All sailboats have souls like men and women, and all souls should move perpetually forward with nourishment to sustain them. With the year now closing and a new year emerging, I will outfit The Bridgeman with twelve (12) volumes to sustain both her and I. Twelve volumes like the twelve tribes of Israel. They are:
1. Homer: The Iliad/The Odyssey
2. Plato: Complete Works
3. Aristotle: Complete Works
4. Herodotus: The Histories
5. Epictetus: The Discourses
6. William Shakespeare: Complete Works
7. Charles Darwin: On The Origin of Species
8. Henry David Thoreau: Walden/Essays
9. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust
10. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays
11. Michel De Montaigne: Essays
12. The Bible: Old/New Testaments
And now after times hard at work and at times of leisure on The Bridgeman, my thoughts are the following:
1. The natural state of man is a 'state of war'. Men are always at war and nature supports this condition with her equal acts of violence. The seas are deep and black and full of one prehistoric eating machine monster after another. The art of war and the study of military strategy are in the end, utmost important for a man's survival in this life.
2. Boats that are useful in this life are boats that are used for some type of work like fishing or exploration or salvage or for military purposes. All other boats that are 'recreational' in nature are representative of an 'incontinent mind'. Possessions of a weak mind. They are nothing more than watery pit vehicles to pour money and time into the abyss. They are manifestations of Ego. Nothing more. If it is not being used to generate wealth or for the attainment of a prize, or some form of skill, it has as such no value in this world. And America is full today of one 'recreational' boat and one 'recreational' Marina after the other. States upon states in pursuit of recreation and big screen TV Entertainment. All built on the stupidity and carelessness of a society running in every direction toward a life of leisure and away from what John Adams (Founding Father) declared to his dear friend and wife Abigail, as their early American/New England Governing Principle: "Let frugality and industry be our virtues". What happened to my Country? Where are the likes today of men like John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson?
3. The Bridgeman today is more and more a METAPHOR in my life. A figurative representation of some type of parallel sensory symbols or set of challenges in this life. It is now more and more like that of a Science Laboratory. A place to discover the principles of AC/DC conversion and vice versa. A place to examine the laws of the natural world. Like the law of Archimedes Principle: "Any floating object displaces its own weight of fluid". That the net upward buoyancy force is equal to the magnitude of the weight of fluid displaced by the body. That if the object is either less dense than the liquid or is shaped appropriately (as is a boat), the force can keep the object afloat. A place now to discover why things perform as they do. Why does a sailboat really float? Why do winds and waves perform as they do? Why do men and women really do what they do in natural succession. The Bridgeman is now a place of discovery. An institution, a state of mind.
4. At first it all appeared that I was in pursuit of my lost tribe. Trying to regain attachment to a community of common interest and brethren. But now I can see in America that every town of ordinary size all have the same Walmart, Sam's Club, Burger King, Pottery Barn, and Victoria's Secret as all of the others. (What is Victoria's Secret anyway?) They are all the same. Mile after mile, east to west and north to south. The same lithograph print out of another. Cookie Cutter living, and beyond the 12 mile coastal boarder lies the rest of the 12 Billion savage inhabitants of the planet. Why leave the dock? Why journey anywhere beyond the Chesapeake Bay waterside towns of Reedville, Irvington, Whitestone, Annapolis, Delaware, St. Mary's City, Baltimore Harbor or Manhattan Island or the ICW? What lies beneath is nothing more than Megalodon and his distant ancestors who walked across the beach and into the jungle. Why go anywhere if it is not for pursuit of profit and gain. Why chase anything that goes beyond the noble state of man to build his own home with his own two hands and to do his best to live an honorable and productive life and to stay fit and capable to chop his own wood for the fireside?
The Bridgeman will continue to sail for the many years to come. She will sail to the tune of her own drum.
She is now a figurative form of speech. She is an instrument of discovery. She is a sentry on the lookout for changes on the wind. A place to erect and 'intelligence and alarm system' that stands on the lookout and alert for all dangers both foreign and domestic. "One if by land, and two if by sea."
Life is short, life is dangerous. Best to strike while the iron is hot!
"There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
is bound in the shallows and in miseries...
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."
- William Shakespeare
Steven, "Critical Path" is good as the twenty-first survival manual in your library.
ReplyDelete'Law of Precession' defined by Buckminster Fuller is "For every action we take there will be a side effect arising at 90 degree to the line of the our action."
The idea is: If we think about pollination, bee's actually don't intend to pollinate, yet they do so and benefit both systems - the Bee AND the Flower. The bee's presence on a flower with the appropriate structure transfers pollen to the bee. The Bee is seeking energy (nectar) and finds it in a flower. The energy required for the pollen contact is not part of the intentional action and reaction, which is the bee gathering nectar. Buckminster Fuller theorised that the bee is getting a reward from nature because it is helping nature to reproduce plant life!
So Buckminster Fuller came up with the theory that if he dedicated himself to do something to benefit the world, then he would always be looked after and rewarded by the Universe. Therefore our job was not to make money. It was to add value to others. All he needed to do was to get passionate and 'go do it' (and 'enough money' would be the 90 degree side effect!).
http://natureluvr.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/how-can-we-apply-law-of-precession-to-our-relationship-and-stay-happy…/