A Rain of Frogs

Sometimes when I go for my evening walks, I’ll debate my own sanity with myself.

Sane? Insane? Who knows. I see things so much differently than everyone else. Does that make me crazy? What does crazy mean? Why the hell do I have so much trouble functioning like a normal person?

I killed a vibrant part of myself a year ago today. I’m a little bummed about that.

Maybe I just think too damned much.

An Historical Downpour is a new featurette of Rain. It won’t be common, but once in a while I will feature something I wrote on a different blog under a penname. I hope you enjoy.

Originally posted as “Sleepless in Toronto” at 09:59AM on April 28, 2004.

In addition to yesterday’s “one of those days,” I had one of those nights last night. You know, the ones where you go to bed at your regular time, after doing all those things you do every evening before bed, and you promptly fall asleep. A deep, good, wonderful sleep. One of those ones that leaves you totally recharged the next day.

Until the massive car accident at the corner about 300 feet from your house about 30 minutes after you fall asleep. There’s nothing quite so astonishing as being violently woken up by the sound of crumpling metal and glass showering all over the road.

Except maybe the sound of the ambulance and its siren. Or maybe the police cars and their sirens. And the horn on one of the cars being stuck on. Wow, those new batteries can really hold a charge. That horn was going for like 45 minutes.

Eventually everything was cleaned up, and all the authorities and their flashing lights left. The night became still and calm again. But I suffer from occasional insomnia, usually caused by having too much on my mind. I also find it very difficult to go back to sleep when I am woken up at night.

Last night ended up being a toss-n-turn kind of time. I remember 3:20 am. And 3:45 am. And 4:20. Eventually I got bored and got out of bed at 4:50.

Not too bad, except I have to play tonight, and that usually means a 4am bedtime. Tomorrow is going to be a LONG Thursday.

I spent the last five days aboard my sailboat. Sometimes alone, sometimes with family and sometimes with friends. It was an amazing experience, and one I’d like to repeat soon.

You learn a lot about a boat when you live on it for a while. I learned there’s some reorganization required in terms of storage to keep the rather small confines of the boat clear of blankets and empty beer bottles.

I learned that the boat needs two more batteries, so that starting the inboard one-lung diesel is possible after using the freshly installed tiller pilot all day. On that note, I also learned that the water pump which supplies water pressure to the faucet in the galley sink needs to be mounted in a far different place than it is, both to make more space where it currently exists, and to make its operation quieter.

I learned that my 26 foot sailboat, with its minimal freeboard handles heavy water better than my fathers boat, which is both longer, wider and taller. Another valuable lesson: having a small boat is beneficial when it comes to replacing sails – the aforementioned larger boat having shredded its headsail on Friday. Probably more than a thousand dollars worth of beneficial, having a small boat. Of course, I retain possession of two completely unshredded headsails at this time.

Mostly the last five days reaffirmed my love of sailing, and let me piece my fractured thoughts back together. I’m in a very zen mood today, and I plan on keeping this way for a long time. Sailing is like yoga, or meditation, or a martial art. You become very serene, and with my life as full as it is right now, serene is important.

PDA, cellphone, iPod, laptop, pager. We are truly mobile warriors, able to work anywhere, anytime. Our equipment makes us free to work anywhere we want and our work ethic entraps us and we work everywhere.

Doesn’t anyone else find it tragic that people ned to wear cargo shorts to go for an evening walk?

One pocket to hold their PDA. Another pocket to hold their iPod. And a cellphone clipped to their belt. Then there’s the wallet, tucked into a low pocket in the shorts because everyone knows that carrying your wallet (stuffed with customer loyalty cards and freer-than-candy credit cards) in your back pocket is bad for your back. And another pocket for the ring of keys, because you can’t carry them in the same pocket as the PDA or iPod because they’ll scratch the screen, and the wallet is already taking up the entire bulging pocket it’s jammed into.

Give me a break.

Technology was supposed to free us, not entrap us. It was supposed to improve our quality of life, not break our backs because we carry it everywhere with us.

I go sailing. The technological equipment on my boat consists of a compass and a radio (both required by law), and a hand-held GPS unit. Granted the GPS is a luxury, but it’s the only one on my boat. I do have a little inboard diesel engine, but it’s only used to get me in and out of harbor. I could probably use long oars to achieve the same function.

A couple docks down from my 20 year old 26 foot sailboat is a big beautiful brand-new 34 foot sailboat. It looks cool. He’s got everything. A wind generator. Radios, a television antenna, radar, a depth sounder, a chart plotter, two GPS units a weather fax system. He’s got air conditioning for Pete’s sake. Air conditioning!

Every time I motor my little sailboat out of the harbor he’s always frittering around with his equipment. I never see his boat leave dock, actually. Even more interestingly, people will walk BY his boat to look at mine.

There’s a message there somewhere.

“Why do you make everything you do into an obligation?” someone recently asked me. It’s the sort of question which gives pause. Really makes you think about the question being asked, and what it means.

I have an answer to it too, which I will get to momentarily.

First, it is important to note that I consider myself a very creation oriented person. I am not well suited to repetitive tasks. I very much like a beginning, a middle and and end to things, and I like there to be something tangible and real when the end is realized.

It doesn’t matter if it’s music, art, web sites, writing, a complex personality, or anything else. I love to create, and that’s where the answer to the above question comes.

The reason I make everything into an obligation is because I imbue everything I create with a tiny piece of my soul.

A little sliver of my soul, sliced off and tucked into the heart of everything I make. The more time I put into something, the more of myself I put into it. And the more of myself I put into something, the more I want it to succeed.

Like being a parent, creating art for me is an obligation. An obligation to ensure the creation is the best it can be, to ensure that the little bit of soul I have invested in it doesn’t go to waste. It’s a finite resource.

Maybe it’d be easier if I didn’t share a piece of myself with everything I create. It’d certainly make it easier on me. While I sometimes wonder if it would be better to have an intact soul, I have to balance that with the idea of never experiencing the joy of creation.

Even if that means slowly whittling myself down a slice at a time to have the joy (and yes, associated obligation) of realizing some of the things that have coalesced behind my eyes.