~ Out here they got a name for rain, for wind and fire only, but when you’re lost and all alone, there ain’t no word but lonely…~
I hinted months ago when I talked about the concept of ship-side single, about how being lonely can make you do foolish things, how we sometimes reach out to unlikely people just to feel ‘here”. But the loneliness that strikes when you live shipside is a different kind than most will experience. You’re around people, constantly, all day, every day. You’re always smiling, but you don’t know anyone…and somehow, the bigger the ship, the lonelier you can get.
I was extremely lucky; my first ship was a family. As my best friend shore-side is prone to saying “we had each others backs, and fronts, and sides” – I’ve been lucky since then, most of my ships have been like that, but somehow this ship…I don’t feel connected to anyone. Not really. Perhaps it’s because I go home once a week, so I never fully separate from home. Or perhaps it’s just the size of the ship, and the length of the cruises – seven day cruises are a rough haul, because you really don’t have time to get to know anyone before they’ve just gone. Even the service staff on the coffee bar rotates once a week, so you don’t even have the same server twice.
It’s a lonely contract this. And with all these charters going on, it’s been a rough one. I don’t love my job any less as a result, I adore my job, and most everything that goes with it…I just… I just find myself feeling this one a bit more than usual. I find myself more and more craving the moments when I can walk off the ship and wrap myself up in the world that’s grounded, the people I’m still connected to. Where my bartender pelts down the road and sweeps me up in a hug before I even get into the club. When I can hear my dad’s laugh, see my mom’s smile. When I can wrap my arms around my best friend and pretend like I’m never going to let go….before getting back on my “other” home and setting about living with strangers for another week.
Morose and poetic, that’s me…
It could just as easily be the weather, or the places we’re going. Alaska – as I’ve mentioned before – has a way of making you feel very, very small, and a way of making you very aware of just how…much humankind uses up without giving back. Alaska somehow makes you think too much, and if you’re not one of those crewmembers who takes refuge in the various ways of just making those thoughts go away…well…
Paint Your Wagon was set in California, during the gold rush. It was one of those movies that I saw as a kid and loved but didn’t remotely understand. I fell in love with the soundtrack, and for a long time I sang They Call the Wind Mariah as an audition piece, even had it transposed to a woman’s key. I didn’t understand it, I just liked to sing it. Now, though, somehow, this week, this moment, I get it… “It can be a bloody hell up here, what with the bloody rain, and the bloody loneliness, and that bloody, bloody wind…”
Up here, you can see why they’d still have a name for rain, for wind and fire only….and when the wind blows at just the right angle down from the mountains, it really does sound like folks was up there dyin’…
Only in Alaska…can you still hear the wind they call Mariah….