Gone Girl

Marina del Rey,CA, slip D-1611.  Docking lines...gone.  Electrical umbilical... gone.  Freshwater hose... gone.  Twenty-three years of dock box treasures... gone.  Trusty old AURORA... gone.

I may have an inkling of how the butterfly feels after finally leaving the cocoon. This cocoon was home to AURORA for nearly a quarter of a century, even maintaining it while she was on her six month journeys through Mexican waters in the Sea of Cortez.  The mere thought of sending her on a truck, crossing mountains, traversing deserts, navigating cities cross-country was downright scary. LEAVING was scary, but then, is not ALL change scary? Throughout my 70 odd years I have weathered a goodly number of life-altering changes and all were scary. Even those I chose by own volition because the future in reality is not a bright colorful sunrise... it is a black and often forbidding nothingness.  Of course we harbor bright expectations about the future but expectations are imaginary.  The black nothingness of an unknown future is real.  And that reality should be scary for anyone who can think their way out of a paper bag. Thank the Gods my parents taught me to embrace fear.  My father, a man with many medals from WWII and who routinely ran into burning buildings as a big city fireman, admitted to me more than once that of course he was scared.  An aha moment, an epiphany for a skinny, young boy afraid of the dark. For some, fright is the peak of the mountain and for some it is the valley.  Regardless, comparing this new change in my life with actual life-threatening experiences of previous lives seems frivolous and specious. Get a grip, RK.  Or more succinctly, as so many of you have pointed out to me over the years of putting up with my 'Roger's Rants' letters, "Hey you... RK... get a life,"    OK, I'm trying.               .