Twilight. New Year’s Eve, 2023. Halfway between Honduras and Costa Maya. SS Norwegian Breakaway. Enroute the Port of New Orleans. A kaleidoscope of thoughts and memories.
I’m home. A rolling deck beneath my feet; a light spray breaking over the bow; a moderate wind popping the signal flags at the mast; a thin stream of light smoke trailing off astern in the distance; the horizon growing less discreet by the minute. Unfortunately, the New Year brings both positive and negative memories, the yin and the yang of the mind. Another year in the books. So many missed opportunities; so many things I should have said. So many things I should have done. All the times I should have stood up; the times I should have shut up; the times I should have stayed at home.
For me, the scourge of the New Year holiday is that a new bout of loneliness begins. The counter is turned back to zero and it starts anew. It is the demon, breathing heavily behind my closed door that I must continually exorcise. It is the wolf, clawing on the windowsill, the snake slithering up through the floorboards. Even if you are younger, loneliness can lead to angst, dread, and sadness. Surprisingly enough, some unfortunates are lonely even when not alone. I am such a person. I can remember being in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, surrounded by probably half a million people and still feeling completely by myself.
I was born lonely. I have a history of loneliness. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m the sine quo non of loneliness, the ne plus ultra of solitude. Loneliness is my unseen guest at every meal, the trope of my life, and the mise en scene of my story. In perhaps his best movie, even better than “Citizen Kane” to me, Orson Wells is “The Third Man,” a dealer in diluted and deadly penicillin on the black market in post-war Vienna. Maybe it’s because Vienna is one of my favorite places to visit. In any event. Joseph Cotton, a down and out journalist, reproaches him for what he does.
They are meeting at the top of a Ferris wheel at the Prater Amusement Park, where I once chipped a tooth when blindsided on a bumper car ride. Wells answers him, suggesting that Cotton stop being so melodramatic. “Look down there,” he says. “Would you feel pity if any of those dots [people] stopped moving?” Sometimes, particularly when alone and lonely, I feel no more significant than one of Wells’ faceless dots.
Did you ever get a song in your head that was on continuous playback, an endless loop of images that seemed to sum up your life - a timely metaphor for the way your life turned out? Here’s such a song that has haunted me all this New Year’s Eve: “Darlin’” (1993) by Frankie Miller:
Darlin’ you’re so far behind me
Tomorrow’s gonna find me
Further down the line
Takin’ me some paper
Pencil in my hand
I’m gonna write:
Darlin’ you know I feel the cold nights
Thinking of the old nights
Spent along with you
Darlin’ the tear is in my eye now
Knowing I can try now
To make it home to you
Darlin’
Love you more than ever
Wish we were together
Darlin’ of mine
I can remember New Year holidays when I was 17, new in the Navy, 2,000 miles from home, confused, broke and lonely. 36 years later, when I retired, I was 2,000 miles from home, still confused, still broke, and still lonely. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I have this theory that time passes differently on ships After much thought, Albert Einstein concluded that time is not absolute. In other words, despite our common perception that a second is always a second everywhere in the universe, the rate at which time flows depends upon where you are and how fast you are traveling. Of course, he was referring to the speed of light, and a ship averages - say, 12 knots an hour. But, once you are out of the sight of land, and stop looking at clocks, all bets are off, and time is an illusion.
Fortunately, l’ve learned to at least mitigate my perpetual loneliness in two ways: by writing and through music. Let me explain. Whenever one of my ships got underway for a long cruise, six months in the Mediterranean, or eight months in the far Pacific, I would always keep a daily journal; in fact, I often use those journals today to write these columns. Keeping a journal helps one stay focused and in touch with themselves. Unfortunately, it’s also one of those good ideas that too often “goes south” after a few entries.
The humorist, Mark Twain, who was also an underrated travel writer, noted this tendency in his book, “Innocents Abroad” (1867), the account of a cruise he took to Europe and the Holy Land onboard the sidewheel steamer, Quaker City. He said that no sooner than they left the port of New York and were only a few miles at sea that “Some twenty or thirty gentlemen and ladies sat down in the salon under the swaying lamps and for two or three hours wrote diligently in their journals.”
“Alas, that journals so voluminously begun should come to so lame and impotent a conclusion as most of them did! . . . not ten of the party could show twenty pages of journal for the succeeding twenty thousand miles of voyaging.” Although yours can be a modest effort, there are some famous journals: “The Diary of Ann Frank” (1947), Daniel Defoe’s “A Diary of the Plague Year” (1722), Leonardo da Vinci’s “Notebooks” (1519), etc. Who knows, not only might they help you conquer your loneliness, but someone 100 years from now might find, read, and profit from your words. I’ll let you in on a little secret, too. For someone who is innately lonely, world-weary, and shelf-expired, these bi-weekly newspaper columns are a balm and a blessing to me.
And, for someone who has always been an outlier, music has also been a faithful friend and a source of comfort. When I was fifteen and working at a gas station after school in Lumberton, I blew my first paycheck on a “portable” red and white transistor radio that must have weighed twelve pounds without the batteries. Fifty years later, one of my last purchases in the Navy was to buy a Sony shortwave portable radio at the base PX while passing through Sasebo, Japan, on an ammunition ship. It weighed about eight ounces. My taste in music is eclectic, picked up in the places I’ve been: klezmer in Israel; flamenco in Spain; calypso in the Caribbean; marabi in South Africa, etc. The origin doesn’t matter; music speaks a universal language.
Regardless of our personal issues heading into the new year, there’s a big world out there that keeps on spinning. For example, in many Asian countries, 2024 will be observed as the Year of the Wood Dragon. The Chinese zodiac has 12 characters (animals) based on an ancient Confucian system. Your personal animal is not determined by the constellations but by the year of your birth. This year, “Dragons” (2024, 2012, 2000, 1988, 1976, 1976, etc.) can look forward to a year of creativity and lots of new ideas. However, it’s important to stay down-to-earth and avoid being too arrogant. Money-wise, things look good with prosperity on the way. In relationships, there might be some challenges. According to those who know, some of the dragon’s “energy” will also rub off on the pig and the monkey, so be prepared.
Also, in the new year, I always taught my high school history classes about BC and AD. Of course, being raised in the Bible Belt, the kids knew that “BC” meant “Before Christ,” referring to a reckoning of time starting with the birth of Jesus Christ in the year “0000.” Broadly speaking, up until that point, time (years) had been measured from the founding of the Roman Empire in 753 BC. The overwhelming majority of them would then incorrectly go for “AD” meaning “after death,” again referring to Jesus’ crucifixion in 33 AD, having no reason to be familiar with the Latin term, “anno Domini,” or “In the year of our Lord.”
And this is the point where I usually lost them, trying to explain that two Christian monks get the credit for the terms BC and AD. The first was a man named Dionysius Exiguus, also known as Dennis the Small. In AD 525 (although no one at that time referred to it that way), he drew up a table to calculate the ever-changing date of Easter. Rather than using the common method of numbering years based on the reign of Roman Emperor Diocletian — a touchstone moment for Christianity due to his persecutions — Dionysius put the focus on Christ instead. He also made the math error that resulted in Jesus logically being born in 3 BC, but that’s too convoluted to explain here.
He didn’t come up with “BC,” though. That came in the eighth century when the English monk, Bede, started referring to events that happened before Christ as, well, “before Christ.” The BC, AD system then took off when adopted by the great Christian ruler, Charlemagne. Unfortunately, the “woke” world we now live in has downgraded BC to BCE or “Before the Christian Era,” or worse, “Before the Common Era.” You don’t even want to know my opinion about substituting “XMAS” for Christmas.
I noticed that one of the hot items in the Cozumel gift shops this trip was “MAGA” T-shirts; however, they were not exactly of the “Make America Great Again” variety. In fact, they were much more “subversive” than that, with MAGA standing for “Mexicans Always Get Across.” This play on words struck me as funny, regardless of the out-of-control immigrant situation at our southern border. I thought about buying one, but I was afraid I’d get picked up by “La Migra” if I wore it in public.
Timely enough, I performed a Hispanic wedding the day before my family departed on this holiday cruise to the Caribbean. I’ve performed well north of 200 weddings during my career as a Navy chaplain and Baptist minister, and never accepted payment for any of them, but this was my first wedding where I was possibly the only one present who didn’t speak Spanish. There was an excellent interpreter present, however. I would recite a few lines of the classic Protestant wedding vows, from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, which I memorized at the Naval Academy (performing 31 midshipman weddings myself in June of 1975); the interpreter would translate, and the couple would repeat in Spanish.
I also noticed several other cultural differences which I though were neat. For example, instead of remaining in seclusion until the wedding ceremony began, the bride, dressed in her beautiful white gown, walked among the assembled guests, greeting each one personally. Instead of sedate piano music prior to the wedding, the guests were serenaded with “ranchero” music spun by a lively DJ, accompanied by flashing strobe lights. Incidentally, the music and the strobe lights continued throughout the wedding ceremony, albeit more subdued. Small children took the opportunity to dance until the actual ceremony began. If I didn’t know better, I might have though we were in Guadalajara, instead of Oak Grove, with the men guests dressed in cowboy boots and hats, and jeans with big belt buckles. The women were dressed in a fashion reminiscent of what I’ve seen in church services in Spain. Finally, and this was eye opening for me, instead of the bride and groom facing me, with their backs to the audience, during the wedding ceremony proper, they sat in two large chairs, resembling thrones, and I stood by the groom’s side. All in all, it was a great experience.
The New Year brought another challenge. I’ve been contacted by the Knights of Columbus organization in New York City who want me to participate in a documentary film they are making about a former Roman Catholic Cardinal and ex- Navy chaplain who later became the Archbishop of New York. They tracked me down after 40 years have passed and offered to send a film crew to Hattiesburg to get my input. Or, if I preferred, they would fly us (my wife and I) to NYC for the filming next week. They are interested in me because I served as the Cardinal’s administrative assistant and “fixer” for almost nine years at three different duty stations, including his time as an admiral and Chief of Navy Chaplains at the Pentagon. They seem to think those 9 years of experiences will produce at least a few valuable minutes of screen time. We shall see. Although I’ve sworn that I would never set foot in another airplane or helicopter after several close calls and crashes in the military, I’ve decided to tempt fate and fly one more time. So, please . . .
Light a candle for me.
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Benny Hornsby of Oak Grove is a retired U.S. Navy captain. Visit his website, bennyhornsby.com, or email him: villefranche60@yahoo.com.
