I read a book a few weeks ago about the last voyage of the whaleship Essex, which was rammed by a sperm whale and sank, abandoning its whole crew to a couple of rickety whaleboats and the ocean. Just when everyone was almost dead they came across a small island that had a small source of fresh water only when the tide was at exactly the right place. Three of the men from the ship decided on this island that being lost at sea is for suckers and they'd take their chances on what barely counted for land, and they watched as their crewmates sail away again. They eventually made it off the island alive but that tiny spring, their main source of fresh water, was never seen again.
Last night I was up for hours, crazybrain spinning like a mashup DJ, layering the Lizzo song that has been stuck in my head with an imaginary conversation about something I'm mad about at work with a series of ludicrous worst case scenarios. I keep hoping to age out of late night worst case scenarios (or, let's be honest, any time of day worst case scenarios) but it never seems to happen, so I still just sit there for hours counting the rats scurrying across the patio below and worrying about what if gravity fails. Last night I plotted and plotted about what to do about an emergency appendectomy this weekend while my boyfriend is uncontactable in the woods, and truly it is both exhausting to be me and to be around me, sometimes.
Surprisingly, sticking around on that island turned out to be the better option than sailing off again, since the cannibalism didn't get going until later. Elsewhere on the island were eight skeletons of people who didn't get rescued later, which must have been a disheartening sight to find once their shipmates sailed off and their water disappeared. Mathematically I'm sure the chances of them being rescued were vanishingly small--almost all of their shipmates would be dead and eaten by the time the remaining whaleboats bumped into civilization again, and the island that they were actually on was a different one than what everyone thought they were on. But civilization was bumped into and the captain of another boat cared enough to check one more place for them, and they made it out alive.
None of the guys left on the island were the guys that wrote books afterward so there's no way to know how it went, but I keep thinking about the feeling of going back to where the water was and waiting for the tide to get to the right spot and it just...never happening. I imagine you'd be haunted by a lot after a whale sinks your ship and you're lost at sea, but it seems to me that there must be moments that would stick more firmly than others, and by any reasonable standard--and my late night disaster planning--that would definitely be one of them.
Last night I was up for hours, crazybrain spinning like a mashup DJ, layering the Lizzo song that has been stuck in my head with an imaginary conversation about something I'm mad about at work with a series of ludicrous worst case scenarios. I keep hoping to age out of late night worst case scenarios (or, let's be honest, any time of day worst case scenarios) but it never seems to happen, so I still just sit there for hours counting the rats scurrying across the patio below and worrying about what if gravity fails. Last night I plotted and plotted about what to do about an emergency appendectomy this weekend while my boyfriend is uncontactable in the woods, and truly it is both exhausting to be me and to be around me, sometimes.
Surprisingly, sticking around on that island turned out to be the better option than sailing off again, since the cannibalism didn't get going until later. Elsewhere on the island were eight skeletons of people who didn't get rescued later, which must have been a disheartening sight to find once their shipmates sailed off and their water disappeared. Mathematically I'm sure the chances of them being rescued were vanishingly small--almost all of their shipmates would be dead and eaten by the time the remaining whaleboats bumped into civilization again, and the island that they were actually on was a different one than what everyone thought they were on. But civilization was bumped into and the captain of another boat cared enough to check one more place for them, and they made it out alive.
None of the guys left on the island were the guys that wrote books afterward so there's no way to know how it went, but I keep thinking about the feeling of going back to where the water was and waiting for the tide to get to the right spot and it just...never happening. I imagine you'd be haunted by a lot after a whale sinks your ship and you're lost at sea, but it seems to me that there must be moments that would stick more firmly than others, and by any reasonable standard--and my late night disaster planning--that would definitely be one of them.
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