broken memories...

I dropped and broke my Sala Victoria mug yesterday.

If you just gasped in shock and horror, then you are one of the few people who knows just a little of how much that ceramic object meant to me.

It was just a mug. But one doesn't cry over just a mug. It meant so much more than that to me.

To begin with, I was its creator. I searched for hours on a slow internet connection through worldwide mug vendors to find just the right size (to comfortably fit a double-tall latte), just the right shape (graceful but unique), and just the right color (something that would go with a 50-year old classic ocean liner). I labored to come up with just the right words ("coffee on a mission" )... just the right typeface (upper or lowercase?)... and just the right placement of that logo (no to mention the hours spent on the logo itself). And before that, I spent weeks convincing the finance officer we would actually be able to sell them and make money... And that was all just for the mug...

Before the mug, there was the Sala Victoria Café. There's really only one other person (Genevieve, where are you?) who has any idea what went into birthing that little coffee shop on our ship. It was so much more than a café. At first, the Sala Victoria was just a dream in our heads and a donated espresso machine in the abandoned Mediterranean Lounge bar... Then it was a saga of politics and plumbers and perseverance... And finally, it was a name and a West African carved sign and a reality. The Sala Victoria became a meeting place for people who desperately needed to meet each other... a breathing space of conversation and laughter for people who desperately needed to relax... a venue for events big and small that became the stuff of Anastasis legend (who can forget Abba Karaoke, or the Pirate Auction, or the 50th Birthday party at sea?). The Sala Victoria became a very special place, for some very special people, within walls that had seen so much...

Long before the Sala Victoria, there was her namesake. The M/V Victoria was a Italian-built luxury cruise liner launched in 1953 – the past life of the beautiful vessel we renamed the Anastasis and called a hospital and home. The Victoria was an aristocratic debutant, reborn to be a gracious merciful angel, pointing her bow toward the world's forgotten places, brightening dull African ports with her beauty and softening harsh worlds with her hope... She was so much more than just a ship.

That mug was the only tangible thing I have from the ship, really. One of the only things I have to remember her by. And in six months, there will be no ship. She will sail off into some sunset to be sacrificed into scrap metal, and for months I have been trying to find words to express how I feel about that...

It was more than just a mug, you see. And glued together in eleven pieces, it will still be special to me.

Maybe even moreso.

:: "If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

life without keys...

I received the loveliest engraved silver keyring for Christmas. It's now attached to my purse, after I realized I didn't have any keys to put on it.

Come to think of it, I haven't owned a set of keys for quite some time. The big house I live in has an electronic locking system that doesn't require keys. Since I work in the same building, there's no keys needed there either. Before, I lived with a gangway instead of a front door, and could never manage to find the keys to cabin 41 anyway (not to mention I had nothing worth locking up). My car keys I gave up four years ago when I left behind my self-sufficient life, and although I now share a "community" vehicle, I rarely use it and don't hold those keys. I barely remember having post office box keys in a past life. And even luggage keys I don't bother with any longer, since it's pointless to lock your bags when every security point between here and the new world can open them anyway.

The plus side to my keyless life is that I have no keys to lose. (Not that I ever lost them before...) They never fall to the bottom of my purse, I rarely worry about locking myself out, and I spend less time fumbling with doors in the dark.

Keys symbolize many things – independence, ownership, security, privacy... In a way I suppose my current life holds less of all of those things. But I'm also well aware that keys represent the trappings of responsibility – commutes, mortgages, car payments – normal life for most.

In my next life I'm sure I'll have keys. And I'm looking forward to them. But meanwhile, there's something rather refreshing about a life without keys.

Maybe fewer keys is the key to simple living. Maybe we'd be happier if we all walked more instead of driving, left our doors unlocked more, and our luggage too. Maybe we should use a safe only for protection from fire, not from theft. But the reality is that very few people live in a world simple enough to have the luxury of not worrying about all of those things.

The empty keychain on my purse reminds me how blessed I am...

:: "I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex." – Oscar Wilde

above the clouds...

I think I rang in this new year reading Blue Like Jazz somewhere over Greenland... but I couldn't be exactly sure when the year turned. I do know that I'll remember watching the first sunrise of 2006 from above the clouds, thinking -- maybe resolving -- it would be a metaphor for my life this year.

When days are dark and dismal below, I want to remember that view from above the clouds -- all golden pink and amazing morning. I hope I can remember, when the sun is not in sight, that light is just on the verge of breaking through. And when I am slogging through mud and wishing for dry land, I hope my spirit can rise above to where everything looks different... To where the truth is.

Feet on the ground, head above the clouds... Bonne année.

:: "There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz." – Donald Miller