Dragging Anchor

When a sailboat drags anchor you wake up in your berth you wake up with the wood around you but you know something isn’t right you’re still in your berth but it’s like when you sleep with someone for many nights and when they turn you turn with them and when they breathe you breathe with them when they get up in the night to pee you feel that they’re missing and you know something isn’t right

so you wake up in your berth and you feel the wood around you and the smell of canvas which isn’t just salt air or age or sunlight it’s sails that carry those things but also time

you know the smell it’s the smell that all your father’s sweaters had and all the beach towels laid out for you in the summer it’s the smell of years on the boat but also something else

you’re in your berth and there’s the wood and the canvas but also the sense of time passing, too quickly, maybe you see the stars moving too but mostly you just feel it, so you get up and leave everyone else asleep you go outside and even in the middle of the summer there will always be that first chill of you alone, above deck, with the rest of the world sleeping and you see that the bow has turned around the wrong way starboard so you pull up the chain and it’s so easy, so light in your hands, and you pull it in and feel the boat really pull with the current now, it could just float so easily out to sea but you look forward and throw really throw the anchor out the other way left to the channel and wait for the anchor to catch and it does- the boat makes a small tug and you’re awake and everyone is still sleeping so why not slip

into the water with the chain, hold onto it and let your body also float along with the current, held against the steady weight of the anchor and see all the little creatures around you light up like magic, your mom taught you the word, phosphorescence 

your first moment that you can remember that was completely yours and years later

your mom is remarried and you aren’t in a ship but in a small house on another river and you want to go into the town to buy pickles so you ask your mom if you can drive and you’re driving and you ask about the journals, the years you all spent sailing, and why her voice isn’t there and why you can’t read them, and it’s not the first time you asked and she says

I burned them 

it terrifies you and you’re afraid to ask and you think about nights you spent awake at night alone, other nights where you’re sure someone should have been awake and who knows

what really happened

but your mom got remarried and you like him and you can all have dinner together in that little house on the river and at night you go to bed and you hear the wind howl and it’s a sound you almost remember and early in the morning she calls your name and you answer, that’s a sound
familiar like the wind, pushing against wood, against canvas, pushing the body of a boat out to sea. 

The wind on the river is different, fierce and Northern and it carries with it the smells of evergreen trees and the haunting mating calls of Loons, their red eyes glowing on the river which you can see from your small window in the house, so like a ship

and you wake up in the middle of the night to its sounds and walk downstairs and the rest of the house is sleeping and still and you know that’s it’s impossible for a whole house to drag anchor. 

Notes From 30

“The enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness of one’s own degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one has reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you could never become a difference person; that even if time and faith were still left for you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into.”* 

 There’s a thing on the internet right now where it takes pictures of you and tells you how you’ve changed over the past ten years...yeah. I don’t want to fuck with that. Every year around my birthday I spend enough time going through pictures and trying to figure out how I’ve changed. I’ve looked the same for so long...but there’s been subtle differences, it can’t just be a hair cut, right? The tattoos add up. My breasts got bigger (how). My shorts and dresses, shorter, as I got comfortable in my body. Usually the same boots, the same half grin, two dimples before I broke my jaw, then just one after. 

 The constant in most of my pictures, as I look at them now, almost 30, is the people in them. The same friend in front of a band, or playing in a band, or in a van. It’s usually Austin, Scott, or Adrien. Two friends I met at a funeral for another friend (I still remember your name Doug, even though I can’t remember most) who I ended up playing in a band with, after high school (we made it though). I had a drink with Austin the other day. Scott texted me. I called Adrien. We are still connected, by our memories and our lives, for better or worse. We grew up together. I am not sure, a hundred years ago, if we ever would have known each other. We certainly wouldn’t have had the experience of playing in a punk band together, and we wouldn’t be talking now, after I moved across the country (up the country?) to go to graduate school. I am grateful for these things. 

 I understand that turning 30 as a woman is kind of a “big deal.” Like we’ve reached some age where society usually at some point dictated something for us...but I’m pretty lucky to live in an age where that isn’t true. At 30 my mom was sailing a 36ft sail boat around the south pacific, about to finish a trip around the world, and was two years from having me (I was born in South Africa, toward the end of the trip). She raised me, with the privileged of the age we live in now, to focus on books and school and “doing my own thing” so that, over the past several years, I haven’t felt pressure about getting married or having kids. I understand that I’m lucky in that regard. I got an IUD a few years ago, which has worked great for me, and has helped me, during my various relationships to prevent becoming pregnant. I could never have been the kind of mother I wanted to be, and despite wanting to be a mother now, I doubt I’ll ever be financially stable enough (student debt, the horror!) to have a child before it’s “too late.” I’ll be 32 when my IUD expires, the same age my mom was when she had me. And I’ll probably get another one. A mix of privilege and luck. 

 So these are the things I’m grateful for. My friends and my mom and I recognize that a lot of my agency is a product of privileges most people aren’t afforded. But I’m also grateful for a sense of understanding and sympathy that I have now at thirty that I didn’t have when I was starting my twenties. I know what I like, and who I am, but I don’t find the opposites threatening to me. I don’t view things I don’t know as “the other” and I have come to understand that everyone, mostly, has something to offer. As a young punk kid I thought the teller of the bank was my enemy, now I realize she just made different choices than me. I’m happy with the choices I’ve made, and I don’t resent regular everyday people for theirs (cue Pulp’s “Common People” please). 

 “Sure, we’re poor in some surface, dirty clothes way. But I stake faith in our instincts and intuition, our abilities and the strength of our friendships. If this isn’t progress or wisdom, at least it’s survival.”**

 There’s friends who aren’t around. People who committed suicide...or just got married or had kids and took different directions in life. I haven’t really grown up yet. I understand both choices. I don’t look on other people with disdain like I did at nineteen. I try to be understanding. I try to have sympathy even when I don’t understand. I’m incredibly proud of turning thirty this year, for feeling like a smarter person. And also, happy that I’m still connected to my friends. When Travis killed himself a few months ago I ended up at a punk show, crying and getting drunk, and then spent all night in bed with my friends, crying and laughing. The simple pleasure of a band, and a shoulder to cry on. I still find comfort in these things. 

 *Dostoevsky “Notes From Underground”
**`Travis Fristoe America #12