I am a patchwork of bandaids and scabs. Yesterday I went to the beautiful skin cancer specialist. Alas, she was as expected masked which hid some of her beauty, but she is a very fine doctor. As usual she froze some spots, scraped others and took one bit for biopsy.The visit caused me to reread ‘A Slice of Life’ which I rather enjoyed. The title, which is far superior to my original, was provided by Steve Earley.
Once not so long ago there was a sailor who crossed oceans alone in small boats. He did this for many, many years and became a legend.
He found purity and joy alone in what he called the monastery of the sea and loved sailing toward the setting sun or toward the dawn.
When as a young man he departed on his first voyage, three tantalizing sirens kissed him good-bye and waved until he disappeared over the horizon and then, as sirens often do, forgot him.
He suffered hardships, not eagerly but inevitably. Sometimes he starved. Twice he almost died of thirst. He learned that thirst is much worse than hunger. Eight times he survived the great storms that are called hurricanes and cyclones.
People often told him he was brave because he made voyages that not only had no one else ever made, but that no one else had even thought of.
He did not consider himself brave. He did not fear the sea and he knew that men do not conquer the sea or mountains, they only transit them. Still he was at home at sea as few others have ever been.
He did fear thirst.
After every voyage he made a pilgrimage to a beautiful sorceress. Wise men told him he must do this and so he did.
The sorceress dwelt in a high tower beside a lake so vast some called it an inland sea. That lake was deceptive, sometimes as turquoise as the Caribbean, sometimes as black as the North Sea in a gale.
The sorceress had coal black hair, a friendly smile, and a gay laugh.
Each time the sailor visited her she sliced small pieces of flesh from him. Though the pieces were small, they did not grow back and over the decades they added up. Each time the sailor returned to the sea he was smaller.
The sailor lived far longer than anyone expected, including himself, and though he grew old he kept crossing oceans. Sometimes he wondered at this. He did not believe in the gods and never asked them to protect him.
Finally when he was very, very old, he sailed his small boat into port and made his customary way to the sorceress’s lair.
The sorceress did not age. She was still beautiful. Her hair still jet black. Her smile still friendly. Her laughter still gay. She welcomed him and cut the tiny remnant he had become into three pieces and he vanished.
On the train down to the doctor’s office I finished reading MY DEAREST JULIA, the wartime letters written by Ulysses S. Grant to his wife, Julia, although in the first part, mostly dating from the Mexican War of 1846-48, she was his fiancé not his wife. The second part consists of letters sent during the Civil War. What is inexplicable is that they were written seemingly by two completely different men.
Grant was born in 1822. During the Mexican War he was a young love sick lieutenant. That is all. Nothing more. The letters are filled with longing that he and Julia get married, with doubts of her love, and questions about her father’s attitude toward her marrying Grant. Grant’s father was a prosperous self-man business man. Julia’s father was also prosperous. Both men doubted that Grant would ever amount to much and until the Civil War they were right.
Part 2 we suddenly have the Grant of history. Only a year or so before the war he had failed at everything he attempted and was reduced to selling firewood on street corners of Saint Louis.
I greatly admire Grant who among other accomplishments wrote what is widely considered to be the finest presidential memoir. I have read those memoirs and biographies of him. He was the right man in the right place at the right time. Perhaps there are always Grants among us, men and women, who never are.
Today’s NASA Earth Observatory site carries an image showing that as we move toward the height of the season the Atlantic Ocean is primed to support and sustain hurricanes.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148689/oceans-primed-for-peak-of-hurricane-season
With the heat here this past week, a few mornings ago I biked to the beach before breakfast. There were a few other people about also taking advantage of the relative coolness, but mostly the beach was quiet and deserted and serene. By the time I walked to the end and back and biked home, the day was becoming too hot.
