I’m currently reading a book called “Lighthousekeeping” which I picked up for the sole reason that the main character shared a name with my best friend back home, whose name was – is – and ever shall be, Silver. When I flipped the first page open the first line that stared up at me was “My mother called me Silver, I was born part precious metal, part pirate” – and I realized that perhaps the character shared more than a name with my best friend.
But I digress.
There’s something about this book that’s taking up residence under my skin. It’s making me think, but I’m not quite sure what it wants me to think about. But some lines from it just jump off the page and immediately work themselves into your philosophy, one of them is this:
“The continuous narrative of existence is a lie. There is no continuous narrative. There are lit up moments. The rest is dark”
Somehow, that strikes me as very very true. Especially the lit up moments part. My family and I call those “seagull moments” moments that come in that strange time between sunset and night, when the world seems to glow from the rays of the dying sun. It strikes me that this blog, is really a record of various lit-up moments. People have often commented on my ability to write, but in truth, I don’t honestly consider myself a writer. The reason the pages here have come out so beautifully is because I’m fortunate enough to live a life that allows me to see amazing places that lend themselves to being written about.
But in truth, I don’t write. I don’t create. I write down.
I live my life in narrative, I hear events in my head as they unfold. I experience the world through story the same way a blind person must experience the world through sound and scent. Music describes itself to me, animals tell their stories to me without saying anything, I look at a landscape and I hear its word picture.
Occasionally, I’m fortunate enough that one of those moments stands out as something interesting enough to write down, and so it ends up here – or somewhere – as a record of my bizarre and random life atop the waves.
But I didn’t create it. I just wrote it down.
Like I said, this book – which is really all about stories, and how they work and what they mean – is making me think…possibly a bit too much…
The true things are too big or small, or in any case always the wrong size to fit the template called ‘language’
I often find our language is too narrow to express experience…