The wind is unhappy.

The wind is unhappy here.

My spirituality it is my connection to nature, and I believe I have an ability my to see, listen, and understand it. I also believe the wind is unhappy here on the Hudson River.

It’s not unhappy because it blows strong in October, it’s unhappy because nobody listens to it. Like a screaming two-year-old left alone, it wants to be heard. The people here live very far away from nature behind the wheels of climate controlled cars, and insulated from the weather by synthetic materials in their homes .

I was surprised to see deer roaming free in town a few weeks back. Unafraid of being hunted, they casually noshed on a front lawn. This is not natural. Most of you live in a world where it is “natural” to buy your meat from a store. To consume flesh that has grown in an unnatural place, unhappy, in pain, and without Love. And to consume fruit and vegetables that have been genetically modified for looks and color, rather than taste and nutrition.

It’s 3:58 am, and the wind on the Hudson is crying to me, shrieking, and shedding just a tear or two on my decks so I know how sad it is. I’ve looked on the radar and can see no reason for the 30 knot temper-tantrum. The voice of the wind is hollow, like a broken man roaming the streets of New York City, it is desperately sad and unsettled.

This night, I write as the voice of the wind. It is my job to let people know there is more to the world around you than technology, processed food, and material objects that provide distraction and comfort.

The wind wants you to wake up in the night when it screams, tackle the deer in the front lawn, kill it, and consume it. “Barbaric” you say? Barbarism is what you don’t see behind the curtain. What you know is there, but you choose to turn a blind eye to. The machines that scoop up chickens and process thousands of lives a second. Mechanically separated chicken they call it. Lives that have never seen the sun, nor tasted a free run in the grass, or have had the chance to love or reproduce.

We are the orcs. The ones who tear down the forest to produce, expand, and consume at an unstoppable, and unsatable rate.

Listen to the wind. Open your windows to let in the cold air and snuggle with your companion for warmth. At the very least turn down the heating and conserve some power.

If you need to focus on “technology”, ponder what the contents of a seed are. What the magic in a seed is that will produce life after being given just sun and water. This is real technology.

We focus on “ones and zeros”, gasp in the awe of binary code and electronic gadgetry because it is something that we can understand and control. And our spirituality is broken into religions that process nature into concepts that we think we understand and control. Religion that separates humanity itself. This is why the wind demands my attention this early morning.

The truth is we are horribly lost and have ventured far off the path of humanity.

This is what the wind wants me to tell you tonight. It wants you to open your eyes and see, feel, grow, and love. It wants you to stop burning, consuming, fighting, and killing. It wants you to listen to it and understand the world around you. If you don’t, it will continue to crush your homes flood your cities, and will eventually blow us from existence so that nature can grow whole once more.

For me, the wind brings me where I need to go, and brings people in and out of my life.

Another great kindness has found its way into my world. A stranger has given me a great gift. It is a material thing, but represents something of great value to me, it represents freedom, kindness, and Love. And it comes from someone who doesn’t know who I am through my writing or film.

A week or so ago, after being violently towed to a mooring here at the Nyack boat club by the terrible man that shouted and cursed at me for being alive, I met a man that brought great kindness to me. He rowed out to me bringing my friend from the shore. My friend had no way of returning to Eleanor and needed a lift. He had to row very hard into the wind and current, as my friend (his passenger), is not a small man. I invited him in for a cup of tea and we talked for about 20 minutes.

The following day he invited my friend Bruce and I for dinner and we ate and drank wine in his beautiful old Victorian home. He has an energy about him that is a bit off from the norm, something I find to be an attribute.

During dinner I asked if I could use his address to ship some used waterproof boots I found on eBay. By the way they are great $9 boots, totally waterproof, and the perfect size to wear two pairs of wool socks in, a total score!

I returned to his house a week later, and after my Nor’easter experience to receive the boots. He invited me into his office.

When I first met him on the Hudson, I commented on the fact he was rowing a 10′ Trinka. This is the tender I’ve always dreamed of but could never conceptually or financially afford. As an alternative to a 10′ Trinka, it has been my intention to build a CLC passagemaker as it is something I can produce with my hands and not my wallet.

He sat me in his office and told me that he wanted to give me his Trinka. I instantly know why a man wants to give a boat away, it is because they have Love for it. Men who love their boats are careful who they give, or sell them too.

When a 42′ WestSail became a reality, my first reaction was that I wished I had the money to give Splendid to my sister-in-law’s family so they could raise their three children aboard. Sailboats are not about money, they are about love and freedom!

He told me he had two conditions that came with the gift. The first being that the boat had to be sailed and not just rowed. I giggled to myself “obviously he doesn’t know me very well”‘ and secondly, if I was to grow tired of it, I had to give it away and not sell it.

A finer deal has never been struck!

Later that day something dawned on me as I was casually walking through the mall looking for a pair of gloves that I never found (too expensive).

I can say with utmost certainty that I have everything I want in life, and so much more.

For some reason the universe has conspired during the last 5 weeks to fill my plate, and over run my glass, so I may voyage in other directions. At 49 years old, I can retire. Not from messing with boats, or trying to inspire my fellow man to unplug and live a minimal life of freedom on the sea. But to retire from the idea that I need, or want any more material objects.

I can now become The Minimalist Sailor and teach others to do the same. To live life free, and travel by sail and oar. To listen to the wind, and not concern themselves with the loud voice of the system.

Over the years I’ve written about an idea that I’ve had rolling around in the back of my head. Operation TRAKS (Totally Random Acts of KindnesS).

As I travel, I want to look for places to plant some Love. To help build a home for a young family, provide filters for clean drinking water, or just buy a kid a bicycle, whatever. Just to do good as I travel with no profit in mind. To raise micro-donations through my voice so that my audience can help others in an arena of zero administrative cost.

You know when you donate money to help starving children you’re really employing a lot of people in the business of charity, and only a very small fraction of your donation actually transforms itself into food in the hand of a needy child.

I can introduce you to the needy, say you PayPal me $20, I’ll buy $20 worth of food for someone you will meet through my website. This is what “operation TRAKS” is, and something I wish to inspire other voyaging sailors to do. I’d like to coordinate it all through Project BlueSphere.

When I was 5, perhaps 6 years old I saw a movie, Carry Grant was the star. In the film he was a philanthropist. I asked my mother what a philanthropist was and she told me that he was a very rich man that used his money to help others.

A light went off in my head, and because of it I can remember this moment like it was yesterday. “That’s what I want to be when I grow up” I shouted…, my mother laughed as we had little, living in a studio apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, in Manhattan.

She continued to laugh over the following years when I told her friends at parties that I wanted to be a philanthropist when I grew up and not a police, or fireman as they suggested.

My mother was wrong about something, you don’t need to be rich to do philanthropic work, you just need time and will.

Yesterday, my father-in-law called to say that we should use his credit card to buy the autopilot, the last pending expense I have before I take off. He does not have the money to pay for it, he would have to figure out how to come up with it before the end of the month but when we tried to refuse he said “Let me worry about that. Let me do this for you. Think about it, what is nicer, giving or receiving?”

Giving, truly is far better than receiving. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not giving my Trinka away, but I am giving my rowboat away, and will be looking for the new owner as I travel south. Someone who really needs it. Most likely a humble, older sailor who hasn’t figured out that inflatables are the most expensive piece of disposable gear on a boat, or a financially-challenged young sailor lacking the same enlightenment.

Bob, If “Pay it forward” was your intention in giving me your beloved Trinka, then I will amplify it and set giving into further motion. Your gift is far greater to me than fibraglass, line, sail, and wood, Thank you!

My time in New York is brightening. I have forgotten what it is to be a New Yorker. Yes, New Yorkers can be crass, cold, and loud. It’s the only city I’ve lived in where you can walk through a crowd and feel totally alone.

It is also where the intellectual community is strongest. The thinkers, the talented, and the ones who will spend a lifetime playing their violin in the subway, just because the acoustics are good. The light can also be very bright in this seemingly dark place. New York is, in my very humble opinion, the center of the world as far as humanity is concerned.

I hope I don’t have many further lessons to learn here as winter is coming and I hope the wind will release me and push me south into warmer weather.

It’s 5:19am now. I’m going to make a pot of tea and start my day, I have so much to do.

Peace

-alex

Here is a video that really had me laughing out loud this morning:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WfGMYdalClU

 

Published in Alex Dorsey