Of Wood and Would
- Ann Cognito
- Sep 4, 2021
- 3 min read
My friend John would’ve had a fit at Skoro’s state — she’s good and solid and I love her, but she needs prettying up… and John made every material thing he touched into a work of art. He made the people he touched see themselves as works of art, too.
John would have banned me from my boat and knocked himself out making her beautiful and perfect. That would be his way of coming with me and looking out for me. Because he would have thought this project was nuts… but he would have loved it, and respected me for really doing it. He’s probably the only person who ever really believed I’d end up living on a sailboat doing this and understood all the whys and wherefores.
He’d lecture me extensively about the care of teak, and the crucial importance of organization, and then he’d teach Mr Myrtle ridiculous nautical commands in Pig Latin… and send me off in the most beautifully restored Grampian 26 on the planet.
He won’t. John died in April. He died because we created a world where people who care too little crush people who care too much. A world where money displaces care. A world where people who are brilliant in the unusual, unique, intricate ways we need in order to restore depth to humanity are at extreme risk of falling through the cracks.
A world where the power of abstract concepts and bodies preempts the value of real things… things like water, earth, air, and community.
If we hadn’t created a world where conformity matters more for survival than creativity, John would be living in a home he’d built every inch of, either on a small self-sufficient farm, or in the heart of somewhere that looks like Algonquin Park. He’d be chopping wood from carefully selected trees and growing garlic and grapes and listening to life from a rock in the river.
John saw the ugliest parts of the world and knew how to fix them, whether it was a piece of furniture or someone he found in a scuzzy blues bar. He had the right putty and wax and markers for blending flaws into patterns. He could make a burnt hole whole. He understood how much fixing things matters, and if he hadn’t been drowning in the cracks of his own inability to escape the boxes he inherited and built, he would have supported my crazy project.
Because he always saw the possibilities… even his own unreachable ones always felt more real than this overproduced and badly written science fiction novel we’re living in. He couldn’t believe in himself, but he believed in truth and beauty and connections and patterns and the innate ability of anyone (except himself) to change. He believed the reality of dirt before dishonour, of finding boundaries for the sake of expanding them, and of never giving up.
He never found his way out of the cracks… he became the cracks… but if cracks are where the light gets in, that makes him light.
Sarah (my dear friend, and the love of John’s life) sent me some of his wood restoration materials to pretty up Skoro’s teak. He’ll probably be rolling in his grave at my ineptitude using them, and cursing himself for not being able to intervene (or maybe he will), but he’ll be part of my boat.
He will be here reminding me that the real things are always worth whatever it takes to keep them possible, and that the world is too beautiful not to believe in, and that nothing can’t be fixed somehow.
Whether we live to see results and consequences is besides the point. What matters is to believe in it and live in that direction.
Change because it’s the only real thing to do and the only way to keep what’s real.
Believe because you can.
Maybe he gave up on himself; I don’t know and can’t. But John would never give up on the world.
Neither will I.
With hope and determination,
Ann
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