Types of People As My Favorite Sailing Superstitions
Whistling is bad luck/brings a storm: rope burns, cupboard doors rattling, you checked out a bunch of books about ghost stories from your elementary school library and never turned them back in (you crave meaning, you crave the weight of things that matter), old dogs, grey skies and choppy waves, double checking your window latches, blisters that become callouses and scars that become stories, spilled candle wax
Touching someone’s collar will keep them safe at sea: remembering a childhood lullaby, you go back to the places of your growing up sometimes (you want desperately to be able to look at the world without seeing the cracks, you are trying so hard to relearn faith) good luck charms, picking up milk bottles at the door, comparing hand sizes and mending broken things, dried flowers from a loved one’s garden, clean laundry
Killing an albatross brings misfortune: penance to the watchful sea, nickels and a whetstone, the horrible lurching feeling of waves hitting the broad side of the hull, vertigo (you are reeling, you are dizzied by the substance of the the world), promises, bleached out scallop shells on the high tide line, biscuits and lard and the reflection of your sole in a puddle, sand fleas, rotting seaweed, why must everything feel so solid but so empty
A ship’s cat sneezing means rain is on the way: the scent of a fish market, fiddle music and distant laughter, bright smiles, conversations with a stranger, you live and breath stories (you hope the world loves you back, you hope you can be a story someday too), learning to write with your off hand, rain on an aluminum roof, holes in your socks and mud on your shoes, picking up every penny you find on the ground, you are not ashamed to bleed
Cormorants are the spirits of those lost at sea: oil slicked feathers, clouded skies, bone dice in your pocket to see into tomorrow (you hunger to understand, to know more than this corner of space and time), carcasses washed up to shore, tide charts, bits and pieces of a conversation overheard, the lines mooring a ship to port, dead languages, lax sails, the sound of splashing water on a quiet night, flotsam
izzy806
prguitarman
stormborns
romaincrisis
annaxmalina
turnnoffyourmind
blakekathryn
andulkaphoto
ellievsbear
