The anchor & the lighter 5/26/12

Thinking now of some skills that Michael taught me, or tried to, when I was aboard Drum those few days back in spring of 1975. One was setting down with him as he showed me the chessboard for the first time. The game was way too much for me at that age, and I’m afraid I disappointed Mike. He’d been trying hard to teach me the fundamentals but saw at some point that I wasn’t so inclined to learn the game just yet. Another skill, which I later became somewhat adept, was the slip-tie knot involving several wraps of the line around another line forming a coil through which a looping tail is placed an late pulled into the coil using the other end of the line. This forms a seamless connection, with no tail ends exposed to become unravelled. I remember sitting at the little galley table on the port side of the boat’s cabin. This is where a great deal of work was done, I think.

Another memory is diving for the anchor, in which Michael was happy to involve me. To my last breath, I will remember this dive. Drum must have been in about 15 feet of water and it was clear as day beneath the boat. I dove as far down as I could and watched as Michael set the anchor. At least, this is how I remember it. That particular image has always been compelling; I’ve never really explored the symbolism, even though I’ve included it in Drum, a Search. It may stick in my head because of certain parallels with my own conception of Mike’s. Setting the anchor is such a powerful metaphor for keeping things permanent, keeping things solid, keeping things straight. Drum was so light that it would float around the anchor like a kite and easily lift it out of the sand.  

Another memory is the dropping Zippo lighter. Mike was moving around the boat and had either just gotten the lighter out of his pocket or had just lit his cigarette with it. For whatever reason, the lighter slipped from his fingers and dropped into the bay. Dad had given him the Zippo just the week prior. “Don’t tell Dad, he said,” and I never did. I imagine the lighter now, a buried artifact that only I know about . It’s still there, that Zippo, and like the anchor, it’s a symbol, a powerful idea that has yet to fully bloom in my mind. In fact, these two symbolic images dance around in my head almost daily, the anchor and the lighter. I need to mull this connection a bit. There is something very important about these two events, a truth in the mystery that keeps it all floating (so to speak). It keeps the Drum afloat and sailing through my mind.

So what of these symbols? Wading into these waters has always been a heady experience, but rarely do I discover anything useful. It’s as if I run straight into the light with little or no revelation. Perhaps I am seeking too much. Maybe more answers lie in those murky moments that have escaped me, or rather, are buried so deep that I can’t discern any edge or impression. These are repressed memories. Why? I should look at what I was happening in my life at that time. At some point, I was a person walking around with all the details of those four days. Everything clearly in view. I was 13 in 1976, just finishing eighth grade.