There are over 500 emails in my “Stephens” mailbox. Godfrey is a tumultuous stream of energy and output. Here’s a fragment from an email today, about the time a seal jumped on board his sailboat Mungo 1. (I don’t like to edit Godfrey’s stream of words.)

This Cutie came aboard in 1982

Dana point where I anchored s/v MUNGO 1 for the night

Please note sail is up and pulling

She left just off the Scripps institute

after a few failed attempts at boarding

a Long torpedo toward the boat

and Ou out of the Sea bang this Creature landed on the Steel Deck

and eventually flopped up to bask on the starbd fore deck

sailing along at a few knots toward San Diego

I could feel the heart beat of this animal throughout t he hull

an empty ness was felt when She slipped over the side and vanished…

We just got this globe last week and I find myself looking at it all the time. I should have had one of these decades ago. With all that’s going on in the world, in unfamiliar places, it’s great to see just where various countries are.

This one is called the Explorer Globe. It’s about $45. The stand is plastic and a bit lightweight. The map itself is bright, clearly delineated, and has slightly raised areas indicating mountain ranges. The manufacturer,Replogle Globes, has over 70 different globes.

https://shltr.net/worldglobe

I was born in San Francisco. One day after a high school swim meet at Fleishacker Pool (out at Ocean Beach)  a guy named Jim Fisher* got me to swim out into the surf with him. I was stunned. The blue (cold) water, the waves, it was sunny afternoon, it was paradise. That clinched my attachment to this powerful body of water. I’m so in love with the Pacific Ocean.

I’ve travelled the coast from Vancouver Island down to the tip of Baja California, and found a similar spirit, brothers and sisters of the beach (you know who you are) everywhere along this coastal waterway. We share a lot. There’s a theory that the coast was settled by Indians in canoes. Could be. After all, the First Nations people speared whales from canoes made out of hollowed-out cedar trees.

*A powerful swimmer, Jim went to Hawaii in the ’50s and rode some of the biggest waves ever at Makaha.

I slept most of the weekend. Getting back from the Green Festival marked a turning point por moi. I was exhausted. The end of 2-year’s work on the tiny homes book. The last 4-5 months pedal-to-metal to get it done. I’ve been neglecting the physical for the mental (if you call it that). I haven’t been doing my homesteading chores and worse, have neglected what Plato termed the “gymnastic.” I haven’t balanced out Mac work with physical exertion.

The three trips I made this month all had to do with the book. Selling foreign rights in Frankfurt, overseeing printing in Hong Kong, and early display at the San Francisco Green Festival. Whew! I have the image of bulldogging a steer, staying with it until it’s grounded. A bit hard to realize it’s done. Still a big promo campaign to wage, but the stress is gone, thank the lord. Jim Morrison said something like, when you finish making a record, you’re released to work on the next one. True that.

I’ve got a lot of the local world to explore now — beaches, woods, trails, roads, lakes. I went down to the beach last week and was stunned by the beauty. It was so deep and meaningful. We are told how fucked up the world is every day, yet my heart was bursting with joy. I felt so privileged, and all it took was a mile or so walk. ( I realize that I repeat the same thing more or less frequently, but goshdarnit, the wild world just reaches out and grabs me again and again.)

Plato’s “music:” Boz Scaggs on radio doing Lend me A Dime hits just the right note this sunny/cloudy cool coastal day. A new week, a new year.