I don’t know what I am. I’m quiet. maybe I’m praying. I don’t know. I don’t even want music.
Are you thinking about the babies? Your babies in Etheopia?
I’m thinking about the whole country. What kind of country is this? When kids go to school, their parents drop them off in the morning. In the end of the day they come to get them, they are just gone. They are stolen and their organs are taken out and then their bodies are thrown out back at the school just like garbage.
And there is no police to tell. No law. No justice. The police are likely the same men who are doing it. The same people you would ask to help and protect you are the ones carving out the organs and throwing the children’s bodies back like garbage. What kind of country is this?
And I’m thinking about the virus. It is there. Two women died in my village and the people are private. They don’t want to say. They say she fell down. But it is everywhere. People are not being honest. And we need to tell each other the truth on this virus. I saw her sick with my own eyes. Her door is 6 steps from mine. I went to them for days, I made coffee for the family; we take care in the tradition when there is a death. But the virus is all around and people don’t want to say.
There are a couple of prevailing story lines that have kept me afloat through the pandemic paralysis from Qatar. Landing in the Arabian desert before we quite knew that a microorganism would soon change everything, hope was as it is before a war. Full of thoughts about what restaurants we’d try and countries to visit, we were trivial and lighthearted then. Docile, naive, brash, superficial, careless…. we were ripe for the picking.
Within a few hours of my arrival, Qatar’s Supreme Committee for Crisis Management announced the cessation of scheduled passenger aviation.
The foreseeable had been usurped by the unforeseeable. The anticipated, expat trajectory of relocation and acclimation to cultural context no longer held relevance. Our maps and charts were decimated, a yet discovered pandemic course in their place. Humanity had been transplanted without a plan, and societal norms lay in its wake.
Our new flat was empty and echoing, harsh and bare, a film of concrete dust settling from fresh construction. A reluctant home base with Eeyore at bat and unlimited innings to come. The country’s labour force was abruptly confined to the industrial area. Hard perimeters delineated a city within a city, as a nation state began to confront an enemy who feeds on a recipe of mosaic allure that is the gem called Doha.
Our foreboding and formidable new world crept in with a crash. My personal transition, made more blunt by an absence of anything familiar, seemed amplified by the news that shops had been closed for our protection. Outside our austere confinement cell, breathing air with other humans was suddenly life-threatening, and there was a sense that things were about to fiercely deteriorate.
The author ponders a life of nautical solitude during pandemic isolation
It was then that I decided to take up yachting – an all-encompassing theme, much larger than a fantasy, stronger than denial, and grander than an imaginary friend. By mid-March, we had selected our voyage: an intimate tour of the Persian Gulf. We took only our two dogs with us, ensuring a purely private and intimate high-seas retreat. Elaborate and enduring, my mythical reality grows more credible every day.
In the letter to our family and friends, we would say:
Dear Ones,
We have taken the decision to restore our meditative lives through an extended nautical retreat. Our focus will be on contemplation, music, art, yoga and literature. Where our inner life of late has become shallow and inconsistent on land, this secluded nautical excursion promises to revive and refresh us, as well as deepen our connection with you, our loved ones, and with all of humanity. We are grateful for this rare opportunity and look forward to seeing you upon our return, when the virus allows. “
Grand aspirations, i realize, but i think this is what’s actually been happening. The joy of yachting has proven to be the most effective and enduring identity available. More than a daydream – it’s become an optimal, conscripted lifestyle. A calling even.
At first it was hard to imagine that yachting could be saving lives – or that by going inside, we could be doing a bigger service to humanity and to the planet than going outside ourselves. Creating a smaller, more intentional life does feel surprisingly impactful. It’s part of what Carmelite nuns, Tibetan monks, and contemplatives of all types have been trying to tell us for centuries. It’s possible that service can be contemplation – or in this case – just staying out of everybody’s way can be of service.
By the age of 3 or 4, i had adopted the identity of a Lakota Sioux girl, and subsequently, a young Timbavati lion. Encapsulated on our boat, it wasn’t difficult to convince myself to immerse in uninterrupted gazing at turquoise waters and pristine beaches while safeguarding our lives. It’s like saying i spent a couple of years as a fish, as a Parisian, as a Campbell, as a member of the royal family. In 2020, i spent my year at sea.
As our excursion progressed, chandlers and cargo vessels sprung up and more and more provisions were delivered. Internet was installed, our fantasy enhanced over Zoom by our vivid, ‘actual’ backdrop – the one we all agreed was the real world – complete with saxe-blue seas and mathematically-spaced palm trees, outshining any that could be digitally created or edited. The backdrop is real, the rest of my story, apocryphal.
As you and I will only ever experience this writing digitally, and likely only meet each other virtually, I recommend some etheral ambient music to accompany your read, as we sail through one version of the Great Adjustment. With so much to mourn and to fear, I find atmospheric, dreamy music helps me to remain focused on the uplifting.
Our round dachshund, Pearl, who has put on a few pandemic pounds and has been dieting of late, climbed up on a chair and slurped up this baby in an instant when i had glanced away. I had to chat with a virtual vet to ensure she wasn’t poisoned by the alcohol i was using. (he was not alive when i found him). At least we have the photo.
Like the Great Depression, we are living through something that will indelibly mark ours and future generations of humans. I save the waxy rind of parmesan cheese for future soup broths because during the 1930’s, my grandmother learned to squeeze every ounce of purpose and flavor out of every available ingredient. Scarcity and isolation nurture different competencies than Easy Street. I resisted the identity of writer for a lifetime, chiefly because I feared the compulsory aloneness which defines it. The pandemic got me writing because we might die, and I never said “it” to anyone. During the Great Adjustment, I’ve learned how to pickle vegetables so that they last longer and to re-use everything I was previously thoughtless about. I may not be able to ever get another fill-in-the-blank. I have also stopped misplacing things. I know whatever I’m looking for is either within the salon or the main cabin, so no need to panic that I might have lost it. I never disembark and no one ever comes aboard. There is a sense of total accountability in that.
I’ve never been a good minimalist, but when you have only four forks, you’re going to wash them right away so that you can eat again. That’s what running a tight ship means! There is a soft minimalism on our yacht. Very soft. Yet even I have grown to appreciate the limitations our Great Adjustment lives demand. When “reality” is intolerable or antithetical to sanity, yachting becomes imperative. We swab the deck daily to keep the sand and the bougainvillea blossoms at bay.
Among the awkward benefits of yachting is its supreme exclusivity. We have no additional crew. We’ve grown more conscious and grateful for relationships to others, known and unknown to us. While the moral imperatives demanded by climate change action didn’t quite get through to us all, perhaps this will.
The planet has been in a state of expansive disrepair for quite a while now. Yachting is the sensation of a dreamer tumbling into the deepest, endless darkness, yet caught by gravity, and abruptly shuttled in a novel direction between light and dark and taking off like a rocket all at once.
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
-Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Time is negligible while yachting, and space moves on all sides, easing navigation of our lonely flotilla of somber, mandatory luxury. A meditative calm hangs in the air, and formerly elusive qualities like industry, ingenuity and creativity flow. Months into our journey, we’ve fashioned a lovely stateroom, a galley offering organic menus, an upper deck garden, an infirmary, barber shop, and spa. Daily yoga classes, piano and guitar intensives, and a broad range of wellness modalities are featured on the main deck. Celestial events, like the dazzling ring-of-fire solar eclipse and the many moons of Ramadan, can be relished from the upper deck.
For the first few months, it was forbidden to venture from the rig, but once permission was granted, we secured a tender and approval to touch the water. We now swim straight off the bow, paddle toward a nearby islet, and steep our thirsty bodies in a gentle, ultramarine water-cosmos. The sea cradles us in a big, warm briny womb; remineralizing, hydrating, arousing our cells and souls.
The world on the other side of the surface overwhelms with strange familiarity, coaxing out breath, movement, prayer, and a hunch that if I get right with these fish, I’ll get right with myself, and that somehow this integral alignment will help you. It’s the hunch that inner work matters, and that we finally have time and space to devote to that – and what else can you do at sea for months but swab the deck and get right?
Three jellyfish stung me on my first swim back to the mothership. I have the hunch that intention could save us from ourselves. Inshā’Allah.
I think we will call her Inshā’Allah.
Thank you to the Foxhole Girls for playing along and making yachting less lonesome and for always bringing the loving perspective that sustains.
During a psychedelic moment in Amsterdam, a friend once mirthfully said to me, “Death is near… but not near me.” We were seated, giggling, at an outdoor cafe. I didn’t see Death, but our squad took his word for it.
When death is near, things tend to get profound
When death is near, things tend to get profound – and at times – darkly amusing. Our brains, between waves of panic, find pools of calm where we make connections on kaleidoscopic levels.
My Uncle Frank ( an incredible teacher, coach, family patriarch and documentarian); Kate (my dear friend, fashion entrepreneur and activist, mother of two darling young girls); Little Richard (my first cognizant toddling memory of a tv image). These are just a few who passed away in the recent days of the shitdown, each warranting proper memorializing. We kind of barely spoke of it. It’s untenable when death is so near and we have lost the luxury of mourning losses per our pre-Covid conventions. Our brains and hearts can’t metabolize so much collective and personal loss and trauma all at once. Bodies are piling up in unusual places and services with tears-in-physical-proximity-to-loved-ones are verboten.
Kate Kruger (December 29, 1973 – April 11, 2020) with her girls. Uncle Frank Greco, family historian. (February 1, 1932 – March 18, 2020)The legendary Richard Wayne Penniman (December 5, 1932 – May 9, 2020)
Zooming with my Foxhole girls, B said it best. The data is fierce, said B, we are NOT every man for himself. At the same time, we are finding ways to be more self-reliant.
The thought of my absence from my father’s side as he went through chemoradiation would have been unimaginable before The Great Adjustment. He sent a photo of what he calls his Hannibal Lector disguise, the bespoke computer-designed thermoplastic mask that held his head to the table during treatment these past few weeks.
Masks give us quite a lot to unpack, both as a symbol and a tool.
I mean masks give us quite a lot to unpack – both as a symbol and now as a tool. Maybe that’s why masking is so provocative and charged. Images of face coverings stir us emotionally and culturally with ramifications that may be both practical and archetypal.
Where are we on a spectrum, where what was once disturbing and uncomfortable, becomes a lifeline to survival?
Chronic isolation was on board for us, way before it became official…
Well, it’s very private. I’ll say that. An intimate life with whomever you’re locked in with. Hopefully very peaceful, once you accept it.
And basically, i was personally already in a quarantine for 6 months last year and then very limited contact with people for the last several months. Just as my friend K, coming back from cancer – and so many other people in the world who are struggling with illness, or age, or means, or mental health or whatever. Chronic isolation was on board for us way before it became official.
I think it’s hard to be outside here in Doha this season anyway. If you are a bird, if you are a worker, if you’re a plant. The air is better inside. I was noticing that before i came over, the only way i had to access any information or understanding of this new country and city or our potential home was through research, on the computer screen. Now that i’m supposedly here physically, no part of that virtual-only experience has changed. Where am i? My survival – and comfort – is based solely on what i can learn and discover with my keyboard and phone – actual physical exploration is not available. So interesting. The experience remains virtual, although i have apparently arrived in a new physical locality.
Is this mean? I can’t help it!
And with time being revealed as a very odd construct, once you are removed from a natural world, one can float on whims in ways we could not do before. Get up and start laundry at 3am, no one knows – take to your bed for a couple of hours at 11am – have a cheeky cocktail at 3pm … who cares? Having a panic attack? No problem. No one sees you – so just do some art or yoga or dishes or whatever works for you on the spot. Brush your hair – or don’t. Our homes are consistently immaculate. What luxury!
And i’m finally writing for you all, rather than procrastinating. We are in a slow free-fall all together, so we have the opportunity to connect. It’s like getting the chance for that last phone call to your loved one as the plane is going down. Why wait?
“We have adjusted. It could be a lazy Sunday morning for us right now,” my friend B. reports.
But I do seem to have trauma rhythms. My M. describes the darker times “as the curtains being drawn” for a while. In the beginning of Covid life, i would have one decent day, followed by a very down day, where i just could not pull it together – over and over. Grief comes cycling through, on one of those old-fashioned, high-wheeled penny-farthing bicycles, wearing a clown nose and smiling broadly. Accepting a new reality is so challenging for all of us. Still, look how incredibly adaptable we are.
I’m becoming a hostess again- one of the key roles of my life which i haven’t been up to the past year of my personal internment, a loss which had measurably compromised my sense of self. Now i get to dress up, prepare, and be quizmaster for the work team, virtually invite family into our home, or gather friends together on a friggin’ Zoom. And you can leave the party whenever you want with a click. How perfect.
You know how i loath goodbyes. 😘
A neighbor paints on his balcony on a covidly April evening
