aTLANTIC ISLANDS TRIP
SATURDAY, MARCH 30: Wake at 2:15AM and lie thinking about getting up, raising the porthole to see stars, so I dress sketchily and go up onto a deserted deck with a wondrous array of stars, clear even to the clouds being outlined in brightness where they obscure parts of the Milky Way. There's a VERY bright star almost at the zenith, but I align it with a few neighboring stars and it doesn't move, so it can't be the comet: probably Sirius or a planet. The moon is gone (it seems too quickly, but maybe it's lurking behind long-lasting clouds on the horizon, since it was almost directly overhead at 9:45PM, and it should take six hours (?) to set). Someone says the ship has slowed so that we won't go too fast, so maybe that explains the balmy quiet air on the deck, waves almost catching up to us. I come down from the deck at 2:55AM and look AGAIN at the -MT list, going back to bed at 3:10. Wake at "6AM" by my watch, and see a rim of light around the porthole, and can't decide whether to get up for a shower or not, and lie for only a few minutes when the announcement comes: 20 minutes to breakfast, and it turns out my watch STOPPED at 6AM: second time in a week? ANOTHER something to worry about? Up quickly and shit, then back to put things away, since there's no lecture between breakfast and lunch I'll have to be able to LEAVE my cabin when the cleaner comes, and I decide to wear my DIRTY long-sleeved shirt on the zodiac ride, so if it gets WET it can be cleaned DIRECTLY, and will wear my SLACKS for the same reason, since they're looking for an excuse to be cleaned. Pretty smelly, so I wear my undershirt to breakfast of corn flakes, scrambled eggs with two pieces of toast, juice and pills. Back to the cabin at 8:30 with the excuse of writing cards, and put them aside to catch up with yesterday and today by 9:15AM, hearing at 8:20AM that Ascension is just visible about 60 miles away, so it'll be awhile before it's within photo distance. Guess I'll try the shower NOW. Having showered, at 9:45AM, feeling in a somewhat valedictory mood on my 60th birthday (though I have until 11:03AM to "feel it officially" today HERE, and until 4:03PM to "feel it actually," as of my birthplace), and not wanting to finish writing postcards because it's my LAST duty for a long time, I wanted to jot a few more notes: heard the obnoxious Ruth saying "To tell you frankly, I don't care about birds" leads me to WANT to say to her "To tell you frankly, I don't care about your OPINIONS," but that wouldn't do, would it? AND, with the notice of impending water shortage, and the dictum to "not take more than one shower a day," (as I've just finished my first shower in FIVE days!), I feel like berating someone who continues to buy these HORRIBLY inefficient shower-fixtures: 1) Water has to come out FAST before it will even HOLD UP the button for shower, and at many intermediate positions, half the water is WASTED from the spigot, not even GOING INTO the showerhead. 2) The attachment to the WALL is not steady, so that half the time is spent READJUSTING where the water is directed, 3) The detachability of the head is nonsense: a SHOWER should be a SHOWER, not doubling as a hand-unit. And of course MOST of the water seems to be wasted in the ETERNAL sinkful of wet clothes I see in MOST open cabins as I pass toward the dining room. So now, that off my chest, I can get, at 9:55AM, to the rest of my postcards. At 10AM there's the announcement "Sperm whales to port, at 9 or 10 o'clock" but when I look out my porthole there's nothing to be seen and I continue writing the last of the cards. Then about 10:30 there's another announcement, followed by Andy's excited "They're right beside the ship!" I grab my camera and camcorder, to find that the camcorder for the next half hour refuses to work because of "Dew" flashing on and off. It's OK NOW, but I somehow have to keep it WARM?? There are lots of tiny faraway spouts, but then I see a form, pale gray or yellow, about 10-20 feet under the surface, drifting past us as we slow, and I THINK I saw the whole whale! The sperm's spout goes FORWARD at a 45-degree angle, and slightly to the left, so you can tell where he's heading as you view the spout. There are a couple of lollings on the surface about 100 yards off which I think I get with the telephoto lens, and everyone misses the sudden slapping of the water with the flukes that Bob shouts, "He's lobtailling!" After a bit, they dive and the ship turns back to its course. I take photos 10:30 and 10:31 of the whales, and 10:32 and 10:33, or nearby numbers, of Ascension. Should EMPTY my camera before we start circling in the zodiacs this afternoon. Back down about 11AM to finish the 27 cards, only 3-4 more to get and send out, by 11:30AM, and then catch up with this by 11:35, the attendant not having come to my room yet. I guess I'll go back on deck with my long-sleeved shirt on so I won't feel the heat as I did in my tee-shirt during the whale-watch. Andy kept crowing about how rare it is to see sperm whales so close to the ship. Ascension sure does look barren! 6:35PM: WHEW, totally busy day! We're anchoring near Boatswainbird Island, which is a ship-shaped rock crowned with nests and escorted on its blue voyage in the ocean by wheeling columns of black (Frigatebirds) and white (Boatswainbirds or Tropicbirds), with terns and petrels mixed in, usually in pairs. I photograph the birds and the anchoring, and they announce lunch will be late, at 12:30PM. Down for a buffet of cole slaw, barbecued sausage (just so awful that I spit out the gristle and tendon and indigestible lumps and leave it near the untouched remains) and chicken (better) and hot dogs (hotter than yesterday's lunch, but still pretty poor, though sadly better than the sausage). Lots of water until I remember the time I have to spend in a zodiac. Bill announces that there will be TWO shifts, groups 1 and 2, and groups 3 and 4, one hour each, so that there will be more room in the zodiacs to move around and take pictures. Two zodiacs are lowered about 1PM, and Bill and Bob go zipping around testing them out, and then Ian gets to the head of the gangway, saying there's a problem with the third zodiac (later hear on the radio that it DOES seem to be leaking), and the first zodiac leaves with NINE passengers. Well, 9 x 4 is 36, and I KNOW at least 6 aren't going at all, so there's gone to be VERY few in the SECOND set, maybe allowing some from the FIRST set to go TWICE. But if THAT'S true, I want to be one in the SECOND set that goes twice. So I cozen up to Ann, who says Don isn't going, and I say, "Can I pretend to be Don?" She says, "Get your lifejacket on anyway, just stand there and maybe they'll let you on." So I race to do so, not having had time to put on sunscreen, but DO have long trousers, unlike many others, and DO have long sleeves, like almost NO other, AND my cap, white with St. Helena brine. Get back in time for the loading of the second one, and Ian looks up and says "Fowler and Zolnerzak" and I get ON! Bob keeps up a running commentary that hardly anyone follows: we just gape at the birds in the sky, the nests clinging to the side of the rocky island, and escry the Braggers (?)(black fish with neon-blue lines outlining the dorsal and ventral fins which furnish locomotion, NOT the pectoral or tail fins) in the clear blue water below. There are heavy swells, and Bill seems to decide NOT to circumnavigate the island. Bob goes around the bottom, where the odd gibbit with rope leads to a landing stage about 15 feet above the water, which then leads by various trails to what might be a tent-platform about 40 feet up, but the path may continue to the top of the 100-foot rock. Two women lived here for a month a few years ago making a documentary, says Simon. Videotaping is almost impossible with the boat bobbing up and down and everyone shouting, and with nine of us in the boat (EVERY boat had nine) it was almost impossible to adjust angles. Bob found a dying bird, being nibbled from below by the braggers, and brought it into the boat, where it appeared to perk up, but then died. We photographed the ship through the hole, and Bob, talking all the while, decided to continue around the island, while some of the others seemed to think this was NOT a good idea! Huge swells made it more spectacular than watching birds, and there were some enormous surfs against the sheer cliffs of the base. Back around to where we decide to leave off the dead bird, and the two zodiacs come together so Bob can show off his prize. Then it's getting close to 2:30 and time to return to the ship. I'm second off, behind Rose, and gently put her to one side, dash to my cabin, drop the spent video camera and pick up the still camera and the same protective plastic bag, and RACE back to the gangway, where my PROPER group is just about to load: Yanofskis, Simon, Bob, Katie, and the doctor and two other Russians, with Ian at the helm. Zip over to the island and Ian goes in MUCH closer, giving a heightened sense of danger, but also making photography far more problematic. I finish off the roll of film, but I'll be curious to see what I actually GET: the various framings of the ship in the hole, including US going through the hole when Ian got so close it would have ridiculous to go BACK, and then a picture of BILL going through the hole with the ship in the background of THAT, with Ian shouting, "Here's the next brochure cover!" Also had the three DOLPHINS swimming in very close, tempting us out into the swells, getting us together, and we say a strange wet booby on a low rock, figuring he must have somehow swam out of the water, and later Jenny says that Graham had found the bird in the water, caught it, and put it BACK on that shelf---from which we frightened it onto a much less tenable shelf! I'd been tired after the frantic photography of the first zodiac, so that by the time the SECOND zodiac ended, I was ready for the hospital at 3:30PM. Back to my cabin to change out of my TOTALLY wet shirt (the attendant hadn't been around YET), then look at some of the footage before the battery goes dead AGAIN, and THEN I find that people are SWIMMING, and go out to see the incredible chest of the beautiful Doctor being propelled to his THIGHS out of the water with his swim-fins, and the ugly chef's assistants swimming around him like misLAID nymphs. Glen and Joe and a few others were also swimming, and Bob was there in his mini-wetsuit and goggles and snorkel, so when Bill swung by in his zodiac, I asked if some of us could snorkel near the fish near the rock, but he said that we had to move in about an hour. Then Tony came down for a swim and he was of course let in. I'd seen Katie and the tanned crew-member going BACK out with Ian for a swing around the rock AGAIN, so it really does matter who you talk to. Later, on the sixth deck where I went for an awful Canadian tonic at 4PM (there WAS no real snack time), I looked down to see the Doctor in his narrow green slip of a suit, bumpy-ripply chest down to almost no public hair showing over a LARGE bulge and nice thighs. But then there are OTHER smooth-skinned tanned Russian hunks walking around, though the tanned crew-member seems very friendly not only with the Captain but ALSO with the doctor. Watch the Russians continue to frolic in the water until the zodiacs are drawn out, and I keep videoing the stacks of birds in the air, trying to get a sense of the STRUCTURES they seem to construct on the very air-currents. Then there's the winching sound of the anchors being drawn up about 5PM, and we start our slow progress around the island: I take MANY slides and videos of the slag, fumaroles, iron-oxide mounds, transmitting stations, large-area space-telescope arrays, antennas of various types, a large white "villa" by the sea, and then the US's long-range satellite tracking white "golf-ball" surrounded in the distance by two contenders for the title of "Two Boats," the second village described in the video yesterday. Incredible reds and greens, fantastic sprays from the intense swell barely visible, and later two turtle's heads above the boom for the oil-line from the tanker, Maersk Ascension, in the harbor, which shuttles a zodiac forth and back as we watch. A military plane lands; and Simon insists that an agent HAS verified that the post office and museum and a store will be open for us tomorrow, so even if he manages to get off TOMORROW, our letters will in fact be mailed. OH, forgot that, in going through the arch the SECOND time, Irina's birthday song was sung, and I couldn't resist shouting, "Now you have to sing an encore, because it's ALSO my birthday." Some seem inclined not to believe me, but I just checked that I can show them my DRIVERS' LICENSE, which has my date of birth on it, which YEAR I can temptingly cover with my finger to tease everyone MORE. Bob makes some SMALL remark about it on the deck when we're passing the parts of the island all of us are taking pictures of, and Simon certainly knows---how NICE for me! The Captain, still in his short-shorts (with a VERY slender body with almost NO definition (nice tits, though) as shown when he sheltered from the rainstorm yesterday), has caught another fish of some kind, and the Doctor is back in his ass-displaying khakis and multi-patterned black shirt that billows so suggestively over his narrow hips. I'd put on sunblock OVER my burned nose and forearms, hoping that lotion would help. Katie makes a VERY late announcement of happy hour at 7:05PM, and I'm feeling almost TIRED from the events of the day. Forgot to mention that I told Dorothy that I'd be playing the ENTIRE first tape to note various events and times, sometime during the upcoming LONG voyage, though Simon remarks "You'll lose half a day crossing the equator." I keep thinking the schedule was made for a SLOWER ship and we'll ALWAYS be ahead unless we meet with some FOUL weather, which thank goodness so far we've been EXEMPT from. The moon is about 3/4 full, and I remark to Simon he'll see the full moon at home, and he makes some statement about "there'll be others." Is that a promise? His face is quite red in the sunset as we argue whether a double-grommeted Union FLAG (since a Union JACK is only hung on a ships JACK-mast, the FIRST one in FRONT) can be hung in ONLY TWO or THREE wrong positions, and he gets testy in an almost Spartacus-like when I continue to explain my point when HE thinks the argument has been SETTLED already. Now just past 7:15PM, and I'll put the video battery on the charge (maybe to video my birthday events?) and see what's going on on deck NOW. Nothing much, and back to the cabin to put things away and finally get into the bar at 7:45, ordering a tonic to quench my thirst from the heat today, and Simon mentions my birthday and Diane wishes me best, and Sheila and Diane are BOTH in Saturday best dresses. Simon DOES ask how old I am, and I won't tell him, but after the bruschetta (which I eat with my fingers, just tomato and spices on bread), the chicken BACK which doesn't have much good meat on it, but the SKIN is good, and mashed potatoes and fresh green beans and carrots with lots of BUTTER added are pretty good, as is the dessert of light tasty flan-custard over stewed berries, and THEN the lights go out and they bring in my cake with THREE candles, and I confess to the world at large that that's VERY considerate: one for each SCORE. Everyone wishes me Happy Birthday and Sheila snaps my photo as I cut the DELICIOUS butter-cream icing, jelly-roll cake in 34 pieces, getting VERY near the end before Freda runs out of people to give it to, and I NEARLY stand to say "Thanks for blabbermouthing," but Ian looks at me somewhat coldly and says, "We DO have everyone's passports." And Simon gets the best-end of the evening by being recognized at length by Bill, and he gives his own farewell in the nature of "The Story of the Giraffe" that gets the New Zealand minister's driver's license revoked, and I confess to HIM that I'm three-score, and he says, "I didn't think he was over 48," and I kick his chair back and say, "You said 45 at first!" Ian also added laconically, "Irina was ten years older than I would have thought, too." Thanks, Ian, who I think WILL miss Simon. That, with all the extras, takes till almost 9:30, and I'm just getting to my cabin when they announce small sea turtles under the fishing lights. Get out with my recharged camera and get MANY small turtles coming up for air (as I'd gotten many FLYING FISH this afternoon, scooting silverly away from the ship's wake), and also a few of the needlefish that I hadn't taken at the step at St. Helena. That goes on, ghostly shadows of larger turtles and larger fish, though the hook next to me catches three foot-long fish as I watch, with billows of yellowy mud being churned up by the positioning engines, until about 10:20PM, and I pee and finish this off by 10:35PM, room not having been seen to AT ALL today, for the first time, and I even debate not washing my face to keep the burn-lotion fresh until morning, when we'll be up early for 7AM breakfast, per Bill, for a lengthier tour AND permission to leave at 10PM AFTER trying to see the turtles on the beaches. A wonderful end to a wonderful day: ALMOST forgot the GREAT certificate, or "Diploma," as translated by Tanya, signed by Vterov, her father the Captain, with "Many years" that I can translate, and latitude and longitude and date, in many colors, for a MARVELOUS memento of GREAT day. Bed at 10:45PM, thinking about the many time-zones across which my birthday-day will be ending across the world, so that I'll be OFFICIALLY 60 years old!
SUNDAY, MARCH 31: Wake at 3:55AM, checking that the watch is working, and then wake about 5:20 with an erection, which I tease into a permanency so hard that I get my watch out at 5:30 to time this marvelous masturbatory masterpiece. By 5:50 I'm right on the brink and bring out the watch to KEEP it there until 6AM, which is incredibly sensual, and then I get the rubber bands and clamp them around the base of my cock, heightening the sensations all the while, until sometime around 6:10AM I spurt and spurt, feeling fan-TASTIC, and when I finally relax enough to check the watch it's 6:15 and revel in luxury until I get up at 6:25, hearing the call at 6:30 for the 7AM breakfast, by which time I'm dressed enough to get ahead of the rush for the john for a shit: the stalls are empty when I arrive, and by the time I leave (with the nose-hawker left thankfully unknown), there are not only people rattling both locked doors, but someone coming in and someone seemingly poised at the ends of the dining room waiting for a vacancy. Look out at the sunrise over the island of Ascension, then search for about 10 minutes for the time-zone map, which is in the England-ahead packet, stupidly (and never DO locate the Nikon instruction brochure with the 24 time-zones, as opposed to the map's curtailed 21. Now at 7AM to breakfast. Oatmeal and toast and eggs, but no staff is around and everyone is running around wondering what to do next and when. I sit and wait for someone to say something until 7:55, then get tired and go to the cabin, where at 8:05 Bill finally says: Now, and then Andy gets on to say that Bill will be addressing us in 10 to 15 minutes in the dining room. Bill actually makes another announcement when he DOES get to the dining room, just to make sure someone like me isn't sitting there waiting for the NEXT message at the start of his talk. He says that the Post Office, museum, and shop will be open; the tour will take about 3-4 hours in three busses, then those who wish will go to the beach, and we've gotten permission to go ashore after dark to watch the turtles, and that supper will be about 9PM. At 8:30 they start loading the first of two zodiacs, order 2,3,4,1, and in the relatively calm water that's quickly done, and I'm onto the second at 8:40AM. We land at 8:55, where the zodiac is far BELOW the step onto the dock gangway, so we just have to WAIT for the swell to lift the boat up so that we can step off. We put our arms around their necks and shoulders on each side and reach for the grasping hand on the step. I'm the last one out, so the zodiac is much more buoyant and is traversing about 6 feet up and down on each wave, and I go up and down, up and down, and Bill finally says "Did you request this ride?" I laugh and get off the next rise. The first ones from our (second) zodiac are down the road to "town," so I start walking fast to catch up with them as they go up the hill. Pass them and see the sign for the museum, but continue to the "center of town" where there's a small group from the first zodiac waiting in front of the still-closed shop. Diane says they're supposed to open at 10AM, and when I make an astounded face, she adds, "Which is 9AM our time; just look at the clock up there," and sure enough THAT clock says 9:55. Over to the Post Office, whose veranda is chained off by three chains and a sign on the door saying "Closed." I look in to see that THEY open at "10," so I post myself to be FIRST, right before Diane bumbles over to try to get ahead of me, and as the lady comes to take down the chain, Ruth comes over in her "I'm the only one important here" way and tries to get in front of me, but I firmly position myself ALWAYS so as to make it CLEAR that I was there BEFORE her. The lady smiles "Good morning" and opens the door and I position myself firmly in front of the window, with others sort of hovering at my side AS IF they had priority. She asks what I'd like and tells me that the postage (25p) is the same to the USA, Europe, or Africa (24 to USA, one to Paris, Milan, Namibia), so I ask for 27 of those, and then for one of each, so she sells me about 6 additional stamps. Put on the 27, finishing just as Ruth gruffly says "Excuse me," and plunks herself in the middle of the service shelf. I have the feeling I'm going to lose my temper with her SOMETIME during the trip! I finish stamping, content to be quit of that job, and return to the now-idle clerk to ask about definitive stamps, of which there are about nine pounds worth, and then get two booklets and a set of postage dues, including a set of ten postcards, four of which I single out to mail in Cape Verde to the four remaining addressees. My first purchase was $13 and second was $16, and I'm left with only a $5 and ten singles. Then I check out the store, nicely stocked with stationery, clothing, even snorkels for eleven pounds, and a wide variety of canned and bottled goods and drinks, and Glen walks out with a carton of Schweppes and Bob carts around a carton of Guinness. I'm out of there and down the VERY hot road to the museum, long sleeves getting wet with sweat, sunglasses not very good (I lose them when I forget to take them out of my shirt pocket when snorkeling; I FEEL them at one point on the beach and am just too lazy to walk back to my shoes to preserve them: the next time I feel my breast pocket they're gone.) At the bottom of the hill there's NO indication which way to go, and I try around to the right and ask someone who doesn't particularly want to respond to me that it's back to the left, "Just follow the road." DO NOT respond, "But that's how I got HERE." Find the entrance with hard-to-read calligraphy under a flank of the old fort, and in to find an unattended stretch of 6-7 rooms filled with old utensils, tools, signboards, bottles, ammunition, shells, and miscellaneous stacked out on rather neat metal shelves with sisal display mats and hand-lettered signs. Take both kinds of photos inside, and leave about 9:30 to follow the sign to the Coach House (old jeep, fire wagon, donkey cart), Fort (up a ramp that I don't follow), and Historical Society (filled with photographs, papers, display cases of every postal issue from the first, and lots of books and maps on sale which tempt me, but I have so little money left that I resist buying anything) in which I take a lot of pictures of maps and photos of Tristan from space. The guy is very helpful, chattering away about the goodness of the collections and displays, and I'm out about 9:55 to return to the central square where everyone's milling about, and I circumnavigate the OLD hotel to find a men's room in the opposite corner (with signs "Don't throw butts here" above a butt-filled urinal), a happy find. Back to see the busses arrive at 10:10AM and I scope them out and see one filling with the Kahlmanns and the Fowlers, so I take the single seat in FRONT of the single LAST seat that Bob claims for himself. Open the window and feel quite comfortable when the breeze starts blowing in. Jeffrey, the policeman driver from St. Helena, is cute in an angular bird-like way, but isn't very forthcoming about details of the island, and everyone shouts for Seymour to relay the information back to us in the back. Up to a plateau above Two Boats where we get out and ask sundry questions: RAF base over there, US base beyond it, from 10:30 to 10:35, where I take photo 12:20 of the water-storage for the RAF base, pumped up, desalinated, from English Bay. Continue up the steel Green Mountain, one bus overheating and having to BACK down the steep hill with us backing behind, another car behind US, and a third car passes when we finally clear the track. Great views over the precipitous sides of the road, which I understand to be "one way, in the sense of cars going only in one direction," which turns out to be "one way, meaning this is the ONLY road up AND down." Reach the end of the road at 11AM, continuing by road up to a run-down farm which is sort of a local pub, and follow those ahead of me into the tunnel that goes under the catchment system. Pass a hooting group of dirty people who turn out to be Harriers, explained by Bob to be locals and tourists whose "Hares" throw out paper shavings, culminating by a large white arrow in paper shavings at the start of the mud-climb, which the "Harriers" follow to blind alleys or successful ends, after which they meet at a local watering-hole and booze it up the rest of the night. Follow Simon, who has a flashlight, and get one shirt-shoulder quite dirty rubbing against one side when I was trying to go fast to catch up to him. Climb out of the gully with the aid of a quite strong helping hand by Simon, and go out on a point over a lush green valley, then double back along the catchment area to see a sign pointing upward to Dew Pond. Start up at 11:30, making sure the Captain and his coterie see me, but Pam is ahead taking pictures of what we agree to be ginger blossoms, and I reach a ridge to see Diane and Andy and a few others hovering there, debating going higher, since "Bill disappeared into the fog, and when the fog cleared, he wasn't there anymore." But do climb, hitting mud ruts that I think could be good CLAY but Bob says not, and struggle up, helped by a rope strung between closing-in bamboo trunks, and finally video the three purple waterlilies in the center of the green Dew Pond, after taking shots of Katie taking a photo of Emery (WHY can't I remember his name?), and we later talk about St. Vincent, where he was born and left 17 years ago, from 1960, before HE was born). Distribute a few tiny sheets from my notebook to those who want something to imprint the stamp reading "Green Mountain; 2817 ft The peak and Dew pond. Follow up into thick bamboo and the start of a slippery trail down, and Bill radios back that it's VERY dangerous, so I return down the slope, Bill catching up and passing on the way down, and only Ian and Simon have continued on around, Jenny being the last to return in defeat of a too slippery field. Down by 12:30, putting the bag in plastic since it's raining, though the fog has lifted, showing GREAT views down to the ocean on both sides of the ridge, and bus down to lunch at 1:15PM, hearing at last from Ian that he and Simon were "on a path with a lot of puddles that went around the mountain." Katie remarked that Simon could afford to muck around the mountain for three days before he caught his flight, and SHE could do everything that Ian could, so as far as SHE was concerned, they could just STAY lost. Lunch is served on a nice patio looking over the forests, sitting with Trudy and Diane who got a table closest to the kitchen, so we were served our decent hamburgers and fries FIRST, to everyone's envy. Diane didn't want her beer (that came with the lunch), so I drank TWO bottles, which was quite perfect to quench my thirst and mizzle my mind, looking at the yellow-flowered tree from which I took a sample to smell (and which Dorothy couldn't), and we finished up about 2:15, where we all lined up for the busses and then couldn't quite decide what to do. Down and the obnoxious fellow from the island who tried to tie up his little boat JUST as we were docking, even in the face of Graham saying "Don't tie up here," "What?" the little man shot back. "Don't ...tie...up...here," repeated Graham quite plainly. "I don't get you," said the old man, cupping his hand around his ear and leaning forward. Quite the comedy. Anyway, we picked HIM up on the way down to the restaurant, and he was told he could have the same lunch for two pounds. Back to the center of town where the gift shop was open (the clerk had just finished 18 holes of golf on the worst course in the world), but there was just NOTHING inside except that horrid video we'd seen two days before on Ascension. I agitate to return to the ship for snorkeling equipment, which Bob had brought WITH him and wanted to take to the beach with others who had brought their swimsuits underneath. I got loud, angrily, and Joe said "We hear you," sympathizing with me but in a sense telling me to be quiet. I sit in one of the cars as the yellow-bus-to-the-beach stops just around the corner by the post office and other things remain hanging because the fellow who cared for the museum hadn't reopened in the afternoon. Finally Bill sends our group down to the pier about 3PM, and finally a zodiac (driven by the tanned Russian) returns to take some of us back, but Bob Tucker can't push his way in front of the old women who elbow him away, so he misses the first zodiac. I dash back to my room to throw off my cameras and draw on my long red underwear and dash back out to Dorothy, who reminds me to take my life jacket, and I dash back in time to see the second zodiac return with Andy, taking Dorothy and me aboard, but he can't wait for Bob so we return to the dock, where, in getting out of the zodiac, I feel my left forefingernail scraping Bill's face, and look down to see blood trickling down his chin! I felt just AWFUL at the top of the stairs, and when he came up I apologized PROFUSELY, so that when he asked, "Did you break your fingernail?" I figured (hoped) he was just kidding). Bill has hired the blue bus to take us, Kevin said snorkeling was very good in the bay, his bright green eyes glittering in the sun, and they had a load of food that was waiting for the cargo net, and Dorothy tried to tell the driver that SHE didn't mind if we waited for Bob and Katie to load so they could come WITH us to the beach, but I was bitchy and wanted to go NOW, before it was 4PM and the sun started to SET. Left my watch behind so I had to be TOLD it was 4PM when we arrived. Passed huge antenna arrays: "What are those?" "BBC antennas." and buildings: "What's that?" "BBC relay station," even though it probably wasn't. A dish-skeleton comprised only of wires was interesting, as was a set of antennae on a base that was either metal or painted red like metal. Again hot, and I said I'd go back in the last bus and went to the picnic overhang where the group was, put my glasses in my shoes (and left my ineffective sunglasses in my shirt pocket, from whence they were lost) on my bags, and took off for the right beach with my snorkel and flippers. But the waves were VERY strong, and the rocks right off the beach did NOT look inviting, so I took OFF the flippers and walked way down the beach to the QUIET area in the west, which I'd wanted to save for last, and I had a HARD time getting into the water, scraped the heel of the palm of my left hand deeply on a rock trying to get into the surf that just threw me back on the beach in a demi-panic, and when I GOT into the water and got my snorkel in my mouth, I kept dipping the END of the snorkel UNDERWATER, so that I had to CONSTANTLY blow the excess out, until I started drinking my own saliva at the end. The surf was so high I had to KEEP my right hand on the snorkel to bend it above the waves. At first the viewings were small and disappointing, only durgons floating above the rocks below. At last I found the area in the center of the bay where the rocks neared the surface and grew a lush green algae that the durgons and others ate, and then I saw the magnificent blue halo around an angelfish that looked like the "Resplendent Angelfish" on the 4p stamp, except that the fins were SAPPHIRE rather than gold tipped with crimson. A pair of Cunning Fish, from the 15p stamp, silver circles with trailing fins of gold, came by, and in the light I saw that either some of the durgons were much more colorful than the others, or it was another kind of algae-feeder with golden blue-veined foreheads and patches of dim color on the sides and tails. The 1p stamp calls the Black Durgon a Blackfish. Saw a speckled fish with widely flaring pectoral fins that might be the Blue Dad or Rockfish of the 10p stamp and surely saw the vertical black stripes on the Five Finger, as well as one horizontal racing stripe on a genus I don't know. Triumph was a moving Sole that I saw going toward a rock and DISAPPEARING onto it, moving again and AGAIN becoming invisible by its flatness and camouflage. Tried other areas, but got worried when the sound of surf rattling against sand became too clear in my ears. Had LOTS of trouble keeping my UNDERWEAR up, the elastic is REALLY shot, as it is on my swimsuit, causing a LOT of problems. Choked a couple of times when I glanced up to see where I was and the sun hitting my eyes made me feel like sneezing, and I'd turn my head and my sinuses would fill up with salt water than I would continue to drip through the evening and feel again when I lay down to sleep. Heard shouts, but only from other groups. Got out about 5:15 to see Bob and Andy snorkeling, Bob telling me about a moray eel, and about a sunken swimming platform under one buoy and two big triggerfish under the other, but I was too tired to try it again, taking off my stuff and feeling TERRIBLY embarrassed as my drawers sagged around my knees and I had to KEEP pulling it up. Back to the picnic table and put on my glasses and walked down to the rocks overlooking the little bay, sitting on a wet one, and I found out why: about each 28th wave SPLATTERED over an adjoining rock and DOUSED me from cap to feet. Katie came out of the woods, and we started getting ready to leave about 6PM. Back to town and I took off the long-johns, getting sand EVERYWHERE, including lots in my sockless shoes. Down to the zodiacs in the setting sun splendor and get back about 6:15PM to hear we're going BACK for the turtles at 7! Race to my room and patter to the shower in bare feet and bathing suit; thank God it's empty! Hard washing all the salt away and back to room to dry hair and put on clothes and life jacket and get to rail for the SECOND zodiac to the turtles, landing on low-again (previous water had been HIGH, so everyone's shoes were SOAKED on the "landing" step) tide, easily, and Peter the turtle-tender told us NO lights and noise, and then led us to the end of the street, then to the beach itself, setting us free to 8:15! I was annoyed at the SHORT time, but didn't feel I should complain. Continuing SUNDAY, MARCH 31, in NOTEBOK7, now at 2:10PM 4/1/96. Find my way awkwardly down onto the soft sands and start walking away. Most dawdle behind, but I find nothing for the first hundred yards, except LOTS of footprints and HUNDREDS of oval scoops from previous turtle-layings, and a few conical, pointy bottomed holes that I am SURE couldn't be made by turtles and MUST be made by humans, seeking eggs for reasons ecological or nefarious. Down to the surf-line, where it's easier walking, easy to see in the almost-full moonlight, and I see the dim figure of Simon up on the crest, arm in the air, and I'd just THOUGHT the track that I'd crossed coming up from the sea looked fresh. Up to find a sensitive hulk that stopped whenever either of us spoke or moved a bit, taking care to stay the requisite five feet from the five-foot turtle. When it resumed, it appeared to be finishing covering the eggs, fanning up flippers-full of sand into an already filled hole. I walked on as others silently joined us to watch, and presently found one that I could EASILY fantasize was laying eggs: there were small movements that MAY have been white spheres emerging from the dark turtle underbelly, and then the tiny back flippers would pat encouragingly on the surface of the sand and the tail would move a few inches to the right, as if to find a new surface with which to receive the newer eggs. Andy came up behind me silently, breathing a word of encouragement, when his radio blared "Bill, Bill, Ian, Ian," and he jerked and muffled it, but the movements from the turtle-pit stopped for several seconds. I moved off from here, too, as he tried to wave to people behind that I didn't see. Another had come only a few feet into the surf before moving back to the wave-front, being caught by one wave and dragged several feet closer to the ocean, and then disappearing in the following wave. These waves were enormous, crashing with loud roars in various pitches on the hard-packed sand beach, muffling, I hope, our sounds as we tried to find more laying mothers. I was passed by a man coming from the other direction, to whom I said, "Hello," but he passed saying nothing, and the woman following him, to whom I nodded, passed as if I didn't exist. I didn't like the feelings I got from the AT ALL, and Andy reported the next noon that he'd been berated by them for frightening THEIR turtles, and so he asked who THEY were, and they didn't answer until Andy volunteered, "The local authorities?" at which they enthusiastically nodded their agreement. I suggested they were up to no good, which he was inclined to agree with, but since they had no digging tools visible we couldn't assume anything. He figured they were just possessive locals for whom ecology was their PRIVATE undertaking, and no one else was encourage to participate in THEIR projects. Then I thought he passed me, and I found one only a short way up the beach who appeared somewhat smaller, and to be almost FINISHED with the last phases of flailing the longer front flippers to cover the eggs, but it was getting close to 8:15; I feared Andy may have doubled back along the beach in a way I couldn't see, and I didn't want to be last back to the group so I started back about 8:10, knowing I was going to be late anyway. Didn't see any more coming ashore, but Andy said where HE was there were two or three coming up as he watched. Others said the peak was at 3AM, when we'd be long gone. Andy said he'd rather have stayed all night, and of course I agreed. Dorothy said her group found one or two that they stayed with the whole time, and others said they say 2 or three themselves. So there must be HUNDREDS there per night, and this has been said to be going on since January, and will continue into MAY! Driver also asked if we saw the comet, which was up at 8PM the first night, then 10PM, then midnight, then 2AM, then 4AM, and then wasn't seen again. Since our reporter said it was three nights since he'd seen HIS first, it was probably long gone when I thought to go up on deck to spot it. Gerry from the First Light said that it was HUGE, stretching across 1/3 the sky, the tail sweeping up out of the Big Dipper. Back to the dock, no life jacket, and wait around for Andy to return, and Bill's calling for the zodiac from the ship. It arrives with life jackets for the rest of us just as Andy gets back about 8:35. I'm into the first one back, easy getting in this time, huge numbers of durgons eating scraps of innards thrown over the side by fishermen at the dock, more needlefish swimming by. Throw off life jacket and into the dining room to find visitors: 3 including a CUTE blond with bright eyes behind glasses over tanned blond-haired legs who enjoyed talking to ANYONE, they'd come from jobs in Turkey and they'd been "going home for 2 years; from First Frontier, or something like that, a group of 3 led by Christopher who's been going around the world for TWELVE years, "usually with a crew of two women, but sometimes two men, but mixed men and women don't work." Then Gerry got up, tried to give it to Genna as "co-Captain," but he talked of setting off from California 5 years ago and sailing until their money ran out, both ecologists who were happier at sea than at their desks. I'd chatted with them about the turtles when I got in, admiring his dark flashing eyes under attractive gray hair and a lovely humpy body, and I think I "came on" too strongly, since he rather avoided talking exclusively to me afterwards. They all liked the meat we served at the barbecue, having had their fill of fish. I sat next to Olivia at the first table while the others served themselves: I avoided the baked potato but took cole slaw and salad (which the yachties loved) and pork (which was too tough to cut at the end) and beef, having just water after the Schweppes and two cookies I got just before 7PM for my "snack time." The two from First Light joined me and Olivia and we talked and talked and talked about their favorite places, problems with torn sails and typhoons that no one predicted properly, hassles with Galapagos admissions that took their cash for $400 of fuel, returning them a receipt for $180, while they couldn't tour any island other than Santa Cruz at which they anchored. They enjoyed good health, didn't sail in the nude since "There are more wrinkles now," as Gerry tactfully put it, though she said she'd enjoy looking through his legs to see that the autumn sun WASN'T any larger when looked at from another point of view. I got tired, even to ordering another Tonic about 11:15 when my throat seized up, but they refused to accept any drinks hard or soft, and equally refused to let us GO, so we continued talking until 11:40 when EVERYONE, including Simon with his jacket, got into the last zodiac and at the end the drunken Peter staggered glassy-eyed down the steps, and Olivia talked about he and the Captain seemed to hit it off, and I mentioned how intently Peter had been talking to the Doctor when they returned together in a zodiac I was in. Olivia and I stared mesmerized by the lights in the water at the oscillating white undersides of red-brown-topped fish that seemed attracted to the lights, coming in fours and fives, almost cutting the surface like sharks, but so round underwater in their refraction that we thought they might be turtles. Then looked at my watch and found it was 12:05AM, ABSOLUTELY the latest I'd ever been up, so we said goodnight!
MONDAY, APRIL 1: Finally get to bed at 12:15AM, absolutely exhausted, noting that BOTH people up the hall from me have moved out: Katie earlier replaced the Malones, and Ruth and Freda moved into Simon's vacated cabin. Trudy says she's staying, impressed as I am by having paid for a share and getting a SINGLE, which convenience is worth any noise or vibrations. Wake at 7:05, and then just think I closed by eyes for a second when at 7:25 comes the announcement for breakfast in 30 minutes. I'm up and shit another very watery diarrhea-smelling shit that lingers on my fingers, and glance at the board for the day-sheet to shit again: the Quote of the Day: "Thanks for nothing," from Bob Zolnerazk as he slugged Bill." Down for Graham's talk on "Why I Secretly Hate Birds," Bob's on "How to Grow a Mustache in 8 days," and no lunch, and other nonsenses down to "We'll be at sea all day, which makes sense since we're in a boat." And the final line: Russian for "April Fool." Back to try to clean things up before breakfast, rinsing and flushing more sand, and get in at 8 to sit with the Fowlers and Dorothy and Trudy and Armand because their table is serving toast with which I eat scrambled eggs, and then get corn flakes with milk that tastes slightly off, whereat Armand suggests I have them with orange juice. Laugh about the day's sheet, and back to try to catch up with the day from 8:30 to 9:30, when Graham announces he's changing his talk to "Siberian Dreams I" from 9:35 to 10:40, showing slides from his 1992 visit to Northeast Siberia, flying to Yakutsk on some tiny Russian airlines with seats that weren't even bolted down, going to see the Pillars of the Lena River, then to the Kolyma River for Ross's Gull, with its pink nesting underside and its black necklace. Back to my room when the cleaner comes in to frown at the sand, but I say I'm sorry and "Poshalsta," and he has no choice. Take Ibsen to the dining room and chat with Trudy and then Andy says there's a crab outside. Out to see a crab that the fishermen probably caught last night that got away, and take out two cameras only to have the camcorder blink "Dew" "Dew" "Dew" at me for about 15 minutes. Andy gets a pail to put it in, but by the time I bring it into my cabin after lunch to video it, it seems pretty terminal. Back to finish "The League of Youth" and update the front-page reference-list, and Andy chats feelingly about our evening on the beach, spreading his legs wide with each sentence, thanking Irina for making his shorts when Ian gets HIS shorts, and agreeing that Bill should ask us turtle-seers to tell their tale at wrap-up tonight. My room was finished when I returned at 11:45 to get my camera, and then it's lunch of spaghetti in tomato-herb sauce which tastes much better when we add catsup and chilis, but Caroline adds too many and she can't finish, while I drink water and take bread and butter to mollify my taste buds. Out at 12:30 and bring the pail in to video the crab after sprinkling him with some water to try to revive him, and then rewind three videotapes in preparation for showing them SOMETIME. There's banging on the deck above during the morning lecture, when Bill says we'll be coming to the equator on Wednesday, the 3rd, and have our festivities. Back to these notes AGAIN, seeming NEVER to be finished, and the notes for each SHORE day will of course be fuller than notes for SEA days, and it's 2:55PM as I finish this! Other "joke" lectures are canceled, but there's something for 5PM which I forget. Take my camera to the bridge and take #13:4, for the S 00s at 5 degrees 15 S and 15 degrees 18 W. Our speed, sadly, is only 9.6 knots, which explains why we're not at the equator TOMORROW. Out to see everyone under the canopy reading, Rita complaining that there aren't enough chairs for everyone, so Charles is reading somewhere but would probably like Scrabble. Diane, however, says she's probably had enough sun for the day and we start about 3:30, finishing two that I both win by 5:05PM and the start of Bob's talk on corals. Some of the colors are outlandishly bright, and he's dived in some wonderful places. He finishes at 6:10PM and I'm to my cabin to see the rather dull end of sunset and finish this by 6:20PM. Resisting the thought of taking a nap; asked Charles (no wonder he didn't respond when I called him George) if he wanted to play, but he said he had to go outside (to keep from falling asleep?). I'll probably start another IP now. Finish "Pillars of Society" by 7:55PM, in time to go to the john and join Olivia and Diane (she wants to set 2PM as a Scrabble date!) in conversation that leads me to sit at their table. Now if I could just get rid of Tony... Potato leek soup needed much salt and pepper, but the roast duck was actually pretty good, though the "neeps" or mangelwurzels or rutabagas or turnips were awful even WITH a healthy helping (or unhealthy schmear) of butter and salt and pepper. Granola-topped apple crunch was dessert, which I had with milk that others joined me in (having milk with, not IN milk). Finished the last of my bottle of red wine, Katie made quite clear, and as I was sitting in the chair glancing through Reader's Digest and Diane's "Thesiger," Bill passed and said he always knew when I went to bed: I took the sheet with me. I said I surely wanted THAT one, took it, and came back exhausted to finish this by 9:40PM, going from latest to earliest? Oh: noted Ian's 7:45PM message: "It's 15 minutes to breakfast." Click. Pause. Click. "OK, dinner." Click. And now the new day MUST start somewhere in a new page. Also note that I started wearing my BLUE shirt, the LAST unworn piece of clothing except for my shorts. Bed at 9:45PM, having no trouble falling asleep even on a relatively full stomach.
TUESDAY, APRIL 2: 7:50AM: Wake at 4:30AM and pee, vaguely feeling like I need to shit, but after I pee there's no real pressure, so I go back to bed and instantly to sleep. Wake at 6:55AM with a stronger urge to shit, but I've just had an AGONIZING dream, so I start to record THAT (see DREAM2) until about 7:10, when a little leakage seems to occur in the anal region, so I quickly dress and go to the thankfully empty john to shit a somewhat more solid, but still diarrhea-disease smelling, bowel movement. Back to the cabin to note that the shorts from yesterday that I'd thrown onto the top bunk has a LARGE brown stain in the seat. AWFUL! Glance out the porthole and see a SHIP on the horizon at three o'clock, and when I get out my binoculars, I see what appears to be a TENDER or some kind of ASSOCIATED structure jutting out from the silhouette of the ship, so I put on my glasses at 7:20 and take my binoculars to the bridge. No English-speaking tourists on the bridge, but Bob and Jules are on the left bridge-wing, so I exit to them and Bob thinks it's a fishing mother ship and one of the fishing fleet which has now gone out ahead, closer to us, while the "mother ship" has been retreating from us and now looks smaller on the horizon. No one else seems to know anything more, and I return to the bridge to observe the radar at 3 degrees 30 minutes south, with the nearer ship's blip actually LARGER than ours, and with the entire scale of 12 nautical miles, looking to be two nautical miles away, while the larger ship produces a smaller blip and is about 4 nautical miles away (remembering the comment from First Light's couple that THEIR radius of vision is ONLY 3-4 miles, so WE might be able (from our height) to see THEM, but THEY wouldn't be able to see US, who would be BELOW their horizon). The Russian crew seems very AWARE of them, but there's no comment about anything as I leave the bridge about 7:30 and return to my cabin to finish recording the dream and then come to this file, finishing just before 8PM, though I can never tell the TIMING on my watch: Bill's announcement that it was 7:30 and breakfast was in half an hour came at 7:37AM on my watch. Decide I just CAN'T wear my Galapagos tee-shirt any more before washing it, so will change into a white tee-shirt before going to breakfast. Paul and Peter exchange stories about Japan, Burma, and more exotic places with me at breakfast with oatmeal and bananas, pancakes and berries, and juice and pills until 8:40AM. Back to my room to see a knotted rope hanging past my porthole, and look out to find that the ship has stopped and the Russian crew are tooling around in their orange lifeboat, which I video first from the room and then (through a misted lens) on the deck, and then again from the room as the orange boat is hauled out of the water past my porthole. Then put winter stuff in the SECOND underbunk drawer and clean out my clothing section by putting in a second laundry list with tee-shirts, underwear, and socks for $9. Others will wait until after tomorrow's "festivities." Bill announced that they were Japanese fishing vessels outside this morning. Finish this at 9:05AM and GOT to clean my gritty teeth! Did so, and should note that, after weeks of using this PWP, I finally developed a position for my right fingers that enables me to see the GLOW of the yellow ready-light on the disk-unit that shows that the "on" has "taken" and will produce the starting-menu, rather than not seeing the glow and having to turn it off and on again, as opposed to craning my head around to WATCH it turn on or not. Graham burst into my cabin as I was using my Proxident, then apologized for getting into the wrong cabin. I took the opportunity to ask whether he's moved next door and why: "Well, sharing with Bob," he began, and I agreed, "Yes, of course, much better as a single," to which he elaborated, "Rather a bit of noise back here, isn't there?" to which I replied, "Yes, but I guess I've gotten used to it." Then to his lecture, which he delayed a bit to let people from the above-deck watching the Russian lifeboat drill come down, and he started Siberian Dream II at 9:40, again describing how ALL the Aeroflot airplanes had TOTALLY bald tires, to which the helicopter, which took him from Chersk on the Kolyma north to a camp on the East Bering Sea, added the facet of being only half full of air, to ease its landing on unfrozen tundra. Great shots of the surrounding areas, though rather too many exclusively-bird photos. He finishes at 10:40AM, promising a second series on "Siberia Revisited," and shows a map of Graham Bell Island, one of the northernmost islands in Central Russia extending into the Arctic Ocean, which has become his NEW dream to visit. Glanced out the dining-room porthole to see we were still stopped, but by the time I'd gotten to my cabin to finish with this, we'd started up again. The attendant hadn't come to clean or collect my laundry yet, so I guess I'll take "Ghosts" into the dining room to let him do his work before lunch. Charles rather determinedly took off after the lecture, so I guess he doesn't like to sit in one place for a long time, and I didn't ask him if he wanted a Scrabble game now at 10:55AM. Finish "Ghosts" by 11:55AM and took the book back and joined the Yanofskis at their table for combined beef and vegetable stews, finishing with stewed fruit that contained large hunks of some kind of MELON, I hope not the lovely Brazilian melons we got on Ascension, and then Sheila had us all in stitches about her tales of taking the driver's test about 7 times before she passed it the first time, and then forgetting to renew her license and having to take it three or four MORE times, and then ending with the story that "always curls her," about Seymour in a camping tent that zipped all around the front trying vainly to get out when he had to urinate, then asking her if he should use his shoe, and finally she suggested that the tent had POCKETS, and he could do it in one of those. She "curled" constantly during the telling of the tale, so much so that Pat and Vern and Andy and I were laughing almost as hard as she was, and Olivia looked on from the entranceway in amused silence. I told her to be sure and ask Sheila about the tale of Seymour and the zipped tent front. Back to find the cleaner in the hallway, but not here yet, so I finished writing the LAST four postcards, just to DO them, and then got THIS out to finish by 1:20PM, nothing to do until I meet Diane at 2PM for our SCHEDULED Scrabble game. Now that I've started dreaming again, maybe I'll get some inspiration for the business plan or for "Antplay." Just as I finished that and filed it away the cleaner came in , so I left (he picked up my laundry) with IP and started on "An Enemy of the People" until 1:55PM and Diane came looking for me for our three games, which I won all of, until 4:25, when we went up for burnt muffins and a cloudy sea that would probably still give a good sunburn. Saw a couple of the small flying fish, chatted with Sheila, and came down at 4:50 to write this up, finishing at 5PM in time for Andy's lecture on his whale-watching job. ORES stands for Ocean Research Education Society, and Andy's e-mail address is andrew@terraport.net and the best anti-blackfly spray is Muskall. This goes till 6, and though I wait around to find out how to lower the sound on the TV with the VTR, there are still more fruitless suggestions on how his organization can attract more clients and make more fund-raising efforts. I leave and see the remains of a spectacular sunset outside, with an atom-bomb column on the left and the Eye of God or the Face of the Devil (your choice) on the right. Take photos 13:10 to 13:13 of the sunset, wishing that the camcorder didn't have to be so "dew" sensitive, or I would have gotten THAT out too. Have to remember to put it out early tomorrow for the Equator-cross ceremony. Had a slight touch of homesickness during a slow point in Andy's talk, and watching the sunset for 45 minutes brought lots of death-thoughts to the fore: if all the world "out there" were destroyed, how could we survive on the ship: before Jules could have me, I'd get him to let me have the Doctor first. Think of starting another file of thoughts, but THIS is a file of thoughts, and I don't even WANT to look at "Antplay" to see how I could incorporate any of this into it. Write off this day to page 6, and I'm not even WRITING that much about today. I've read my play for the day, done my writing for the day; it's too late to try playing some of the video, but there's always something to look forward to: tomorrow the Equator-crossing. After that the Cape Verde Islands, and after that the next thing, and after that the next thing. And so forth. And so what? Tried to think of sunsets from the past, but realized that it's not the DETAILS of the sunset that are remembered that make it worthwhile, it's the EMOTION I FEEL DURING the sunset that's important. Not the thoughts of the world-destroyed what-do-I-do-now?, but the THINKING that counts. Moment to moment. Now at 7:10PM I know I have to shit and will get to dinner at 8 (after washing my face), but then there's just more reading and then to bed. This sure isn't getting anywhere. Shit and wash my face and start reading "Bleak House," and the characters are immediately engrossing. Stop at 8PM for dinner, starting with VERY fatty baked brie, then a decent Wiener Schnitzel, hot baked potato with much of it quite black, and thinly sliced fresh carrots and underdone green beans, and I told Katie to open me another bottle of wine. Dessert was an oversweet raisin berry tart, and then Ian announced a birthday certificate for Dolores, so I dashed over to distribute the slices as she cut the flaky-layered cake rather like an austere Napoleon. It all went very quickly, particularly when Calvin came over to help me and many people refused their portions, some saying that they should serve ONLY this kind of cake for dessert. Bill announces that there'll be no lectures tomorrow since everyone will be preparing, but he'll have more to say at noon, and "things" will probably get underway at 2PM, with EVERYONE being considered pollywogs, even Kevin and Ian who sailed SOUTH with the ship last year! Quite full at 9PM and surprised coming back to my room to see IAN reading on the bed of the room that I thought (and STILL think!) Katie occupied! Aha! Read up to page 61 of entertaining "Bleak House" and finish these lines by 9:55. Bed at 10:03PM.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3: 12:50AM: Woke about 11:50PM 4/2/96 with a very detailed memory of a tremendously bizarre dream, but I really didn't feel like getting up to record it, except that lying there I had to pee, so I wrapped the quilt around me, peed, and transcribed the dream described for 4/2/96. Then I lifted my porthole-cover to see what the nearly-full moon was doing outside, and found that the sky was VERY light, the sea VERY smooth, and the shadow at the edge of the porthole hole showed that the moon would be visible after ten minutes or so, but finally decided to dress and, tempting Fate somehow, with the idea of surprising someone in an outrageous homosexual act, or inducing someone tremendously desirable to participate in an outrageous homosexual act with me, go up to the 6th deck. Up the two stairways and debate briefly about going onto the bridge, but out the side door and up the staircase to a lonely deck that I went to the overbridge and sat down in a chair, noting the two equi-bright stars like enormous eyes peering over the NW horizon, noting almost a rainbow formed by the thinnest of clouds around the nearly-full moon, and being disappointed by not finding anyone there. Sit watching the silken sea sliding under the bow, surprised to see billows of swells that roll the foremast sullenly athwart the horizon, thinking that I should immerse myself in the moment rather than debating doing an Actualism session to conjure whales or spirits to my Being of Light, remembering details that I should add to my bizarre dream that woke me to this moonlight vigil, hoping to find some significant event or thought to "validate" the fact that I woke, wrote, and wait for someone (ah, lovely typo) to happen to me. Climb down to the fifth deck, debate looking in on the bridge, but don't, then cautiously climb down to the fourth deck and peer over the lit stern to see no signs of today's coming initiations then open silently the unbarred door and memorize the lovely nameplate on the door of the sexiest person on the ship: Dr. Mikhail Potachits, having found a crew member looking through a magazine, standing in the open doorway just PAST the Doctor's (and fantasizing a late-night tryst one doorway away), but there were no sounds, so I made my way to the stairwell and came down to my cabin to put on my light, add the salient dream-detail, and finish this by 1:05AM. Note that I got back into bed at 1:11AM. Then up at 6:05AM and look out the porthole to see the clouds in a state of "just before sunrise," so I put on tee-shirt and jeans and socks and shoes and go to the starboard door on my deck to see the sun rise (well, the moment BEFORE the sun rose and the moment AFTER the sun rose, having looked away at the MOMENT the sun rose), dispelling the orangeness on the bottom of the clouds with daylight. We're still moving VERY slowly, so we don't overshoot the equator by 2PM, and the dining-room door is FINALLY closed (it wasn't at 1AM), back to the cabin about 6:20 and take down the map to find we're still QUITE far from the west coast of Africa latitudinally, and I begin counting days and weeks and "only one day left that ends in a "2" and suchlike." Then get out Pope's astrological sheet to see that there's supposed to be a lunar eclipse tonight, and that April 7 is a major Aries turning point, so I leave that sheet in the "current" drawer. Feeling quite tired, so I put the porthole-cover down and return to bed in the comforting blackness at 6:55AM, hear the announcement at 7:40, and up about 7:50 to dress and pee and get to breakfast for oatmeal, fresh grapes, french toast, juice and tea and pills. I thought Bill's announcement on "Emergency" was scheduled for 8:20, but Caroline reports that it's 8:30. Ian comes in with the weakest Knock Knock joke of them all: "Knock, knock" "Who's there?" "Nobody, I just like the power I feel when eliciting the Skinnerian response when I say "Knock, knock."" Bill comes in at 8:35, apologizing for being late, and says the former lifeboat breakdown won't work, since 27 passengers are on the port side and only 7 on the starboard side, so there are new assignments (I STAY on the port side for the lifeboat), and also new phone-lists which he passes out one to a cabin, AND there are life RAFT assignments, based on the fact that we CROSS THE DECK (which would be GOOD if the boat is LISTING so that lifeboats AND life rafts can't be deployed from one side, but makes NO sense if the ship is upright, as Paul establishes, but Bill holds to his rule, making Paul shake his head in frustration) from our assigned lifeboat to get to our assigned life raft. SURE it'll work! Finish this at 9AM, with nothing scheduled today but lunch at 12, Neptune at 2, and snack and sunset at 6PM. So I guess I'll spend the morning reading after I get the grape-skin out from between my teeth. Of such moment are the moments made of these busy days. Read "Bleak House" (BH) in my room until 10, then decide there must be SOMETHING going on elsewhere, and go into the "reading room" (the sofa-section at the "back" of the dining room) where only Trudy is quietly reading. My eyes begin to close with boredom at about page 144 at 11:20, so I take the book back to find my room "cleaned" without my laundry returned, go up to the bridge where I find Jules clapping the Doctor on the back, and the Doctor responds cheerily in broken English that I so envy to have directed to me. Jules and I agree that the "equator" must be placed VERTICALLY on the window for the photograph. Almost my stomach knots in envy and sexual frustration: Jules can be so NEEDY about it and actually GET the contact that he wants! We're at 0 degrees 15 minutes, so must be traveling at something like 6 knots, though the indicator isn't set to read that figure. The birders seem to be having a convention in the "conversation area" (the entry to the dining room), and there are FEW on the top deck, mostly reading, except for Armand, who has his "painful teeth" grimace on constantly as he wheels back and forth in his swivel chair looking at the featureless horizon. Diane assures me that NOTHING has been going on. Pass Pat and Vern arm in arm on the bench under the lifeboat on fourth deck. Katie passes again: I said "Hi" to her the first time, she says "Hi" to me the second time. Charles is reading the daily schedule, and I look at my watch at 11:40 and say "It's a bit late for Scrabble before lunch." "I'd come down looking for you earlier," he admits, and I responded, "I was reading over in the back," while he gives the impression he'd looked only into the conversation area. Put on a shirt to protect against the extra coolness inside, particularly at meals, knowing I have to change before the shenanigans start at 2PM into my grottiest clothing. Now 11:53AM, so another chapter before lunch. At 11:58AM comes the announcement "Lunch in 10 minutes." Delays in the barbecue again. In just in time to see the franks enter, and get on line to take one of the first hotter hamburgers, just some potato salad, and over to the next table for roll, cheese, and onion. Back to expect wonders from the good-LOOKING hamburg, but it's full of bits of gristle and tendon and inedible parts that I put in a pile on the side of my plate, and pick up to try again, again and again. Wait with the others until Bill arrives late to say that we should go to the bow on deck 4, unless we want to photograph, and we should go to the front of deck 6. Most leave and I find Charles and ask if he wants to play Scrabble now, and he does, so I get the set and leave it with him while I return to my cabin to put my videocamera upstairs on deck 6 to warm without dewing. He's set up on the table in the middle of the reading room, which is OK, and he goes first but somehow in the middle I confuse the columns so that "he" wins, though I and he both know that I do. By then it's almost 2PM and Bill announces we should be ready for the advent of Neptune. As I go back to my room to change, the shouts and hilarity from the mud room make it clear that's the dressing room, so I avert my eyes and turn my back whenever I can. Up to deck 4 to photograph the area in the well on deck 3, and then there's canned Russian music and the cannibals enter, though I actually didn't know they were CANNIBALS, only SAVAGES, followed by the pirates, and then finally there's a shout, and Neptune and his court arrive on a ZODIAC from far behind the ship! Quite a shock! I think they PLANNED to circle the ship, but the swells are pretty bad, so they just get out on the gangway and enter in a procession that I film most of, except that the Captain is right beside me trying to film the same. I try to alternate film and slides, but don't really get EITHER of them satisfactorily, particularly since I see that the Doctor is bare-legged under his netting as a Guard of Neptune, and I can't think of any excuse to fill my camera with close-ups of HIM which I would then show to everyone aboard. There's a VERY long rigmarole in Russian, and the thing is even SCRIPTED. Finally they call down "Beel, Beel," and Bill goes down to kiss the hand of the mermaid queen, the almost bare-bosomed buxom blonde cook, and of Neptune, as everyone guessed, the "owner's rep/KGB man." Then he's taken to the side of the ship, doused with talcum powder, and given a "Haircut and shave" by the barber, one of the mates dressed in a formal dickie and effete makeup. Then he's sloshed with water and orange juice, made to drink from a cup at which he grimaces and pushes away the last, then forced through the "tube of garbage," which seems MAINLY to be banged on from above. I don't recall whether he got the "poker game on the belly," which seemed to determine the winner of whatever GIRL it was. Then he was tossed into the pool, which didn't seem that deep, and someone was reporting that it was leaking. The same sort of thing was done by Andy, the gold-toothed cook, (they called for Emery, but no one could find him), and Katie startled the Russians by falling OVERBOARD (which I cursed I didn't get on tape) in collusion with Ian, who went down next and "fought" with them until "knocked unconscious", but I thought his "fighting" went a bit long and hard, and had a bit of viciousness to it. Then they called for passengers, and Frieda volunteered, taking it VERY well. Others went, of little interest, until Shiela said "Seymour's going," but which time my battery was going too, but I got most of his smiling endurance, and then they just started tossing EVERYONE into the water: Olivia and Alan and Andy, and finally I went down, telling Shiela to film me: I hit my head on the bottom and got confused, and they dragged me to the top, as they got CONCERNED when Bob stayed down too long to "wash the junk out of my hair," as he put it. Ian jumped from the edge of deck 4, which Katie reportedly hurt her foot trying to duplicate. Noted Calvin's thin varicose-veined legs and Shiela's plumpness when SHE went. Forgot the Captain's role: at the START, in his dress uniform of short-sleeved white shirt with rank-epaulets, navy-blue pants and black shoes, he posed on the bow with a bottle of wine which he threw into the water as a gift to Neptune in the FIRST place, and then said he was no longer Captain of the ship, but Neptune was. He videoed as much as he could, and then changed into his jean-shorts (Olivia noticed his front-torso was covered with little round scars, which I hadn't noted yet) and continued shooting. Then they tried to get HIM into the water, and though he APPEARED to put up a laughing denial, they finally GOT him, and I shot him with the LAST of the battery, including his passing by dripping on the deck. Then, about 4, Bill gave warning to those with cameras that the entire deck was going to be baptized, and a few minutes later the fire hoses were arced into the air and large salty drops fell like the heaviest rain over all of us, flattening my cap, filling my trouser pockets with water, and sopping my shoes (and I guess it was AFTER than that I decided to take the total-dunk). I put my cameras on the stairway landing, but Paul obviously hadn't heard the warning and ran, cursing, with his camera-case clutched to his wet chest. Another time, the wind-up man, hilariously dressed as what I thought was Erik von Stroheim but someone else reminded he that he had a simulated peg-leg, which I hadn't really taken in, flicked HIS hose up to the fourth deck, getting angry cries from Irina about getting her camera wet. There were the usual madnesses: men dancing with each other with obvious pleasure, Sacha's ass-revealing cut-outs with enormous red lip-prints that someone ELSE obviously had to apply; I kept looking for the Doctor to indulge in some hair-letting-down behavior, but he remained smilingly distant, even though his partner, in the general final melee, allowed himself to be tipped into the water, as were all the major participants including Neptune, and the von Stroheim capitalized on his rubber-ball stomach to gesture at it as it floated just under his chin. Someone tried carrying the little kitchen-help girl, kicking and screaming, toward the water, but going across a narrow section, while I was filming, he tripped and fell almost on top of her, and she was still for a moment, causing great concern, and then she seemed to be crying, at which point I stopped filming, but it might have been in protest of being thrown in the water, because she reacted appropriately when she was dumped in. Tanya went through a bit of it, too, though they didn't force her too hard to drink the vodka, or whatever it was (Katie said it was just awful), with her smiling father filming it all. They even threw in the gauzily topped cook, and I may have gotten some tits and ass on film. Then it seemed to be over about 4:10, and I stomped wetly back to my room, COLD in the wet in the air conditioning, stripped off the clothes to put on my bathing suit (the only dry item I had) and stand for a moment outside the third-deck men's shower room, but finding that Tony was inside and Calvin was in line outside, I figured to try the fourth-deck shower, when I found only after circling the women's dressing room, shower, and men's dressing room, which of course was the bathroom. THAT bathroom was empty, had a showerhead that was DIRECTLY attached to the water faucet, a plus, but the thing was more awkward to handle and COULDN'T be attached to the wall, a minus, and the handles were in inconvenient places, it seemed. There was a chair OUTSIDE the curtain that didn't seem to be much help. Dreaded someone from the fourth deck wanting to use it, but I finished rather quickly, becoming perilously low on shampoo, and exited with no one waiting outside. Andy saw me coming back and asked if the shower was empty, and I said I'd used the one upstairs. Only recently have I seen HOW MUCH HE LOOKS LIKE ME, which may be one of the reasons I don't like to associated with him, because I DON'T LIKE THE WAY I LOOK. Wash out the salt-water-soaked shirt and pants and hat with sink-water, wring them out, and drip on the floor before I decide to hang them from hangers on the mirror over the sink until they drip out enough to put back on the hangers over the floor. Feels good to get dry clothes on again, put the battery on to charge, and about 5PM get up to deck 6 to find everyone sitting in the shade. Have the luck to find an unused swivel chair and bring it over to the shaded side of the deck, where Olivia makes some remark about "people who are NEVER on deck" being on deck. Pam talks to me for a long time about camping trips in her youth, and Olivia says that Bob Tucker had been a ship's captain and that the flags displayed were simply for "dressing the ship," and don't mean anything. The sun is high and bright in the sky, and as 5:30 comes on there's no sign of a snack, so I return to sit in my cabin and eat the apple I'd taken at breakfast a few days ago, and then back up to find my seat still untaken, and look at a solitary bird flying way off to the east, and notice four or five splashes as some frightened FISH take off from the ship's bow. Setting up a long trestle-table down the center of the deck reminds me of curtain-stretchers, which Olivia never heard of, and finally at 6:10 the sun's getting into an interesting-enough lowness, and safe-enough dimness, for me to abandon the chair and take up a post at the very corner of the 6th deck with my cameras ready for whatever sunset throws at them. It doesn't get interesting until just before the actual setting, and I'm looking through my camera viewfinder, seeing NOTHING but red, when three on the deck below start exclaiming about seeing the green flash, which Diane right behind me also seems to see, but I don't see a thing (wouldn't it be GREAT to have it on film, but I won't hold my breath). Bob points out the gibbous risen MOON on the other side (and sadly there's a report of Frieda looking out her porthole at 4AM THIS morning and seeing the moon in eclipse, so there's no use to look TONIGHT), and I point to a cloud halfway between them to the south east and call it a second moon, which has Glen plaintively asking how there could be a second moon. When the sun has set for about 15 minutes there are spectacular clouds, even to RAYS of alternating orange and blue-green from the far-sunk sun that Olivia says has something to do with cosmic dust, but I think are just below-horizon clouds filtering the sun's rays. Take more than a few pictures while enjoying the canapes of little pizza squares with salmon and roast beef, the dips going mostly unused, and when I try one of them I can see why. Keep wishing for the Doctor to come up beside me and say how spiritual he thought I was, or SOMETHING, and keep trying NOT to be sexually frustrated at such a glorious sunset, but in the moments BETWEEN thinking how beautiful it all was (though the ship, having stopped, was subject to rather intermittent swells through the evening), I began to think, having had a soda water which wasn't very satisfying, and thinking of taking a beer but not wanting to (having had one after lunch made me somewhat maudlin, rather than cheerful, I think), I gradually thought it might just be as well if I considered THAT (and only NOW, at 9:05AM, think to take my MORNING pills) to be dinner, which has certainly been enough with about 4 mini-roast-beef sandwiches. About 7:20 some of the dinner courses start coming up, and all I see are the same sad cole slaw, another dish I can't even REMEMBER of surpassing mediocrity, and what appear to be baked potatoes under the aluminum foil, I decide that I CAN leave the party, so I gather up my photographer's bag and get down to my cabin to take my pills and undress for bed. There's still banging through the door and noises from the mudroom as crew cleans up from today's wetnesses, but I put in my earplugs and decide to give it a try, NOT wanting to go through NOT interacting with the crew, talking with people I wasn't particularly interested in talking with (even Diane made me a bit impatient by sitting next to me when I was sitting quietly on the slow bench looking at the spectacular white moon sailing above tiny cloud-wisps)(and Bob irked me by asking, "What are you standing HERE for?" as he went down the stairs, to which I rather tartly replied, "Looking at the sunset," when it was manifestly OVER. Didn't want to talk to someone that I DIDN'T want to talk with (any passenger) without talking to someone I WANTED to talk to (the Doctor), even though I KNEW, even if he CAME on deck (and there was no sign that he was going to, though the thought that he might be even shyer than I am in striking up conversation with someone he might WANT to talk with is too poignant to even be CONSIDERED)---all that thinking about possibilities was too much to bear with so many days yet remaining to the vacation. So I got into bed at 7:30, listened to some of the talking outside, JUST heard the announcement for dinner on the upper deck, and may have tossed somewhat till 8PM, but got to sleep without too much more difficulty. Not without thinking, AGAIN, of the stops we have yet to go, the days and weeks of ship-time left, and all the thoughts that I KNOW are best not to think, but of which I keep on thinking!
THURSDAY, APRIL 4, starting in NOTEBOK8, now at 9:20AM 4/4/96. Woke at 3AM and, though I didn't feel particularly horny, and even though I'd already slept at least 7 hours, I decided to jerk off. Play lazily with the quilt over me until it got feeling good, then got out the rubber bands and, in searching for my scarf, my wooly sock, and started playing nicely, though it WAS a bit of a stretch (no pun intended), until I got the two rubber bands around the base of my cock (can feel the TINIEST stirring down there NOW as I write about it!) and used the sock to slightly abrade and re-sensitive the edges of my cock-head. Propped my pelvis up on folds of quilt and my head on turns of pillow, and used the sock to rub my torso from neck to pubis, sucking in my gut and feeling nicely whole-body orgasmic as my breathing got more constrained and I felt I just HAD to come, so I worked it up nicely and held out the two rubber bands to the side around the cock head and let the first spurts come THAT way, feeling that the orgasm CONTINUED until I let that light touch go and really GRABBED the cock to permit it to feel that it WAS truly in orgasm. Licked off the curds and found that it was 3:45, so that the whole ritual lasted about 45 minutes. Just took off the bands and lay them and the sock beside the bed, where I found them when I woke. There WAS a segment when I THOUGHT, through my earplugs, a door was being opened VERY close to me, and a moment's fantasy of someone (hopefully NOT Graham) finding me "in flagrante" and joining me, but (again, sigh) if could only be the Doctor to REALLY satisfy my fantasies. How COMFORTABLE I was when I thought there was NO one on board to yearn for, except maybe Andy, until I saw his unprepossessing legs and even less attractive rather potty and undefined chest (though I was rather charmed to see him straining through final chinups on the lifeboat bottom after the initiation yesterday), until focusing on the Doctor. Maybe I would have ended up focusing on ANYONE to fill the gap that I thought needed filling. Would have liked to finish THIS, too, but it's 9:30 and I'll be out to see Graham's talk. Wake at 7:20AM and dress and shit and write the details of the dream from 7:30 to 8, when I go out for breakfast of two boiled eggs, two pieces of buttered toast, one piece of toast with peanut butter and marmalade, juice and milk, taking an apple for later. Back to type yesterday and part of today from 8:30 to 9:30, and get out for Graham's talk on Australia I, focusing on the first of three trips he took in 1976, 1983, and in January of 1995. He cruised from Singapore to Perth, stopping by Christmas Island, uninhabited, taking the train to Adelaide, and discovering interesting things I didn't know about mangroves: the undersides of their leaves excrete salt, and the SEEDS are actually miniature TREES, since seeds themselves wouldn't be able to survive in the mangrove tides. That goes only until about 10:10, and Charles doesn't want to play Scrabble but Diane does, so I go back to get the set and we start with her WINNING a game, and then I win, so we have to play a third game which is interrupted for lunch. Reports say that it's raining outside, but I haven't been outside at all and the ship is starting to rock and the waves are becoming white-capped. Lunch is an odd quiche-like top over boiled potatoes with pink and green pasta, and they actually SERVE the Brazilian melon I'd lost hope of eating, but I think they cut it too early because the milk-white insides were rather firm and disappointingly tasteless. I resisted asking for lemon to flavor it a bit more strongly. Then Diane and I make a beeline back to finish the game which I win, and we JUST start another when Charles comes past, but says he'll wait until we're finished. Then Andy comes past and says he's going to give the last of the Photography series at 3, so we don't get to finish THAT game either, and I say we can finish later but Diane bizarrely says she doesn't WANT to finish. Andy starts at 3:05PM on composition, giving the Rule of Three that doesn't REALLY make much sense, though it DOES seem a good idea that a runner should be running (slightly) toward the CENTER of the picture, while a penguin looking in a direction might be SLIGHTLY away from the side to which he's looking, but doing it by THIRDS seems extreme. He says the same about the horizon line: never in the center but concentrating on the sky OR the ground picture. He RAVES about the goodness of Fuji Velvia, saying the higher the ASA the more granular the picture. DISTANT flash assures NO red-eye in the subjects. Professional films (like Velvia) are more color-TRUE, but it must be kept COOL. Amateur film is NOT so sensitive, but not so ACCURATE in colors. 50 ASA Velvia is GREAT. Fuji Provia 100ASA is good, but not for GREAT detail. Ektachrome 100 is GOOD for hues of blue. Kodachrome 200 ASA for PASTEL-like effects. Do NOT use ASA 200 on SUNNY days, it'll be too contrasty. Use it mainly on OVERCAST days. If USING 50 on a CLOUDY day, put the meter on 100 ASA, and say "I pushed it," and lab will correct for it. He said to CHANGE the ASA rating scale rather than using the + and - meter. 50 ASA Velvia will be too DARK, put it in as 32 and it'll be correct. Color is more SATURATED with WIDE lenses. For MULTIPLE exposures (on my camera, TRY pushing the button on the BOTTOM and winding the film: it probably WON'T wind and I can multiply-expose it), say 3 exposures of 100 ASA, put the meter on 300 ASA so that LESS light will come through EACH time, but the MULTIPLE will be well-lit. He makes and GIVES me a gizmo to extract film for taking "bad" film out at photo X and rewinding it to extract it, then putting it IN again and "false clicking" X photos, then two more, to get it back to the correct area. That talk goes to 4:15 and even later as he adds facts, and we munch on buttered gingerbread until about 4:45, when Diane and I finish the game which I win for a final day's score of Diane 1 and me 4. ANDY would also like to play! Graham talks on Australia II from 5 until 5:35, and then I show Sheila first the last TEN minutes, then everyone wants to see the WHOLE reel, so I rewind and show the WHOLE thing from 5:48 to 6:21, for 33 minutes of the 90 minutes reel 3. I say I'll show reels one and two over the next two days after lunch. Then up for the tail-end of sunset, lovely unphotographable colors, and moon rises about 7:10PM, and I watch THAT until 7:30, when I go down to the bridge to see we're only at 4 degrees 44 minutes north, so I must have MISREAD something day before yesterday, the night of the initiation, where we were NOT 4 degrees north already. Then down to type this, finishing at 8PM, JUST in time for dinner. Sit with Tony, who's VERY interested in my laptop, even to saying he wants to look at it tomorrow. Turns out Alan had worked for a telephone company doing computerized billing, for 25 years, but he's SUCH a negative person, stuffing food into his mouth haphazardly and then complaining when he tomato-spots his "clean" shirt, and then dismissing himself from the table and lolling on the sofa while Bob and Bill do the wrap-up, he seem a TERRIBLE person. Diane is wondering what I'm going to DO with all this writing (estimated at 50,000 words so far, but my current total is more like 55,000 words; I tell her about my 15 feet of writing, but it doesn't even compute, and Tony says she's "Blown" about it. Tomato-cabbage soup started dinner, the Chicken Florentine wasn't bad, not that much spinach in a cream sauce, and the sliced fries potatoes weren't TOO black. Dessert was that rather icky peanut-butter Rice Krispies combination I say tastes like something a kindergarten teacher would teach her students to make for Mommy and Daddy, but covered in a chocolate sauce so almost-good that after I finish mine I take Diane's to take the sauce from. Bob "wraps up" with a fund-raising story about the fellow who wants to film giant squid LIVE, who estimates that SQUID make up 60% of the world's biomass, obviously grossly overestimated. The largest part found implies that the biggest so far is 65 feet, and it may end up the largest animal ever, the REGULAR squid living at 5000 feet and the Giant squid below 10,000 feet. Bill then hands out the Diplomas for crossing the equator, and I tell Ian I'll take Simon HIS, and he hands it to me gladly. That's over about 9:10PM and by 9:15 I'm back in my cabin finishing this by 9:30PM, wondering just WHAT text I'll show Tony as an example! Have to put the camcorder battery on recharge and brush my teeth, then might try reading. Decide to show Tony "Antplay," and read to page 193 of BH by 10:45PM, quite late! Tried to take care of most of the sand in the bags and clothes, but the floor is pretty bad. Poor cleaner! Bed at 10:53PM, MORE conscious of bed-vibrations.
FRIDAY, APRIL 5: 7:45AM: Wake at "4" to find my watch stopped, and pee, and record dream, and glance at the bright moon in light clouds shining on calm seas. Check the VTR and it says it's 4:55AM, so I add 50 minutes to my watch and start it running again. Wake at "7:15" to find my watch stopped, and record dream, and check VTR and it says 7:40AM, so my watch is getting WORSE. Maybe have to buy a bathing suit (unless I use shorts under my gym shorts?) AS WELL AS cheap watch, just to keep UP with things? Dress and type this and have a huge need to shit now at 7:50AM. No one in the john, though the hall is crowded with people talking about 1) Today's Good Friday, 2) Ron Brown, Commerce Secretary, was killed in a plane crash in Yugoslavia, and 3) The Royal Viking Sun hit an object in the Red Sea and is now disabled. And Dorothy wonders how to get MORE news! Someone's heard Ruth get a news station on the short-wave radio they brought along, and everyone knows Jules listens to the news all the time. Someone even said that the stock market took a nosedive one day and came back two days later. Others depressed me by talking about seeing the lunar eclipse on the EVENING of April 4, or 3rd, so that Frieda was MISTAKEN when she reported the eclipse at 4AM that morning. Breakfast of oatmeal and two fried eggs with two slices of buttered toast, followed by a slice of buttered toast with peanut butter and marmalade, with juice and pills (described in detail to Armand, who proceeded to explain HIS pills in detail (I take one prescription and the rest vitamins, he takes one vitamin and the rest prescription) and was followed by ANN who explained HER pills in detail. Diane stopped by to say that she'd be in her room all day knitting the neck of her sweater; Andy said that right after breakfast was his time for writing letters, but maybe later in the afternoon, and Charles was so engrossed in the conversation at his breakfast table that included Rita, Dick, Glen, Jules, and the newcomer Olivia, that he didn't seem ready to get up at ALL by the time I left at 8:45AM. Checked the schedule to see Bob slated for a talk at 9:30, so there isn't even TIME for a game before that. Back to my room, past a TERRIBLE benzene smell from the mud room where Emery smiled me a "Good morning," to finish with the sand-dealing (lots on the floor, but the snorkel stuff is all dried, desanded, and in its proper bag for the NEXT time) and making up another laundry slip for $6 for one shirt and one pants from the snorkeling, not yet having got back the pack that I sent in three or four days ago, and my underwear and socks are beginning to NEED changing! Look at "Antplay" to decide that IT would be a good thing to show Tony, since it has both a "user" and an "automatic" page-break symbol in it, and it's something that would entertain more conversation in a reasonable mode, rather than showing him my notebook or dreams and coming into some outrageous cock or gay-oriented segment. Still very cloudy out today, which Bill keeps blaming on passengers' whistling (or cutting their hair or trimming their nails!), but someone reports following a RUSSIAN whistling down a corridor. Ann relates that the staff is hiding POKER chips all over the ship in preparation for an "Easter egg" hunt on Easter Sunday, when we hope to be hitting the Cape Verde Islands, and I decry the need for ANY immigration: why can't we just sail up to an island and LAND on it, for heaven's sake, without worrying about immigration. But everyone insists that "it's quite normal" for passport-stamping, immigration control, and the safety of these sovereign islands. Sure. So even if there IS any particular Easter celebration on these Catholic islands, we'll be sure to miss it. AND then they talk about things being closed on "Easter Monday," which I don't THINK I've ever heard about before, though probably the boat will be enough impetus to open shops and post offices, where I hope to mail the four last of my postcards. Now 9:15AM, looking at the EMPTY clothes-hooks on the wall for the first time: why did it take me so LONG to take advantage of the hangers in the UNUSED closet, just as it took me a LONG time to appropriate the second under-bed drawer for my winter stuff. With everything "spread around," it doesn't even look like I HAVE that much. At least the watch seems to keep running when I have it on my WRIST, as opposed to running down OVERNIGHT, when at least I have the VTR to check against. Sit dimly thinking if there's anything more to say: aside from paranoidly thinking that the vibrations of my cabin and bed are driving EVERY useful thought from my mind! I must say I've been VERY lax about lightwork: haven't done a session in over a week, probably more like two: I have to trouble getting to sleep, and rather than doing lightwork while stonedly watching a sunset or sunrise, I just let my mind wander idly, or even think nothing at all for long periods of time. Probably take my pointer to Bob's for his lecture, since he usually needs it, and ALSO take the Scrabble, hoping that SOMEONE will play after his lecture and before lunch? Nothing NOW scheduled after lunch til a 5PM talk, but there may be a last-minute addition as there was yesterday. Another number of lines blathering on about absolutely nothing at all. Leisure doesn't produce rich thoughts, BUSYNESS does! I stare at the blinking cursor and nothing more comes to mind to write, so I'll close it down at 9:20AM and get to Bob's talk early. Bill, I guess, hung the spare "April 4" schedule next to the current schedule, confusing EVERYBODY. Guess I should also get to the bridge to take a "north 00s" photo, which would be #13:27, taken at 9:30 at 7 degrees 27 north and 20 degrees 56 west. Sadly for historical purposes, the SUN was out, when I really wanted to get a picture of the CLOUDS that surrounded the ship most of these days. Bob doesn't start his talk on turtles, fish, and sharks until 9:40 and goes till 10:55. The "ten-minute talk before the slides" was over in 25 minutes! Leatherbacks (leather OVER shells) are 6-7 feet long and 3000 pounds, in their own family. Others in a single family include green and Australian flatbacks, loggerheads, and Ridley's, which are most endangered. Some sharks EAT EACH OTHER in the WOMB. That's not a very good statement for a lecture meant to indicate sharks are NOT dangerous: only about 33 attacks per year, probably fewer than people hit by lightning in the United States. Cuts it pretty close to start a game before lunch, so I get back to type this to 11:07AM and will take BH out to read WITH the Scrabble in hand in case anyone wants it. No one wants it, so I read to page 230 just before 12, when the meat chili comes in first and I grab for the second bowl, leavening it with veggie chili for veggies, and sit at a table with Bill who has lots of interesting stories about his home in Nassau, his trips across the northwest passage both ways, and tales of other passengers. Andy says he has slides to sort, Charles bombs out of the room again, so I corner Diane and win a game just as Charles enters about 2PM. We play two games and he plays a fairly canny game, seeming to enjoy it, but I win both. Diane and I start to play again when it's snack-time, and with grapes going fast, we know to get there first, adding VERY blue bleu cheese, crackers, Swiss, and Philadelphia cream cubes, of which all I eat a lot of. Back to two games of which I win the first and she wins the second, and I must say I find myself very grumpy about it. That's over at 6:15PM, ship rocking in varied sunlight, and I take my stuff to the cabin to find the bed made and the sand swept up, the new laundry gone but the old laundry not returned yet. Catch up with this after noting that the sun is about four diameters above the horizon, not nearly ready for color yet. Feel slightly dippy with FIVE games of Scrabble done, but what else IS there to do. We both decided to avoid Graham's lesson in perfecting a French accent, because HIS accent is SO British as to be really laughable. Anyway, our final game was the hottest, since she WAS winning and I WAS trying to catch up. Finish this at 6:22PM and feel like a good shit and then to take my camera up on deck to see if the cloudy skies yield anything like a colorful sunset. Up to find few passengers on deck, and to Olivia reading at the rail I say, "Nothing like doing two things at once." She starts chatting and suddenly Graham interposes himself EXACTLY between us, and even Ian comes up to ask if I have his initiation on tape, but when I ask him to wait until the sunset is over, he loses interest and says he'll write it himself. Continue chatting with Olivia during the non-sunset and we go down to find we're at 9 degrees north and 20 degrees west without finding ANY indication of speed. Back down to shit, take out my still damp (and VERY smelly!) shoes and put them on the bench to air better than under the bed, and finish this to 7:45PM. Will BH until dinner. Tossed salad of shredded carrots and lettuce make up the appetizer, and the Beef Wellington is well-intentioned, but the dough is underdone and much too large for the tiny meat (tiny meat! tiny meat!) inside, which is rather too tough for such a famed dish, and though the mushroom lining the meat totally SHOULD be good, they have more color (black) than texture (papery) than taste (almost none. Even omnivorous Bill doesn't eat all the dough. Tiny overdone, over-greasy fries could be good, but they were cool and too few, and the combination squash-red beet vegetable was terribly bitter (so I guess it wasn't squash but rutabaga), even with the addition of salt and pepper to try to taste. Dessert was a chocolate mousse that wasn't bad, but the meal was reasonably depressing anyway. Bill reported on the contacts and still-unknowns of Cape Verde Islands, which he said we should reach at 6PM on Sunday, and Graham said a word or three about the bird or three sighted that day. When he returned to the table, Bill said it was the first time they LEFT him his coffee and dessert. I return to the cabin about 9PM, even putting on the shoes to try to assist in their drying-out, which they've almost accomplished, except for a FOUL smell that I hope doesn't broadcast too widely. Continue with BH until page 276, when I feel I can read no more, and get to bed at 10:05PM, feeling the room getting chillier and chillier.
SATURDAY, APRIL 6: Wake when my watch says 3:10AM, but it's stopped, so I go to my videocamera to find its face blanked out with the extension attached, so I substitute the battery for the extension and find the time, retained, to be 4:30AM. The room is QUITE cold and the boat is PITCHING distinctly, which would endanger things on my shelf, so I get up to pee, put the bar on the shelf to hold the books in place, put the computer on the floor to protect it, and because I feel ever-so-slightly nauseous with the boat's motion and my changing positions within it, I take a complete Bonine pill, starting a new placket, and record my dream briefly because it just feels too cold to get up and transcribe it. Instantly to sleep again and wake with the watch saying 3:35AM, stopped a second time, and my camcorder says it's 6:50AM, so I note the dream because AGAIN it's too chilly, but I can't ignore the erection I still have, so I start playing with it and wrap the quilt around my shoulders to get the rubber bands and extract a woolen sock from the below-bed drawer and play for a limited amount of time, feeling almost more frustrated than satisfied with my activities, and have a very felt orgasm with the cum strained through TWO quadruple-wrapped rubber bands, which keeps the cock still purply-red even after cuming, and I take off the banks and drop them beside the bed, wiping off the slime from the tip a couple of times, and fall back asleep. Wake again and JUST take one earplug out when Bill announces that it's 25 minutes till breakfast. Laze a bit more, then get up and dress with undershirt AND shirt, even debating a sweater, and get to my morning shit at 7:55AM, bathroom empty, and wash shit-cum fingertips and in for my two-couple table without Peter: Rose was absent from lunch yesterday, Peter with stomach problems (the chili was too seasoned for him, we all thought) from yesterday (he hardly ate any dinner) and general fatigue after being up all night---this morning. Paul and Caroline looked extra-cheery under the sunlight coming in the porthole, and though the ship pitched and pitched (which Paul made clear was different from rolling, which it did on the way back from Nightingale and on the first few bad nights on the ship at the beginning of the trip), the sky seemed relatively clear and the waters relatively free from whitecaps, but it was clear that we were trying to make good time in a swell, and the ship's motion suffered from it. I mentioned that it was ironic we dawdled in the calm waters around the equator, and now that it's the tiniest bit rough, we're bulling our way through it to make it as bad as possible. Oatmeal and grapefruit juice, and two large pancakes with a special treat: they'd diluted the berries into a reasonable semblance of a syrup and heated it up, which went very nicely with the pancakes. Rose (I thought) asked for grapes for Peter (she ended up eating them herself), and Olga (the smallest waitress; she who was dropped on the deck when she was being carried to the ducking pool) frowned and obviously was obliged to bring back an entire tray ("There goes tomorrow's breakfast," observed Paul) for the whole dining room, since the portions served with the fruit went so quickly. She presented the tray to Rose, who took only a bit, and then to Paul and Caroline, who took theirs, and to me, who declined, and then to the next table and across the room, prompting Seymour, with a truly pathetic "left-out little boy" face gaping after escaping goodies, to bounce across the aisle and take two fairly sizable clumps for himself and Sheila, prompting Rose to make the comment that "That happens so often; people take it all for themselves and leave nothing for the others," which I thought was unjust, but I let it go. Olivia could be heard behind us, talking long and loudly on "postmen who went from village to village, smearing out the languages between villages, though dialects, which have been around since the time of chimpanzees, develop in isolation----" to what end I couldn't quite determine. I said, "I guess I'll go back to my refrigerator---I mean my cabin," as I excused myself from the table, to give myself an "one up" on Rose, who complained that "That Door" squeaked throughout the night, giving them excruciating discomfort even greater than when the door slammed, which people seem to be avoiding doing, but "I'm sure that Marine Expedition is going to get quite a letter when this is over," she pouted, and Caroline opined, "You mean you're not coming back on the next trip?" Back to the cabin about 8:30, putting things away and getting new pills out and LEAVING THE DOOR OPEN just so it can warm up a bit from the hall, causing Bob (does HE live two doors down TOO?) to blunder in, and there were MANY workmen passing in the hall and Frieda and Andy were doing something in the mud room, and there was a general parade of people that I really wasn't aware passed by in the morning. Finish now at 9:25AM, ready for what Caroline called the greatest-possible contrast: a 9:30 talk by Bob on Indonesia, and a 5PM talk by Graham on Siberia. Climatic contrasts! I thought I might have to spend the whole day in bed, but the pill seems to have taken effect and I'm really not aware (except for balance purposes, of course) of the ship's motions, which are still pretty strong, and the white waves rushing away from the ship's sides DO seem higher than usual, and there ARE the occasional whitecaps between here and the never-ending horizon. Each destination seems to be "just one more important one," since there's news of boats being kept from landing on the Cape Verde Islands because of strong seas, but I'm confident that in two days we'll be able to land at LEAST once. Oh, remembered that Bill said that the office would tell Don (if he tried in the LEAST) where our next docking would be, and he could fax or telex a message THERE, to be picked up by Bill and passed on to me. So I now have TWO chances of hearing news before meeting (or not meeting) Don in Madeira on the 15th, just TEN days from now! Aware that the vacation-time OFF the ship now exceeds the vacation-time ON the ship; and at this moment Bob babbles on FOREVER (partly in Dyak?) about his coming talk---another use of my shelf-slat as pointer. Bob starts soon after 9:30, talking of the geological formation, ethnic settling, and political developments throughout the entire area. Most is "old stuff," but he manages a few neat tidbits: the Seven Seas are NOT the oceans of the world, but the seas surrounding JAVA, which I want to get a list of. AND he tells a convincing story of what became of Michael Rockefeller: from the brothers Lorne and Larry(?) someone who made the four-part "Ring of Fire" that I believe I taped and will have to re-watch. Rockefeller had admired the three central Boshi(?) poles (totems) that commemorated the three chiefs killed by a Dutch force trying to eradicate headhunting and cannibalism who had not yet been avenged. To add to his crimes, he bought some spirit-masks which were sacred to tribesmen, sold by renegade profit-seekers. When he admired the poles the FIRST time, they thought he was DESTINED to bless them, because he was white-blooded, like the criminals who produced the deaths that produced the totems. Then when he returned to the island, and the two ships separated, he decided to swim to shore, producing rumors that he drowned or was eaten by sharks; but the L&L brothers became friends with the Asmats, who in comraderie brought out a skull wearing gold-rimmed glasses, saying "This is Rockefeller," who had been encountered, swimming, by an Asmat canoe whose rowers were then CONVINCED that he was returning to offer himself as a sacrifice for their totems, so they speared him, shot him with arrows, cut off his head, anointed the totems with his blood, and preserved his head as a valued enemy. The brothers told them, "Don't TELL anyone about this," and Bob concludes, "The Rockefellers may not even know this story." This talk concludes at 10:35AM, I retrieve my pointer and return to my cleaned, not yet laundry-returned, cabin, still cold and open, and finish this by 10:55AM, and will return to the reading room to read more of BH until someone comes for Scrabble or requests more video-viewing. Read, and Katie begins setting out dishes on a side-table and I think I've once again outsmarted the system, but the first course is a pea soup with tarragon (THAT spice) and potatoes, served at the table. Then comes toasted cheese sandwiches that I coax a jar of peach jelly out of Katie for, and SHE promises to try it, and likes it, as does Vern and Pat: I'm making converts! Then everyone clears out and I wave down Diane to play, and while I win the first game SHE gets TWO seven-letter words in the second and wins 413-259! And in the third game she wins 311-271, for her first "series" win. I read BH some more, but get bored, and shit, and return for cookies and a nice iced tea, then take my camera bag to the bridge, where we're at 12 degrees and 30 minutes, but the bouncing ship isn't translated into good bridge-pictures, and Olivia and I try various sides, but aside from bursts of TINY flying fish in squadrons of 20-30, and colorful wavetops when the sun hits them right, there's not much to photograph: the BEST pictures would be where there's the MOST spray, which would be damaging. Down with wet glasses and shirt-sleeves at 4:45 and catch up with this by 4:55PM, ready for Graham's second Siberiade I. He repeats the Lena Rocks, but not before a shot on which he lingers a VERY long time: on Matrushka dolls, but in the background are two shirtless young men, abdominals pinkly outlined by the sun, shading their eyes from the camera, one in jeans-shorts with a distinct crotch, another with slimmer hips in which the jeans simply fall in a straight line from his waist to his knees. LOVELY young men, blond, flawless skinned, pinkly lickable. I think about them from time to time amid the firs, boats, birds, villages, and dancing Yakutsk teenagers. That's over by 5:40 and I invite Tony to look at my laptop, which he does, taking my manual to read it, and I go onto the sixth deck with my camera bag, sitting on the side until sunset starts about 6:20, then when everyone moves off the deck, sitting at the rail, looking down at waves so high they wet my glasses three or four times; at the perfect picture-time, the cameras would get VERY salty wet! And, dismally specific, the Doctor comes onto the deck, I think I glimpse him before he sees me, and I turn back to the front to see him hastily retreating: he HAD to see me, and he HAD to choose to leave because I was sitting there. How specifically disappointing and depressing! Think to open a new FILE on depression, but decide to get it out of my system here, reminding myself that I should really do LIGHTWORK to LIGHTEN this depression, rather than DWELLING on it. If I have to BUY kids, BUY them, as I've said SO many times before on trips. USE Tony and Paul when they visit me, and have Tony make MANY tapes that I can use for future jerk-off material: he's the PERFECT subject, with a GREAT cock and WONDERFUL verbalizations, so USE that before he gets AWAY! Washed my face already once, so maybe I can leave this until bedtime, hoping to get a shower tomorrow when I get clean CLOTHES back to put ON clean socks and shorts! Now 7:07PM on 4/6, aware that TOMORROW is the cusp-day for Aries, and that in ONE MONTH I'll be back HOME, this trip OVER! When tomorrow, Sunday, starts, there's only ONE FULL Sunday left on the ship! For now, let's READ, and FORGET about this ugly aging stuff! Read BH until 8, then in late for cheese on toasted roll as appetizer, and trimmed pork in delicious minted applesauce, with potatoes and rutabagas added to (and uneaten) by Dorothy, followed by dessert of a slice of apple, a few grapes, a curl of jellyroll, and a mint. Bill said that we should see the first of the islands about 1PM, and I left the dining room at 8:55 to return to brush my teeth, read, take another Bonine, and read to page 446 by 9:50PM, feeling just the slightest bit nauseous as the ship started not only greater pitches, but sickening side slides and bumps. Room is just about 20 degrees Centigrade and I can think of nothing better than bed. Get into bed at 10PM, feeling warm under the covers and fall immediately asleep.