The Journey Quotidian

Some days ago a friend sent me a note of support about my recently released podcast, First Mate’s Log. Within this kindness was a word that struck a chord: quotidian.

Sometime last year I began creating the podcast with an intention, but one I did not name for myself. And I realized upon reading my friend’s note, that this was what I was aiming for, encapsulated in a word. Quotidian.

If there is an English word the exactly matches the meaning of quotidian, I don’t know it. The closest thing I can think of is mundane, but that isn’t right at all. And as we all understand words in our own way, maybe it’s just me, but quotidian speaks of something almost like a sacred mundane, the procession of moments in time–a breath, a step, a heartbeat, a smile for something we love, a mouthful of good food gratefully swallowed. Each of these moments succeed each other, one after another, making no grand statement or meaningful gesture, except that they are everything . Because, as author Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives.”

And so the First Mate’s Log pays homage to some 1000 days I paid out like shimmering priceless coins from 2020-2023.

In serial story form it is a slow expression of what happens in a day, each day following the next, one foot in front of the other.

Over the past week, in naming this work’s intention, I came also to a purpose underlying the intent. I don’t have a word for this, but perhaps my unnamed friend will have one, or, maybe one of you who is reading this. But it comes to this: I experience so much of these times we live in as a body weighted by helplessness. I spent much of my life before the sailing journey believing fiercely in my own ability and purpose to be an agent for good in the world. But somewhere along the way–within 15 years of fighting the destruction and division of landscapes and communities, followed by three years as a tiny creature on the ocean–I learned something important of my own inadequacies and frailties. So my aspirations in life have become much, much more humble. I still don’t know quite what they are, but I believe they are to put one foot in front of the other, to live each moment in every day, breath by breath, as peacefully but as courageously as  I can. It isn’t easy. When I see the last wild places, lifelines for jaguars, mountain lions, orchids and others, trampled under the boot of militarism, that same cruel boot on the neck of the city I’ve called home for 30 years—I hear a voice in my head that screams for some bright sword or swift cutting word that will bring all the destructive forces down. I feel in my bones that I should be leading some charge against some thing or some one. I feel restless and insufficient, harried and haunted by my own smallness.

And yet, there is this other voice in my head that says, ‘shhhhh, no, now is not time for angry words, for casting blame, for running harried and aimless through the streets. Now is the time to breathe, once, twice, a third time and to walk beneath trees and hold out a hand, and speak up, yes, speak up and stand boldly. But also to consider seeds…seeds…how they start in this small, inconspicuous package, inanimate to the eye. But if they are put in the right ground, watered daily, fed the right nutrients, they will not only grow into something fruitful, but they will change the very nature of the soil. And what grows there in that rich, dark earth will outlive you and everyone you know.

This is the power of the quiet, daily work of being in a world that seems so out of our control. This is the work of the journey quotidian. 

I will explore this and many other things and places in the First Mate’s Log. The first four episodes have been released, another one is coming tomorrow.

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