{"id":949,"date":"2012-03-14T16:16:18","date_gmt":"2012-03-14T09:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=949"},"modified":"2013-06-17T18:51:17","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T18:51:17","slug":"aint-no-word-but-at-sea-03132012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=949","title":{"rendered":"Ain\u2019t No Word But\u2026. \u2013 At Sea \u2013 [03\/13\/2012]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u201cNow Bangkok\u2019s pouring rain and I\u2019m going \u2018round again and I ain\u2019t seen my girl in 15,000 miles\u2026and is it true it\u2019s always happy hour here? And if it is I\u2019d like to stay awhile, and as clich\u00e9 as it may sound I\u2019d like to raise another round, and if your bottle\u2019s empty help yourself to mine, thank you for your time \u2013 and here\u2019s to life\u201d – Mekong (The Refreshments)
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

250 days out\u2026<\/p>\n

45 days left\u2026<\/p>\n

22 ports\u2026<\/p>\n

23 sea days\u202623 very long, very dragging sea days, including one trans-Atlantic crossing.<\/p>\n

Not of course that I\u2019m counting. Not that I have a \u2018convicts calendar\u2019 pasted to my cabin wall, with great red slashes through the dates that indicate the first half of the month. The rest of the markings are legible only to me, mostly various initials indicating where friends are (\u201cH to WST\u201d, \u201cT to RT\u201d, \u201cS to IoM\u201d \u201cM to LV\u201d etc ) my own way of keeping track of where my various Siblings are in the world. All are in places elsewhere than here. Normally this doesn\u2019t bother me, I\u2019m quite used to my family being far-flung, but sometimes\u2026<\/p>\n

But when you find yourself talking to your mother over the crackling connection of the satellite dependant phone, and you both realize at the same time that you\u2019ve been out for nearly a year, that home and work have swapped places. You don\u2019t live at home anymore; you just come back for a visit once in a while? Well, it can hit you hard.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m an ex-citizen of nowhere, and sometimes I get mighty homesick<\/em><\/p>\n

Out here your world shrinks after a while, you talk about going home for the night in reference to going back to your cabin, watching a movie on your laptop and crawling into bed simply because you don\u2019t feel like going to the Officer\u2019s Bar that night. With the time differences being what they are right now, calls home are left until the wee small hours of the morning, or late, late at night, and email checks become uncertain as the people you\u2019re hoping to hear from are seldom awake when you are.<\/p>\n

By the time I\u2019m finished with this contract, I will have seen well over 100 ports and traversed countless days at sea, I will have made friends that will last me a life time, made connections that run deeper than I ever expected, I will have been to Hong Kong Disneyland twice, Singapore twice, climbed the Great Wall of China, had my photograph taken in Antarctica, sailed around Cape Horn and danced under the stars in Tahiti.<\/p>\n

I will have been away from Victoria for 295 days. At least.<\/p>\n

In multiple ways that I cannot even explain, or if I could they are not for this venue, my life has changed forever on this voyage. I am a vastly different woman from the one who trekked up the gangway in Seattle in June. I always am, I\u2019ve said many times before that every contract changes you, but this one has thrown my very sense of self into a spin that I\u2019m only just starting to pull out of. It seems that one thing happens and just as my head and heart start to resolve it, another quake comes. Most of those changes are good, and have brought on the kind of self-examination that, even though it may feel like you\u2019re being torn apart and rebuilt from the ground up, you come out of a stronger and better person. That said, there are only a few things that remain steady under my feet these days, and for those I remain eternally grateful.<\/p>\n

But whoever I am, and whoever I become\u2026what I am right now?<\/p>\n

Well\u2026.<\/p>\n

Out here they got a name for rain, for wind and fire only, but when you\u2019re lost and all alone there ain\u2019t no word but lonely\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cNow Bangkok\u2019s pouring rain and I\u2019m going \u2018round again and I ain\u2019t seen my girl in 15,000 miles\u2026and is it true it\u2019s always happy hour here? And if it is I\u2019d like to stay awhile, and as clich\u00e9 as it … 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-949","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-fj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949","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=949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2257,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions\/2257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}