Just Two Lost Souls Writing in a Goat-Fish Bowl

It was this one Roman centurion I know that provoked me with enough unconditional acceptance that I joined yet another social media platform. So, he bears some blame for it all. Or credit. They are both the same thing. Such changes seemed to be happening a lot lately. I don't want to get into specifics about which site, so lets just say it was the one dedicated to processing and sharing photos. Sudden Germ Cracker or some such...

I have a lot of photos. So this thing was a gold mine of justifiable procrastination!

Writing had become even more difficult recently because I couldn't find any of my words, nor recall any names that I needed. Ever lost your car keys, your wallet? It was like that. My words were missing and Bobb - my mind's archivist - was nowhere to be found since the Paulie Walnuts incident. I had no idea where or what anybody's name was, either!

I had gotten home late from a date with this smoking-hot lighthouse keeper that I know. We had gone to see what was described as an oldies cover band at this new bar down the valley. Turns out Grunge is now "oldies." For some reason they also played a really decent cover of the Tom Petty classic, "Last Dance with Mary Jane." We hit the Tavern back at Tyddyn yr Haul a'r Lleuad afterwards, and then went back to her place. Bridget the lighthouse gal's, not Mary Jane's. Ask me about Mary Jane and I'll take the Fifth. Lets just say I could have bought Miami but things came up and I had to cruise on back home.

Once she fell asleep, I went back to my office in the backroom of the Tavern to cook the books a little. I wasn't sleepy yet, so I thought maybe I would get some writing work done. I keep several notebooks and reference sources available there. With so much writing to do - especially the one about those kids lost in the woods - I knew there was only one thing to do:

Start processing some photos.

Eventually I decided I might want to beat my morning alarm home. I enjoyed a stargazing walk home through the meadows, then headed into the cabin. I hung up my coat and hat, and leaned my cane by the door. As I was taking off my boots, I heard hoof taps. I paused, then looked up towards the desks in my workspace.

There was a large goat standing on the other desk. It looked at me. I looked back. A goat in the cabin really wasn't very odd, considering we ran three herds of them there at the homestead. This wasn't the first time I'd had livestock show up in my house; it wouldn't be the last.

The goat squinted at me, and lit up a cigarette. I could now see that the goat was a he - and he took a long pull from it, then exhaled a billowing cloud of smoke. I coughed, irritated by the goat dander no doubt. Maybe it was the smoke. It could have been the smoke.

"Do you have to do that in here, Billy?" I asked. I really didn't want to have to open a window on a cold winter's night. A goat that smoked Camels? Is that what I smelled? You would think a goat would smoke Pall Malls.

"Don't call me 'Billy,' Johnny Boy!" the goat barked at me in a voice reminiscent of The Bull Dog himself, with the accent of jowls burbling out. My head was spinning. Maybe it was those Dr. Comforts I had drank at the bar, or maybe I hadn't cooked those books all the way and they were giving me the pip. Either way I had a problem; I hate being called that by that nickname.

The goat crushed out his butt, and lit another with a little piece of paper. As it flared, I saw the last few letters of what looked like the name of a person to whom I was supposed to send a letter! That damned goat was lighting his cigarettes with the names I couldn't recall! You know, you expected that sort of thing from a llama, but goats were supposed to be better than that!

"Instead of worrying about what I am doing, you best get some work done on that one about those kids lost in the woods," he said gruffly, taking another drag on his cigarette. I had no idea what he was talking about. Was I writing a story about goatlings being lost and nobody told me? What business of some goat was it if I was?!?! And that "gruffly" business... from a goat? Isn't that a little on the nose? He just stared at me, his waddles twitching.

When did a duck get in here!?!?! And why was it twitching? I was tired. The sky to the east was glowing with pre-dawn light. It was almost time to change the tiller watch, and I hadn't slept. The last thing I needed was a Camel-smoking goat barking at me about twitchy ducks losing something in the woods from the quarterdeck!!!

I needed a drink, so I walked over to where I kept the bottle of Bumbu; it was missing. I heard the plonk of a cork being pulled, followed by the gurgle of golden spice splash into my copper gill cup.

I turned around as the goat was taking a snort directly from the bottle. He offered me my gill cup and lit another cigarette. I quaffed the spirit with one throw. As the warm elixir rolled down my throat, I wondered where all these words were coming from? I'd had about a 500 word vocabulary for the last several days.

"Better?" the goat asked as he brushed ash off of his cardigan. I took a quick dive into the sea from the rail, and swam around in the warm salt water before poking my snout once again above the surface. I smiled at the old sailor as he smoked his pipe while the sun rose over the mountainous shore beyond. I nodded; I was feeling better.

"Good," he said, finishing his pipe, tapping it out on his horns, the ashes falling onto the horsehair rug on the floor. "Now, if you don't want to work on the story about those girls, you could always do that one about your Sun Sign. You know, the story contest about astrology? There is a decent little purse being offered. If you are gonna waste time, its's better to be doing something worthwhile."

He tucked his pipe into his corduroy trousers, "I'll help you get started," he said. I splashed back under, spun and leapt out of the water and onto the deck. As I landed, I was taken aback by the sight of a goat wearing corduroy trousers and sensible shoes. Something about that seemed odd. As the day dawned outside, the truth of the situation dawned on me; I knew this goat!

"Bobb," I said getting angry. "You lousy bastard! You hid all my words and have been burning all my names!" I was incensed! And I was wet. Why was I wet?

"You deserved it," he said while lighting another cigarette. He sat there at his desk, an ageless man, tidily dressed in a manner appropriate to his position as a mind's archivist. I looked around the workroom and saw a single filing cabinet where there was usually hundreds, and no stacks of his little black notebooks. He stood up and took a bottle of Black Bush down from a shelf. He produced two tin cups, and poured us each a snort.

"First," he said after a silent toast and a sip of whisky, "A dolphin is not a fish. And pick one or the other." I had no idea what he was talking about. He continued, "We need to get to something topically relevant about your Sun Sign at some point during this fiasco."

I pondered this, sipping the whisky as I sat on the edge of my bed. A lady's warm, bare arm came across my lap. Startled, I stood up fast and stepped away. Laying there in my Hudson's Bay blankets was that gal from the lighthouse. How did she get here? She murmured something and rolled over, showing some more skin. I covered her up, then carefully sat back down. Women weren't usually allowed on the ship. I would have to deal with that later.

Bobb had lit a fire in the cabin's little stove to ward off the dawn-drop chill. He stepped outside into the yard a moment, and came back with an armload of firewood. Soon my little house was filled with a cheerful warmth. I got up and stripped off my wet clothes and hung them up to dry, wrapping myself in a colorful Mexican blanket I had picked up on a run in Baja. We both sat back down.

"I don't know that much about astrology," I said. "There are a few things, a couple of historical references. And a few references from other cultures, and their year-timing birth symbols and so forth. I don't know what I would write about. I don't really feel like another history/culture treatise. I was just gonna skip this one." I finished my whiskey and stretched. I was exhausted.

"Well," started Bobb, "On the one hand it's all just bullshit used for mating dances during the Victorian Age. On the other, there's something to personality types congregating by season of birth, and historically a lot of cultures put a lot of credence in it. Add to that the advanced models of cosmology and physics that are starting to indicate a lot of interaction between things beyond our understanding or perception." He lit another cigarette, and poured his cup full. He offered the bottle to me, but I waved him off. He went on, "Take that little 'keeper gal snuggled in your bunk. She was born ten days after you, and by the rules of that astrology stuff, you two have the same Sun Sign."

"So, what?" I asked, yawning. I seemed to have a lot of my words back, and there were a lot more filing cabinets and notebooks scattered around the room than there had been.

"So crawl in with her, sleep on it, and we will work on it tomorrow afternoon," he said while stoking the fire. I agreed without protesting much. I folded up my blanket and crawled in next to my wife. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

I woke up late the next morning, got dressed, ate a little and sat down to write. After four or five hours of watching me process photos, Bobb slammed the book he was reading down on his desk.

"Do you like wasting my time!" he snapped at me, clenching his pipe between his teeth. He picked up a bottle of Bushmills and took a big swig. He had once told me that he would drink almost anything. Over the years I had learned he was lying about the "almost" part.

"I told you Bobb, I don't really know anything about that stuff. Look at how great this photo of that one snow trek came out." I tried to show him but he had stormed outside. Concerned and embarrassed because I knew I was spiraling from where and what I should have been doing, I followed him to where he leaned on the ship's rail. We were making good time in fairly gentle seas. Dolphins swam and played around us, as they had so many times before. I had intended to apologize, but I kept silent.

"Remember when you were in that prison up north?" he asked after awhile. "When you got busted running that contraband for that one dipstick? Your ship got boarded, and he flipped on you?" He tossed his cigarette and lit another, taking a long drag before continuing.

"So you were in that place, trying to figure out where you went wrong and your folks shipped you some books. Remember those books?" He bent down to check on the rose bushes, to see how they were wintering.

"Yeah, what about them?" I didn't like talking about that affair. It had all worked out okay in the end, but there were some hard feelings about it, which was reasonable and should have been expected. I had learned a lot there.

"One of those books was called 'Sun Signs' by Linda Goodman. Your aunt who sent it recommended you read about yourself." He tossed the butt of his cigar in the forge box by the big anvil, lit up another and headed into the workshop. I stood there thinking about it - about what I had read - as I watched the albatross tilt it's wings as it trailed us. Seeing such a bird seemed odd in the mountains of Colorado, but so did working the deck of a brigantine. I joined Bobb inside the workshop.

"I remember some of it, Bobb," I told him, sitting down on my bunk. Bunk? Where was the bed? Why was there a bunk in the workshop? I shook my head. I went on, "But not much. You are right though. I remember that as I was reading, it really did sound like me, and the other descriptions for the other parts of the zodiac didn't. I have recommended that book to people over the years a few times, but I don't specifically recall much that it had to say."

Bobb picked up the book he had been reading and chucked it at me. It was a copy of Sun Signs by Linda Goodman. "Best get reading it then, Johnny Boy. This story ain't gonna write itself." He took out his pipe, packed and lit it. He pulled on his pea coat and his watch cap and went up on deck. I opened the book as I sat down on the sofa in the solarium.

The section on Capricorns opened with a quote:

"Speak in French when you can't think of the English for a thing -- Turn out your toes as you walk - and remember who you are!"

Reverend Dodgson, I thought to myself, Through the Looking Glass. Mathematician, writer, philosopher. I chuckled. If I used less than a half-dozen languages in a day, something was wrong with me. That last part though...

I continued reading about how to recognize a Capricorn. It talked a lot about steady and stubborn, ambitious - but quietly and resolutely so. Lots of metaphors about goats and climbing. Constantly under-rated but always ending up dominant at anything they put their hand to. Quiet, but a cultivated quiet with adventure underneath. Deliberate of speech and thought, melancholy and serious in aspect, a business-like romantic who becomes restless with age, respectful of pathfinders...

I stopped there. It was hitting me hard, and the memory of the same impact I had felt so many years before in that cold, concrete cell hit me, too. My soul felt always like someone watching the horizons for the dreams they had lost, and for the dreams they still had. Not as frivolity, but to gather what was needed to achieve or recover them. To find the way to do what needed doing. I had spent my life literally and figuratively climbing mountains, crossing seas, taking on new tasks and excelling at them through determination and carefully honed skill.

I had always made my own rules, but I crafted them not from my base desires or whims, but from the careful work of thousands of years of the teachers who had come before me. I needed my rules to be better than what was commonly offered. I was a man of a dignified lust, a romantic who sought the most practical way to achieve the most fantastic things. I was someone who respected and defended the work - in every area that interested me - that had been done well and good before my time. A man who understood marriage was a business, one which required serious forethought, not brash moments that would pass. I liked classic things, things of the earth, foundational things built of hewn stone.

I read on, through sections about the men, women, children of this Sun Sign. I not only recognized myself in the relevant parts, but also my wife. I saw the health advantages, triumphs, and challenges we had faced described. There were the struggles against less dignified or more openly aggressive Sun Signs that we both had navigated our whole lives. I read about tradition, honor, history, and dignity. I saw how we complemented each other in these things: ferocity and tenderness, ambition and ethic, practicality and drive. We both possessed incredible dreams forged in hard common sense. We had both let the stars guide us in a pragmatic, aesthetic, and scientific way on our endeavors for decades... was this any different?

I saw us. I saw that The Sailor and the Lighthouse Keeper were uniquely the same, connected. To be either one required intensity, practicality, and the ability to withstand toil and trial under terrible conditions. To be steady in a crisis. And they needed each other. There were no roads we didn't make for ourselves. The same ship the Light protected brought the supplies that sustained it. To be legion while alone, to be alone while legion. Greatness is born from the ability to work in an isolation of endurance. Both are duty driven things, traditional and respected.

I reached the end of the section and saw as examples, names of famous people who had the same Sun Sign. And there was more truth thrust upon me, an honesty that I thought might bother some people, but for which - and in agreement with the analysis my Sun Sign book had provided - when it came to me, made simple sense. Whatever makes a Capricorn the way they are can serve good or it can serve evil. We are a great and terrible thing, quietly and relentlessly working towards whatever destination or purpose we have chosen. Other Sun Signs might be more motivated to act on their worst impulses, but if we were to do it... we would succeed. And that would not properly do! What stopped most of us from choosing to do wrong was being aware of the shortsightedness of authoritarianism and viciousness: it was bad for business, it was ultimately terrible for accomplishing important things; it did not work. We realized that one cannot abolish force through its use. We know we are who we choose to be.

Genius must be disciplined, capable, steady, and determined or it would become something less. Hold fast, hold strong, hold the line! The show must go on! Do not let the light go out in even the most terrible of tempests!

I closed the book and walked it back to its shelf. I looked at its place. It typically rested upon one of two shelves - made from antique wooden apple crates - that I can reach without shifting position at all from my writing and drafting desks. I took a moment and looked at it's companions:

Thoreau, Sheakespeare, Lao Tzu, Yeats, Longfellow, Taliesin, Oscar Wilde, Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Moore, John Gunther, Franklin, T.R., St. Francis, Frederick Douglass...

Out of 16,000 volumes in the collection - over 4,000 of which resided in the cabin - this little Sun Sign book cohabitated with just a few dozen very special little tomes. From the front and sides of its shelves hung a purse and wallet from ancient Morocco, a canteen from my last voyage with its handwoven lanyard and cover my wife made, and another made of copper from Turkey and meant for use on a camel expedition. With them hung an old medicine pouch, and a compass, too... my gage d'amour made from bison hide, holding a pipestone pipe, strung with blue chevrons centuries old...

This little book mingled with the best. It was cherished, valued. And I had not opened it in many, many years. It was obvious: If this book, and the ideas behind it were nothing, meaningless... it would not be on this shelf.

"Do you remember now, Johnny?" asked Bobb as he set a cup of hot coffee down on my desk beside me. I closed my eyes and smelled the Arabica, chicory, turbinado, and cocoa making its way between the aromas of salty sea air, smoke-stained canvas, and dark, oiled wood. I gently sipped from the ceramic cup. The warmth of the sweetness spread through me like a reawakening.

"I do," I replied quietly. "I had forgotten." As had happened so many times in my life, changes in the wind had occurred again - and I was adrift. I was struggling to remember who I am. Just like the Dodgson quote there had said I needed to. The room had become dusty and my eyes blurry.

"That is why I'm here, Johnny," Bobb said gently, resting his strong calloused hand on my shoulder, "Other characters have come and gone in your stories over the years, but I stayed. And I will be here until death or decommission does us in." He squeezed, then patted me firmly twice. He lit his cigarette, took a drink from a bottle of St. Brendan's, and poured some in my cup. He sat down on a bale of plews, and leaned back against the hull of the ship.

"That is why your wife is here, too," he continued. "And that is why you are here for her. Take your bearing from her beacon, and get some sea room so you can work this storm without getting dashed upon the rocks. You have been bringing her what she needs to sustain her good works; let her do the same."

I sniffled. Allergies maybe. "I don't know about writing for that contest, Bobb. I feel like I am going to drift way off topic." I finished my coffee and opened my notebook. I had some clarity on the story about the kids in the woods and wanted to write it down. Then I stopped.

"Bobb?" I asked. His eyes were closed. His hands were folded and he was leaning back in his chair, his burned-down cigarette dangling from his lip.

Without opening his eyes, he answered, "Yeah, John." He seldom called me that. I found I didn't need to ask why he had gotten so mad and hidden my words and burned my names; I hadn't been living up to the task nor challenge at hand. I still didn't know if I wanted to write for that contest about astrology or not, but I knew I had to renew inside of me that goat, that dolphin, that dragon, that giant that had climbed those mountains, crossed those waters, braved those fires, and stacked those stones. Bobb and the stars had guided me home once again.

"Nevermind, Bobb, I remembered," I said with a slight smile.

"I know," he replied softly. "Now wrap-up this astrology thing. You are one line from being done."

It turned out he was right.