Reading aboard...

                                 I've always been a big reader, as far back as I can remember.

    
                     When I was 14 I stayed up until 3AM with a flashlight under the covers
                                all the way to the shocking finish of "Rosemary's Baby."


Fiction, non-fiction, romance, chick-lit, adventure -- I've enjoyed it all. But since we shoved off and sailed south on November 2, I've been surprised to find myself drawn almost exclusively to memoirs, true adventure and biographies.  Suddenly, fiction is not intriguing me. At all.

 During our difficult first 3 weeks coming down Baja, I dove into Rita Goldman Gelman's "Tales of a Female Nomad." We were cold, tired, hitting storm after storm and wondering if we were really up to this cruising thing.

 I was deeply drawn to this woman's honest story of leaving behind her upper middle class, L.A., show business life, complete with sophisticated dinner parties and award shows, etc. Seeking meaning, she sold everything, traveled alone and immersed herself into the lives of small villages in rural Guatemala, Indonesia, etc. For years.

THIS is what I needed to read. But I didn't give up on fiction yet...

             I tried without success to finish Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged."  I think I deserve a great big brownie point for getting 40% of the way through it!  It certainly deserves it's provocative reputation, anyway. But again, I was drawn back to memoir.  To real life stories of real people, sharing how they got through tough situations.

   After Rand, I felt the need for -- anything else. Craig Ferguson's hilarious, honest memoir of growing up as a young alcoholic in the streets of Glasgow fit the bill.

  Next it was Tania Aebi's memoir "Maiden Voyage." It's the true story of a lost and troubled 17 year old girl whose dad gave her two choices: you can go to college, or I'll buy you a sailboat. The sailboat is yours, but only if you agree to sail around the world. Alone.

She did it -- 30 years ago, too -- before the internet, before GPS, before satellite weather prediction. Holy crap.

It was clear that the dogeared John Grisham and Barbara Taylor Bradford paperbacks which line the shelves of cruisers book exchange libraries would not fit the bill for me. Now now, anyway.

Quite impulsively, I grabbed a bag and cleared my boat bookshelf of the 20 or so fiction books I had accrued that I planned on reading and dumped them into the now-groaning cruisers book exchange in town.

 I replaced them with Sebastian Junger's "Into the Wild" and a biography of Stephen Hawking.

I'm not sure what it means that I'm suddenly not interested in fiction. I think it has something to do with the challenge of this new sailing and traveling life in which we have immersed ourselves.

I want to hear the real stories of people who have also chosen the road less traveled.  I'm basically a student sitting at their feet. I want them to share with me how they did it. How they changed and adapted to their new lives. How they triumphed over adversity.

As crazy at this sounds, our every moment out here is not sipping margaritas (or in our case, Coca Dietas) and watching sunsets. There are doubts. Fears. Marital squabbles and power struggles. There are painful goodbyes. There is loneliness.

And, the dirty little secret amongst cruisers which noone is supposed to admit: there is occasional boredom.

So to allay these issues, I've been reading women's true stories of their lives -- "The Diary of Ann Frank," then a Jane Fonda biography.

                  One other thing: I really want to LAUGH. And Kathy Griffin's hilarious and
              honest memoir certainly left me chuckling to myself at 3AM and rolling my eyes
                                         at her over-the-tops antics in spite of myself.

     Phillip Roth and Ernest Hemingway aren't going anywhere. Neither is Joan Didion.

                   I'm currently reading Michael J. Fox's memoir of life with Parkinson's disease.


So, this is the latest crazy dispatch from lil' old me. Looks like I'm all over the map, as usual. LOL. Sailing south with my husband, sometimes wondering what in the heck I'm doing down here... But we're committed. And I'm learning. And growing. And changing. And adapting. Who knows what's next? Stay tuned...

Very simple "New Years Resolution" list

Happy New Year from La Cruz, Mexico.

A few weeks ago I read a fascinating biography of the private and modest Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz.

 I've lived in California almost all of my life. But since my parents grew up in North Dakota and Missouri, the simple, humble ways of the midwest/northern plains folk have always inspired and intrigued me.

Anyway, Sparky ( AKA"Charles Schulz") was born and raised in Minnesota. And I was born in Minnesota, although we moved to California when I was one.

Sparky's dad owned a neat, clean and happy barber shop in St. Paul. I learned in the book that his dad adhered strictly to the book "The Art and Science of Barbering," basically the barber's bible.

In this manual, there is a list of the 10 commandments of being a successful barber. They are:


1. Maintain a good posture.

2. Wear an easy cheerful countenance.

3. Constantly practice friendliness.

4. Speak distinctly.

5. Don't be overly inclined to give advice.

6. Don't be didactic (don't go on and on about boring technical details).

7. Be a good listener. A good listener asks leading questions.

8. Be essentially informal.

9. One's success in any avenue of life depends a great deal upon his selling ability.

10. Don't take yourself too seriously.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


With the possible exception of #9 (I'm not much of a saleswoman), this list pretty much sums up my New Years resolutions for myself.

Communication and relationships are everything in life. They are certainly everything in this sailing/cruising life.

And not only does life go better when we have good friends with whom we can laugh and share experiences, it's also a safety issue.

We need each other out here.

So, Happy New Year to you. Wow. 2012.

Maybe since we're in Mexico and it is, after all, 2012 (the end of the world?) we'll head on over to one of the Mayan pyramids, climb to the top and see if we are struck by lightning or something.

Now that would be quite the blog post. :-)