In the Doldrums of Everyday Living

Jessica's boat after the
"Silver Yang" ran into it

That's enough to keep you in
  the doldrums for quite a while

I was reading Jess Watson's book 'True Spirit' yesterday, and she confused me when she wrote 
"For me to be sailing alone through the doldrums was pretty cool."
But then she went on to explain that the doldrums is a real place on the earth -

The Doldrums

The Doldrums

Then Jess goes on to say the Pacific doldrums were famously described in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 

Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner in the following stanzas:
 All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody Sun, at noon,
'Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the Moon.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, no breath no motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Which was funny, because not long ago my blogging friend Mike Perry had written a post on his blog titled -

Statue of the Ancient Mariner

Synchronicity Starts With Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 Which taught me a few things about Coleridge, too.

The next time someone says that they are in the doldrums I 'll have a picture in my head of a sailing ship stuck in the doldrums making no progress forward on the journey.

When I went to buy a newspaper at the newsagents today there was this blue yacht, so I bought it for my book-self to remind me that life is like sailing a yacht, not that I have ever sailed a yacht mind you.
My idea of being on the water is to catch a ferry across
the Brisbane River;-)

It will be a reminder for me on those days that I feel that I'm in the doldrums, that the winds will pick up again, and for me to be patient.  

I guess we all have to make the
best of the cards we are dealt;-)

Having also just read 'The Storytelling Animal'

I thought it was a bit of a sync that Jess next wrote -
"I love hearing stories about other people's adventures and the way they coped with places like the doldrums." 
Surely she could see the irony of writing this to us readers reading along in her wake;-)

Also having read the book and seen the movie of the
'Life of Pi' before reading Jessica's book, I couldn't help but compare her journey with Pi's.

Although the stories are nothing the same, the journey across the ocean is similar, and in a similar time frame as days on water, as well.

There are another two movies I can't help but think of while reading Jess's story either;-) 
Thankfully, I already know how her story ends.

"Parker, has anyone told you that you are (wind)vain?"

Jess kept calling her wind-vain "Parker" and asked the readers of her book where she came up with the name.
All I could think of was Richard Parker, the tiger out of 'Life of Pi'.
But it turned out it was named after the pink limo driver, Parker out of the TV show 'Thunderbirds'.

Another sync was that Ailsa Piper, another author who wrote a book about a journey through Spain  
(highly recommended by me, by the way) 
and whose book I bought at the BBWF on the same day as Jess's

 wrote on her blog this post about painting her toe-nails red -
Indulgences

I asked Ailsa jokingly in the comments section -
Isn’t there an old saying that goes -
“Red toe-nails at night,
sailor’s delight”?

When I pick up Jessica's book and start reading, she now is

painting her toe-nails pink and talking about sunsets and the same rhyme that I'm joking about to Ailsa -
‘Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.
Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.
Then Jess talks about doing an internet search in an effort to find out where the phrase originated from.

 I couldn't help but think what a small world it was, but I doubt after a journey like Jess's she would be thinking the same thing;-)