an old skin

Metal polish seeps into my skin.
I move blankets and towels room to room.
A sink is leaking and needs a new fitting. I find a screwdriver and twist off the hoseclamp. Satisfaction is taking a heatgun to plastic tubing, pulling male and female apart with a salubrious pop. I root in the bilges for a replacement but none is to be found.
I move on to the next project as the day creeps towards evening: sewing string together to cradle the sails. The sails are why I am here.

I love the little projects, the neat endings, the gratitude in finite tasks.
Its not like writing where the parts are interchangeable and on one day a word fits snugly in its place and the next it seems to rip jagged holes into whatever passes above or below. Or it hangs limply, wilting in the sun of the next paragraph. I write, read, rewrite, reread, rewrite, infinitely.
On a boat the lines may fray, the fuel may run out but all these mechanical situations bring comfort in their tangibility. Mend or replace the lines, fill the tank with diesel.

And yet. And yet! I wander around over teak and holly, through narrow hallways leading to narrow bunks and a cold toilet seat I'm not allowed to use in port. This is not my own. I fix and prep and provision and wonder: what the hell am I doing? All these motions mean little to me now. The purpose has evaporated and I feel more Meaning and Action in the cerebrally compartmentalized meanderings and half joisted frameworks holding up stories in my mind. What once was a glorious job now seems a whittling of time- I could be Not Getting Paid to dream and record and excavate the possibilities within... and be much more rewarded.

I am anxious to get back to my craft; my muse is whispering to me over the shelf of the continent. She wishes me well on the actual voyage, on the conversations with whales and swallows, on the long nights of stars horizon to horizon singing me awake. She knows I need this too, that it excites and nourishes and forms me. Feeds me. As is true of the reciprocally crucial work in the formation of letters and pauses. In the spinning of tangled webs unfurling with each step into the woods or with hands in the soil or with each stroke through the cool water.

This other work, this hoseclamp in my hand, they may have a solid purpose and function but me being the holder of such devices and titles for another's pleasure, it is an old and flimsy costume on me now. I set down the screwdriver, pick up the keyboard and fix what I can with the tools of my fingertips smelling of metal polish and solvent, solving nothing and dreaming everything.