of threads, stories, connections I need to transform, purge, celebrate and disentangle from. I went deep into this territory, now I am climbing up from the hole I digged, carrying my treasure.

The Ocean is calling, and the Ocean always punish messy people. Even if my mind tolerates mess it comes a moment when clutter becomes a real obstacle, and that moment is when you are underway and your entire world starts moving up and down and back and forth and left and right. A messy boat underway is a recipe for disaster. Curbing my mess is my main job now.

As the tendrils of the spiral of chaos agitate in this magic forest things start to fall into place, messages are exchanged, clarity is achieved. The unnapetizing concoction made out of who I was and who I will be is brewing. As the agents of change are doing their metabolic work I try to keep things under check, put away stuff and tidy up. It looks like a Sysyphean effort, but there is no way around it and the reward is immense.

As Robert Frost put it, “the only certain freedom is in departure”.
The burden of things

The burden of things

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It is refit time aboard Tranquility and things can get messy.

The already meager living space is occupied by lumber, sheets of bendy foam, painting products, stowed mainsail, furling jib and staysail, parts waiting for repair, extra supplies for the long term stay in the boatyard and many assorted items that has not yet received an approval for discarding nor a destination of use. Normality, if such a condition existed, is gone.

We congratulated ourselves when we originally moved aboard after downsizing of most of our belongings, but we feel like the process is never ending. Over time we acquired more stuff, hardly disposing of any decrepit or unimportant object, we collected trinkets and memorabilia, hoarded parts and materials that floated our way, in few cases not figuratively. All this lays above the regular household items, clothing to survive the four seasons and the always useful boat gear, composed of an arcane list of safety gear, aids to navigation and fun toys.

This collection moves around on the surfaces of the boat when we are pursuing a specific object, like sandbars in an estuary. There, where the tide meets the stream, stuff gets shuffled continuously to the point of requiring periodical management, raking and repacking. There has been several attempts in compiling maps and indexes of this less than a 150sq ft of interior space, all kept at bay by the revolutionary forces of Change, that always challenge the established order.

Beta participates in the boat search.

 

Tentative sketch of a future comprehensive map. Mañana, as we learned, means “not today” in these lands.

To date, despite the best intentions, no ultimate map exists, although we never lost faith that one day we would have a more or less accurate blueprint of the storage onboard.

I have always desired to possess some of the useful skills that obsessive compulsive people are champions at, but instead I grew up with NGDD, also called Not Giving a Damn Disorder which makes my cleaning efforts look rather pathetical and confused. This is also probably why it’s going to take a weekend to deeply clean and reorganize a 29 ft boat, another punch in the stomach to my productivity and self worth.

Kate’s traveling to Panama City and I am taking advantage of one less body on the boat to explode the interior and hopefully repack it in a way that makes sense. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. It is indeed due, so my bruised ego has to shut up and roll with it.

Many parts and specific tools which use has been postponed for long become now essential to complete the task at hand. Excavation begins, tote bags aggregating protective ziplock bags filled with objects sorted by some thematic criteria spread around like a slow and unstoppable honey spill.

Putting them back in the same way they came out seems totally out of my grasp. The more difficult to reach the object the more anxiety and adrenaline fog my reasoning, bringing confusion and shock to my procedural memory already impaired by NGDD and making less likely for the pieces to go back in the same rational order.

I do it one step at the time, inefficiently, but without stopping.

How many knives do we really need? Out of the 6, 1 knife got discarded, 2 donated.

I guess this is the curse of modern life: acquiring things that we may or may not use that then become a permanent claustrophobic presence, because, you know, you’ll never know…

There is great hype about topics such decluttering, simple living, minimalism, downsizing. It may be an alert, that speaks to the worst side of the consumerist mentality, or viral talk targeted to who has the time and money to deal with the problem.

The need to acquire stuff is a familiar yet still deceiving part of us, which has been engraved in our brains through indiscriminate, pervasive and undisclosed psychological manipulation techniques for more than a 100 years, since Edward L. Bernays adopted his uncle’s (Sigmud Freud) discoveries to serve the wealthy and powerful.

Appealing in a veiled way to human irrational drives like sexuality, fear, vanity, insecurities, selfishness, Bernays invented Propaganda and its good face in society, the industry of Public Relations.

We’ve been studied and manipulated for so many years that it’s not surprising how resisting the call of consumerism seem an hopeless battle. This conditioning survives even when you remove many of the advertisement sources sailing away on a small boat.

Grown up measuring our worth by the objects we purchase, we still fall for the idea that if we do not buy things we are worthless. Not only that, if we don’t buy things then the economy suffers and consequently jobs, and the large scale system we are embedded in.

So apparently we are between a rock and a hard place.

Tranquility is helpful in the quest to escape the one-dimensional man trap. With the finite and scarce space available we have to make choices, pick the important. Every subtraction is difficult, every addition must be purposeful. It’s a lot to ask to a brain used to pick from brimming shelves, using irrational hunches that expose us to the work of the engineers of attention.

Mankind have long believed that material objects contain spirits, possess some kind of supernatural quality that speaks to us, to the point that we can have a relationship with them, a conversation, intense staring and appreciation. Some objects truly give us joy.

In Japan there is a ceremony known as the Festival of Broken Needles (Hari-Kuyō) where women commemorate their worn-out needles and pins and bury them. Irrational but powerful forces bond us to objects and despite people profiting from this intimate relationship we can still choose the meaningful and useful over the superfluous. Which is easier said than done.

But let’s focus for one second here. I know this in front of me is a collection of bad decisions. My bad.

I can still donate it, recycle it, or toss it. Will you?

Boat project has begun

Boat project has begun

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In few hours I will finally lay hands on my boat again after 4 months. After purchasing Tranquillity, Kate and I went through a process of preparation that kept us apart and far away from the boat. For her it meant cutting the dock lines that kept her moored in NYC for a very long time. For me it was to wander the caribbean and harvest the necessary gold to start the restoration and equipment for Tranquillity. The rigor of New England’s winter contributed to postpone our project and the yard work. In some ways, we are still wimps.

We are brave however, when it comes to the decluttering process. We need to select and reduce our belongings to fit into a car first and then into a 29 ft sailboat. The task is not easy but I am lucky because Kate became a professional in this kind of operation and she is a great help. To reduce our belongings involves binning a lot of clothes and items, it means also merging departments and discarding surpluses. Sometimes I am terrified when I have to let go something, I feel like a real part of me is going away. Wait for an hour and this feeling disappears, and your pile of clothes and junk look more tidy, eventually fitting into a small place.

I am a very lazy guy and as many others I have this tendency to occupy all the available space, like a stuff Big Bang. Choosing a small boat means to seek discipline in this matter. There will be no space for the surplus, we will have to pick the essential and take care of what we have.

The decluttering process pointed out to me the importance of quality. While I was ironing my clothes I was amazed at how old but still beautiful is one of my shirts. That garment is probably more than 10yrs old and it has been with me in any place I traveled and went through third world washing machines, but it is sill pretty while other relatively new cheaper clothes show signs of wear. Quality is something to consider when purchasing equipment and even if we run on a small budget we should get few essential quality items.

Now we have no excuses, we finally moved ourselves and a well-sorted pile of things to the proximity of Tranquillity, in Fairhaven, MA. A kind friend, Keith, helped us to find a temporary nest in his parents’ house while we go through this project. For a long time Tranquillity will be not suitable for occupancy due to the restoration process and we will be shore-based in the place where Moby Dick took form, a place where the ocean is part of daily life and wrote important pages of history.

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