Throwing Things Out, Driving Around, and Talking About Sailing.

I never posted a Discardia wrap-up, did I? The end of it got upstaged by Earn-money-a. Due to diverse work schedules, hhw and I didn't make it to the Hazardous Waste facility (though we still intend to go). And I bought something on the last day of the holiday, which is the day you're supposed to not "buy anything or bring anything into your home and enjoy the fact that you have enough." I bought some fish and chips and a milkshake, because in the rush to get from work to a show (which I was too early for), I forgot all about Discardia. I'm not sorry though. They were tasty.

I'm not sure how summer Discardia will work for me. Maybe by the time I've been in Hawaii for a few weeks I'll have accumulated some stuff to discard? Maybe I'll clean up my hard drive. Or maybe I'll have to actually examine "ideas and habits [I] no longer need." That sounds almost painful.

In the spirit of Discardia, and also Obtainia or perhaps just Rearrangia (Q: Am I taking this wordplay too far? A: YES), there is a Stuff Swap going on in Portland this Saturday the 19th. It's basically a free garage sale: bring your old stuff and/or take home new stuff without ever getting out your wallet. I heard these have been pretty cool in the past; this will be my first time to actually attend and not just drop stuff off beforehand. E-mail me if you're interested and I'll give you the details.

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I had a fun weekend driving around in Washington. Oregon is the landscape of my heart, but Washington is my favorite place for a road trip. Crossing the Columbia, heading north with the windows down and adventure ahead, is greatly giddifying. Doubly so when the weather suddenly turns fabulous.

I went to Gig Harbor for Truck's hitchin' (daah hah), which was pretty good times, as weddings go. And I crashed at Piri's place for a couple nights, so we had a little time to catch up on our respective plans and (mis)adventures and creative projects, and even planned to revive one of the latter for collaboration (woo exciting!).

And both times I passed the Aberdeen exit, I got that little tug that said "turn off!" Even though the tall ships are still in California and everyone in the Seaport office was home for the weekend, even though Aberdeen is a really wretched town and Westport doesn't have a lot going for it, still I knew the sun and the wind and the water were doing amazing things out there, and I really really wanted to be part of it.

So it was gratifying to get back to my speedy internet connection and read a post from former crewmate Annie about realizing how much sailing lingo you've learned. I only know maybe half of the terms on her list, which is appropriate because she is at least twice the sailor I am. But I definitely know what a vang is (and that there are four of them on the Chieftain, two of which need to be moved from pinrail to kevel before setting the mains'l, and by the way they go three times round the kevel before the locking hitch, or they're impossible to undo if there's any wind to speak of). The article she references articulates something about the language of sailing I think I've tried to say before, but not nearly as eloquently:

But there’s no glazing over [the vocabulary] when you begin sailing, as I did under tutelage for the first time a few weeks ago. You find yourself at sea, awash in the natural world, and yet at the same time you find yourself immured in a vigilant kind of properness, a clear sense of how things should be. It’s not just a matter of proper names. It’s a matter of proper actions and responses, without which there is a world of trouble. There is something deeply ethical about it, as there always is in the command of language.

This was one of the things I found deeply comforting about sailing, even while being utterly confused by it: that there is a unique way of talking about things, and a particular way of doing things, both of which have been derived from centuries of trial and error. Taken out of context these seem odd, even nonsensical, but in a world where creatures of earth move across the water using wood, metal, and air, they make sense. I mean, literally, they make sense, taking something ridiculously complicated and improbable and distilling it into something anyone can quickly learn to contribute to and even understand. The way we've shaped this technology is amazing, but no more so than the way it has shaped us.