My Ship and I

O it's I that am the captain of a tidy little ship,

Of a ship that goes a sailing on the pond;

And my ship it keeps a-turning all around and all about;

But when I'm a little older, I shall find the secret out

How to send my vessel sailing on beyond.

For I mean to grow a little as the dolly at the helm,

And the dolly I intend to come alive;

And with him beside to help me, it's a-sailing I shall go,

It's a-sailing on the water, when the jolly breezes blow

And the vessel goes a dive-dive-dive.

O it's then you'll see me sailing through the rushes and the reeds,

And you'll hear the water singing at the prow;

For beside the dolly sailor, I'm to voyage and explore,

To land upon the island where no dolly was before,

And to fire the penny cannon in the bow.

- My Ship and I, R.L Stevenson.

In pursuance of the goal "follow thy whim", she (Whim) has led me home. A "year" of travel in a month. On the day I fly home I meet Pete who has been travelling for 11 years (it's too easy to think there is causality).

Going to pursue some ideas to their end back at home.

Thanks for following this blog. I appreciated the feedback and comments.

Palermo

"There are strange things done 'neath the Sicilian sun"

The patron deity: Chaos (blind -- milky white eyes -- a pair of bellows in each hand [she started with a poker stick in her right hand, but soon realized what they needed was more fuel and less organization]).

Bus from airport to City: typical Italian desolate ex/sub-urbs that always scare the shit out of me.

Fire truck roars by, all fireman have their arms out the window. To turn: all start waving/gesticulating with the arms pointing and screaming out the window: "relax we're professionals".

Homeless man with pet duck who whispers "sweet" nothings (more likely) into ear. Chestnuts roasting on open fire's in the centre of intersections. Xenophobic police officers keep non-Italian knick-knack sellers on their toes.

Crowd gathered round SUV. "Ah, the mafia" I think (thinking of the photo's of Hariri's car in Lebanon). Gawking. Broken window. Someone opens the rear window. A dog. The golden retriever is saved from the sweltering heat. Spontaneous ebullient applause. Exeunt.

"Chaotica" the pharmacia-ist said to me (while buying over priced ear plugs because the blatantly naked old man sleeping on the bed next to me snores loudly). In the morning, while the old man is showering the two Dutch girls in the room and I carefully avoid making any allusion to the strange fact that the naked-old man slept so brazenly... the air holds our questions.

London 2

Went back to Westminster Abbey for another Evensong.

From journal: "... we turn to the front to utter some words. The woman beside me (now behind) knows them. The sound of her voice is lavender. 

 Lavender-voice -- "know ye not that ye are gods?"

Tomorrow is errands and John Soane... next is Palermo (Sicily).

Portsmouth

Portsmouth is nice. Livable.

HMS Warrior. Quaint idyllic fishing boats seem suspiciously quaint. Ask 'bloke' in anachronistic officers clothing if they are staged. He assures me they are "real". Uncertainties remain.

HMS Victory's rigging. Battle of Trafalgar: 1805. Nelson: 1805. Napoleon: 1821

fin.

Glasgow and Scotland

Glasgow...

Arrived. Woozy and wavy from the ferry. Head to Glasgow School of Art for cute girls. As it turns out the Glasgow School of Art is actually the Glasgow School of Art (by Charles Rennie MacIntosh), and the only tour of the morning was just beginning! Good intention: thrice repaid.

Hostels all full up. Found one. Room in basement. Feel like a coke addled criminal hiding from the police in the dingiest, dankest, filthiest hostel to date. Begin to concoct inane schemes (steal copper pipes, etc) to fit in with the crowd.

... otherwise, nothing at all to say about Glasgow...

Scotland: from the journal "... it's easy to feel like the whole world is Scotland. That you will be trapped with only fast food and asymmetry for the rest of your life." Steven Pinker said: "organisms that move in straight lines have bilaterally symmetrical external forms because otherwise they would go in circles".

Chicken-or-egg.

Drink cause their crooked or crooked cause they drink?

From the journal in Edinburgh:

tell me oh Mews, of your twists and turns,
of the Citroens and Mercedes ye have known,
of brawls, broken bottles and vomit.

On the flight from Glasgow to Southampton the movie Escape from New York keeps popping into my head.

Nice people though.