As I clean up and relaunch Project Bluesphere (3.0), I’m doing a lot of reflecting. The original Project Bluesphere was about venturing into the world to “find what I was looking for” while inspiring others to find their own path. Version 2.0 was an attempt at blogging as a sailor who had found marriage and love. That failed miserably. Version 3.0 comes from an older sailor trying to share what he’s learned along the way.
Crossing the Pacific alone on a small boat, without internet, changed my life in so many ways. One of the biggest, and something I still hold dear, is my memory castle.
When I left Panama for the Marquesas Islands in Polynesia in 2006, I was setting out on a six-week trip at sea. Food, water, alcohol and provisions were important, of course, but I also stocked up on books to occupy my mind. I pillaged the book exchange at the Balboa Yacht Club before leaving. Sorry to the other readers. I took more than I returned that day.
It’s hard to find books that interest me, and most of what I found came from authors like Cussler, Clancy, Flynn, and Child. Entertaining, but they didn’t leave me with much afterward. Among them, though, was Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris. Hot off the press in 2006. Score! I am grateful star link was not available back the,
In Hannibal Rising, a young Hannibal Lecter begins building a memory palace in his mind, which later becomes a psychological refuge from trauma and imprisonment. During my eight years at university, I spent some time as a psychology major. I’ve always been fascinated by psychology, especially child psychology and statistical.
My first night out of Panama was hell. Punta Mala. The worst sea conditions of the entire trip.
Punta Mala, or “Bad Point,” really is the pits. The seabed rises sharply from about ten thousand feet to two hundred feet. There’s about an eighteen foot tide, and when the wind opposes the strong current, things get ugly.
The next day, once I was out to sea, I rested and read. I was saving Hannibal Rising for a special occasion and knocked out a few of the other books first. But I couldn’t wait. I read it earlier than I’d planned, and I’m glad I did.
When I finished it, I was disturbed. Why in the hell had I left on this beautiful journey and brought all these policemen, detectives, and serial killers onto my boat?
The books swiftly went overboard somewhere between Malpelo Island and the Galápagos. For entertainment, I was left only with my guitar and my thoughts.
However building a memory palace stuck with me. A palace didn’t feel right. I’ve never connected with servants or shiny things, so I started building a memory castle instead. It began as a small cabin in the mountains, but the architecture wasn’t sufficient for what I needed, so a castle it must be.
I needed somewhere to store memories that were hard to recall, so I wouldn’t lose them. I pictured a remote Scottish setting surrounded by peat bogs, with a moat and no other living souls except my horse and the pack of dogs I’d rescued over the years.
The castle’s layout mattered. I wanted the rooms assigned to memories to be easy to find, so I decided to build it in the spirit of the Guggenheim Museum.
Inside was one big living space beneath a two-hundred-foot-high glass ceiling. A gently sloping walkway circled the space, climbing all the way to the top. Along the right side were rooms assigned to different people, places, and times in my life. At the bottom sat my old skateboard. I’d take it with me so I could ride back down after visiting the rooms and placing memories where they belonged.
The first room I built was the easiest to reach. I took my old rusty hammer and a nail and hung a sign on the door: “Mom.”
I lost her when I was just twenty. I wanted to dig deep and secure as many memories of her as I could.
As I wandered the sea, changing sails, fishing, and preparing food, I found myself reminiscing and trying to recover forgotten memories. Most of my time was spent in my imagination. Eventually I could do this with my eyes open. I’d focus on something physical, like a train set I’d been given as a kid for christmas, and that would lead to other memories. Once I remembered something, I’d label it and file it in the appropriate room.
Twenty years later, I still work on my memory castle today. I can never get bored with it, and I find it a positive form of meditation.
When I visit, the ritual is always the same. I approach in my carriage, driven by a ghost whose name I don’t know. I only know he’s loyal and a friend. My horse, Rocinante, is a close friend as well. Once the drawbridge is lowered and we enter the property, I unharness Rocinante, give him an apple, and let him roam the grounds. Then I spend some time with my dogs and give them treats I’ve purchased in a town I’ve never visited.
Only one dog is allowed inside the castle with me, Gina, a female German shepherd my father gave me the day I was born. Se is also my spirit animal.
Then I get to the business of remembering. I pour myself three fingers of scotch, sit in my leather chair, and focus on a part of my life. My grandmother’s house perhaps. Something will come back that I haven’t thought about in decades. I’ll gather a few memories, grab my skateboard, and start walking up to the appropriate room.
Each room has a wooden sign on the door that I’ve taken the time to carve. Inside are floor-to-ceiling bookcases and a desk in the middle. Each room has a smell. While studying psychology, I learned how closely our sense of smell is connected to memory. Whenever I smell a two-stroke engine, a lawnmower or an outboard, it whisks me back to Georgia, where I got my first motorcycle. I was fourteen. It was an Ossa 250 Phantom, god, I loved that bike.
After assigning and taking in the smell, I take the appropriate journal from the shelf, the one marked “Train Set,” for example, and log the memory. When I return to read it, I can recall what I placed there, which usually leads to more.
Anyway, I pour myself another drink and spend some time at the desk, taking in the room and reading the titles of my journals. When I’m done, I close the door behind me. Gina trots beside me as I skateboard back down to the living area. Somewhere along the way, I drift out of my imagination and back to reality.
Writing this, I have to take a little sidetrack. I’m realizing how much we’ve lost in the technology dumpster fire. So few people take the time to read books. Our imaginations are being silenced by the internet, antisocial media, video games, and an over abundance of pornography. AI is stealing even more from the human condition. We need to limit it and feed our minds with real art, music, literature, and most importantly our imagination.
I also realize that probably won’t happen. I feel privileged to have lived in a time when the sea was free, with opportunities so many people don’t have today.
I guess what I’m getting at is this. Take the time to feed your mind with positive things. Real art created by real people. Art is something one human being experiences as either, joy, pain, love, materializes it, and shares it with other human beings. I find nothing more beautiful and, in my opinion, art is the spine of the human condition.
If you can, spend a little time building your own memory castle. Whenever you need some peace, visit it. Build it any way you see fit. It’ll be a home you carry throughout your life, somewhere you can visit as often as you like.
Peace, Love, and Coconuts, my friends.
Alex