Watermelon traders at a floating wholesale market along the Sandha River in Pirojpur, Bangladesh.

Photo by Syed Mahabubul Kader.

If only...less humiliating. At least, I went into the water with a diver's grace or so my wife assured me (but then she would, wouldn't she?).

I tried to stand up, with the help of three 'marineros' (marina workers, but couldn't so I lay on the dock for 15 minutes, to regain my stability — and, it has to be said, my sodden dignity.

Below, the livid souvenirs:

I blacked out for a second. Then, disoriented, I reached for rigging that wasn't there and fell between the hulls, my ribs and wrist hitting Wrack's gunwhale. The water was bloody cold. I managed to swim, fully clothed, to a barnacle-encrusted ladder from which I was pulled onto the dock.

A 'senior' humiliation:

While loading and stowing personal gear aboard Wrack again, I had to cross from the deck of our marina neighbour's Catalina 34 to Wrack, over a gap of maybe a metre, in dead calm conditions. And ended up in the sea.

“The human race sleepwalked to oblivion, thinking only of the corporate logos on its shroud.”~ J G Ballard, Kingdom Come

The most awful news: a dear, elderly friend whom Given and I met in Berlin a decade ago and with whom I have corresponded reularly, has just died.

My grief is sudden and heart-wracking.

With a bit of luck, these initial repairs will be completed by the end of this week and Wrack will be ready to leave Cagliari at the end of this month.

My wife and I will be sea vagabonds — for a little while — once more.

[sigh]

Repairs to Wrack's damaged timber gunwhale caps and handrails begin tomorrow morning, with the assistance of a local live-aboard and shipwright (mille grazie, Alessandro!). It will be a 'temporary fix', to clean up the decks for a 220 nautical miles passage to a boatyard on the mainland.

Bowles on William Burroughs's claim that he didn't remember writing Naked Lunch: "He ought to remember it. It was all over the floor. There were hundreds of pages of yellow foolscap all over the floor, month after month, with heelprints on them, rat droppings, bits of old sandwiches, sardines..."

When the then best-selling novelist Jay McInerney visited Paul Bowles in Tangier, 1985, for Vanity Fair, one of his most intriguing observations was that, "Bowles makes his way around town in a bronze 1967 Mustang."

Photos by Mary Ellen Mark

www.maryellenmark.com/bibliography...

So, still a youngster...

Notes from India, 1962 by Joanne Kyger September 7, 2017 –   In 1960, when she was in her late twenties, the poet Joanne Kyger (1934–2017) joined Gary Snyder in Japan. From there, the two traveled to India,

"Reading Kim all day between bouts of laundry. A grey heavy wind dries the clothes on the porch. Lugging buckets from the faucets at the pumps. Soaking the clothes for 30 minutes in the room and back to rinse and bringing back a fresh bucket for new laundry soaking..."

Wrack looks so forlorn, it's heartbreaking. On Sunday, we start clearing her decks and drying out below decks, and a diver is coming next week to scrape below the water, and free the propeller of weed and shellfish.

Given and I feel lost and in disarray, too.

Nine months must have been very hard. And yeah, when we first became homeless, we lugged around three duffles and a couple of suitcases and backpacks. We now share one duffle and a canvas tote.

Our one room in Rome felt like a palace. But then I am a man without a purpose anymore.

[hug]

Strangely diffident about being back in Cagliari, upset by the state of our boat, and fretful about our youngest, Given and I spent our first afternoon here holed up in a borrowed apartment just two streets back from the harbour, catching up on three nights of lost sleep.

Just 'Crash', no?

“We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality.” ~ J G Ballard, The Crash

A small dome tent rises in the middle of the living room. Strewn across the floor, sealed bags of camera gear, clothing, and provisions, soon to be packed in a lightweight 50 litre backpack. It's all our son's.

My life has been reduced to a couple of kilos in a small, black, waxed canvas tote.

Our wayward youngest flew to Sydney this morning, leaving us with a mix of irresolvable emotions: loss, hope, fear, and relief.

We fly tomorrow to Cagliari, in Sardinia. There are no good feelings about that.

The Ballroom and the Brink A lot of people argue that we Brits should stop obsessing over the United States. After all, we have enough on our plate, not least energy bills set to

"Someone once said to me that everyone in the Middle East deserves each other...Do they really? Can that be said of anyone, anywhere? I cannot believe that in the mind of a child there is an appetite for wanton destruction, no matter which side they are said to belong to."

– Peter Bach

“The Opera and the Louvre have aspects of both the refrigerator & the ossuary.”

Erik Satie, cited in old notes

A long piece about the road trip, published in an anthology of essays several years ago.

At night, Cohen and the waveless sea. “Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving / then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.”

But a word is a bottomless pit.

— Lyn Hejinian

‘My life has become a rollercoaster’: Francesca Albanese on death threats, danger and dread after accusing Israel of genocide When the UN special rapporteur published her report Anatomy of a Genocide in March 2024, she was lionised by some and demonised by the Trump government. She describes what happened next

“Excuse me, why can’t I express a political view? Everything that is being done is political. The way human rights are not respected is political. But we are used to thinking in silos, so I need to stay in my silo?”

– Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur

One of the few books I'm hanging out for, this year:
@laurenelkin.bsky.social's Vocal Break: On Women, Music, and Power.

Artist's soul corroded by assholism.

It will probably be a couple of years before we're all together again. But Given and I are determined to have a home ashore, somewhere everyone can gather, long before then.