Hilton Head Island: two emails

I have little personal contact with others of our species except Carol, so I am defined in part by emails to others, some of whom I will never meet in person.

 I truly have lived beyond my time. I watch sports and deplore the grandstanding, usually after what are very routine accomplishements. I know that is generational. I could be those young men and women's grandfather or even great-grandfather. But I will say that I expect that even if I were young now I would not be one of them. 

I have different standards which I accept are outdated, perhaps to the decline of the species. I have written about a world beyond us. 

 https://www.inthepresentsea.com/the_actual_site/lastborn.html 

 I have been and am a sailor, who believes he has no living peers. His peers are the Phoenician who might have made the first circumnavigation of Africa before the time of Christ and the Polynesians who colonized the Pacific. I could have done that. 

 So two emails from beyond the social media world that may help define one who chooses not to be a part of it. 

"I trust that you and N. had a safe drive home. I regret that we could not spend more time together while you were here, but personal problems precluded that. 

 I wanted to learn about your health evacuation and also to know what you think of the boat you came to see. 

 You asked about my books.  

Unlike many, perhaps most, I consider my job to write words, not to sell them. I have outlived most of my contacts in the publishing world, which is odd because I took infinitely greater risks than they. So because of what you asked, I went to my main site, and found that either Kindle editions or PFDs of five of my books are available there. https://www.inthepresentsea.com/the_actual_site/books.html 

 N. asked good questions about me as a writer. I answered superficially about what I was paid last year—one of the reasons I prefer writing to spontaneous responses. Money is not important except that it measures respect. The current editor of SAIL begged being reduced by the Internet, which to some extent is probably true. 

 So to N., whose intelligence I sensed in our brief time together, I still write in my online journal, which is to the disappointment of those who only care about sailing, about more, as I am. https://self-portraitinthepresentseajournal.blogspot.com 

 I regret not being more social to you when you were here, but it was not possible. I wish you joy on land and water.’

 And to D. 

 Of QUAL—and I confess I had to go back to your entry to get that: Quality of Life Years—of which I expect I have had many because unlike most I did not expect my reward in heaven—-Christian or Muslim or any other—-and knew I needed to find whatever joy I could in this butterflies cough of life, as I defined life once in an acceptance speech. 

 Of the sailing book you mentioned in the previous entry, that might be one in which the author wanted to include me but asked questions about my life before I sailed that I found irrelevant and refused to answer. They reflected to my mind a deficient intelligence. He persisted citing his editor’s wanting the answers. I refused and told him to exclude me from his book. That did happen with one writer. I am not sure it was that book. 

 As an economist you will know Gresham’s Law. Not being an economist I am not sure how I do except that I read a lot. 

 I long ago knew that it applies to more than currencies and have found from time to time that others do too. 

 The bad often drives the good out of circulation, and I expect that in our present time of social media dominance, I will be lost. That may be the species’s loss, but is not my responsibility.  I have done my job. At 82 I am doing it still. I write and also bring some words written by others to the attention of people who would not otherwise have known them, and if I am still alive and healthy in a couple of more years I will take GANNET on another voyage more difficult than her last circumnavigation probably pushing limits of age which do not interest me. Making that voyage will just  be me being me, though I do wonder that I have gone on so long. 

 When you have lived as hard as I, and have read as much as I, you know there is no reason to justify joy over despair.  So beyond logic the animal I am prefers joy, and I wish and advise you to seek whatever joy you can.

From STONER by John Williams:

“Lust and learning,” Katherine once said.  “That’s really all there is, isn’t it?”