Small Worlds

Sometimes the world shrinks on you.

I’m sitting at a bar in Nicaragua, minding my own business then later sharing stories with a TV guy who is visiting town to do a story on last year’s murder. I’ve been places he hasn’t, he’s been everywhere else. And as the stories continue, he decides to tell me the time he spent a few days on two “pirate” ships in San Diego.

“They aren’t pirate ships”, I tell him with all authority. “They’re tall ships.”

“No”, he insists, these are really pirate ships.

“Was one of them a wooden brig with square sails that was in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie? And the other one named the Hawaiian Chieftain?”

He looked at me in wonder then, because there is no reason why a girl in Nicaragua should possess this type of information that was over three years old. “We were filming Blackbeard” he tells me, and with that I am able to name off three or four people that he had met, and share stories about all of their quirks and habits as is common to know of anyone you have sailed with, and he could do the same.

That boat, the Lady Washington, was my home for over two years (not all at once, but on and off). I lived there longer than any one house since I left San Diego at 19. I felt homesick for it. I felt homesick for someone I could tell “remember when” stories with, or even just someone that had been somewhere I had.

Now I’m thinking it’s time to go. I’m not sure where, maybe Asia. I’m watching a praying mantis crawl up my wall. Regaetone is playing on the quitadore’s radio set, coming in and out of static. It’s going to rain again. The bay is a milky brown from all of the mud that has washed down this week, the trees are thriving green and I’m going to miss all of this horribly because Nicaragua is really a beautiful place, but I know now that my time is very limited now.

I have a phone interview Sunday night. Wish me luck.