Douglas Mercer
November 28 2024
Continued from Crow (Part Three)
They say one should never tempt fate but I never saw why; and I can certainly see now that that is what I was doing. From an objective standpoint I had no business setting out on a craft that was ill conceived and without having the experience that was required; and it did not take long in the event for reality to set in; when reality sets in is when it becomes not a perfect as the idea. People were always telling me that I ignore the world, that I felt I could will or dream something into existence, as if when you thought about it long enough something would become true provided you never stopped thinking it. I always was drawn to the books of HG Wells and his novels had people much like myself, amateurs who dream big but when they venture out into the wider world their fever is tempered. But that is just a set story as well, and no one who tempers anything achieves greatness. They say that when reality becomes not as great as the idea it shows why ideas are dangerous; they say that the mind is a precarious mechanism and when it runs riot the imagination is dangerous as well, indeed the greatest danger; but I don’t see why that is. Fate is always what is tempting us, tempting us to tempt it you might say.
It did not take long for things to go wrong. I hoisted my sails and when I crossed the starting line by the Ness (4:52 PM local time, October 31 1968, some seven hours in hand--no one ever said I don’t cut things close) the official timer fired a shot. Certainly everyone knew, due to the novelty of what I was doing, and in some respect due to the controversy and the plethora of problems that had plagued the past months or so, that something fateful, or at least sensational was underway, though no one, most definitely including myself, realized that it was a New Age. That would happen next year on the Moon everyone thought—but that was just one step, and one in a very near neighborhood. This was something else—a dark horse.
At the top of my lungs toward the shore I screamed half in jest: I’ll be glad when I’m on my own without the help of you bloody lot!---and on my own I was to be. My wife did not wave but just stood there watching her husband disappear into the distance. Sailing off like that the thought crossed my mind of how little experience I really had, and that thought fortitude and courage counted for a lot, but in the end it would come down to knowledge; for when things happen fast one can’t be lazy, one had to be mentally alert, and has to be able to think without thinking about it---and you have to know what to do, not after mulling it over but right now.
The first day I spent cleaning my cabin which was a bloody mess. I noticed that the lacing eyes of the main boom had broken and I said to myself that will be a nuisance for the rest of the trip. I kept finding odd objects that I did not even know had been put aboard in Tupperware containers, and I set about carefully organizing them in my customary manner. The equipment I had would have looked right at home in a ham radio fanatic’s basement: aerial connections, microphones, headsets, morse keys, switch panels, transmitters and receivers; indeed as it looked my boat was a travelling hub of communications; the foremost idea that anyone would have got from stepping board was of wires---wires everywhere, color coded wires hanging all over the place. I had wires that formed a kind of spinal cord or nervous system of electronics which went hand in hand with my hobbyist’s nature; to me it all seemed very impressive, like all the words and messages in the world could be lit up, and the wires themselves fanning out above board to the rigging and floats; to my eye it justified all of my talk about the wizard like nature of my “computer”; but soon even the idea of communication became a fraught one; what to say or when to say it or when to achieve radio silence, that is whether to say it at all, it was a tricky question; and in the books too for a while it was a game of cat and mouse until I decided on the third option of the truth.
But as time wore on and when I was still in sight of Lizard Head the disaster began to ensue; the steering gear going away was the first sign; it had shed some screws and I had to replace them from less essential parts but it occurred to me that this cannibalization could not go on forever lest the boat literally eat itself up. If the shedding continued the boat could lose control when I was not present at the helm, which could not be always. On one of the first nights when it got dark I hoisted the reflecting radar even higher up on the mast and as a result I cut my left middle finger badly. Blood was everywhere and on the boat’s bottom I was not able to clean it off; and in the hectic days ahead only a glimpse of the red pattern was enough to trigger me into anxiety, as if some initial sin was plaguing me still. And it was a hell of a morning one morning when I began to notice that bubbles were blowing out from the hatch when the boat rolled; the float was dripping a lot more water than it should and it was then that I noticed that the whole compartment was flooded; with a bucket I began to furiously bail and mop. It was a protracted and tiring effort as the fifteen foot waves came across and as fast as I bailed just as fast it came back in. Was the boat only a toy fit for a museum or an artificial lake? Had the scornful detractors among my town folk been right?
I was always fearing leaks but to get too tangled up in the future is to cause something to spill by fearing the spill; looking back at those hard days I see the hand of destiny in it, what got me here was so serpentine in nature, and so improbable, and yet it happened so suddenly as in a process that was automatic; the best thing about writing now is that I don’t imagine how anyone will read these words or take or perceive them; this is only for me. But to say such a thing as the “hand of fate” is a sign of the incurable romantic in me, and others would say that this was only used that as rhetorical device in histrionic game. And when I think of my penchant for conceits or play acting I can’t help but recall how others had taken me; as a man given most of all to the put on, and the high drama I always had to be participating in, as if mundane life was so boring or tedious that only the world of imagination could redeem it; I can see now that the critics (and there will be many!) will say that everything in this final narrative was prefigured in my entire life, the hullo folks disposition, the theatricals, the pretend black magic, the claims of future disembodied life, even the car crashes and the constant belief that it was belief alone that could create reality. But critics are critics and historians are historians and they have yet to create a category to put this into. And so the sober minded and the judicious, seeing that they have no corpus delecti, but only the glaring circumstance in this case that proves the existence of the crime, will declare suicide by drowning, or death by misadventure, they will tie it up in a neat story. But being a bit of a purveyor of words myself I know what words can do and I know what words can cover up; and for the most part when it comes to genuine mysteries words are meant to obscure the issue rather than look at it coldly and elucidate it. They will say when they read these words that the foremost task of any interpreter is to deftly unmesh the genuine observations from the role playing; first off I have learned enough by now to know that they is a false dichotomy; looked at aright tragedy and farce are the same genre; and out here on the waves the only thing to do in the face of death is laugh at the ridiculousness of it. They will say that I have a Public Hero tone and a private tone that is more searching; I can tell you the two have merged as sure as the two worlds will merge; I am sure they will call this entry itself a pose, as if I were on stage issuing a dramatic soliloquy with a death’s head nearby to frighten those in the rafters; it’s true that in some of the films I made I said now’s about the time for some deathless prose, a bit of the old Hemingway, eh---but irrepressible and mocking high spirits are in no way contradictory to absolute sincerity, in fact the first may be a prerequisite for the latter; because we always see the truth as some dark and bitter thing; but nothing could be further from the truth trust me: I speak from personal experience.
Meanwhile the boat was falling to pieces. On Saturday I had noticed that more screws had fallen from the tree spar of the mizzen on the main mast; lack of engineering detail had sunk my chances from the beginning, we had started too late and had been too rushed; plus my navigation was perplexing; each day it would place me in the same position as if for all my exertions and watery perambulations I was stuck stationary in the same spot or perhaps just going round and round in the same circle. Something was going wrong with my sight of the sun perhaps but I could not figure it out; and then came the worst as I see now when I wrote: too tired to care. It is this inertia and sloth that is the dread enemy at sea where even a moment’s inexactitude or lack of attention and you are sunk without a trace. I MUST NOT ALLOW MYSELF TO GET LAZY, I wrote out several times in bold lettering as if to hypnotize myself out of the trance of forgetfulness; all was hurry and scurry for a time then on November 13 (just two weeks out of England) I had my third major disaster. I had already been in peril of steering trouble and faulty gears; now the electrical generator was about to go. This was real catastrophe, the kind that makes a man think that the exhilaration of the good days were when one was in a fool’s paradise. As I sat down I saw near my feat the blood spots as if instead of tempting fate it was tempting me. I had to face it: now I had to realistically think about the alternatives open to me, take stock, think about what was in store. I knew that what would happen next was pure conjecture; but had yet to learn that I must act without guile.
I am more than well aware of what the main line of interpretation will be as to my adventure (or misadventure!), especially if psychiatrists get their clinical hands on it. Here was a man (they will say) who through irrepressible high spirits was given to play acting; he was full of bluff and bravado and had a theory for everything; he was smart enough but always viewed himself as smarter than he was and certainly viewed himself as above his station; and then he undertook a foolhardy quest that he had no business engaging in; he did this in order to prove to himself (for he often lied to himself as well as to others) that his vision of himself was real. Then in the event the whole escapade (which was an effort at escape) became a rolling fiasco and began to take on water. In the face of this he did what he always did: planned, schemed, plotted and hatched, that is he lied. For a time these fabrications of this fabulist seemed like they might work; but then the fraudulent account of this unreliable narrator also began to spring leaks and he was stranded on a calm sea square face with reality. This crush of the real was of such an overwhelming force that he suffered a psychotic break with reality, lest he face himself as he really was; once more he lied and used his perfervid imagination to claim something for himself which was not true. This was the final lie, the lie of all lies, the lie that would redeem all others and subsume them into the truth. And then he had the audacity to claim as a universal truth the idea that the only sin was to conceal, that is to lie. Thus we have the classic case of the primary narcissist who thinks though clever words and plotting he can make his way through any impasse, and that no matter how much it rose he could by his wits always keep his head above water.
This will be their story, you can be sure of it. But it occurs to me that everyone has a story. And so do I and mine, what is more, will be true.
Continued at Crow (Part Five)
