Smitty’s Ship

Smitty stood on the bow or something and yelled for the men to hoist up the John B Sail, while the author knew almost nothing about ships. Also, the character. That Smitty came to be captain of a sailing vessel, let alone successfully seek out an operational caravel in the 21st century, is even more mind boggling. A reader is, perhaps, wondering what possible purpose a working carnavel could serve for society. Don’t. It simply existed without regards to any of the presumably important purposes, like money and war and marlins.

And on the pointless ship, Smitty shambled around the pointless deck, smiling and brooding, strutting and stumbling, chatting chirpily and staring stonily. Riding the winds of ever shifting vibes. Occasionally, he’d put a dry mop to the chipped wood or heave on random ropes. When asked by his men why he took up the position, he simply said that he was a romantic, no further explanation was necessary.

But, to explain further, Smitty had long embraced existence’s rampant absurdity. One sunny Sunday, Smitty, then living under his birth name, Sartre, sat in his basement listening to the Dead, with one hand down his pants, another on The Dream Songs, and another preparing the occasional beer for shot gunning. He looked around with a smirk and a frown. “S*** don’t look no good,” he thought, fingering vomit on his shirt, “but, I guess that’s in s***’s stagnant nature.” Suddenly, like breath pushed to the lungs on a kiss, he felt the sweet call of the savage and endlessly shifting sea through the dreary dirt of the hills and the weepy walls of the house. Walking outside in a trance, he saw the winds whistling over the mountains and the geese running from the winter, toward southern sands and seas in fleets against the gray ocean of the northern skies. I’ll follow them in a dream, he thought. So he did.

So, he changed his name to Smitty since it “sounded salty,” and now, as an old man (well, only thirty, but everyone lives so lightly, so long, I hear that’s the new eighty), he could look back easily on his first years following his leaving. He had set out for the hell of it, for feeling, but he found that people seemed incredulous when he told them so. So, he said he was on a search for meaning, and they thought him a deep and wise dude. Eventually he convinced himself it was meaning he was looking for, too.

There was none to be found. He was in despair. Eventually, he decided he really didn’t care.

Upon further examination, he found no structure or form the world. He was exuberant. “An opportunity! he thought, I’ll form my own structure with the understanding of its precariousness and the objective pointlessness of it and all things, including the term pointless and thoughts of meaninglessness. It’ll be a beautiful, badass, sorry and loving tower built out of nothing and becoming some wonder on the horizon.”

Now, years later, he was generally content and happy, because, on these terms, he had succeed. He was often catatonic because he was human. So, the strange captain and his crew wandered the circling and vast seas, searching for more and staying content with stealing some; occasionally all falling into as deep a despair as their solidly slippery worldview allowed.

On either October or November 6, 2009-14, Smitty sat on the… point?... yes, that sounds right… of the carnavel and watched the romantic splatter of chemicals split the sky over some southern sea, thanking god that no leaves nor snow fell on the middle of an anonymous ocean stretch. He pulled a photo from his breast pocket and looked at it longingly.

The deckhand Steve, wandered over to the captain, a man who he’d sometimes seen as a distant father, leaving his often slow post as Head Glacier Observer deserted. He inquired about the picture.

“Oh, I have no idea who this is. I don’t really remember exactly where I came upon her image, either. That’s why I love her.”
“Because you don’t remember where you found the stranger’s picture?”
“Yes, but also because I never met her. If you ever come upon someone who bears a passing resemblance to her, draw her my sketch and capture my vague essence. Then profess my undying love. I’m sure she’ll love me instantly, too. And then we’ll both have that, as long as we never actually know each other.”
“Alright, sir, but I really don-“
“You know, Steveironey, I could live like a god and die like one, too, if it wasn’t for the unending loneliness. Who’d of thunk it. The sea grows desolate. The skies grow somber. And to think I’ve been so almost satisfied for so long. Still, I can agree with all that jazz about the universal isolation of man, but I don’t think it’s beneficial to give up hope in some strange savior. In the meantime, all the loneliness does, is just occasionally drag you to hopelessness, which, if you don’t slit your writs first, always suddenly slips into a notion of the triumphant in the human spirit, after several months or years or days or seconds. Which, again, after further disappointment, descends into despair… But, alas! hope again... Hope again. What a wildly beautiful, meaningless cycle….What do you want out of life, son?”
“Mostly to live it, awhile.”
“Exactly! Why don’t we talk more?”
“You’re erratic changes in temperament grow tiresome.”
“True, true. So much grows tiresome… Oceans. blah! I’ve always wanted to ride the rails. Trains- they’re like the ships of purple mountains and golden prairies and whatnot! Do railways still exist?”
“Did they ever? I’m quite young, and I know no other home. I mostly remember the sea, though, it grows tiresome to me.”
“It too, grows tiresome to me… Wouldn’t it be nice just to see to folks, listen for a minute to the stale jokes?”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“Yes, my speak is so timeless, or stolen. All words already spoken… fun to repeat in different ways, though.” With that, he let the photo he held fall into the waves. Jumping on the ship’s point and pointing specifically to some obscure landmark or mirage on the horizon. “Forward the starboard side towards yonder eastern dusk! Make haste, before we’re all stuck in this s*** up to our waists. Steve, son, we won’t get stuck again.”
“I’ve only been stuck once, yet.”
“Well we won’t let it happen again!”
“We can only hope.”
“But, hope’s a fine dream. There is no other we can keep.”

And, suddenly, the ship hit a glacier just off the coast of Santa Monica, sank like a stone. “Finally, a break,” Smitty sang.