the ship's log

all aboard the Albatross!

my dearest fledglings ––

I hope this missive finds you well. Depending on your preferred method of receiving mail, you could have received this in a letter, a message in a bottle, or a whisper in a conch shell. No matter how you find this, I hope you enjoy what comes next.

In my time as a writer, I have started and dropped a variety of projects, from novels to poetry and even an old blog. That is the thing about being a wordsmith; words tend to make up most, if not all, of your internal dialogue and you find yourself narrating your day more often than not.

This can be both a blessing and a curse. For someone like me, I find words are often a double-edged sword that have the power to hurt no matter which way the weapon is swung. But what if a weapon wasn’t a weapon, but a tool? By which I mean, what if this sword cut through the fabric of reality to reveal an infinite amount of worlds?

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trade ship Halsewell’s logbook, 1781 (source: The British Library)

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the log book

The purpose of this log book is just that: to act as a record of thoughts, writing updates, and little notes I write to myself and my friends. A digital archive of sorts. It’s my first attempt at a newsletter, and I hope to use it to connect to more people, share my thoughts on the creative process, and muse about life in general.

Like the log books of old, on sailing vessels and in lighthouse towers, some entries might be short and others long. Consider this a snapshot. A glimpse into the goings on. I am notorious for hardly sharing details about my life, my process, or even the planning that goes behind my writing. There’s myriad reasons for this, which I won’t go into, but suffice it to say I learned how to hold my tongue a long time ago.

This makes the log book an experiment. How much can I share comfortably and with strangers online? I would love to talk at length about my works and what I am up to, but ingrained habits make it hard to always do this in DMs, Discord servers, or wherever I feel like spewing my little thought nebulas into the world (mixed metaphors; what can I say? Space and the ocean are one and the same). So, like any good experiment, this is the trial phase. We’ll have to see where it takes all of us.

the theme

I’ve been musing on the way water features both in my life and my stories. At the time of writing this first missive, it has been raining on and off for weeks with few breaks. Storm after storm has given Southern California more rain than I have seen in years. Not only is this unusual, but it is almost unheard of, and certainly something many in the Golden State are unprepared for.

There is perhaps no other place I have visited or lived where the effects of climate change has been so severe. This is what makes rain like this so unusual, especially so late in the winter season. Spring has almost never meant rain for me. Summers used to bring some thunderstorms, heavy with hot raindrops, but it’s been years since I’ve seen one.

Anyway, rain like this always makes me think of the biblical version of Noah, which I grew up learning as a Roman Catholic. Water meant a cleansing of the earth and new growth. I mean that’s why we say “spring showers bring May flowers,” isn’t it? Which is only partially true, as in my home state of California, early winter rains most certainly mean a poppy super bloom. Later rains have no effect on the plant life or our drought. But I digress.

My point is, water plays an important part in our lives. As a cleanser, a healer, a big scary eldritch being ready to swallow you whole. Whether rain, a river, or the ocean, it brings life almost as much as it takes it away. And in a state particularly fixated on water, it only made sense to make this newsletter a love letter of sorts to she who drowns.

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two wandering albatrosses (source: frank hurley via museums victoria)

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so why the albatross?

This brings me to the albatross. You thought I’d forgotten, hadn’t you? Just made it the fun little byline. Well, I promise there is a purpose.

Here is a bird who makes its living exclusively on the open ocean. According to scientific sources, they only come ashore to breed. Some other fun facts about the albatross include: they largely eat cephalopods, fish, and crusteceans, can only be found in the Southern Ocean or the North Pacific, and are one of the largest seabirds. They have killer eyeliner, yet somehow their babies look like Muppets, and how those become anything resembling a fully grown albatross, I have no clue.

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absolute fucking muppets, i swear (source: Steve Bloom Images)

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What I do know is that if albatross (albatrosses? albatri?) could tell stories, I’m sure they’d have many. Traveling as far as they do over open ocean is bound to yield some interesting tales about marine life and the humans who cruise above it.

I am also aware, as the owner of a BFA in Creative Writing, of a little poem called The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This poem haunted me with its albatross imagery for a good portion of my freshman and sophomore years. I simply could not avoid, at least once a week, seeing or hearing something related to seabirds and the albatross. It was like a curse.

Thankfully, actual albatrosses are much cooler and far less irritating to deal with than English literature poems of the late 1700s. They also don’t hand out grades. They don’t even know what grades are.

Oh to be an albatross.

final thoughts

I meant to keep this short and sweet, but as usual, the words ran away with my keyboard. Or something like that. I hope to keep up with this and send out a new log at least once a month or so, that way I can keep sharing some progress and hopefully motivate myself to continue working on my various writing endeavors. With any luck, this is just the beginning of the ship’s log.

To new adventures!

–– Sasha