Hilton Head Island: a log: THE PEARL; reader

 

Another day of steady rain.  Above is the current radar.  Rain is to be expected when you live in a swamp, even a very nice swamp.

I am sitting on the screened porch, enjoying the sound of the rain on the roof, deck, trees and Skull Creek, as I have enjoyed the sound of rain on the deck from inside the cabin of boats, assuming none of it was leaking on me.  I am curious what I will find below the compass when I am next on GANNET.

This morning I read John Steinbeck’s novella, THE PEARL.  I last read it more than fifty years ago and while I remembered the trajectory, I had forgotten the details, so it was like reading a novel I had not ever read before, but knew the ending.  A good story.  I think you would enjoy it.

I also read in today’s entries of THE ASSASSIN’S CLOAK a discussion by the Scottish poet, Alasdair MacClean, of the differences between diaries and journals.  He died in 1994 and so was fortunate enough probably never to have heard the abomination, ‘blog’.  The last paragraph came as a flash of insight.

This is not a journal or a diary, it is a log.  That’s what I write.  Land logs and passage logs.

If you are, as I and others believe, what you actually do rather than what you say you do or would like to do, I found myself wondering what I have actually done most in my life, not including sleep, which is probably what we all do more than any other single activity.  

I suppose that for most people what they have done most is work at whatever their jobs have been.  That might even be true of me who hasn’t worked for anyone else since 1974.  My job may not have been to have a job.

I am not sure how much time I have spent making ocean passages.  It is certainly more than eight years, maybe ten or more.

My first thought was that what I have done most is write.  I have been writing steadily, almost daily for more than sixty-five years.  But then I realized that I read more than I write.  So that’s it. The activity I have spent more of my life performing than any other.  I would not like it to be the single word to define me.  I much prefer the triad:  writer, sailor, lover.  But I can’t deny:  Webb Chiles, reader.