The Shadow Line

 

 

These days I'm only a shadow of my former self, or else I would've already rowed out to the yacht that moored last night across from "Riverbend", and whose white anchor light I'd kept an eye on during the night, dreaming of the times when I was still dreaming of sailing away from it all.

There were many such moments, but reality - and an inborn feeling of obligation, of "doing one's duty" - always intervened, and I remained hide- and desk-bound, my one rejection of the conventional life being my rejection of a permanent job and moving from place to place.

Which is how Joseph Conrad begins his novel "The Shadow Line":
"Only the young have such moments. I don’t mean the very young. No. The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the privilege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautiful continuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection."

 

 

This short 1917 novel would have a difficult time finding a publisher today. For one thing, it’s about men. Only. There’s not a single female in its 128 pages. For another, it’s a sea story without much of a plot: a young sailor, never named, becomes captain of a ship and has to lead the ship and its crew through a lot of difficulties before reaching harbour. No pirates. No swashbuckling. No mutiny. No desert islands. No treasures. And, for that matter, no sex, no romance, no drugs.

Its subtitle, "A Confession", already seems to make it clear that it wasn't written to entertain but to offer the reader a chance to consider core questions of what it means to be alive. It's about an older man who is recounting with more than a little ruefulness a key moment in his life, a moment when he crossed the line — that shadow line — between boyishness and adulthood, between happy-go-lucky and battle-tested, between self-ignorance and grimly won self-knowledge.

The older man is recalling how, on the spur of the moment, he quit his ship and decided to return to his home port. It was, he says, the product of boredom, weariness and dissatisfaction. "My action, rash as it was, had more the character of divorce — almost of desertion. For no reason on which a sensible person could put a finger I threw up my job — chucked my berth — left the ship of which the worst that could be said was that she was a steamship and therefore, perhaps, not entitled to that blind loyalty which…. However, it’s no use trying to put a gloss on what even at the time I myself half suspected to be a caprice."

Strictly speaking, it's not an autobiography, but a heavily fictionalised, semi-autobiographical novel of Conrad's life, to which I can relate, albeit without the ship. Complex as it is, the French tried to make a movie out of it - in French. Get your dictionary out, sit back and relax.

 

 

Which is what I'm doing, as I sit on the verandah in the morning sunlight, with one eye on the yacht across the river to watch for any sign of life.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

Walk, don't run

 

 

A very dear person who was the most important person in my life gave me for a birthday present this bottle opener. I used it for nothing else, until the subtle message finally revealed itself to me - too late, as so much else in my life.

For years I moved from one place to another, and dreamt continually of stopping. And because my desire to stop haunted me, I didn't stop. I continued to wander without the slightest hope of ever going anywhere.

I gave myself up to the drift, veering, detouring, and circling back, always one step ahead of nowhere, inventing the road I had taken as I went along. And for all I had left behind, it still anchored me to my starting place and made me regret ever having taken the first step.

And yet I went on. For even though I lingered at times, I was incapable of taking roots, for what I wanted is what I didn't want.

In the end it was the sheer distance between myself and what I had left behind that allowed me to see what I am not but might have been.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

Another big dreamer with small pockets

 

For the full advertisement, click here

 

Having saved your images of the verandah to my phone some time ago, and revisiting the listing this week, I’d be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t enquire about the advertised property. I’ve sat staring over the front gate from my car more times than I care to admit."

Another dreamer having fallen under the spell of "Riverbend". It once again vindicates my preference for cutting out the middle-man, as a real estate agent would already have brought her out to the property as a "pre-qualified buyer" (whatever that means; a beating heart?), preparatory to which we would have spent several hour doing some decluttering and cleaning up the kitchen etc. - none of which we still do; it's been "what-you-see-is-what-you-get" since the last agent left.

I replied, "As mentioned in the advertisement, the eventual selling price - which is negotiable - is set by the land value of more than $2.5 million (already seven years old), with the balance determined by the perceived value of the two-storey brick residence and a host of improvements, giving it a likely total of $3 million-plus (how much "plus" is left to be decided by the person with the cheque-book). So, before we proceed beyond this email exchange, here is the $3-million-PLUS question: do you have the funds or finance arranged?"

Predictably, she replied, "Straight off the bat it’s out of my price range. I am actively looking for a family home for myself with two teen boys, one into archery and the other loves camping, along with my soon to be 80 year old Mum. We’ve lived together on the Far South Coast for four years. I’m an artist and I’ve outgrown my small studio here as my art sales have been very steady, and am looking for somewhere near the water to live and paint, build a larger art studio (around 8x6m) and hold occasional art workshops over the holiday seasons. My eldest paddled from Shallow Crossing to the Bay with a night on Little Island with two mates not long ago, and loved it (but not the blisters). The boys said it would be an awesome spot to live, kayaks straight off the bank. I’m staring at the screen wondering why I’m saying all this instead of just saying sorry it’s way over my budget. In any case, I’ll buy a lotto ticket, and keep selling paintings!"

Another big dreamer with small pockets! But there was more: "Maybe I could possibly visit please to do some preliminary sketches for paintings of the river and surrounds? I’m just so drawn to Riverbend, and the magnificent trees on your property." I might have relented, if she had boxed in the 'please' with two commas, but, on second thoughts, I can't see myself sharing my treasured privacy with an arty lady and her two teenage boys shooting arrows and lighting camp fires all over the place.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

The pedants' revolt

 

 

We first got to know each other through letters. Then, quite a few letters later, she wrote, "Your adorable!" "No," I replied, "YOU'RE adorable!" She must've thought I found her adorable when all I had been doing was point out to her a grammatical mistake.

That was twenty-five years ago. We are still married but I am no longer pedantic about her grammar (I reserve my pedantry to her cooking).

Not that I've given up the fight when it comes to what I read. The apostrophe is being killed by the internet. No one knows where commas belong — is it Oxford? Texting has led to words being shortened in ways tht are guaranteed to annoy. How much effort did the missing “a” require? Worse still, entire words are replaced by single letters. Mercifully, not everything is lost when even the youngest texters still know that all sentences have to end with an exclamation mark!

I am still irritated by the sight of a “who” where a “whom” should be, and I am also still drawn towards the correct placing of the word "only", except on those occasions when I am not. There is something pleasantly jarring about insisting you are here only for the beer, rather than only here for the beer. In the more common and incorrect variant, the word 'only' is qualifying not beer but here, which could lead people to think that you are only here and indifferent to the libation.

Does it really matter when no one is really confused? Should I switch to oral pedantry and rage at the persistent interjection of "like" into sentences, and the contraction of "could have", "should have", and "would have" into "could of", "would of", and "should of"?

I guess I shall always remain pedantic about those phrases that irk me. Or is it phrases which irk me? Or maybe phrases by which I am irked?

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa ...

 

 

 

War es der Roman des Erich Maria Remarques oder die Kurzgeschichte vom Heinrich Böll, die aus mir einen Auswanderer machten? Ich las sie als Klassenkameraden noch die Abenteuergeschichten des Karl Mays lasen.

Obwohl ich jetzt vergessen habe, welches von den beiden ich zuerst las, habe ich beide Bücher noch vor meinen Augen: "Im Westen Nichts Neues" war ein Buch vom Bertelsmann und Heinrich Bölls Geschichte "Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa ..." war in einem rororo-Taschenbuch.

Selbst die frühere 1930 Verfilmung von "Im Westen Nichts Neues" trug nichts dazu bei den Aufstieg dieser Charlie-Chaplin-Figur und einen neuen Krieg zu verhindern. Somit wurde ich ein Wehrdienstverweiderer und sagte ihnen wo sie sich ihren Wehrpass stecken können.

Und seither lebe ich in Frieden auf der südlichen Halbkugel der Welt.

 

Googlemap Riverbend