Sometime in no place
A lanky figure wakes me
Fading away in a car lost in the desert
Dreaming of the time I wait for
I wake at each u-turn 3, 4, 5…
Sleeping in a playground next to park benches
I’m somewhere else
Rain on my face wakes me at night
Pine, shrubs, granite, rushing water
Moonlight illuminates, pale naked bodies follow
Out of the earths dark hot insides, into her cold river
A distant voice tells a sad story
So cry with your new closest few
As you play protagonist
and villain
The deepest night, the clearest black
Strangers dance with me to the sound of a fiddle
I quicken my pace, suddenly too far
In between trees and rocks, insects rise up
Lightning strikes
Twilight, walking upstream
Submerged in hot muddy water
An awkward glance, says more
Clinging to granite cracks
Slipping, you don’t want to die like her
I laugh and smile with strangers
I cry with old friends
I pretend to dance
Burning lights in the sky
Sometimes I am happy
Too many voices in my head
Eyes shining in the night,
Tell me I am stupid
I am nothing
You’re too idealistic, too high
I pass out in a deck chair
An old friends sweat on my hands

I’ve already said this though. But I’ll say it again because my heart continues to push and pull in its own directions.
I have always seen myself exploring new lands, smiling and laughing with new strangers each day. What I dream of is adventure. I dream of putting one foot in front of the other in what ever direction seems the most exciting.

Of course I do not do this, I have a job, I have bills, what would my parents think? Who would take me seriously?All these questions and more haunt me daily, but mostly, and this is the basic essential truth, I’m afraid of the unknown.

I worry that if I’m ever to find happiness and satisfaction in my life, it will be through a number of clever concessions that will allow me to feel as if I am following my dream while still meeting the needs of living in the real world.

I’m afraid though that I’m too clever to trick myself into thinking that in some abstract way I am fulfilling my true desires. I’ll always understand deep down the sacrifice I made and the lies I told myself to cover it up.

As the kayak takes shape and the to do list gets shorter I now feel myself regretting the project. As I’ve worked I’ve also been daydreaming about grand adventures and following my aforementioned dreams. However I’m not so sure the kayak is the best vehicle for this. Honestly how far can one get in a vessel of 13 or so feet and the strength in their arms. (somewhere a voice says “a lot farther than you think” but I don’t trust it)

Oh, it’s all so complicated yet deceptively simple.
I just want to live life to the fullest, have exciting adventures, make meaningful and deep connections with the people I meet along the way, and then become a filmmaker who draws on his diverse life experiences to create original and insightful work, which will inspire the next generation of starry-eyed romantics to follow their ill-conceived delusions of greatness, and I mean that in the best possible way.

Is that too much to ask?

So much fuss for so little, I forget that all things must start small.
And so I begin,
again.

Technology, acceleration do not affect our way of living – they are, in effect, our new and comprehensive host of life, the environment of living itself. It is not the effect of technology on the environment, culture, economy, religion, etc., but rather that all these categories exist in technology. In this sense technology is new nature. The living environment, old nature, is replaced by a manufactured milieu, an engineered host – synthetic nature. In a real sense, we are off planet, dwelling on a lunar surface of stone, cement, asphalt, glass, steel and plastics, engulfed in the atmosphere of electromagnetic vibrations – the soothing lullaby of the machine.

Reggio

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dreams
for the adventure of being alive.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your
fingers and toes
without cautioning us to
be careful
be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the center of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

-Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Read ‘The Invitation’ in full

Why did the old Persians hold the ocean holy? It was still deeper meaning of the story of Narcissus who, because he could not grasp the mild tormenting image in the fountain, plunged into it and drowned. That same image we ourselves see in all rivers, in oceans and in lakes and wells. The image of the ungraspable, the phantom of life, and that is the key to it all.

-Melville

The weather has come and I can’t assemble the kayak outside because the plywood will get wet. I was able to go to the hardware store. I bought polyurethane (to waterproof the plywood), some sandpaper, a box of rivets, and some aluminum that I will use to make the seat support.

I decided that today might be a good day to start riveting the connecting sleeves to  the tubes. It’s a fairly simple process but works well. To rivet the sleeves to the tubes the first thing to do is drill a hole through the sleeve and the tube inside. Then insert the rivet into the hole and squeeze the gun until the rivet ‘pops’. Two become one. Easy right? Not so, I figured the first step would be the easiest; to drill a hole, but I was sadly mistaken. I set the drill on the first outer sleeve and pulled the trigger,the drill spun dutifully around…. and around…. and around. It seemed to be taking too long to get through such a thin piece of metal so I stopped to check.

Finally!

I lifted the drill and blew away the metal filings. There was barely a scratch. I figured I must have had the drill in reverse (it wouldn’t be the first time). So I checked but no, the drill was rotating in the right direction, what gives? I tried again but the drill was going nowhere. Maybe the bit was dull? I tried a different drill bit and the same thing happened, the stubborn metal just wouldn’t give. After about 15 minutes of drilling the drill finally made it through the outer sleeve, a mere 1/16th of an inch thick. It then punched straight through the aircraft grade aluminum of the inner tube in a couple of seconds.

I have no idea what the sleeves are made of but it sure is tough. When I was at Alco Metal pulling out tubes that were marked 6061-T6 (a high strength aluminum) I found this thin wall tube that fit almost exactly over the 1 inch aluminum tube. It was perfect for the connections. The guy even gave me it for free. I should have known when I was cutting it with the hacksaw, it was very difficult to get a cut going and there was a lot of screeching, a sure sign of a hard metal. After you make the hole riveting is a snap, or pop. Just squeeze while applying pressure until the nail of the rivet breaks.

So after drilling for several hours and only getting four rivets done as well as breaking a couple drill bits I was like well f@#$ that, and built a terrarium.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

-Keller

The next step was to get all of the tubes the right length.As you can see the tubes cross each other at the stern, this means that the frame twists.

After a lot of sawing everything was straight and I took the frame to the scale. I found that the frame weighs only 16 lbs. That is amazing! Most plastic kayaks weigh too much for one person to carry. I expect the completed kayak will weigh in under 30 lbs, and cost around $200. We’ll see.

I’d dare to make more mistakes next time.
I’d relax, I would limber up.
I would be sillier than I have been this trip.
I would take fewer things seriously.
I would take more chances.

I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers.
I would eat more ice cream and less beans.

I would perhaps have more actual troubles,
but I’d have fewer imaginary ones.

You see, I’m one of those people who live
sensibly and sanely hour after hour,
day after day.

Oh, I’ve had my moments,
And if I had it to do over again,
I’d have more of them.

In fact, I’d try to have nothing else.
Just moments, one after another,
instead of living so many years ahead of each day.

I’ve been one of those people who never goes anywhere
without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat
and a parachute.

If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter than I have.
If I had my life to live over,

I would start barefoot earlier in the spring
and stay that way later in the fall.
I would go to more dances.
I would ride more merry-go-rounds.
I would pick more daisies.

Nadine Strain,
85 years old.

(Update) The author of this piece, Nadine Strain, originally submitted this article to Family Circle and it appeared in their March  27th issue of 1978. Her name Strain was misspelled in the article and has been misspelled ever since as Stair. Nadine Strain passed away in 1988 at a rest home in Louisville, Kentucky. She also donated her body to medicine. This information is in Kentucky Stories By Byron Crawford