It started with a picture…actually, a screen capture from a video…
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I was motor-sailing my sailboat, the S/V Cuddy from St. Georges to Dockyard, Bermuda in June of 2011 and wondering if the rudder was capable of getting me there. I wasn’t worried…the coast of the Island was within eyesight.
It was a Time of Limbo, as I had arrived in Bermuda a couple of weeks before alone on the Cuddy after an eight-day voyage which included a battle with a storm hundreds of miles out to sea. The intention of sailing on to the Azores and eventually Lisbon, Portugal seemed at the time to be impossible given the physical state of my boat. When the video was shot by me using a suction mounted GoPro camera, I was wondering what the Future would bring. I knew only that my vessel needed to be inspected and fixed if possible and the weather window of continuing on to Portugal would end within weeks. The physical journey to Portugal was on indefinite hold…perhaps permanent, if the Cuddy was deemed incapable of continuing, yet I knew the Spiritual Journey of a Life would always continue as long as I breathed the air of this Earth…this was my state of Mind as the picture was taken.
Fast forward to the present day after having flown back to Bermuda to retrieve the Cuddy last November when Hurricane Season was over, sailing her back to North Carolina alone, writing a book while living on the Cuddy and planning the next phase. I feel like I have been raised from Death. I have come Home. Not to a physical home, as I do not feel like North Carolina is that to Me…but to a Peaceful understanding of where Home is…within Self…within my own Heart. Thus, the physical Place I have been searching for, does not matter. I can go anywhere…and I will. This is where my mind is Now…in the Present.
Katherine Gerardi is a talented graphic artist in Maine who is working on the illustrations for “Path of Three Hundred“. From time to time, I send her sketches and photos for her inspiration in creating the artwork for the book. The screen capture above was sent to her without the story I have been writing about here…I just sent it to her. In the months and weeks prior to sending Katherine the screen capture, I had also sent her the “Bermuda Longtail” drawing I sketched back in July, 2011 after I flew back to North Carolina leaving the Cuddy in Dockyard, Bermuda for repairs where it remained until November, 2011. The Longtail is important to me because at least one came to visit me during the crossing to Bermuda each day beginning on the second day of the voyage. I wrote a poem about the bird¹ and continue to write about them in “Path of Three Hundred”². For me, the Bermuda Longtail was a Spirit Guide while I was at sea alone. Bermudians will tell you, as they told me, that the Longtails carry the spirits of angels…of loved ones from our past who have passed on. A cab driver in Bermuda told me this after I told him the story of the Longtails coming to see me while I was sailing³.
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“Bermuda Longtail with Peace”, June 2011
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Katherine felt compelled to add the image of a whale to the artwork. Upon seeing the piece, I called to ask her what kind of whale it was…
“It’s a Minke Whale, Greg.”
Katherine knew the story of the whales from the chapter, “…day Four to the East…”, but I never told her the species of whale, I wrote that later…yet she felt compelled. She went on to tell me that it was at the moment of adding the whale to the artwork that she thought she was finished. She told me she almost sent it to me, but something stopped her, so she took a break. Within her moment of not thinking about the artwork, she found an image of a woman rising out of a book and it hit her…add the image of the woman to the artwork, yet she knew not why. In the same conversation about the whale I asked her why she placed the woman looking up to the sky beside my head…
“I don’t know for sure, Greg…I saw the image of this woman rising out of a book and it just spoke to me.”
To me, the woman rising out of the book is the Muse…the Muse of Me and a person who will always inspire the Free Spirit I have become.
The Path of Resurrection is a Path of Life. All of us at some point perhaps have “died” inside from choices we have made. We, me included, have sometimes blamed others for those choices and the results stemming from the choosing. Regret ensues which fuels negativity and spreads like a virus outward into all who come in contact with us…I have done this in the Past and have learned from the experience…something I will never do again. The sails to the East and West became physical tests as well as mental ones. The time alone at sea became a Time of Inner Strength building.
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Fear…
the thing which fuels all negativity has been defeated…
the Soul of Me is Resurrected.
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“Hindsight To Sea”, 2012 by Katherine Gerardi using a GoPro screen capture image and the “Bermuda Longtail” drawing by Greg Frucci.
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I learned quite a bit about Self during the crossing from Wilmington, North Carolina to Bermuda…quite a bit. The book I am currently writing, “Path of Three Hundred“, is the true story using fictional characters and the chapter, …Day Three to the East… is the event which created the issues with the Cuddy.
My goal is to finish the book by August 1, 2012 and release it through Amazon via CreateSpace and other outlets sometime around August 9, 2012 which is the one year anniversary date of publishing the poetry book, “Inspiration From A Muse: Poems To Her”.
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Peace to you.
¹ “The Bermuda Longtail” from “Inspiration From A Muse: Poems To Her”
² “…Day Seven to the East…” from “Path of Three Hundred”
³ “…A cab ride in Bermuda…” from “Path of Three Hundred”
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Path of Three Hundred, October 5, 2012
Path of Three Hundred (Volume 1)
