10.
22/03/2009
Pigorilla Power!
I’ve never thought of tying my own bow-tie, because the clip on ones are so common and easy....perhaps that alone is reason to do one’s own, but after my father said that a girl would never take a man seriously who didn’t tie his own bow-tie, I begged to differ. Having asked several passengers to help me with one that I bought that needed tying, none could help....in fact; there was one who said with a totally dead-pan face that it was a “physical impossibility”. I told my father that no-one bothered with that anymore and even mentioned that there was one guy that had tied his own, but all the girls had laughed at him. I was joking, of course, in that instance, but it did remind me of when my father told me that girls would never look at a guy that didn’t have shiny shoes......guess what the 14yr old baby Pigorilla was doing for three hours before a party at a neighbourhood friends house (Rolf Simms was his name)....you guessed it....polishing his shoes. Well everyone had a good old chuckle at my expense that evening and there wasn’t a girl to be seen anywhere near my shoes.
In any event, tonight I tied my first bow-tie, and boy did I feel good! I didn’t see any girls taking me seriously, or anyone that even noticed that I’d nearly strangled myself several times this evening, but I guess that is just the way the cookie crumbles. I’m only 41 years old now....the girls have got loads of time to take me seriously....until I’m too old to be taken seriously. Given my very methodically constructed, artistically self-manufactured, ridiculously bleak circumstances, hopefully there is still time.
Today was another day of badly attended workshops, but a welcome one hour break next to the pool in the sun with a very pleasant Kiwi Photog (the affectionate term for the photographers on board). No relation to the elusive Pigorilla we hear so much of these days on the high seas. After the sun, I rushed back to a Photography Basics class (nothing to do with the Photog). In fact, I was about to cancel the class, and one willing lady turned up. After that I busied myself with my schedule for the final leg of “The Worldie”, from SanFran to Southampton via Antigua, Panama Canal and Mexico with Acapulco thrown in for good measure. I also fielded an email reprimanding me for my attitude. I’m in the middle of the ocean and someone in London has a problem with my attitude...it must be some attitude to travel that far....and what’s more, they’re probably right.
I couldn’t wish for a better family. A father who gives shocking tips on how to pull women, but saves face by pulling quite good ones himself, a step-mother who is fantastic, but a little slow in executing plans which is why I’ve been to Majorca thrice as that is where she was moving the family home, but has yet to leave Durban herself. I have three wonderful sisters, Belinda who is always keen to help as long as her diet of autographs from nearly famous people and hot news on the Royal Family is up to date, with the odd dolphin thrown in. Then there is Irene who has insisted on being called Tish her whole life and in the blink of an eye-lid has reverted back to her original name as it is totally cool to be called Irene in Milan. Sandy is the most sensible and as such is the most likely to be able to provide the family with a roof over their heads when decades of financial mismanagement from the whole family (albeit from the top down) explodes into a catastrophic genetic failure that will make the Big Bang look like something that Einstein sneezed into his moustache.
Despite my gratitude for being part of my great family, I cannot help but feel......and this is a consistent feeling......that someone is going to come to me out of the blue one day.....initially it was just going to be someone that was just looking a little dishevelled, but I now imagine him to be a grown man (looking quite important and a big decision maker)blubbering , with tears running down his face, pleading....no begging for forgiveness for the terrible error in which he accepts full responsibility for having given me the wrong life and willing to do anything within his power (and on my good days, that can include just about anything, even keeping all of you good Pigorillians in the picture) to make the matter right as long as I promise to say nothing to his boss, who I am, so it turns out, very good friends with, in a close, relative, kind of a way.
Anyway, before you all feel that I’m gonna wave my wand and fix your lives up, I guess I owe it to you to let you know that I don’t even wake up and smell the coffee.....that’s the sad part of the story....I am awake already and that takes the possibility of it all being one long nightmare out of the question.....unless it’s one of those dreams where you think you are awake and you’re not.....you’re still asleep......whatever makes the big things happen in your life if it’s not yourself, ask them that it can be that option......if we can get that right through our combined collective thought, it’ll make the story of the several thousand Catholics watching the sun crash to the earth in Fatima in Portugal (during a mass) look like something out of Alice in Wonderland with the good I will do for the universe with the new life bestowed upon me.
Assuming we fail....it’s not a lack of faith....think of it as a prenuptial agreement when you get married....it’s just limiting your downside (depending on which side of it you fall, of course). Should we fail, the worst that can possibly happen is that you get (at most) ninety years of this mediocrity; And who knows....if our atoms do get redistributed (as most of the educated ones believe) and natural selection and the green movement continue to exert their will on earth and beyond....we could get the chance to come back as part of something that really matters.
In the meantime....don’t give up.....whatever you do....try and have and make as much fun with your lives as possible, cause if I am right and you get a chance to look back on your life....that is what will count!
P.s Having fun includes doing what is right. That includes, but is not limited to:-
· Helping poor people (never forgetting that I am one of them)
· Don’t have fun at the expense of your children
· Take nothing with you, but great memories when you leave
· Leave happy....in the knowledge that you are better off than those you leave behind
· Don’t regret not having worked on a ship....it’s shit
· Think about those that have gone before you (with jealousy)
· Know that what we know is not what we will know, just as what we now know is now different to what we knew. Know that and smile ;*)
· And so on and so forth
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