“It’s a perfectly balanced mechanism of shouts and echoes pretending to be wheels and cogs, a dream clock chiming beneath a mystery glass we call life. Behind it? Below it and around it? Chaos, storms. Men with hammers, men with knives, men with guns. Women who twist what they cannot dominate and belittle what they cannot understand. A universe of horror and loss surrounding a single light where mortals dare to dance in defiance of the dark” – Stephen King, 11/22/63
One life, one little thing that we do – can change so many things. There are multiple strings to the universe. You pull one, it changes the pattern of the others. Somewhere out there is a world where I never met certain people, never did certain things. There is, I’m sure, somewhere a reality where I was not even born, or where my non-existent blood-brother was born instead. Somewhere out there he is living his life, wondering what it would have been like to have a sister.
In the meantime, I sit here wondering why it is that Alaska always puts these overly deep thoughts into my head.
Perhaps it’s simply because there isn’t a great deal going on at the moment. The wheel continues to turn, we visit the same ports every week and every week – at least it feels like every week- it rains. But there continue to be those lit up moments. Laughing while you lose at a game of darts, having someone totally unexpected comment on the color of your eyes, or losing yourself in a really good book (and 11/22/63 was one of the best books I’ve read in a long, long time).
And sleep, blessed blessed sleep.
After eight months on the flagship nearly longing for a social life (the social outlets on the flagship tend to be fewer than you would think, since we’re expected to spend a lot more time socializing with the guests and the venues are fewer), I am now remembering the ‘dangers’ of having one. Especially since I tend to – if you’ll pardon the pun – harmonize with the musicians. They keep a late schedule, and so I find myself once again whipped back to my ‘Cats n’ Kitten’ days of last summer, where I’m working late and stumbling, exhausted, back to my cabin in the wee small hours of the morning. But I’m laughing, and I’m making friends, and I feel myself again. Oddly enough, coming back to Alaska, and the strange routines I have here, has probably completed the recovery process that I needed from being out so long last time. Not for the first time I’m reminded that my supervisor over in the Head Office knows precisely what she’s doing.
And I have been lucky enough this cruise to have someone who can lead on board. He’s a little two determined to integrate himself with the crew, and there have been a few times that some of us have had to put our collective feet down and say “no, there’s a line, and it can’t be crossed” – but he can dance.
And last night it truly did feel like being a flame in the dark. Flying across that floor, nearly out of breath, letting the music take my feet where they needed to go. When I dance, I burn through everything that might be bother me, the grief, the confusion, the overly empathic sensitivity…
I know very little these days, and the things I do know are constantly shifting. Reality isn’t solid, time isn’t a tangible thing; it’s flexible, like everything else. But one thing I do know: Strive to be the one who dares to dance in the dark.