Somewhere, beyond the sea...

Yes, the Kraken Rum commercial with the Frank Sinatra song is stuck in my head.

"A writer writes, always."  So it goes in a great movie, "Throw Mama from the Train."

And in a drunken stupor, the writer writes... always.  Or, dot, dot, dot, always (for emphasis).

I just finished reading a couple of books related to that somewhere beyond the sea.  The first was Joshua Slocum's "Sailing Alone Around the World."  Decent book, but written in the early 1900s so a bit old.  That guy sure was full of himself.  But I guess you'd have to be to sail a boat like his around the world with no modern technology, getting shot at by aboriginal South Americans and such.

Second book was Cap'n Fatty Goodlander's "Buy, Outfit, Sail" book about buying, outfitting and sailing (hence the name) a modest vessel around the world at modest expense.  So you can see where this going.  A plan is being hatched.  Not a new plan, per se, but an old plan among many being re-energized.

More to come on all that later, of course.

More importantly, however, is life.  Yes, life.  People say it's middle age.  Does things to you.  You do weird things, buy corvettes, pick up hot young chicks, as you pontificate on your own mortality and the very real recognition that your days are indeed numbered.

I don't think that's the whole story.  It's not about realizing mortality but understanding life.  It's about becoming more aware.  A heightened awareness.  A learned awareness, learned only in years of experience.  You recognize what's important, if in fact there is anything that is "important."

Dot, dot, dot, and so on.

Yeah, I know, I say it every time.  Gee, I don't post on here enough.  Oh, but I will.  I will.  Just you wait and see.

  

Letting Go

Waist deep in preparations for my AT trip.  Since this requires the acquisition of a few new pieces of gear, I switched to sell mode before moving to buy mode.  Anytime I want to buy something, I first look for something I can sell to raise the money.  As a man of many interests, I usually have something laying around the house that I can sell.  Case in point; to buy my new pack, I quickly sold on eBay my old pack, a pair of snowboard boots and bindings, a kayak rack for a car, and a pair of lederhosen (don't ask).  That easily made enough money for the new pack and some other items.

In the process of selling though, I started looking around and thinking I have a bunch of junk I should sell.  I have things that I've collected over the years and I started wondering why.  Why am I saving these things?  What is the psychology of saving things, collecting, and clutter?  As a proponent of  Buddhist philosophy, should I have any sort of attachment to all this junk?

A few things that I thought of getting rid of come from my hat collection.  I have a bunch of odd hats that I picked up throughout the years.  All of the hats hang from a wall in my basement bar.  They are fun to look at and occasionally wear, but do I really need them?  There's a East German army dress hat, a Soviet army ushanka, a Soviet navy hat, my old Army Dress Blues hat, an Afghan Pakul, various Middle Eastern shemaghs, an assortment of baseball caps, my old MP helmet liner from the 287th MP Co, a Sherlock Holmes hat, a desert pith hat, a knit pom-pom hat from Bosnia, a German army medic beret, etc.

Why am I keeping any of those things?  All of them have some sort of memory attached, but won't I still have the memory with them?  Psychologically speaking, I don't think I'm at the point where my collecting and clutter are a "problem," but from a Buddhist perspective, isn't all of it just unnecessary attachment?

I think I'll sit on this for a while.  In the meantime, expect a "first impressions" pack review for the AT trip tomorrow.  UPS says it will arrive tomorrow!