Happy Halloween!

This poem perfectly describes how it feels to work on a ship – sometimes (a lot more recently, for me) you just want to go home because you crave a sense of being settled somewhere.

The Double Life

How very simple life would be 

If only there were two of me 

A Restless Me to drift and roam 

A Quiet Me to stay at home. 

A Searching One to find his fill 

Of varied skies and newfound thrill 

While sane and homely things are done 

By the domestic Other One. 

And that's just where the trouble lies; 

There is a Restless Me that cries 

For chancy risks and changing scene, 

For arctic blue and tropic green, 

For deserts with their mystic spell, 

For lusty fun and raising Hell, 

But shackled to that Restless Me 

My Other Self rebelliously 

Resists the frantic urge to move. 

It seeks the old familiar groove 

That habits make. 

It finds content 

With hearth and home -- dear imprisonment, 

With candlelight and well-loved books 

And treasured loot in dusty nooks, 

With puttering and garden things 

And dreaming while a cricket sings 

And all the while the Restless One 

Insists on more exciting fun, 

It wants to go with every tide, 

No matter where...just for the ride. 

Like yowling cats the two selves brawl 

Until I have no peace at all. 

One eye turns to the forward track, 

The other eye looks sadly back. 

I'm getting wall-eyed from the strain, 

(It's tough to have an idle brain) 

But One says "Stay" 

and One says "Go" 

And One says "Yes," 

and One says "No," 

One wants a home and settled life 

And One Self craves the drifter's life. 

The Restless Fellow always wins 

I wish my folks had made me twins. 

- Don Blanding 

We also had a few visitors (kids of crew) stop by for some trick or treating...