My hands just would not let go! For 30 seconds they remained attached to my
lovely AVENTURA even though I was already standing in the launcha ready to head
off on the first leg of a long trip back to the so-called “real world.” Finally, the boatman said, “Ramon, are you
okay?” This shook me out of my
trepidation trance and I replied, “Sorry, Ignacio, vamanos – let’s go!”
I have now returned from that journey - and my hands were right. Each reunion with “normalcy” staggers me so brutally that I wonder whether I can ever go back again. For a sea gypsy like me, who experiences it
only every few years, the modern world looks like low-grade lunacy.
· The frantic yet fruitless frenzy of the car culture –
accelerating up to sixty mph even though the next gridlock stoppage is clearly
visible 100 yards ahead.
· The sad and tragic disconnection of those who believe
that they are so “connected.”
· The cultural mean-spiritedness that worships
competition and power and ridicules co-operation and sensitivity.
· The Everywhereness of Television. In this NSA version of our Cowardly New World
of 1984 Plus 30, it is even more troubling knowing that The Screen is probably
watching us as much as we are watching it.
· The ever-increasing incompetence and unpleasantness of
the bureaucracies that are utterly inescapable in the modern world.
Admittedly, for those marooned in this society, they
have become so gradually acclimated to it, that the insanity of it is barely
noticed. It is the old dilemma of asking
a fish about water. The tuna is so
immersed in it, that it cannot perceive it.
Here are a couple of examples of the absurdities that I experienced
first-hand.
I always buy a little $10 cell phone when I arrive in
Key West so that my friends will be able to conveniently contact me during my
visit. Obviously, I do not also buy a 2
year contract but opt for the purchase of a modest amount of minutes. When my $10 worth of time was running low, I
called to buy some more minutes using my debit card. I spent the requisite 5 minutes maneuvering
through the non-human phone tree. They
required all of my normal info such as card number, expiration date, the 3
numbers on the back, but now they also want the phone # for when the debit card
was first activated. Since that was many
years ago it was also many phone numbers ago.
After another 5 minutes of telephone bumper cars, I finally made it
through to an actual breathing human being.
However, this person who was presumably addressing me from somewhere on
the Indian sub-continent, was totally indecipherable. I couldn’t even unravel whether it was a male
or female voice.
So I attempted to purchase some more minutes via the
internet. I went to the website and
typed in my new phone #. It asked for a
password. Nobody had provided me a
password. But alas, if I clicked a link
it would text me a password on my new phone.
Presto! It did so quite
swiftly. I typed it into the appropriate
box and retyped it again for verification.
I expected to then be quickly
shifted to the page where I could buy some more minutes. But instead, it informed me that without my
CURRENT password it could not assign me a new one. Perhaps it is just me, but that seems to beg
the question: “If I knew my current password, why the hell would I be
requesting a new one?” And so, I hopped
on my bicycle and pedaled 3 miles back to the “cell phone provider” and
purchased some more minutes from an actual human.
A more ominous encounter with Bureaucracy Nation was
my attempt to obtain a new passport.
When getting my picture taken at a place that specializes in passport
photos, I was told that they would have to do it over again. When I inquired why that was, she said
because I had smiled. I assumed that she
was joking, but in fact it is now a law that you cannot be smiling on an official
passport photo. It felt like the ghost
of Kafka was now writing the passport regulations.
The Miami passport office was horrible the last time I
renewed mine about ten years ago; but this time it was a veritable daytime
nightmare. When I arrived at the door it
was locked but there was a large blue arrow pointing down the block. I proceeded in that direction but found no
office. The Miami Design College was
there for the next 4 doorways or so.
Eventually their doors ended and there was an entrance to a parking
garage under the building. Assuming that
couldn’t be it, I retraced the 70 yards back to the original large blue
arrow. There I discovered in very small
print that the office entrance was now…in the parking garage.
So back I went at least feeling comfortable that I had
pre-arranged an appointment over the phone.
But apparently I was not alone in this regard. There were 54 people in line ahead of
me. We all stood there in this grim
concrete garage inhaling auto fumes with the line not moving at all. Forty minutes later the queue still hadn’t
budged and yet nobody provided us any explanation for the delay. There was no drinking water and no
bathrooms. Eventually, I just walked
away from such blatant indignity and decided to try my luck with a U.S. Embassy
overseas.
The philosopher in me could not help but question what
all of this is about. Why are we so
bludgeoned in the so-called advanced world by these bureaucratic SNAFUs that
seem purposely designed to degrade us?
Why must my passport photo look like a criminal mug shot? Why are automated phone trees - that rob
people of their jobs - not even efficient?
Why must I show my passport to a TSA guard and then show it again to
another one 6 feet later? Why is it that
almost all bureaucracies seem to have forgotten what basic human decency means?
Why…oh why…oh why?
*******
But these were just personal nuisances and aggravations. However, while back in the U.S. I noticed two
items in the alternative media that were extremely foreboding on a societal level. Our ruling class – oops, I mean our
government – is stealthily attempting to further reduce Freedom of the Press by
having federal observers in newspaper, radio and television news rooms. They will monitor what they term “Critical
Information Needs.” A cynic might suggest
that they will be there to insure that information that is critical for
supporting the government’s position on any particular issue is the “need” that
these neutral observers will be tracking.
Is it too big a stretch to imagine them also compiling lists of journalistic
troublemakers who are not willing to toe the government line?
Presumably, the ruling class – oops, I mean duly
elected representatives of the Multi-National Corporations, Too Big To Fail
Banks and the Military Industrial Surveillance Prison Complex - believe that this latest insult to a free
society will not be greeted with pitchforks and torches. But just in case one of their actions eventually
does nudge the citizens beyond the “can’t take any more” tipping point, there
was another extremely disturbing revelation in the non-mainstream media.
The Pentagon has built a 300 acre “fake city” in
Virginia complete with a bank, a mock subway station, and a sports stadium in
order to train troops in advanced urban combat techniques. If this has you wondering whether this is
designed for overseas operations or for responding to domestic violence, you
are not alone. It certainly seems like
the army is being trained for homeland police duties even though that is
strictly forbidden by the Posse Comitatus Act which has restrained the military
ever since 1878.
*******
So, my recent journey convinced me that corporate and
governmental bureaucracies have become even more ludicrous and soul-sapping
than ever. And then combine that with
two more examples of the U.S. steadily sliding from freedom towards tyranny,
and I gained even greater clarity about the value of my sea gypsy path.
My wanderings on the Wide Waters have been driven by
two main motivations. The first is the
sheer enjoyment of it. And the second is
the fact that an ocean-ready sailboat is probably the ideal survival platform
should the world face a severe emergency.
Here are some of the joyous aspects of this life choice that make it so
wondrous:
·
As a sea gypsy I
don’t visit Nature - I live cocooned in it.
My days are not spent in a world of concrete, asphalt and steel. Creatures of the Sea and the Sky are not rare
visitors - they are my neighbors.
·
My life is
slo-mo. At warp speed my boat barely
achieves 7 mph. Back in the real world, its
frantic pace genuinely unnerves me.
·
The freedom to
“just sail away to somewhere else” is a powerful elixir. If a
situation deteriorates, it is pretty intoxicating to be able to pull up my
anchor and head for greener pastures or bluer waters.
·
There is much
more community in the sailboat cruising world than in suburbia. There are frequent pot lucks, swap meets,
beach volleyball games, etc. And
neighborly helpfulness is the norm rather than the exception.
These are
some of the wonderful characteristics of my life aboard and abroad. The second aspect of my sea gypsy existence
that is very reassuring is the fact that should there be any sort of
large-scale emergency of a societal or environmental or political or economic
nature, my AVENTURA is an ideal survival platform. And she offers the prospect of not just
making it through the black swan storm clouds, but of actually flourishing
after the calamity has occurred. My carefully
considered thinking in this regard is detailed in my 4 “Sea Gypsy Tribe” essays
that are available here on my blog.
*******
So now that I
have returned from my latest visit to Insaneistan, I have another reason for
embracing my sea gypsy path – ESCAPE!
Rather than passively surrendering to an Un-Culture that is
mean-spirited and numbing and that grinds a person down, I have actively
abandoned it for a better way of living.
I have voluntarily rejected its insipid artificiality – its Reality
Television and Celebrity Worship and Shopping Mall Nirvana. I have sailed away from a United States that
is so different from that of my youth – a nation that is now widely scorned because
it has become a global bully and a police-surveillance state.
*******
Arriving back aboard AVENTURA, I opened
all the hatches and portholes to let her air out. A sailboat can get pretty musty when battened
down for 3 weeks. Then I went on deck
and eased myself down into my dinghy. And
just as I had done 3 weeks earlier when trepidation was sweeping over me, I held onto her.
Many of my friends insist that AVENTURA is a dream
machine that dooms me to a life of fantasy.
Well, I have just returned from the Real World - and I find it
unacceptable. And to me the great
mystery remains … why do so many people surrender to it?