I Lost My October At Sea

Because in this imperfect world, even the best laid plans may fail…

Here’s why we struggle with the present and get lost in obsessively planning for the future – only to carelessly end up on a Caribbean cruise instead, watching Creepshow, and eating lukewarm strawberries.

There is a saying that “Plans are meant to be broken.” I’ve heard it plenty of times and always roll my eyes at the thought.

I like planning. I like making lists, checking off boxes, filling in the calendar, mapping out my course, dotting every “i” and crossing every “t”. I enjoy having everything line up the way it should in a perfect world. Except this world is far from perfect and, being the hopeless nostalgic that I am, I’m constantly torn between what once was, what is, and what could one day be.

Nostalgia has a tendency to derail us from realistic and concrete goals. Most are familiar with nostalgia’s favorite destination: the past. but nostalgia also allows us to explore the future, where we delight in our dreams for a better world.

Despite my plans, the winds of life blew me toward San Juan, Puerto Rico where I met up with long lost family at Castillo San Felipe del Morro. We sat for hours on a bench and talked, laughed, and hugged. The cool breeze surrounded us and made us feel as though we’ve always known each other and no time had passed.

Quite the visionary, Walt Disney’s amusement empire relied heavily on the concept of nostalgia and childhood pleasures. The key to his success; however, was in realizing that nostalgia exists as much in the past as it does in the future. In creating his favorite park ride, the Carousel of Progress, Walt Disney incorporated aspects of both historic nostalgia and futurism. The ride proved the two can coexist and its catchy theme song continues to encourage riders that: “There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow / Shining at the end of every day.”

But what about the “in between?” The present? Why is it that we can’t get a grip on it?

Recently, I had an enlightening moment that was spurred on by a visit to an antique shop, wherein I encountered a late 19th century Mutoscope. Frequently found at the old penny arcades, this early motion picture, coin-operated device was often not without an ogling eye peering through its hood-enclosed single lens. Not having come across one before, I dropped in a coin and turned the crank that activated the Rolodex-type machine and quickly learned why it became a favorite in the peep show business. With one eye closed and another nervously toward the lens, the machine whirred and a dark-haired woman appeared and unabashedly performed a brief burlesque dance. A series of still images reflected in black and white flashing across the lens like a flip book. A  quick trick of the eye and a blink and the picture was over in only a few seconds.

Life can seem a bit like that sometimes…a blur. Hopefully, for most of us, it’s not one in which we end up topless and gyrating in front of giant eyeballs for all eternity, but simply a whirlwind in which time seems to escape us somehow.

This last month has come and gone and I had so many things planned for us. I had promised myself that last month was going to be different. I was going to break any old habits of procrastination and was going to plow forward with all things fresh and creative; a new sense of motivation. I wanted us to dive head first into this journey. I wanted do all of those things I had dreamed of doing in the days when I would say to myself: If I ever got  a chance to share a part of myself with someone, to write something, to photograph beautiful things, to travel, I would…

Despite my plans, I ended up on a solitary brick road in Old San Juan, where it seemed that nostalgia had carved a private space just for me. I walked and enjoyed a much-needed moment of reflection.

I had spent months etching out plans to delight you with vibrant photos of my favorite season as the world seemed to turn to the yellow, brown, and orange hues that fill nostalgics with all kinds of wonderful thoughts about cozy socks, knee-high boots, soft sweaters, warm caffeinated drinks, and leafy frolics on cool afternoons.

I was going to write about a recent birthday celebration and humor you about the pains and fears of growing old and my aversion to the game of musical chairs and plastic knife-wielding, lollipop-sucking, shirtless, party-crashing boys (a detailed and much-needed explanation of this will one day follow)…

In light of Halloween, I was gleefully going to spook the socks off of you with tales of mysterious ghosts in creepy unexpected places. I even planned on sharing with you a chance encounter I had with a curiosities shop in a town with a haunting reputation.

I prepared to amuse you with anecdotes about my recent move and the confusing art of adapting to new surroundings.

In my mind’s eye, I was all set to tackle the month of October. I had this idea of a new “future” that I wanted to create for myself. But I got lost in all that nostalgic idealism and forgot that the very definition of the word “plan” is: a proposal, an intention, an objective to move in a certain direction; sometimes, because we’re trying to flee from our current position. I had all these elaborate plans for the future because I couldn’t just settle into the present. 

Even on a solitary road, I was never alone or short on inspiration. Just below my feet, in the blue cobblestones that paved the alleys in Old San Juan, lay a world of history.  One I couldn’t help but want to learn about and explore

Author John Green forthrightly wrote in his first novel, Looking For Alaska, “Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia…You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it.  You just use the future to escape the present.”

No matter where you are, even in the middle of the ocean, there is always an escape route. Some ways seem like a light at the end of a tunnel. Others are dark paths we take out of desperation. But sometimes, the hardest part is learning how to stay put.

This plan of mine led me to craft the month of October into this dreamy world, where life happened at a slow and floating pace. Everything allocated just right. A world coated in Technicolor warm tones and sunny weather. A world where a hum and skip were all I needed to get by, simply because each day was carefully drafted inside a tiny calendar square.

Instead of accomplishing any of what I planned, the days seemed short and hurried. Time was ever-fleeting and darkness arrived earlier each evening. Stressed at the thought of getting older with a long and looming to-do list at hand; packing up my apartment where I had lived and comfortably settled for over 10 years; not being able to find my writing mojo which included the right music, lighting, and #2 pencil; and creeped out by the dark shadows that now seemed to lurk around every corner once the sun clocks out in the early afternoon hours; I packed a bag and shipped off to sea.

Conjuring up images of Titanic and Queen Mary, where one might engage in a game of shuffleboard, sit on a deck chair in a long coat and stare out into the amber horizon, or sip Brandy in a cigar room – my trip was less nostalgic. I really just went on a cruise that I had booked on cheap deal sometime last year and all I did was eat, sleep, and count the stars. And maybe I indulged in a relaxing spa treatment…or two.

In an interview with Jacob Brogan of Slate Magazine, Sci-fi writer Ernest Cline talked about an upcoming novel, and the process of writing about the future. He states, “Imagining the future is dangerous because it can go either way.”

Despite my plans, I hiked mountains in St. Kitts and took in breathtaking views of various shades of blues and greens that I never knew existed.

We can concoct dreams and ideas for ourselves that may never come to pass in the way that we imagine them. In the same way that our memories sometimes fail us in recalling the past, our future plans and dreams, glazed over by idealistic wishes of things we’d love to see happen, may be flawed in ways we may have missed while gushing over the possibilities.

Despite my plans, I boarded a sail boat in St. Maarten and took in all the beautiful colors around me while the captain sang Jimmy Buffet, Bob Marley, and Caribbean-version Elvis Presley tunes on a children’s karaoke machine.

My new towel friend…Not a swan. Not a monkey. A rare dog breed, perhaps?

The thing about plans, proposals, intentions, and objectives, is that they can all change. They change because we lose interest, because we get busy, because others interfere, or simply because we change.

I apologize for leaving you stranded on the shore. Next time I feel like the winds are blowing strong, I promise to bring you along. Who knows where we might end up.

Never-the-less, October ends as it should for me…on cruise ship, celebrating a belated birthday in my stateroom, eating lukewarm chocolate-covered strawberries (that I nab while passing the poolside dessert buffet), sitting nervously on the edge of my bed, and clutching an unidentifiable, yet comforting, towel figure that my stateroom attendant carefully crafted, as I re-watch the first horror movie I ever saw as a kid. 

I couldn’t believe it! Creepshow is on! The suffocating images of Ted Danson’s head sticking out of the sand as waves lapped against his face; an evil-looking Leslie Nielsen standing ominously above him; Stephen King covered in weeds, eventually committing suicide, and (gasp!) that creature under the stairs! I’m just as spooked as I was when I first saw it at the age of seven. My parents probably shouldn’t have let me watch it then. I’m sure they didn’t plan on it! (pun intended)

Much like the waves of the ocean, nostalgia may try to sway us one way then quickly change course to another. The only way to keep up, like the captain of a ship, is to stand firm at the helm, acknowledging the present, yet allowing ourselves time to reflect, alternatively, on the wake of the ship as well as the horizon ahead.

In her book, What Happened to Goodbye, author Sarah Dessen wrote, “It was amazing how you could get so far from where you’d planned, and yet find it was exactly where you needed to be.”

Yeah…I had my plans, but none played out quite the way I imagined. Instead, this past month went by much like the Mutoscope image I had seen – a monochrome confusing mess that awkwardly whirred past with a dusty twitch of an eye. Yet, much like the giddy peeping Toms of old, I still enjoyed it and I’m ready to drop another coin and do it all over again.