Time… Warps and Windows

I’ve written about some of the parallels between this journey up the Rideau and our collective journey up the proverbial creek in terms of the global climate and human rights crises. The fact that boats are (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again) small floating abnormalities in the time/space continuum keeps emphasizing that.

I think a piece of me knew I might not be able to catch my time window for going south this winter. I wanted to go so badly, though, I couldn’t focus on that small ugly possibility. I had to put everything I had into catching my window. Surely it would work somehow.

One tipping point and another passed. Time for visiting was cut from the window. Events I missed were cut. The timeframe for what I had to do finally became so condensed I basically yelled for help online.

I tried to stop virtual traffic and wave flags.

Even with people catching the lines I threw, I couldn’t catch the alternate window, for the alternate shorter trip — those tipping points passed so quickly I barely had time to yell about them. 

More tipping points… the water level in the canal will be dropping soon and will become too shallow for my beautiful sea vardo… marina docks are getting even fuller as boats come home to hibernate, and their winter storage space is being quickly reserved, and both are expensive… campgrounds close in mid to late October, many sooner… there’s so much else to do and it’s mostly already on borrowed time.

The near future does not look bright. The to-do lists keep growing, and the means with which to do them is notably less stretchy. There are more tipping points, and the windows will morph and shift. Too many possibilities to evaluate and try, and simultaneously, not enough feasible options. Juggling, catching up, tripping, losing balls in the air and out the windows.

We think we know what we ought to see through the windows, but the truth is, we don’t. The view keeps changing, and we don’t know how to see without glass and scratches and tangled blinds.

It takes so long to untangle things that more knots grow behind my back and pull me towards the wrong windows.

I can’t imagine why this is happening.

So I look at that. Read the charts. Check the channel markers.

My own faulty stress responses and trigger management is partly responsible for the lost windows. There were other factors too, but I recognize my own. Accept it. Learn from it. Put it in better soil and take of it. Change it from being called a weed to respected as a medicinal herb. All easier typed than done of course, but another work in progress, which needed doing.

Everything I’ve been seeing as a tripping point and a negative tipping point has been awful and irreversible and has removed positive options… but has then actually led to positive outcomes in many ways, mostly in having so very many, and such good, opportunities to talk with people and weave more strands together in this net. The world, this project, and I will be better for those opportunities.

There is depth in places we never dreamed. There are harbours we’ll learn to anchor in. There are docks where least expected.

I will be able to stop missing all the important things happening.

I might even see a family I respect and love, ripped apart by human rights issues that shouldn’t even exist, made whole ago — and if THAT can happen, I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that anything can happen in this morphogenic window-filled world.

If I’d bailed on the project when the boat was swamped by offended people, it would be lost and sunk. Instead I bailed the bilge, a task even less pleasant than it sounds, but I can’t figure out how to fix the bilge pump. I will, and it’s negligent of me not to have made time for it yet, but meanwhile, a cutaway vinegar bottle and bucket serve the purpose. There’s a little more time and elbow grease involved, but the boat floats, and I will learn to fix the pump.

Now, having missed not one but two windows, time warps to let me tend to that, so other things will work better later when it matters even more.

The same perspective applies to so many other things.

We’re used to windows with corners and frames and constant measurements. Sailboats and the time/space continuum and the planet have no corners. The shape of the windows depends on things that most of those who look through them will never see… and (except for sailboats), the windows change according to infinite variables.

That makes them unpredictable and unmanageable. It also means our perspective need not be limited by frames and fixed dimensions or expectations. That opens a world of possibilities.

So I am making my way south again on the river. The long term trip won’t be the trip I imagined. The stories will be more upsetting. The world will be in more pain and so will I. The weather will be screaming about the climate. 

Time slipped, I fell, but the Sirens in Merrickville saved me again. It’s not what I wanted for winter, and maybe not actually what would have been best all ’round, and maybe not even what should have been… but it’s what is and I am already thankful for so much help bailing this bilge — it may never be clean enough to make tea in, but it will keep the boards from decaying and the keel bolts from detaching, and keep the boat from sinking, and buy time to fix the bilge pump I should have fixed last time I was in Merrickville.

Because boats are small floating windows in the time/space continuum.

With hope and determination,

Ann

____________________________________________

Please help the Climate Emergency Sailboat budget defy financial physics…

Sporadic and one-time support through Chuffed, at

https://chuffed.org/project/climate-emergency-sailboat

Ongoing support via Patreon (I’m still having trouble posting there, my apologies), at

https://patreon.com/climateemergencysailboat

Thank you… your help means the world to me… and as soon as I find a good little time loop, I really will update the budget/maintenance log/needs file

______________________

Photos from our walk though the park at Kong Island lock station, Nicolls Island, and down a road… yes, I bought gluten free potato chips… yes, they bumped me out of a grey hole… yes, I feel guilty, and also itchy… I think that the way professed food and (lack of) nutrition is tangled into mainstream western culture is an addictive pattern. I’m always trying to balance and comprise, and to replace cultural habits with reliance on natural patterns. Another work in progress. Another reason to take walks, and take pictures. Another reason to love living with the world.

#climatecrisis #timewarps #ecosystembreakdown #sailing #timewindow #globalecosystemcollapse #climateemergency #climate #climateemergencysailboat #changingtheworld #missedwindow #time #windows #earth #climatechange