Choices

Sunday June 23

Saturday. Beginning of the second week. I am settling into a new rhythm. It is aligning itself with my circadian clock, one that in turn is ruled by the sun. Thus I wake, slowly, at what is defined by the Naval Observatory as the beginning of “civil twilight”, around 5:30am.  I move in and out of wakefulness for about 90 minutes, and get out of bed at 7. I put the coffee on, shower, then apply the morning application of mosquito repellent. I go get the eggs from the chicken coop, then pour some juice and turn on the laptop. One or two emails to read. Then I check the fire situation in Colorado.

No one is around. Bonnie and Max have headed to Ireland for 2 weeks. If a fire were to break out near our homes we couldn’t do anything. I might try to get someone to go get the motorcycle and the jeep, maybe the computer. Unnecessary, as all the important files are backed up on this laptop or on dropbox.  I read a few articles about the fires, then make scrambled eggs and toast. I download the photos from yesterday and think about what to write about today.

I linger over the blog for several hours, getting up and walking out to the edge of the cliff now and then, or over to the sitting areas in the backyard. I use my binoculars to see if there are any surfers out at the Zicatela, or to watch the fisherman in their small boats a few hundred meters offshore tug on their lines, hoping to see them land a fish.

Today I have no place I wish to go. Not even swimming. It is quite an incredible feeling, knowing that the only choices I have to make today are which book to read, and whether to lay in the hammock or on the lounge chair. After the adventures of this past year, it feels pretty good for it to be so simple.

Towards the end of the day it rains. Afterwards I notice a cargo vessel has crept into my field of view. It is perhaps 10 kilometers or so offshore, and the second one I have seen this week. It is heading south. It reminds me of the time I arrived in San Diego, having just driven cross country from Detroit. I was 21, almost 22, and I was doing that vagabond thing, having left my job at the accounting office after 3 1/2 years, the job I landed after I dropped out of college.

It was July. I went to the docks to try and get a job on an ocean going freighter, something I had sometimes thought was a possible career choice. I was told by the men in the shipyard’s office that to do so on an American flagged ship I needed to be in the Merchant Marine. I found the local office. They said in order to join the Merchant Marine I had to have the offer of a job on a ship. Catch-22.