the cut of your jib

Navigate away if you care to. I make no attempt to disguise that my aim here is to steal your attention. For short infrequent spells only, it should be said. You may have your attention back when I'm done. I wouldn't want it for good. But in the meantime we have need of it. For this is not a private chat. This is no inner voice. These matters are public, as public as they can be. And although this voyage will demand a great deal of patience and dedication, I assure you that if these qualities are strong in you, they will pay handsome returns. I am asking you now to abide with me, to strip free your main sail and cut loose with us as we plow through Sao Paulo's manifold concrete seas. To hell with the sails. Let the current carry us wherever it may. Ahead we will surely enter uncertain waters. We may be tossed mercilessly from great wave to great wave. Perhaps we might even submerge for a time, and be overwhelmed, only to bob up again, like flotsam, amidst a group of jousting narwhals. That's just the sort of stuff we can look forward to.

Look lively now crew. The tide turns, and the wind tugs anxiously at our rigging. Up anchor. Our great captain must call for us to push off. These dry docks have it that we've long outstayed our welcome. This particular port of call, wants us long gone. So you lot, get up, get about and push us well off! Empty those tankards you lushes! Look sharp. You, over there, are a drunkard. But we need you. Listen here, none of us aboard now is perfect, but together we man this ship. I have seen these waters through three winters now, and yet still I feel out of depth. For this very reason I call on your consul.

Perhaps first, I ought to introduce myself. But then why the rush? We have a long voyage ahead. We should hold back and be spare on details for now. Later the thirst will nag and we'll have something in store with which to quench it. For now I'll say this much. Presently I'm a hand, a firm hand, some would say, but first and foremost I'm a deck hand, aboard this, the good ship Visorbearer. And oh my, isn't she a beauty? Still being payed off don't you know? She came to us through a murderously complicated hand of cards, but I won't trouble you with all that. That's not your station.

Take a look up my friend. Damn it's bright, isn't it? But as your weary eyes adjust, you may just be able to pick out a figure way up there in the crow's nest. See it? That's me. That's my station. It's from up there that you hear me now. And it is I, more's the point, who catches the priviledged first view.

I am the eyes cast far and wide over these concrete seas and I promise to tell you exactly what these eyes see. That is, as and when and at my discretion. At the very least, something. When the sea mist comes down on us and sits as dense as all hell, and that will happen I tell you now, I will take it upon myself to look into my mind's eye. And then I'll tell tale of voyages, epics and intrigues from times well gone by.

And you? What's your place in all this? Why you, my friend, are our captain. No one saw fit to tell you? Relax. It's the same as any new job; new skills, new colleagues, new office politics, new office stationery, but hold true. All will come good. I don't mean to worry you, to place too much on those lean shoulders of yours, but you are fundamental to this trip. When I sight something and have good reason to call down from the nest, all of us here aboard await expectantly for your return. We need you here among us to look for meaning. We're calling for meaning as we cut an arbitrary course through concrete. And wherever words fail you, look for signs. And we'll hope that the current shifts us that way to earn a closer look. And I know you've never sailed before, and you have as much a notion of the nautical, as I have of a game of football. But that's of no real concern to this crew. Remember, this wonder has no sails, and we are all of us supremely content being here at the mercy of these seas.

So give the call to PUSH, captain. We all must push together. For the love of it all. Ah, that's it now. We're off. We're truly clean from shore. Our old and wounded hull licked clean once more. Visorbearer. You're in your element again.