{"id":1048,"date":"2012-04-06T13:45:33","date_gmt":"2012-04-06T08:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=1048"},"modified":"2013-06-17T18:56:31","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T18:56:31","slug":"playing-for-keeps-at-sea-03312012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=1048","title":{"rendered":"Playing for Keeps… \u2013 At Sea \u2013 [03\/31\/2012]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The problem with being the last of anything is that eventually there\u2019ll be none left at all. The world used to be bigger Jack.<\/em><\/p>\n

No…no the world\u2019s the same… there\u2019s just less in it.<\/em><\/p>\n

~Pirates of the Caribbean, At World\u2019s End<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s strange, but at the same time that I can\u2019t bear to imagine where my life would have ended up had I not taken this job, there are times when I wish I\u2019d never set foot on that San Diego gangway nearly two years ago. Would I have still met the people that have become so close to me? Would I still have met my Siblings? Yes. Of that I have come to have no doubt whatsoever, the circumstances of our meeting would have been different, but those people were meant to enter, and in some very sad cases that I have come to believe I am not supposed to understand, meant to leave, my journey.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to explain, but I suppose bear with me while I try.<\/p>\n

Before I came to ships the world was as huge as it was inaccessible. It was full of amazing intriguing things and gauzy images of places that were fueled by literature and imagination and myth and legend. I was like the farmboy who dreams of being a knight \u2013 unaware of the blood and battle and grief that goes with the armor and the medals of honour. The world we paint with the help of National Geographic and Jane Austen and whatever else might contribute to the image in our minds, is not the same as the world we travel in. To truly travel is both to have those illusions reinforced, and to have them dashed to pieces.<\/p>\n

The job expands your world, at the same time as it reminds you just how very small it is.<\/p>\n

Once, long ago, in a drawing I completed for art class, a mermaid perched on a rock and stared at a tall ship on the horizon. She dreamed of being aboard that ship, of belonging somewhere, of seeing the world beyond the confines of the sphere she\u2019d grown up in, of running away from the troubles that plagued her. Dreamed of chasing life around the globe and catching it in the process of the chase.<\/p>\n

The universe listened to her plea, and exchanged her tale for legs, and her legs for wings. She succeeded in her dream, and she\u2019s quite happy with that most of the time. Her wings have grown stronger. She shed her scales for Indian silks, scented her hair with incense smoke and slept in sheets of Egyptian cotton, she sees wonders now that she never could have dreamed even existed. She has opened many, many new windows….and each new window has led to another vista, another adventure, another viewpoint.<\/p>\n

But sometimes she looks back at the trail of selves that she shed in the pursuit and wonders….<\/p>\n

When did the world, that once seemed so vast, become so small?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The problem with being the last of anything is that eventually there\u2019ll be none left at all. The world used to be bigger Jack. No…no the world\u2019s the same… there\u2019s just less in it. ~Pirates of the Caribbean, At World\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,40,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-below-the-waterline","category-grand-world-voyage-2012","category-reflections-below-the-waterline"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-gU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1048"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2282,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048\/revisions\/2282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}