I know that some people might find that kinda boring, even extremely eccentric on my part, that all it takes is merely looking at photographs of my ships to steady and reinforce my inner spirit, my mojo if you will, but that's what works for me. I think everybody out there has some kind of hobby or interest that does that for them but so many of us get caught up in the rat-race antics of our daily existences that sometimes we unintentionally allow such peaceful habits to fall to the wayside. So for myself, as soon as I can swing it financially, I'm rescuing all my things from their midwestern storage unit and bringing them back into the fold of my life, where they can be seen, where they can be enjoyed, and where they can embrace the light of day as much as any beloved personal belonging would do if it were more than just an inanimate object.
In fact, I think one of the most underappreciated, as well as least spoken about, treasureable feelings in the world is to be able to have all of your personal possessions with you in one single place, but like with some folks out there, for whatever reasons, that's never been the case with me. When I left the midwest, I left behind everything behind so that I could go to school on the East Coast - my furninture, my books, my cd collection and all the miscellaneous knick-knacks that sometimes cast a personal reflection of who we are as people. Then after I met Jack and before I moved to the West Coast, I took what I had on the East Coast and put a great deal of that into storage, along with all my other things, so yes, as you can imagine, the storage unit became a bit larger! After the Loma Prieta quake in '89, with the exception of a few personal mementoes and the majority of Jack's papers from the George Moscone/Harvey Milk murder trial, there really wasnt anything left to put into the storage unit that time around.
It was at that point that both my personal belongings and myself sorta came full circle. When I left Northern California, I moved in with my grandparents in Michigan and not only was I fortunate enough to have a roof over my head, but during that time I was also lucky enough to be there when my grandparents decided to sell the place and thus we all went through the tedious, yet very emotional, process of sorting through and distributing all the family heirlooms. You guessed right again - yet more stuff for that nearly bulging storage unit in western Ohio! No, no, dont get the wrong idea, I'm notta packrat by any means folks, I may have a fairly large storage unit in the midwest BUT that is ALL I have, aside from what I have in my apartment in Boston as well as the very clothes on my back, I really dont have much of anything to talk about. No large CD accounts for the future, no houses, no cars. Of course, there is something that is far more important to me than any material possessions - friends. I have my friendships and those mean a great deal to me. After all, they always say we cant take anything with us, but they're wrong because those friendships reside in our hearts-n-souls and where we go, they go too.
Perhaps some folks might find themselves saying "Geese, Spice, why dontcha get rid of some of that crap and lighten your load?" I dont think so. I'm gonna be turning 46 years old this year, and though that doesnt make me old by any means, those things are all that I have. It may not even be as a quarter as much as what other folks have, but they're all mine. Give up the 2 wood veneer coffee tables my grandparents were presented with on their wedding day on Valentine's Day, 1942? Dream on. Throw out one of the few remaining copies of the Cunard liner FRANCONIA's World Cruises of 1931 & 1932 still in existence? Forget it. Toss that old 1947 Kingston Radio, the one I use to listen to the broadcasts of Santa Claus's sleigh-ride from that one radio station in Ontario, Canada late at night every Christmas Eve when I was a child? Move along with that thought Sparky, just move along.
The moral of all these recollections, aside from the fact that wouldnt it be nice if I found me a fairly nice man with a big ole' house that needs to be redecorated and/or has some fairly good amounts of free storage space? Okay okay, maybe that's not too realistic but it never hurts to dream! Actually, I dont think there is any moral to any of this, except for just one admission on my part - whenever my life is in distress or up-in-the-air to a degree, like alotta folks out there, I try to reach out to those things in my immediate environment which comfort me the most, as well as give me strength, give me sustenance.
But, those ships books are way too far away for me to reach out to right now, so I'd like to do the next best thing. I wanna look at and post a ton of photos of one of my most favorite ships in the entire world, the Cunard liner AQUITANIA (1914-50). Yes, I definitely could write a history about each individual photo, and maybe someday I will, but not today. Today all I want is to look at her and absorb every bit of her majesty and beauty because somehow, some way, it's gonna help me deal with some of the things I'm currently going through in my own life. I dont know how many images I'll post in this piece but I hope I come across a mighty slew of them and I hope that everyone enjoys looking at them as much as I do, even if only for a few seconds. Thank you for reading and for viewing.
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