Notes: water active but not choppy
In past iterations of this self, I’ve tried to teach myself to be more politic with varying degrees of success. Contrary to what I sometimes tell myself and others close to me I do know how to conversate with people. The problem is I like to pick and choose with whom I will and won’t conversate.
This is what makes me, by most social and cultural standards, anti-social.
My guilt over being anti-social lasted decades. I saw myself as A Broken Thing that didn’t work like other Things That Were Not Broken. My Old Man was one of those… a Thing That Was Not Broken. He knew how to talk to people. He also knew how to NOT talk to people, though I didn’t take much notice of it when I was a kid. I defined him by what I saw as my own deficencies and tried to then fix them in his image.
This didn’t go well. It rarely does, though it’s a common thing for sons to do. In the end, whatever took root in the blood and bone sprung forth root and limb and fruit with some help or hinderance from the general environment.
The Belle of Louisville is a genuine steamboat. The paddle wheel turns by steam pressure and steam pressure of that kind is big and hot and greasy and noisy. The magic is all gears and sweat and sometimes blood. Wood is also magic,in that it floats on water, though we tend not to think of things we can explain scientifically as magic. But magic it is: the mystery of physics, grease, gears, sweat, bone, and blood.
I don’t work in the pumping heart of the Belle. I’m the Watch. I’m still learning what that means but at the moment it means I commune with the water and with these three boats: the Belle, the Mary M. Miller (not a real steamboat but a beauty in her own right) and the Broaddus, which most people forget is a boat because that’s where the gift shop is. I walk around, climb stairs, look at things. I check to make sure things are tied down right. I’m pretty comfortable with the role: I’m basically a wharf dog, which appeals to my romantic nature more than being a lot dog at Churchill Downs.
That romantic nature, like my desire to pick and choose with whom I conversate, is another thing I assumed meant I was a Broken Thing. More recently, I had convinced myself that being an alcoholic meant I was a Broken Thing, since that’s really the basic message of AA: you are broken. You can be fixed.
Except that I’m not broken. Not because I’m an alcoholic (4 years sober). And not because I’m anti-social.
My kid jokes with me that I’m broken because of my bad hip and hinky lower back. That I accept and embrace because there’s a certain truth to it. The hip, at least, at some point will be replaced… when the insurance underwriters decide I’m old enough. Until then, I move forward at my own pace and walk with the pain like it’s a friend and teacher. Yes, it’s a friend I sometimes wish would get a life or a girlfriend or something. But still, a friend that teaches me things I need to know. Beyond that, I’m not a Broken Thing in a world Things Not Broken. I’m the fruit of what took root in bone and blood.
When I started this job I was told I could use a locker. I put a lock on it because I always carry one in my work bag. I came into work today and the lock had been cut off. I suppose I should have put my actual name on the locker. I suppose I should be annoyed about it. But they don’t know me yet, don’t know if I’m going to stick around, and have no clue that I will find a way to have fun at their expense once I’ve settled in and convinced them I’m not going anywhere. I’m here for the season, at least, and hope that they decide I’m worth bringing back. But the nice thing about working on a boat is that most of the guys here are raging assholes who know they are and don’t apoloize for it. So I suppose if a person is really lucky, they find refuge along the dirty sacred river.
