Rick Kimball I entered an unfamiliar medical office down by the river recently and I froze. “Are you all right?” the receptionist asked. Ignoring the stupidity of a question like that in a place like that, I pointed to a photo on the wall. “What’s with those boats?” I asked. “They’re dinghies,” she said. “For getting places, like if you want to cross over to the other side.” “Then hang ‘em in a funeral parlor.” I told her. “No dang dinghy belongs on a doctor’s office wall. I’m here to get a wart fixed – not to cross over to the other side. That sounds a bit deadly to me.” “I was talking about crossing the river,” the receptionist said. She pushed a button on her desk. A ding rang out and seven orderlies surrounded me. “What’s up?” asked the burliest one. “This guy is dingy,” the receptionist replied, and she pointed at me. “Dang you all!” I shouted. “I’m out of here.” “Okay,” she said, as I roared by. “Whatever floats your boat.” Well I suppose I over-reacted. But wherever I go, to every bank and medical office and restaurant, I see pictures of dinghies on the wall and they’re getting to me. What’s the dinghy draw? Why are photographers and artists so attracted to them? Why have I photographed dinghies myself? And why have some of you? They’re pretty, of course. They look great bobbing at the end of the pier, all colorful and clean. You never see a dingy dinghy in a picture. But dinghies are also sending a message to all of us. “Don’t be happy here. Hop in, and let’s go somewhere else. Maybe not all the way to the other side just yet, but somewhere neater than here.” That’s why the dinghy pictures trouble me. They reflect America’s deep discontent with staying wherever we are, with doing whatever we do, with leading the lives that are ours. Drive down the turnpike and count the cars. Swing over to the shore and add the boats. Stop by the railway and bus station, and move on to the jetport. Count the travelers, too, if you can – but you can’t. There are too many people, maybe most of us, maybe even all of us, driven to be somewhere else. Why can’t we be happy right where we are? Gurus sit on their mountaintops at peace. But not the rest of us. We’re always on the move. Think of the gas and the money we could save, imagine how much we could help the environment if we just stayed still. Maybe we should ban all nonessential traffic for a day or a month or a year. This could give us time to contemplate the dinghies on our walls, to see them as the religious icons they are, symbols of our hopes and dreams, our need to get outside ourselves, our need to travel on to someplace else. Then, of course, we would all insist on having ESSENTIAL TRAVELER stamped onto our forehead. “We need to travel,” we would argue. “We need to get wherever we need to get, but especially to our church on Allen Avenue. Where else can we find out what those dang dinghies mean?” My dingy Dinghy by Mike Luce Dinghies. Little boats which get people from one environment, say ashore, to another, the boat. Transitional vehicles you could say. Cabs, land dinghies. Often taking people to or from a bus, maybe a train. Another type of transitional vehicle. I don’t know a whole lot about dinghies. I do know more than most about cabs. Transitional in another way for me. At a rather low and aimless point in my life I fell into driving a cab. It was what you might charitably call a “rich experience”. Driving nights, I was often hauling people to, from or between bar and another. Often driving drunks someplace to get drunker. They could be jolly, surly, comatose. Let me tell you. Taking the bar closers home was not for the faint of heart. A lot of more civilized rides also, but you couldn’t avoid lots of sad sights there either. After a few months of that I switched to days. There was still lots of sadness on display, but many fewer sloppy drunks. It’s a trope that cabbies are often treated a little like bartenders. It’s also true.You heard a lot about folks’ lives. Lots of desperation, quiet or otherwise. Lots of people with lots of struggles wanting, needing to talk. Looking for someone to listen. Lots of conversations between riders as if I wasn’t there, covering incredibly intimate, even shaming things. I had a friend volunteering on what was then the Ingraham Volunteers Hotline and so I was aware of a little of the social service world. I found that the folks in my cab with problems seemed to like talking to me and a few even requested me if I was available. Things came together. Driving a cab showed me something about others and about myself. I started volunteering on the suicide prevention hotline. It felt right. Fast forward a few years. I’m working with “troubled” teenagers. These kids had been through so much. They didn’t get to us, a residential/educational setting, unless things had really broken down in their lives. So much pain. So much fear instilled in their lives which often came as anger. It came out sideways, many ways. I saw one of my co-workers injured in what is euphemistically called a “therapeutic restraint”. I was injured in a restraint when my hair became a handle. That one’s stayed with me ever since. Over time however, the pain which drove me out, which made me angry was from a whole environment I was working in. I burned out. Crispy. Hadda leave. Back to the cab. I needed a job in which nobody depended on me for a damn thing. I could take a day off and no one cared. This time however my cab, my rather dingy dinghy helped in a transition which was much more directed. I knew I would be back. I had found my calling. I had to let the lessons sink in about empathy and self care. I saw again all the reasons I had felt the draw but right now I had none of the responsibility. Perfect. After some cooling off and paying attention to lessons learned, I took my first tentative step back. I worked part time at a transitional shelter, (how fitting is that?) for folks just out of AMHI and kept driving a cab. Sort of like putting a testing foot on side of the boat but not letting go of the dinghy. On the Water by Erica L. Bartlett Last month a cold hit me pretty hard for about a week. And as you may know, when you’re not feeling well, you’re apt to try all kinds of things to feel better. In my case, I remembered hearing about studies showing that patients heal faster when their hospital rooms have a nature view, or at least nature art. Especially if it included water. Since I knew we would be talking about dinghies this month, I decided to conduct an experiment. If I looked at images of dinghies on the water, would I get better faster? One thing I noticed immediately was how restful and calming the pictures were. When you don’t have much energy, it can be refreshing to look at these cheerful boats bobbing on lakes and imagine the gentle sound of waves lapping against the hulls. Even more, it reminded me of times I’ve been on the water, reviving happy memories I hadn’t considered in a long time. The earliest ones are of canoe trips with my family when I was growing up. I always enjoyed those. Even the time we swamped is now a fun memory because it makes a good story. Then my junior year of college, I had the opportunity to go sailing for a week on the schooner the Spirit of Massachusetts. We had a stormy start, but we also had some gorgeous days of blue skies and blue water out of sight of land. And my favorite – my trip to the Galapagos Islands almost 10 years ago, when I spent 8 days going by boat between the islands. This included opportunities for snorkeling by a coral reef, seeing countless numbers of incredibly adorable sea lion pups, and being awed by the flocks of magnificent frigatebirds wheeling around the ship. That was also my first time on a dinghy, going between the boat and land. I don’t know if this made me recover faster, but those memories were much more enjoyable than dwelling on being sick. It also made me curious to explore this connection between nature and healing a little more. And it didn’t take long for me to discover the phrase “blue mind.” The term is used by Wallace Nichols, a marine biologist who wrote a book with that title. He writes: “We are beginning to learn that our brains are hardwired to react positively to water and that being near it can calm and connect us, increase innovation and insight, and even heal what’s broken.” I find this amazing. And one of the parts that most fascinates me is how this “blue mind” can encourage a deeper sense of connection. It reminds us that we all ultimately come from the ocean. Whatever else may divide us, we have this in common with each other, and with every other form of life. And water is what scientists look for as signs of life even on other planets. I hadn’t thought about it quite like this before, but it does make sense. It also seems to echo the idea behind our ingathering every fall, when we return here to bring waters from our travels and merge back into a unified whole. All these memories and connections, simply from thinking about and looking at pictures of dinghies. Before this, I wouldn’t have thought such humble vessels could carry me so far, but now, I have a much better understanding of their appeal. https://psychcentral.com/blog/waters-psychological-benefits/ https://www.shape.com/lifestyle/mind-and-body/how-use-water-reduce-stress-and-soothe-your-mind “Stuck in a land-locked city, or facing a dark, cold winter? (We feel ya.) There's still hope. "Water in all forms can help you slow down, disconnect from technology, and shift your thoughts," says Nichols. "In the city or in the winter, float spas, tubs and showers, fountains and water sculptures, as well as water-related art can help you access the same benefits." Not only are these experiences therapeutic (they send your mind and body into a healing mode), Nichols says they can also activate positive memories of previous experiences with water, bringing you back to your happy place.” “Voyages” by Beth Fitzgerald I’ve always been particularly fascinated by paintings of windows and doors and have discovered they are “liminal images” ... that they represent boundaries or thresholds and may carry psychological significance. They have certainly been recurring images in my dreams. But what, I thought, might be the draw of dinghies? Checking the definition I found that “liminal” also means “relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process”. So perhaps dinghies might represent the invitation ... or need ... to begin or continue a journey... or perhaps the memory of some adventure? And with that thought, a memory of my childhood ....which did indeed involve a dinghy ... was suddenly triggered. In the summer of 1950, my friend Ellen and I were playing in the large, protected harbor on Block Island Rhode Island. Like Rat and Mole in “Wind the Willows” we knew that "there (was) nothing - - absolutely nothing -- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats." A sudden summer squall came up bringing a torrent of rain, wind, and angry waves ....and caught in the strong current of the outgoing tide we began to be pulled towards the entrance of the harbor. Rowing as hard as we could, we just barely made it to shore before we would have been swept through. And when we finally beached the little boat ... and fell exhausted on the shore.... our young selves may not have realized that we had just cheated death. We were more worried about our parents being angry! We ran back to her house, got ourselves dry and warm and the next day retrieved the boat. And never mentioned it to our parents. As a parent myself now, I realize what agony they had been spared. This past year ... I was caught up in a totally different, but equally harrowing experience. Due to an initially misdiagnosed injury unrelieved by medication, which left me in severe pain for months and robbed of sleep, I plummeted into a deep depression, and was swept out of the comfortable “harbor” of my life ... alone ... adrift ... and fearing I would be lost. The dingy this time was the metaphorical one ... the little boat of the self that Emily Dickenson speaks of: Adrift! A little boat adrift! And night is coming down! Will no one guide a little boat Unto the nearest town? So Sailors say—on yesterday— Just as the dusk was brown One little boat gave up its strife And gurgled down and down. But I did not go down. Some mystery.... some grace .... upheld me and I look back now in wonder for all the synchronicities ...... all the “rafts” ... which brought me safely home. Recently a scene in a rather silly little movie, unexpectedly made me weep. A young man is adrift on a raft, and exhausted after many days, lies down, surrenders to approaching death, and sleeps. Something wakes him. The sea is calm and the night silent. He kneels and gazes over the ocean to the vast horizon. Under the black canopy of sky.....pierced by millions of stars ... a moon slowly begins to rise. When the glorious full moon sits on the horizon, he stretches out his arms ... and with tears streaming down his sunburned, blackened face ... he whispers ...“Thank you, thank you”. Nature was my great consoler also during my time adrift. Dickenson’s poem continues : So angels say— on yesterday— Just as the dawn was red One little boat—o'erspent with gales— Retrimmed its masts— redecked its sails— And shot—exultant on! I am indeed exultant ....for after having slipped the oars and pulled the dinghy up safely on the beach, I am traveling in a lifeboat. And with kindred souls I sail the starry heavens in our beautiful Blue Boat Home. Yet I am aware there is another solitary journey to come... the last and most mysterious ... this time hopefully on a gentle tide, and may I remember then the words of an Eskimo Shaman : The great sea has set me in motion set me adrift moving me as the weed in a river. The sky and the strong wind Have moved the spirit inside me Till I am carried away Trembling with joy Susan Selbe Our theme today is dinghies. Because I was drawing a complete blank, I turned to my daughter, who sailed tall ships in many ports for several college summers, then after college for a few years. This is her response. I have actually thought about it, and strangely it has been helpful to me in a stressful week to think about what a dinghy represents...escape, survival, pleasure, entertainment, exercise, transport to wherever you want to be, and even a life-line to the dry land when you are aboard a big hulking ship that simply cannot get you ashore. In a pinch, a dinghy has been known to provide adequate sleeping quarters. Dinghies are also the traditionally preferred mode of secret boarding for stow-aways. But a dinghy is also something that adds weight to your load, and can create imbalance on your ship. It's another piece of gear that requires care and maintenance. If you forget to put the plug in the water drain when you launch it, you'll quickly take on water and we can be sure that at least once in human history this has been the cause of sinking and even death. If you forget to take the plug out when you pull the dinghy out of the water, it will fill with rain, the contents will get soaked, and it's a pain to drain. If you're out rowing your dinghy, and you lose an oar, well you know how that story goes. Generally too, dinghies are built for fitting in neatly aboard the ship, not comfort or speed, so they're often hard to row, much as you are grateful to have them. These are my thoughts and reflections about dinghies. All of the above is a metaphor for life. We all have need of a dinghy every once in a while, whether it be for rescue or pleasure, but for it to be there when we need it, we gotta take care of the dinghy. I leave it to the others to further expound on this fluid topic.