a guestpost by wonkie
Since we’re coming up on Halloween, I thought maybe we could share stories of the weird, the creepy, the odd in our experiences. My weird experience is of being stalked by a boat hook. A boat hook, for those of you not in the know, is a long hollow aluminum pole that ends with a plastic hook. The purpose of the boat hook is to push when your boat is about to hit something it shouldn’t or pull when your boat is not stopping where it should. Usually this means swinging it at the top of mooring buoys.
My husband bought a sailboat a couple of years ago. He read all about sailing, bought all the stuff, and spent the requisite amount of time standing around at the marina, chatting with other men who were standing around at the marina. Thus prepared, we set out on our first voyage.
Our goal was to leave our island, sail across Pickering Passage, and go around Stretch Island to a cove where we could practice mooring at a buoy. It was a brisk, rowdy day with gusty winds and choppy waves. I don’t think we put the sail up, but don’t really recall. We got around the corner of the other island, spotted the cove, and started up on our mooring practice.
The buoy was a fat round rubbery object topped with a think hard plastic loop. It looked like a bathtub toy for a giant. Paul got the boat aimed in the right direction and moving slowly. As he sidled up to the buoy, I leaned out and tried to snag the loop with the boat hock. No luck. The hook seemed to be sized to be just small enough to not catch on the loop.
Paul took the boat out, got us all re-oriented and we tried another pass. And another. And another. It was really frustrating. Pumped full of determination, we took another pass and I leaned out, waved the boat hook in a low arc and snagged it. Triumph!
Except, like the dog that catches the car wheel, I now was in a dilemma. The boat was moving too fast to be stopped by a mere boathook on a buoy. Desperately gripping the boat hook, I got dragged down to the stern. I braced my feet and hung on, but powerful forces more powerful than me were at work. When it looked like I might end up in the water, I released the boat hook.
It sailed in an impressive arc up in the air before plopping down in the water with a splat.
“We were going too fast,” said Paul. He took the boat out and around and back in another pass by the buoy, this time to rescue the boat hook.
It wasn’t laying horizontally on the water as one might expect. The pole part was under water with just the hook above the waves, bobbing forlornly. It was oddly animate—almost as if it had eyes—and seemed reproachful.
Armed with a rope in a loop, we made a couple passes while I leaned over the side and tried to snag it. Three tries and I never got within a foot of the hook. It just bobbed in the water, the bent part of the hook aimed at us. There was a definite air of reproach at our incompetence.
“Well, it isn’t going to drown,” I said.
Meanwhile the sky was darkening. We abandoned the boat hook and headed for home. The wind kicked up and the waves got steep and fierce. As we crossed the passage toward the marina, motoring as fast as we could, there were times when the boat rode so high that the motor wasn’t in the water. It didn’t really start raining until we got to our berth.
We got the boat all settled and ran for our car.
The next morning Paul told me that he was going to go down and check on the boat. The weather had changed dramatically; it was one of those Pacific Northwest summer days with a smiling blue sky, cool temps, and crisp bright air. A good day for sailing, but we weren’t heading out. Paul was just doing what boater guys do: he was going to stand around on the marina and talk to other guys about boats.
He was home an hour or so later and I swear I had a premonition. Or maybe I was tipped off by his bemused expression. “Guess what I saw down at the marina.”
Yes, the boat hook. It found us. It swam around Stretch Island, crossed Pickering Passage—about a mile—and entered the marina right at our boat. There it was, bobbing in the water reproachfully. Paul fished it out with the second boat hook. (He says boats always have two.)
We had that boat hook for another year or so until the day I used it for balance, fell off the boat onto the dock, and broke my arm.
Thanks so much for the guestpost wonkie! I waited a bit to get it closer to Halloween. Other writing eagerly sought.
The idea that inanimate things have ‘something’ is one that I would like to believe, but feel a bit strange about. There is something vaguely comforting to me about a Shinto view of the world, where everything is imbued with something, but it always feels like a short distance from that to thinking that vaccines are trying to kill us.
Thank you for posting! I hope we get some tales of the weird. That draft has some typos that I forgot to correct.
I’ve always treated objects as if they were animate–I mean some objects, not all of them. I know they aren’t but that doesn’t stop me from saying “Excuse me” when I stub my toe on the coffee table, or shouting, “Not one chance, asshole!” at the computer cord that tries to trip me. When I turned my old car in for the two hundred dollar trade in value, I actually cried. It was such a betrayal, felt like I was turning an old dog in to the shelter.
I’d like to know more about the Shinto concept. I have a strong feeling for certain landscapes which includes thinking of the landscape as holy but not in a Christian way. Holy more as in a place where spirits would reside if there were any.
I know they aren’t but that doesn’t stop me from saying “Excuse me” when I stub my toe on the coffee table, or shouting, “Not one chance, asshole!” at the computer cord that tries to trip me.
I believe Michael Cain has also been known to talk to (or taunt) computers….
I don’t know about other professions, but I suspect everybody in IT spends some work time cursing when, inevitably, things don’t go smoothly.
Whether they are talking to the software, or maybe the hardware. Or if they are appealing to a higher power for help. (Or maybe retribution on said recalcitrant software.). Hard to say. Possibly it varies from one individual to another.
wonkie, check this out
https://aeon.co/essays/shinto-shows-the-debt-to-animism-of-organised-religions-today
I believe Michael Cain has also been known to talk to (or taunt) computers….
More threaten than taunt. Most famously, in a hotel ballroom in midtown Manhattan at 2:00 in the morning. Did it work? All the demos worked for the new board of directors later the same day, in significant part because the computer I threatened did all of its jobs properly :^)
Thank you JP for the article about Shinto. I have no religion but the closest thing that really resonates with me is petroglyphs. Why? Clearly animistic but there’s no words. It seems to me that as soon as people start talking about spiritual matters, we take the wonder and awe out of it and substitute in stories that reflect humanness. I have the same attitude about Mass: much better in Latin so I can’t understand what is being said.
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I’ve had MANY experiences of threatening computers/printers/projectors with impending demise, after which they stop messing about and behave.
At least for a while. One was just last week.
Now, perhaps it’s just Loki doing his thing. But I think I’d know if that was happening. Maybe. So instead I chalk it up the “the inherent perversity of inanimate objects”.
For serious animism, one of my favorite memories is still Faith healing for computers:
Operations called Systems Programming because a (mainframe) disk drive was misbehaving. Walked in to the machine room and over to it. Laid my hands on top of the box.
Problem solved. Never did anything else to it. But Ops said that the problem had gone away.
Laying on of hands. Don’t see how it could work on inanimate objects, so …
At vrious points in my brilliant code monkey career I contemplated offering bribes to the machines, but I could never figure out what they would take as currency.
Threats usually resulted in some technological version of “Oh yeah, well watch *this*!”.
Animism is also at the heart of circumpolar shamanism. As a Dark Green Religion, biocentric type, I lean that direction, at least as a narrative for living ethically in the world. It’s the story I allow myself to live by whenever and wherever physics starts to slide towards metaphysics.
I think it’s healthy to treat everything as a fellow creature wherever possible. It maximizes empathy and guards against hubris.
This may be the oddest picture I’ve ever taken: it’s the Spourne Parclose, containing the tomb of John Ponder, in St Peter and St Paul’s Church, Lavenham.