Transient – Tracy Arm, Alaska – [07/20/2017]

Posted on July 20, 2017 by GypsyShaughnessy

Tracy Arm is as beautiful as I remember it being, it still feels like being transported into Narnia. The icebergs (more properly called growlers) are a shade of blue that you simply don’t see anywhere else, and everything is so vast.

When I first started working on ships, places like Tracy Arm terrified me. I am a water girl, and being hemmed in by too much earth made me feel trapped; suffocated. I hadn’t learned yet how to adapt to that particular element, that would come in time, and would never be as strong as perhaps I would like. I remember sitting at my desk on the top deck, with a zen blend herbal tea in front of me, trying to will myself through the spiritual claustrophobia, while still being totally in awe of the beauty I was seeing.

But things change, people change…the awe though, that never went away.

Perhaps it’s because of my strange affiliation with Alaska, but it made sense that after I took my photos and got my proper dose of fresh air, today found me sitting in a corner in the library…thinking how true it is that as much as things change, and the railroad tracks shift, sometimes they never actually change at all.

Five and a half years of my life, 10 cruises, were all spent behind that one desk. This library was my baby, my pride and joy, I was good at it. You catch yourself thinking that if you dedicate such a huge part of your life – of yourself – to a place, or to a thing, that you must have left some kind of impression on it. Some small trace that you were there. But the truth is, we are all so transient, in the  face of shifting tides and sliding glaciers…none of us leave more than a glancing mark on history. There is little of me left in the library any more, except for the labels on the books – those I can point to and say “yup, that was me, I did that.”

But the flagship herself? She remembers. Sitting there this afternoon, I found myself feeling oddly guilty. Sometimes I wonder if she thinks I abandoned her for greener pastures, if as soon as the going got tough, I got going. No one looks after her books now, and looking at those shelves, I felt badly about that. Perhaps that makes no sense to those of you who have never been at sea, but trust me, the ships have personality, and the flagship and I have had a love/hate relationship at best, but in the end we have taken good care of each other…

And today, I had to remind myself that I hadn’t let her down, any more than she had me. Instead, I’m just…taking care of her in a different way. I always have. I always will.

You can take the woman out of the library, but you can’t take the library out of the woman.

On my own journey down the railroad tracks, with my feet occasionally slipping off the tyes and the edges of my cuffs getting frayed on the sometimes sharp edges…I’ve discovered that while it may be true that some things never change…and that while we may not leave much of a mark on history, but history…history will always leave a mark on us.

Make of that what you will..

Posted in Below the waterline, Leisure Lady, Transitions, Vacations/Shore-Side | 1 Comment

At Ease – At Sea – [07/18/2017]

Posted on July 18, 2017 by GypsyShaughnessy

I was right, it is strange. Incredibly strange. I am not used to being on a ship where I’m not constantly on someone else’s schedule and rarely having time to do anything except watch a lot of reruns. But this, this is different. No one telling me what to do, no one really caring what I do. Eating when I want, wearing what I want. And being able to work on my writing on my laptop in the upstairs lounge while I’m watching the sunset.

As a result, I’ve managed to get five pages written on my novella in the last twenty-four hours. To put this in perspective that’s more than I’ve written in one go on this particular piece in the last three years.

Colour me amazed.

Today is a sea day, so I spent most of it updating my computer games on my new laptop and seeing whether or not I could send my Mongol warriors successfully against China in Civilization 5 (much to my dismay the game keeps crashing, apparently a common problem, so I’ve learned to save often). Yesterday I crawled my way through immigration (Which goes a lot faster when you’re in the passenger lineup!) and met up with Amras in Seattle to explore Pike’s Street Market, with it’s juggling stores and fortune tellers (apparently, I’m going to come into an inheritance from a wealthy relative, not sure how that’s going to work as I have no rich relatives to inherit anything from!) and rambling book stores (where I caved and picked up a copy of Fahrenheit 451 because as terrifying as that book is it feels like it’s time for a re-read).

So here I am…Alaska bound again, in a rather different context than I ever thought I would be. So I wonder what the glaciers have in store for me this time…

Posted in Leisure Lady, Vacations/Shore-Side | 1 Comment

Sur-Reality – Seattle – [07/17/2017]

Posted on July 17, 2017 by GypsyShaughnessy

I have been many things over the last few years, but I have never been a guest on board my own ship. As crew members, we do have the ability to bring friends on board to sail with us; I’ve had someone sail with me before, when Amras came to join me on my first computer teacher contract almost two years ago now ; but I’ve never sailed with someone.

It’s…surreal.

It’s an experience that’s made even more surreal by the fact that the ship I’m sailing on? Is the flagship. My flagship. My people, my friends, my crew, my workshop….the exact same ship I’ll be sailing on as a regular crew member come August.

Talk about your busman’s holiday!

It does, however, present me with some opportunities I’ve never had on a ship before: I’m technically a guest (though I’m being sponsored by a crew member, so I can’t do anything too crazy) – I can sit on bar-stools, stay out past curfew (yeah we have one), wear jeans in the buffet line-up. It is all kinds of strange…

It’s also giving me a chance to get some work done as far as prep for next cruise, not to mention dropping off my uniforms. There’s the usual onboard meetings and raft  drills to attend…and then once all that is done….I get to have the very unusual experience of being a lady of leisure for two weeks…

So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and find a barstool to sit on…

Posted in Below the waterline, Leisure Lady, Reflections, Vacations/Shore-Side | 1 Comment

To Life – Victoria – [06/26/2017]

Posted on June 26, 2017 by GypsyShaughnessy

~So tell me why, oh why should it be that
We go on hurting each other~

Life is a funny thing, you never know what it’s going to bring and – some would say more importantly – you never know when it’s going to end.

The geek in me wants to believe that some madman in a blue police box will come down and whisk me off to the universe; but the logical side of me knows that just like princes in search of hapless servant girls with delicate slippers and talking animals, such things will always be in the pages of fiction.

The bald truth is this: life is wonderful, and life is hard. Really hard. It is an emotional and mental wring-out whirl-wind and there are times…oh there are so many times…when it feels like you have screwed up absolutely everything.

And who knows, maybe you have.

Because that happens, because human beings make mistakes. We make bad choices and we cause tsunamis by stepping on metaphorical butterflies. We hurt each other, we tread on each other, and then for whatever reason on whatever scale…most of us will come back, bandage the wounded, bury the dead (literally or figuratively) and we learn. Because that’s what happens…

Human beings have a marvelous capacity for pain – both causing and withstanding – but we also have an incredibly marvelous capacity to love. To forgive. To move on. Not to forget, forgetting would make the pain pointless, but moving on…granting those new beginnings…accepting them. That is the most beautiful gift we have.

Now more than ever, I wish people could see that. We’ve drawn so many lines in the sand that I don’t think we can even see the beaches anymore. There are so many variations of us and them that we don’t even know who we’re supposed to be fighting, what choices we’re supposed to be making.

In the last few years of my life, there have been many many times I have made choices that may not have been the wisest. May not have been the smartest.  I have learned from those choices, I have moved on from them and built from them.  They may not have been the smartest choices, some of them are not choices I’m proud of, but they are my choices. I have done my best to limit the ripple effect of those choices, but none of us can control other people’s reactions. That’s also part of life.

I am not always the smartest person in the world, none of us are, I make too many emotional decisions and I think too much with my heart instead of my head, and I often give people too many second chances. I’m not perfect, no one is.

But I do my best, and that’s what matters I suppose…

Because what else – in this crazy thing called life – can any of us do?

Posted in Reflections | 1 Comment

Pack-rat – Sydney, Nova Scotia – [07/14/2017]

Posted on June 15, 2017 by GypsyShaughnessy

It’s that time again..

Chocolate acquired, movie chosen…resignation to suitcases that came to the ship underweight leaving the ship overweight in place….

Time to pack…

The last few days of a contract always are so surreal. It’s as if I’m here but…not here. And packing ,packing remains the worst chore pretty much in the history of…ever.

That said, I actually started packing weeks ago;  because we left French Polynesia and that meant I wasn’t going to need any of my warm weather outfits. The east coast of Canada is not exactly weather of shorts and tank tops, not even in June. So the hard part was mostly done. Just a matter of getting the paperwork out of the drawers and the pictures down off the walls.

But it still feels weird.

It’s amazing how much of a life can fit into just two bags. But it does. Fortunately I haven’t accumulated too much stuff this contract, although more than I normally would have – especially in the way of books. And Disney t-shirts and general articles that are colourful.

And also a small metal mermaid statuette…

And several outfits for Applejack

Okay so maybe I did acquire some extra stuff.

So hopefully it will all fit into just those two suitcase!

Posted in South Of the Border 2017 | 1 Comment

Light in Darkness – Quebec, Canada – [06/09/2017]

Posted on June 9, 2017 by GypsyShaughnessy

Museums are my church, museums and art galleries. Every one is different, every one has its own signature, its own feeling. In their own way, each brings me peace.

The east coast of Canada has a great deal of memories attached to it for me, not all of it good. Not all of it bad by any means, but definitely mixed. Despite calling here at least twice so far this season, I haven’t set foot in Quebec for nearly three years.  But with only a week left in this contract it seemed pointless to waste a port. So out I went and just walked…and found myself into the Museum of Civilization, which is only steps from the ship.

Like I said, all museums are different; this one has a heavy focus on Native culture, which I always find both intriguing and horribly sad. So many things that we had no right to ever do, or to ever forget. In this case all captured behind glass and over headsets. It makes it look so clean and sterile, when no culture is like that, and the loss of a culture even less so. But what hypnotized me here wasn’t the exhibits themselves, it was the huge screens that surrounded it that showed nature: crystal clear lakes and staring eagles. There is no planet B people…we need to remember that. I can’t remember who said it but it is true “only when the last animal has been slaughtered and the last tree chopped down will we realize that we can’t eat money…”

The rest of the museum was mostly to do with provincial culture – which has been tumultuous to say the least – except for the one bit at the end that caught me a lot by surprise.

It was three doors, three identical doors in the wall, that’s it. All with the same handle, all the same oversized false keyhole. The doorknobs only spun, instead the doors pulled open, but only one actually let you in. The exhibit behind those doors was one of the oddest that I’ve yet seen. It was about the senses…not in the scientific way, but in how we should use them. One section of the place was a hall of mirrors made to look like the middle of the woods, another a replica of a beautifully cluttered attic (flashing me right back to when I was studying cabinets of curiosities in Uni), one a miniature of the night sky…and then the very last one. Having made my way through the previous few rooms I had no idea what to expect; but what I didn’t expect was complete darkness.

Total and complete, darkness.

The room was called “The Cellar”, and it was geared towards focusing you on the sense of touch. I didn’t make it through the first time, in fact I blatantly cheated, using the screen from my phone to light up the far wall. But the second time I went through I did it right; and it was the most unsettling experience I’ve had in a long time. Not frightening exactly, not once I knew I was going to be able to get out, but knowing that there are people who experience the world this way, and experiencing just how much your other senses do heighten when you are in total darkness.

That tiny dark room was the most enlightening part of my day.

 

 

Posted in South Of the Border 2017 | 1 Comment

Give me Liberty – Boston, USA – [06/02/2017]

Posted on June 3, 2017 by GypsyShaughnessy

Yes, sir, I think I do. As the ship lay in Boston Harbor, a party of the colonists dressed as red Indians boarded the vessel, behaved very rudely, and threw all the tea overboard, making the tea unsuitable for drinking. Even for Americans. ~ Mary Poppins

I expected the Boston Tea Party museum to be basically like any other museum. What I didn’t expect was what it actually was. This is not a standard gallery style museum with glass cases and hushed voices, this…is a show. A fully theatrical costumed experience complete with interactive guides and in-character docents. It is, in short, the kind of job that if I found myself living in Boston, I would audition for in a heartbeat.

Upon entering the museum I was assigned the name of a historical figure, and handed a feather (which would later prove necessary as a means of “disguise”) and introduced to Sam Adams, who gave such a rousing speech that it was not long before the room rang with thumps and huzzahs of agreement. And upon Mr Adams’ utterance of the now well-known words “This meeting can do nothing further to protect this country” we were escorted out of the meeting hall and onto one of the museum’s two full scale replicas of the ships involved in the original event. In the case of my visit today, it was the Beaver.

She’s a beautiful ship, fully rigged, and – though trapped in the harbor by the height of the bridge (she was constructed and then brought to the harbor with the masts’ separated to be reconstructed later) – fully seaworthy. They have raised the ceilings a foot to make room for visitors but all else is to scale. It was highly entertaining watching the children in the group heave replicas of tea chests over the side. Where they could – of course – be conveniently pulled back up for the next rebel to have a go.

But the experience of the day also gave me a lot of insight. I am a history buff only in regard to certain things, and general American history is not one of them. I learned about the Tea Party of course, all of us did, Canadian history classes seemed to focus more on our neighbour’s than on ourselves. But it had been a long long time since high school, and all I really knew was there was tea, there was a tax, and there was a revolt that ended up with the tea in the harbour. The pure historical significance of that event was somewhat lost on little Canadian me. The fact that this was the event that basically started the Revolutionary war is something that I never really put together. It took seeing a specific thing in the depths of that museum to really bring that home to me..

The Robinson Half chest.

It’s one of only two that are left. It’s matching companions, all bearing the scarred burned symbols of the East India Trading company, were burned or drowned with their contents. Just for good measure.  All that’s left is this one tiny, hatchet marked  and brightly painted wooden chest, hidden under a families’ stairs for years, then used to house a child’s doll collection, until it finally found its way to the museum, where it is suspended in a rotating glass case. A mute witness to the violence that lit the match to a revolution.

Nothing else could compare to that. Not the replica ships, the perfectly reconstructed paintings, the excellent scripting or the humor. It was all about that box.

History can be changed by the smallest, seemingly most insignificant things…

And on a totally unrelated note: How does one manage to get a job at an interactive museum? Because yeah, that would be brilliant.

Posted in Historical Sites, Ports of Call, South Of the Border 2017 | 3 Comments

Sail On – At Sea – [06/02/2017]

Posted on June 2, 2017 by GypsyShaughnessy

“Write a book and before you know it you’re living with her. Before you know it you’re married to her. And let me tell you something, there is no divorcing Titanic. Not ever” ~ Her Name, Titanic

It is difficult to understand or explain what Titanic means to me, her roots run deep and have affected me as long as I can remember. What started as terror has become scholarly interest (okay some would say obsession) and if I could make my living studying her, I would jump at that chance. She’s symbolic, she grabs you and she speaks to you. You do not forget her.

But it seems we have not learned from her.

Or perhaps we have just forgotten what we learned all those years ago. Forgotten the lesson that is buried under the water.

Pride cometh before…

They said she was unsinkable, and then they said she was unfindable. Soon, she will be gone. Because we simply cannot leave well enough alone.

She has become a multi-million dollar business when, if she could express herself, I’m sure all she wants is to be left alone with her ghosts and her tears and the cold water.  Had she plummeted just a few feet to the side of where she lies, she would have been lost down a crevasse. I have often wondered if that might not have been better. When Ballard first found her, he refused to give out the coordinates, to this day, despite all my digging and reading, I’ve yet to find out what (or how much) caused him to break that vow of silence. Had he not, we would know less perhaps, but she would have peace. As it is, the salvage attempts have caused more damage than they have insight…

We challenged the forces of nature, nature pushed back, and is now reclaiming that which we challenged her with. The truth is that there has been no ship like her since. Modern liners, while faster, larger, and “fancier” are neither as sleek or nor as luxurious. As the book I’m currently reading said “There has never been another ship like Titanic, because it simply hurt too much when we lost her.”

Here, on this particular itinerary, she is everywhere. There is a Canadian connection to the disaster that few even think about. They think about Belfast, and New York, and the Carpathia and the Californian, but it was not they who dealt with the aftermath, who dealt with the gruesome task of numbering and bringing in the lost. That fell to Canada, to Halifax, and it is why 150 souls from the most famous shipwreck in history rest in Canadian soil. When they sent out the cable ships to the wreck, they paid the crew double and extra rum rations, because they knew what the work was going to be.  Many of the bodies were returned to the ocean, for there were not enough coffins or embalming supplies onboard. And even in death, the class system survived: first class was carried off in coffins, second and third in canvas bags, crew? Crew in open stretchers.

And the world mourned, and then the world forgot. Until over seventy years later, a determined ocean explorer found what no one thought could be found. And she woke up, so to speak.

Something about this ship touched the public’s conciseness. It was a disaster that changed the world, the reason that the liners I travel on have spare lifeboats and life jackets, the reason we are drilled so constantly and know exactly where everything goes down to the last step…traces back to that cold night in April over 100 years ago.

And now the world stands on the brink once again, we challenge the planet and think we will win, that somehow “conquering” nature makes us stronger, that not acknowledging that we are so very dependent on something so very fragile and carefully balanced somehow makes us more powerful. We constantly think only of the next great thing we can achieve, rather than thinking of the cost that it may bring to us, and those who love us, and who come after us.

We have not learned. For all our study and all our pride we have not learned.

We are still on a ship, metaphorically speaking, and one has to wonder…are there really enough lifeboats?

 

 

Posted in Below the waterline, Titanic | 1 Comment

The Eyes of Anne – Charlottetown, P.E.I – [05/24/2017]

Posted on May 24, 2017 by GypsyShaughnessy

Every young girl in Avonlea is about to heaven as she can be. If you don’t know why then I guess you didn’t hear…
~ Anne And Gilbert

Someone this morning observed to me that Anne of Green Gables was “not a real person” and, as such, that they didn’t understand  why she received so much attention during our call in P.E.I. At the time, I was at a loss for words – because as a bookworm, a Canadian and a theatre girl, it never occurred to me to question Anne. Anne just is…

Without giving it much more thought, I went out to enjoy my day in Charlottetown, I love it here. It reminds me of home. I know the reputation that the residents of the island have for being unfriendly to those who “come from away” and I’m sure I would perhaps run into that a bit more if I ventured outside of the main city; but all I’ve ever encountered here is kindness and good humour. And the kind of beautiful fresh air that you can only seem to get on an island. Truly, I would live here, and I don’t say that about many people…

Sipping on a bottle of raspberry cordial I wandered through the sunshine and ended up perusing  the local used book store (and not for the first time, got a slightly bewildered look from the clerk when I laid down four Titanic history books, that often does make for an odd conversation when they find out that I also happen to work on a cruise ship). With everything purchased and in my overly large handbag, I inevitably found myself back in the audience of the Guild Theatre; watching Anne & Gilbert. And laughing, and crying, and …feeling…better about things. Better about life, in general.

Three years ago, this show saw me through a lot. Attending it was the light at the end of a long hard day; and as I sat there rewatching it, and realizing that I will likely return to it next week, I could feel it peeling back the layers of tarnish that had collected over the last few months. My heart felt lighter somehow.

Anne is very good at that you see…

And that’s when it occurred to me. No, Anne did not historically exist, but that does not mean that Anne is not very very real. She is a mindset, an attitude. Anne – and her fellow residents of Avonlea –  are symbols. They are reminders that we can make our way through hardship, through all the ups and downs of life, including massive battles within ourselves, and still come out the other side of it all with only a thin sheen of jade over our sunshine. Anne’s ability to find the good in things, while still being stubborn and self-depreciating, and so stoically and totally herself against all odds, is something we can somehow all relate to. She is universal, she could easily be all of us.

And as such, Anne will always be a national treasure. Physically real or not.

Truly, I think we could all do better if we perhaps strive to be a bit more like Anne…with an “E”…

 

Posted in Historical Sites, Ports of Call, South Of the Border 2017 | 1 Comment

God’s Heaven Be Their Blanket – Halifax, Nova Scotia – [05/22/2017]

Posted on May 22, 2017 by GypsyShaughnessy

May God’s heaven be your blanket as you sleep…
~ Titanic: The Musical

Graveyards are wise, and the air in them is different. Some find an attraction to them gothic or macabre, I just find them peaceful. All graveyards are wise…the air is always different there. But this one is more different still.

There are 121 of them here, different from the rest, in plots laid out in the vague curve of a ship’s bow if looked at from the right angle; a bow that points – as the crow flies – directly towards the cold water that swallowed them and so many others. Of those 121, few bear names, most provide only one date, the same date over and over and over again

April 15th, 1912

A date and a number that denotes when they were pulled from the water.

These then, are almost all that is left, – though there are a handful at rest elsewhere in Halifax – of the 300 or so souls that were recovered from the chill and uncaring Atlantic when the “Unsinkable ship” was swallowed by the waves on a moonless night in April over 100 years ago. A lonely but beautiful cemetery on the east coast of Canada their final destination.

When they sent the cable ships out to retrieve the dead, they paid the crew on board double, because they knew the type of cargo they would be returning with. Tramua pay really, the job had to be done, but doing it was a tragedy all by itself.

And they ended up here, in Fairview Cemetery. “The Titanic Graveyard”

Yes, I came. Finally. Three years ago I made all the excuses I could not to come here. I didn’t intend to come here today, but somehow I found myself on the bus and this is where I ended up. Perhaps in the grand scheme of things it is fitting that I came alone. This was something, somehow, that I had to do. For me, this has always been personal. On a surreal, inexplicable and almost painful level, this will always be personal.

Of the few markers that bear names, most of them are crew. Almost all of them bear the same kind of inscription – when there is one at all – “He stayed at his post, determined to help others, and went down with the ship”. Smattered among the small company paid for stones are the occasional taller monuments paid for by long gone friends and family, but most who were buried here are third class or crew, and their families could afford no such extravagance. Among those is the one lone musician – a violinist, who proudly played until the end. It’s true, the band did play on…and the engineers that lie next to him kept the lights going until the cold cold water swept in and dimmed those lights forever.

These are the heroes, lying here at my feet. They always will be.

There is one grave here that draws more attention than it necessarily should, that is to say, it gets a lot of attention for a reason that …doesn’t feel right. That of J. Dawson. No, it is not Jack. Jack Dawson was a fiction created in the mind of a director for a movie that had so many flaws I can barely even think about it clearly. But there is a J. Dawson resting here. His name was not Jack, it was Joseph Dawson, and he was a coal trimmer. Quite possibly one of the worst jobs on the ship.

He was one of the ones that kept the lights burning until the very very end.

It is, at least, peaceful, perhaps more so than the deep depths of the Atlantic that serve as a grave for so many who never saw another tomorrow.   How many families’ resting places are separated by miles? We’ll probably never know. We don’t even know their names. So many people, so few names.

How do you respond to that? What can you say?

I could stay here so easily. Just sit cross legged at the bottom of a monument and listen. But graveyards are built for the living not for the dead, they are not here now, or at least if they are, there are only traces. And those traces are little more than near-silent whispers in the corners of my hearing.

There are children here, and women, though the “law of the sea” means that there are few. There is one though, at the head of one of the gracefully curved lines of graves, that stands as a monument to the “unknown child”. Her memorial service was paid for by the crew of the cable ship that drew the bodies from the water, as she was one of the first to be found. She was finally successfully identified a few years ago, but even now, she stands for those whose names are long lost.

These graves…they stand in silent tribute to a lesson we have yet to learn: life can change in an instant.  We are forever striving to outdo ourselves…how many tragedies must we survive before we realize that we cannot, nor will we ever, conquer nature. How many more graves must there be before we realize that or own arrogance has all too often been our downfall?

All graveyards are wise…this one is wiser than most.

Posted in Below the waterline, Reflections, South Of the Border 2017, Titanic | 2 Comments