When I was in the midst of writing my memoir for my grandson, I wrote into the story that I was going to put the entire book into a bottle and throw it into the ocean. I imagined someone finding it years later and getting in touch with him, which made my effort at the time feel even more dramatic than it already was. The book was actually published a little over six years ago. I confess to not following through on that promise and today it has come back to bother me.
So far, so good, as he is still far too young to read the unexpurgated truth of my life, gifting me the additional time to be true to my word, which now suddenly matters to me.
The idea of the message in a bottle, conjures an honest, confessional approach to whatever communication is squeezed through the mouth of bottle. What do you have to lose, floating through oceans of anonymity? When this idea came up very recently, it had nothing to with my book or its promise. I was just thinking about what I’d write about next and feeling a bit stuck, which is not terribly unusual for me. I am always vacillating between small stories and big ones, which is very easy to explain.
First person stories are what I refer to as the small ones, They also happen to be the ones that work best, in terms of eliciting reader response. This is very important, because there is not a single person, who writes not to be read. Luckily for me, I have lived a fairly colorful life to this point and I love sharing my adventures with you. My problem with them is that I don’t like repeating my stories, even though they never come out the same and I am the only one, who reads everything I write. I’ve got my Mafia story, my cross country ride that ended up with me facing a homosexual encounter, having more jobs than a resume can hold, plus my evolution over time and so much more. There are times when a story is yelling at me to be told and I hit the keyboard with great enthusiasm, a seemingly effortless self-expression.
The big ones have an entirely different allure and the danger is thinking there are people other than myself, who give a shit about what I think. These are third person treatises that speak on behalf of us, which is often terribly tempting, but you can’t go there without really mastering the small ones first. Really, why should anyone wonder what I think about Guiliani or our global inaction in addressing climate change?
When I started thinking about the message in the bottle, I wondered who would read it, feeling it would make a difference in how I wrote. My memoir, Halloween in Portland, is a testament to the hodgepodge created by mixing the “I” with the “We”, but it was really only ever intended for my grandson. My life is a reflection of my mind. It is very difficult to separate myself from the world I live in, which keeps intruding on my private thoughts. Truthfully, I was not terribly concerned with crafting a readable and accessible book, rather it was just what I referred to it as, a Diary of the Mind. I think an editor would have had a slicing and dicing, field day with it, but I was happy with all its flaws, because polish was not my objective in this sharing of the heart.
Now, the blog is another story entirely, no pun intended. My audience is people like you and focus is critical, because meanderings get readers lost in the confusion and that is exactly how you get incredibly low numbers, with a like or two and rarely shared pieces. There is no way honesty has to be sacrificed, but form is crucial.
The idea of dropping a story into the ocean is a wonderful exercise in imagination. I really thought about the two extremes of recipients, assuming it doesn’t do a Titanic and end up on the bottom of the ocean. It feels like wishing on a star and there is no limit to possibility.
The first retriever is someone in another country, speaking a different language, with years in between its setting sail and beaching on a distant shoreline. I think it would work beautifully, with a purposeful inscription on the inside cover of the book, encouraging them to get in touch with my grandson or relatives that survive his tenure on earth. I figure this gives us around seventy years to find him alive and there are enough clues in the book to map out a strategy.
I have made a hard promise to myself to launch the book when I am out in the channel between this island and its neighbors. I will write the inscription, prior to its journey and share it with you at the time. I promise.
The second possibility may sound ridiculous to you, but while we are populating the world of the make believe, I can imagine beings from another world finding the bottle and the book. Of course, the inscription has to reflect this. In several hundred years, it is not crazy to think that our species will have met its demise, as a direct result of doing nothing to address climate change. Earth will survive, because that’s what she does and we could easily be the modern dinosaur, victimized by the climate catastrophe we will have brought upon ourselves. I am certain my grandson will be ahead of this holocaust, but dramatically impacted by the consequences of our inaction today. I will share that inscription as well.
So, we are now looking at messages in bottles, both containing the memoir, one for our relatives and the second for the unforeseen visitors, who will likely show up once we are gone. Just imagine an advanced civilization wanting to meet Trump? My guess is they will wait.
I now have two messages, two books and two bottles.