Hilton Head Island: an epic life indeed; two hemispheres; two poems of Richard Murphy; two lines from Tim Robinson

Yesterday I changed a door knob.  Today Carol and I walked down to the marina pier.  Well, some days are more epic than others.

However each day I am improving.  No.  That’s wrong.  I am pretty much as I have been for decades.  But each day since being meshed I have decidedly less discomfort and move more easily, which is something.  

My friends, Michael, Layne, and their trusty dog, Rusty, have been living on board their Dodge van named GANNET 2 for a couple of years, traveling for the past year south through Latin and South America.  The van has a custom interior and life on board is much like living on a boat, though GANNET 2 points higher than GANNET.

They have just entered Ecuador and are about to cross the Equator, if they have not already done so.

I knew that 90% of our species live in the Northern Hemisphere, but I had to google to learn that 68% of the world’s land is north of the Equator. 

You already know that I like the Southern hemisphere better, but I have never touched the land through which GANNET 2’s intrepid crew will be traveling.  I wish them land joy.  Assuming there is such a thing.

https://conchscooter.blogspot.com/

The collection of Richard Murphy’s poetry I am reading is titled, THE PLEASURE GARDEN:  POEMS 1952-2012.  Murphy was born in 1927 and died in 2018.  Here are two more of his poems, but they come with a caveat.  The poems that I have enjoyed and admire greatly, including these two, were written before 1974.  Starting about then he returned to the social world.  He was poet in residence at several U.S. universities.  And his poems mostly become about the petty trivial disappointments and aggravations of modern life.  Not surprisingly I like them much less.  He spent the last years of his life in Sri Lanka and died there.  I have not yet come to those final Sri Lanka poems and am curious what I will find.

From Tim Robinson’s A LITTLE GAELIC KINGDOM.

Lies and wonders are what the world wants to hear.

and

What is it that comes into existence when you step into it and ceases to exist when you step out?  The exact answer is your life, of course; but an island is an approximate answer, only slightly blurred by the aura of expectation extending before one’s visit and of memory prolonging it.

I very much like living on an island.