Attar and his Conference of Birds

The orange avian creature on the cover of 'The Pod' is not some oversight, that bird is a hoopoe and very important in the process of concocting my own piece of fiction. The hoopoe is the winged leader of the 'Mantiq Au Tayr'. This is the lasting creation of Attar, a sufi writer that roamed this Earth 800 years ago. The legends say that he was a pharmacist in his day and was well loved by the people of his birth city, Nishapur, in the Khorsan Valley of Persia. They say that he stopped to say hello to anyone he would pass and that the children of Nishapur would stop whatever they were doing and run to him if they caught sight of his face. He was the son of a father that enjoyed the teachings of Sufism and his father passed his love of Sufism onto his son. They say Attar left his home in Nishapur and traveled around the world to learn more about this belief system. When he returned home, he had the teaching in his heart and he poured them out into his masterpiece. Today that masterpiece is more widely know as 'The Conference Of The Birds'.    

They say Attar was so well loved in his town that the people protected his identity even upon the threat of death. In 1220 AD, Attar was killed at the age of 78 by the invading Mongols. The Mongols had been looking for the famed man that led the heart of his people and after some time, a small group of soldiers found him after his identity was mistakenly said aloud. The soldiers were taking him back to their leaders when they crossed a wealthy woman who offered to buy Attar's freedom with a small sack of silver. Attar looked at the soldiers and asked them not to take such a small amount for him, that he was worth far more than this sack of silver. The soldiers listened to Attar's advice and continued their return trip to the command post. As they continued their journey home, they crossed paths with the most wealthy man in the region. The man had a highly valuable sack of gold on him and the man offered the entire amount to free Attar. Attar looked at the soldiers and told them that he was worth much much more than this so they continued on. Then as they approached their home base a poor man passed them with a donkey and sitting on the donkey was a large stack of firewood he had been collecting all day. The poor man offered his entire stack of firewood to the Mongolian soldiers and Attar said to them, take this man's offer, it is a very good price for the freedom of an old man. Enraged by his advice and being enraged that they lost out on silver and gold and were now sitting here negotiating his life for firewood, they killed him. This was Attar, I'm sure you can see why he was so widely valued by the common people and abhorred by rulers.

Not all of them, but this creation still lasts to this day. Over the years there have been many many creations of art that Attar inspired.  One of my favorites is a carefully crafted art piece by Habiballah that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It's a watercolor painting of the 'Birds' gathering that uses both actual gold and silver in the piece. Attar has inspired countless pieces of art around the world, but he's also inspired musicians and writers as well. The well known Persian poet, Rumi, was influenced by Attar, in fact, Attar's name appears in some verses. So, I would be remiss if I failed to tell you that his book has inspired me as well. 'The Conference Of The Birds' is told using couplets where each bird speaks or responds in couplet format. It has been 800 years and still Attar's words linger in our world today, but it is hardly the oldest epic to stand the test of time. 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey' punch holes into our society and creep in regularly. The television producers of 'Game of Thrones' mentioned Odysseus in the interviews following a recent episode. They mentioned how Arya Stark had been gone from Winterfell for so long that the guards patrolling the gates did not recognize her just like King Odysseus was not recognized after returning from his long journey. Poetry has a unique way of standing the test of time and an influence of Attar's used poetry as well as anyone in the history of writing.

"The Concourse of the Birds" by Hibiballah of Sava 

(created somewhere between 1590-1610)

Attar wrote in couplet format where each couplet was twenty-two syllables and the eleventh and twenty-second syllable always rhymed. Amongst Attar's influences was a very well known man whose poetry and scientific discoveries are still prevalent today. The influential man was Omar Khayyam and both Attar and Khayyam were born in the same Persian city, Nishapur.  While Attar wrote the beautiful and rhythmic couplets Khayyam wrote powerful quatrains that were meant to be read as single entities. I'll share my favorite one that Fitzgerald translated from Persian to English:

Why ponder the future to forsee, 

and jade thy mind to perplexity

Cast off thy cares, leave Allah's plans to him- 

He formed them all without consulting thee.

With so few words Khayyam could speak to the deepest thoughts in your mind and challenge all the layers of ideas you had previously stacked upon them. So what I have done is mix the two ideas of these poetic giants and pulled in elements of Homer's and Melville's to structure 'The Pod'. My whales speak to each other in quatrains that have eleven syllable lines where the last syllable in the line rhymes with next in an AABB rhyming format. I've been told that the rhythm this creates somewhat of a feel for the ebb and flow of the oceans.   

In 'The Conference of the Birds' the birds come together in search of a leader. They were going to vote for the noble hoopoe to lead them, but instead the hoopoe tells them that the true leader would be the mythical firebird that we call the Phoenix. I knew my whales in 'The Pod' were going to need their Phoenix, but I wanted them to search for a religious character that almost every culture shares, so I have them searching for the Green Man instead of the mythical Phoenix. So, to find this Phoenix or 'Simorgh' in Persian, the birds have to travel through seven valleys.

First) The Valley of the Quest

Second) The Valley of Love

Third) The Valley of Insight Into Mystery 

Fourth) The Valley of Detachment 

Fifth) The Valley of Unity

Sixth) The Valley of Bewilderment 

Seventh) The Valley of Poverty and Nothingness 

The book is fantastic and certainly gets you thinking, but half the book is convincing the birds to go on this journey another huge section of it is about what to expect on the journey, then the journey itself lasts 3 or 4 pages after all the preparation. It works and I would suggest that you read it, but it's not a style westerners are used to absorbing. So in that sense, I felt like there was room for me to write my story and use Melville's whales, Homer's sense of facing trials, Khayyam's four line structure and Attar's valleys.  However, whales cannot cross valleys so I instead I had my whales travel through the incredibly deep oceanic trenches.  If you've seen my map from an earlier blog post, you might know that they cross seven trenches:  The Aleutian Trench, the Arctic Trench, Kuril, Marianna, the Tonga Trench, The Java and the Indian Trench. All of the trenches are real places in our oceans except for the Arctic Trench. Due to the shape of the Earth, the spin of her and other scientific mumbo jumbo that could definitively explain it to you, the ocean surrounding the North Pole is pretty shallow and lacks a true trench. Perhaps it's all Saint Nick's doings but this is all to tell you that this journey was very very carefully plotted. Every scientific finding on these whales and places was put into the story if I could find a way to include it. Each species has characteristics that I tried to humanize so that you could relate to them. Each location has some element of reality tied to it even though the story seems so impossible. The whales face hunger, ice, changing arctic temperatures, hoards that want to kill them, tsunamis, a typhoon, a maze of coral and enemies that want to stop them at every turn. It's scientific, it's exciting, it has unexpected plot twists and it's philosophical. And I owe it all to my influences and to all of you who inspired me to write it because your future self has agreed to read it and I knew that while I was writing it for you. And maybe, just maybe one day, far into the future, a young lady or young man will pick up 'The Pod' and be just as inspired as I was when I read all these masterpieces. And maybe, if I've done my job right, that young lady or young man will say that 'The Pod' was my masterpiece. Maybe they tell people that this one work of art amongst all the pieces I've created, is the only work of art that could define me just like I believe that 'The Conference Of The Birds' defines Farid uddin Attar. 

  

The Conclusion and Inclusion of Moby Dick

Call me Andy. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my bank account, and nothing particular to interest me out and about Austin, I thought I would read at home a little and read about the watery part of the world. Scouring the classics shelf I flipped through the printed sheets of a great many novel and settled upon a curious and mind you - lengthy choice with which to spend copious hours with. During that time a character with great fortitude and inner strength pushed me to sail - and by that I mean read - further on with him and to meet our doom together. The character's name was Captain Ahab and he led a strange crew. Now I would not have called them strange once embarking upon the blue swelled liquids of the North Atlantic Ocean or her six sisters, but using my mind's eye to see them in an earthen bound dwelling with imported tea from South Asia in hand and squirming in the comfort of cloth covered armchairs, you wouldn't be so quick to call me wrong. No - in fact you would agree that they were not meant for this solid based world. They - in all detail that mattered to an ocean adventurer, were sailors from mind to toe, from garment to heart, from followed dream to the equipment they handled. Their dream was none other than to pursue the greatest beasts to ever walk or swim the Earth. They had a fancy and that fancy was to chase the very whales around that live great lengths of their lives within liquified mansions and I, the reader of the great 'Moby Dick' by Herman Melville was going along for the ride.

In nine of ten attempts to find a story to place myself in, I'm able to find just such a story, but for that one in ten, I find myself able to enter the world that story created again and again. The wordiest of writers, the first person of all first persons, the creator of contradictions, the ultimate ride along without leaving homerist, the great Herman Melville created just such a story and I would be hard pressed to present my own story to you without telling you of the magnificent impression his words placed upon my head and heart. His first person character that tells you to call him Ishmael, pulls you deep into a world of pride, madness, and the voice of reason. In a way, you become Ishmael. The first personage does not ever describe themselves and you could even argue that you're not aware of this "Ishmael's" gender for in fact, Ishmael is likely nothing more a description of who ye are to the world as you chase the White Whale than a name. None of the surrounding characters ever calls you Ishmael, but they do assume that you're a man with little experience aboard a whaling vessel. With all the biblical references found in Moby Dick, it is likely that Ishmael is supposed to be like the Ishmael that was kicked out of Abraham's house by Sarah and as such is a reference and so furthermore that reference is likely to mean 'outcast'.

In addition to Ishmael, there is another seemingly biblical character that tells a bold fortune to 'Ishmael' about his journey to hunt whales. That character is named Elijah. In the Old Testament, Elijah was a prophet so it's not too much of a stretch to label this character a biblical reference. The lesser known biblical reference is to Ahab King of Israel. In Moby Dick Ahab is the somewhat logical and authoritative captain that inspires his crew to follow him as he attempts to exact insane levels of revenge. When the novel begins, Ahab's already lost his leg trying to hunt down the white whale Moby Dick and now his only goal in life seems to be killing the previously noted sperm whale. It seems that only this will provide any level of personal justice and even though the leg of this captain is not the leg of the crew, he convinces the others on the ship that it must indeed be their leg in spirit and therefore in spirit, it is also their revenge. The captain is the lowest kind of villain the bares no ethics, he only acts on his motivation and has a willingness to sacrifice anyone to get a shot at the White Whale. Melville's description of this maleficent being inspires thoughts of some of the worst humans in history, a small number of which came after Melville penned his masterpiece. The biblical Ahab, which it is clear to me that the captain was based off of, was King of Israel and was just as putrid as his doppelganger. After Israel had been blessed by Kings that shone light upon the land like David and Solomon, the quality of kingly leaders dropped and spiraled downward rapidly until the moral fortitude of rule bottomed out with the anointing of Ahab. This King, Ahab, abandoned the God of his ancestors and worshiped the idol god Ba'al instead. The Old Testament story follows how the Prophet Elijah went in service to the Hebrew God in order to straighten out King Ahab and his people and return the beliefs of the Hebrew God to their 'rightful' place in Israel. Ahab continually challenges Elijah, is humbled time and time again only to regain his gumption to challenge the commands of Elijah and the word of God once again. In the end, King Ahab's own desires destroy him and Elijah is left standing to claim that he'd been right all along, that he was a true prophet. Just like King Ahab, Captain Ahab is humbled many times, yet still challenges Moby Dick to his doom. I find the similarities to be too much to ignore.

All this is to say that I am of the strong opinion that Melville looked to the story structure of 1st Kings and turned it into this masterpiece and it is not lost on me that after reading Moby Dick, shortly thereafter I began penning my own book about whales. However, mine was not to be about the hunting whales but instead it is about the perils that whales face in our world where the pursuit of human comforts often impedes on the success of their lives. I could talk or write all day about the merits of Melville's observational comedy about society, but I really just want to spell out the grapnel that pulled me for a Nantucket sleigh ride, the baited hook, the whirlpool that is 'Moby Dick Chapter 32: Cetology'. To be clear with you and above all else, Moby Dick is a comedy. Nothing within this comedy made me laugh more than to read Melville's 'expertise' on whales in said chapter. To paraphrase, he justifies that 'whales are air breathing fish that swim with a horizontal tail'. He's got a whole line of reasoning for this conclusion but something whispers to me quietly that he wanted to be wrong about his erroneous definitions. Afterall, he was telling the story from the perspective of someone who'd never been whaling or studied whales in their whole life. But amidst all my laughter, Melville lists off a great number of whales that I had known nothing about and that lack of knowledge stuck with me as something I wanted to remedy. With a little research I found out that cetology is nothing new, that Aristotle(~300BC) took up the occupation and declared that whales were indeed mammals. Roughly 300 years later the Roman philosopher and naturalist, Pliny the Elder contradicted the great philosopher of his time, Aristotle and declared that whales were fish. The debate continued through the years of whaling, but today there is little doubt. Whales are mammals, not fish, but it was the discussion of classifying these amazing creatures that sucked me in, not the debate of what to call them and it is the reason that my 300 plus page epic poem includes 20 different whale species. I also knew I wanted a whale like Ahab, that could convince his crew to come along for an impossible journey, but my issue was that I generally think of whales as 'good'. They seem like gentle giants at peace with the world around them so I couldn't make this persuasive orator vile like the captain or king. We all know in our hearts that not all persuasive people are evil, so why not have a kinder gentler, well meaning Ahab that cares about his mates? So this is how whales entered my mind and never left, and though they are the characters that tell this tale, the structure of the story has more to do with a different author whom I have an equal level of respect for:  Attar.      

Below is my interpretation of a complex set of events that conclude the story of Moby Dick(I'll explain the piece below if you're interested):

"The Conclusion of Moby Dick" 

 by Andy Graham

In the front of the picture at the bottom is Pip and that is me to the left wearing the orange shirt and holding the oar. I'll get back to those two later, but to me they pop out first, so I'm just making that a placeholder. To the right is Moby Dick and Moby's eye is a squared up version of the Egyptian symbol for Ra or at least it's the Eye of Ra. Ra is the sun god that continues to rise and fall for eternity. In the center is Ishmael's best friend Queequeg. He's an islander who's tattooed all over the place, but Ishmael learns to see him as just any other man. The man secured to the body of Moby Dick is Fedallah, he's a fire worshiper (Zoroastrian) from Persia. His eyes are distended because he's been dragged around for several days by Moby and has been dead for a while at the moment this was 'painted'. Moby is splintering the boat and knocks off several important crew members that are covered in the story. When Moby Dick ends, no boats are left to speak of and Ishmael floats to safety on a wooden coffin. The coffin is not pictured yet because The Pequod, the ship that the whalers all call home for three years on this voyage is sinking in the background. The coffin eventually floats up from that wreckage. On the right side of the splintered boat is Daggoo the African tribesman that the others see as a natural leader not to be challenged, left of him is Starbuck whom the coffee company Starbucks is named after. He is the voice of clarity much like your own voice after you've had coffee. Left of Starbuck is Flask who is angry at all whales, then Stubb who doesn't take much of anything seriously, then Captain Ahab. In the movies, you'll frequently see Ahab being tied to the whale instead of Fedallah, but in the book he's yanked off his small vessel when he clears a rope with his body only to get the hemp rope tangled around his neck. It is one of the final scenes and he never resurfaces. This all brings me back to Pip and myself. The entire crew is crazed with Moby Dick fever and Pip knows it. Twice he jumps ship and once they save him from the sharks that always seem to follow whalers for an easy meal of whale meat. To me, he's the 2nd most realistic character in the book and it's the reason he's not 'painted' in the same way that the others are. Lastly, I'm playing Ishmael because Ishmael is your eyes and ears and thoughts while you read this first person narrative. Ishmael is not actually on a small boat at the end of the book, he's on the Pequod and witnesses all the destruction of boats and people from her. When a large boat sinks, it pulls down things and people with it, but Ishmael luckily avoids this undertow and swims to safety, but I've symbolize his control over this situation by putting an oar in his hand. He's the only one with the power to survive this grim picture where Moby Dick destroys all that challenge him. Ishmael never truly challenges the white whale, so he (or she because frankly Ishmael could be a woman and I have a theory that supports this claim of Ishmael being a woman) is able to survive to spin the tale and no one survives to say otherwise. This piece took me 8 or 9 days to execute my ideas. I hope you enjoy it as it was not exactly great fun clicking 1000s upon 1000s of times over the last two weeks!  

Talk to you later!

-AG (aka Ishmael when I'm caught reading Moby Dick)

Moray Eel

Writing is a funny thing. You start with nothing and by the time it's over, there's an entire world you've created and you have characters that makes it alive. I don't know if other writers feel the same way, but I fell in love with a lot of the characters. Maybe it wasn't a lot of them, it's probably all of them. But how do you love something that absolutely frightens you?

A moray eel is occasionally known to take body parts from divers. They're a bit freaky to me in many ways but amongst the ways is the odd fact that they have two sets of jaws they use to snatch prey. One that you see and one inside that can protrude like the jaw of the alien in Aliens. Creepy, but for some reason, I felt the need to have one in 'The Pod'.

Moray Eel, the character in the book, is the guard to the kelp gates that protect a highly valuable ocean dweller, Otter. He's very protective of her and untrusting of strangers. Many of the whales in 'The Pod' are complete strangers to Moray so he treats them with quite a bit of veiled disdain. The real trick is getting him to lift the veil and give you directions on how to find Dear Otter. The scene below is an argument that arises between Right Whale and Moray.

He's a small character both physically and in the book, but he was fun to write for because he's an angry little guy with tons of attitude.

The Wandering Whale Shark

I can't remember exactly how it went, but my sister convinced me that I needed to have a whale shark in my book about whales. When I first came up with my character list, a whale shark wasn't on it. Afterall, a whale shark is a shark, not a whale. It does behave somewhat like a whale in that it filter feeds like a baleen whale, but other than that, it's all shark. They're beautiful creatures and I like them, but I just didn't see how one of these would fit into my story. That changed..

My sister Julie invited me to come see her in Atlanta and the only thing on the 'to-do' list was go to the Atlanta Aquarium with her and her son. When we got there in the middle of the school day, in the middle of the school year, we were in the middle of about 2,000 kids and chaperones. But the excitement of the ocean filled every corner of the building and spilled out into world around the aquarium. No doubt, countless dreams and stories left that building that day and many days before and since that one. One of stories was my own because I knew exactly what I wanted to do with a whale shark in my book about whales.

One of the first things I noticed about these gentle giants (the Atlanta Aquarium has 4 of them) was that they never stop moving. It made sense that a shark that doesn't breathe air would need to keep moving, but I just hadn't thought about it. Seeing the whale sharks in person changed my idea of what one could become in a story if given a few human characteristics. I thought to myself, a spy is always on the move, always gathering stuff about this or that and filtering through it. A whale shark does too. It also has little remora fish following it around and the fish help them out. Maybe if a whale shark was truly a spy, these remora fish would be passing the shark secrets. There's also little known about whale sharks because they tend to do their own thing after feeding, perhaps it's because of their spy secrets..

The Wandering Whale Shark bloomed out of a trip to the Atlanta Aquarium. He's a wanderer who picks up information and spreads it to whom he sees fit. Luckily for 'The Pod', the shark thinks kindly of them, though 'The Pod' itself is not so quick to trust this stranger in the same way that they trust one another.

Dear Otter

The sea otter is roughly the size of a golden retriever, I say that because some are bigger than others and some sea otters are bigger than others. They vary in color, but usually have a blondish face and a darker body. They boast a long tail, claws, sharp teeth, and they wrap themselves in floating kelp to keep from drifting out to sea while they chill, pretty much all day. Their primary source of food is abalone, but they'll eat a variety of sea life. They're found in the north of the Pacific Ocean and always near land. They are found in Russia, the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, Canada and most importantly, in California. This is where our Dear Otter spends most of her life hidden amongst the kelp.

There is nothing more majestic than watching an otter move, so when I created Dear Otter, I wanted her to have these majestic characteristics. I made her an oracle or an advisor to the whales. She's an older otter and doesn't have much to give other than sage advice, but she's happy to give it. I feel that even though she's in her twilight years, she's still radiant and beautiful.

"Dear Otter Hidden in Her Kelp Forest" 

by Andy Graham

The Route the Whales Take

When I was writing 'The Pod' I had an outline that I adhered to and more importantly a map of their journey. It's been my intention to have a copy of it inserted into the book so you could understand the scale of this undertaking. They end up passing all seven continents and swimming each of the seven seas on their search for The Green Man.



I've attempted to mark all the important spots where they travel without giving away too much of the story or how it ends. I hope it's not a spoiler and that it just helps you as you read the songs of these whale's daily lives.

If this map looks a little off to you, it should. Either that or you've grown up looking at a more accurate map than I have.  Usually the western world countries are shown to be much larger than they actually are. I guess that makes us feel more important in the west, but globalization of this world is slowly changing all of that. Or at least I hope it is.

Home Is Where You Anchor Lies

My Grandfather was a sailor.  Sailing is what caused him to meet my Grandmother. They met during the trying time that was World War II and never forgot one another. When the war ended my Grandfather sent my Grandmother a telegram that she kept with her until the day she died. It contained two simple words that carried an incredibly deep story with it:  "Marry me"

When my Grandfather was still alive, I used to go visit both of them. Grandma would always make me a sandwich with ham, cheese, butter or mayo, tomato and iceberg lettuce. Then she would ask me how I wanted it cut, diagonal or straight.  I always liked it cut diagonally even though my hero and idol was sitting across from me with his pumpernickel sandwich cut straight.  Maybe it was because the sandwich looked like a sail..

It kind of feels odd to be telling you about my Grandfather without telling you what we called him. To my family, he was Papa. Sometimes I called him Pop for short. He was a handyman that learned to be a craftsman by fixing steam engines on his ships, but he didn't start out that way. And the reason I know that is because I used to ask him open ended questions and then listen to every word that followed. Two such questions painted an incredible picture of his life for me, a picture made of words.

The first of the two memorable questions was "what was your first job?" He told me that his first job was selling honey.  He'd pick up 6 for a penny and sell them for a penny each. When he had enough pennies to rub together, he'd go see a motion picture. The first job I had was mowing lawns for cash, but my first job where I got a paycheck was at a movie theater. I don't think that was a coincidence. I've loved movies as long as I can remember and most jobs I've had were somewhat related to that business. Movies drew me in, but the sea drew him in. After he told me about selling jars of honey, I heard about a newspaper job and then another job and another. When he was old enough, he went to sea. He eventually became a Merchant Marine and brought many supplies to men that were on land. On a ship there's lots of time to read, so my grandfather used that time to educate himself on steam engines that powered the ship. He qualified to become an engineer without ever stepping foot on a college campus because he studied on his own.

As much as Papa loved the sea, he never married it.  Instead he married my grandma and found a career on land. When the war was over, he had a career waiting for him checking steam engines all over Louisiana. He worked with that same company doing the same job until he retired. And that was the end of his story about his first job. It took him about 2 hours to answer it. You could easily feel how much he loved being on the water. He talked about all the things he was able to see because of being a sailor. It got me hooked on the idea that I need to see the world from a boat.

The second open ended question was "how did you meet Grandma?" They answered that one together. It was their life story. Grandma was born in Wales, lost both her parents and lived with a kind man that knew her mother when she was growing up. When she was entering her teens, she went to live with an Aunt because the man didn't want rumors about them flying around. She spent the war in fear of being bombed by the Luftwaffe. There wasn't much food to go around, to give you an idea of how little they had, she told me they would use the same teabag at least 3 or 4 times before declaring it useless. At night, if you lit a single candle, the whole neighborhood would chew you out because the Germans were bombing the area with some regularity. Light meant life and the Germans would aim at even a candle. Cardiff, Wales was a tough place to be a young woman during that stretch and it shaped her into a tough and honest woman. She didn't take guff from anyone and she didn't ever cheat or want to be cheated.

Papa's job as a merchant marine wasn't easy and it was dangerous, but they were paid regularly and ate square meals. It was dangerous because submarines and bombers were always on the lookout for supply ships. Cutting off the supply line was better than winning a battle, so they were sitting ducks out there. But the people that deliver meals have access to their fair share of food.

My grandparents didn't have very many dates before getting married. You could count them on one hand and have a finger or two leftover. The second date was the most memorable and to listen to the two of them describe that date is amongst the greatest experiences I've had in my entire life. They planned to meet up because they had seen each other the previous day. My grandfather went back to the ship and down into the galley. He asked the chief cook for a special sandwich for his second date. The chief cook knew what was going on in Cardiff so he grabbed the biggest loaf of bread he had and exaggerated the contents of the sandwich. My grandfather told me about how he took his knife and cut the absolute thickest slices of ham he'd ever seen. How he got a huge amount of butter on his spatula and spread it all over the bread. Then he filled it with iceberg lettuce and tomatoes. It was the same sandwich I had been eating for years.

That sandwich made it to the front door of Grandma's Aunt's place and it was dismantled by the starving Welsh family. They stripped the butter off, the ham, and the veggies. They made a small sandwich for the two lovers to split on their date and they all shared in a sailor's gift from the sea. Anyone who brings food to the starving is a hero and like all good heroes, he never thought he was one. But I know he was a hero because he was mine.

This story and many more stories that I haven't shared stayed with me. So now I feel it, I know it's my turn to sail. My turn to see the world from a boat. I'm selling my house and I'm going to use the money to buy a 36 foot Pearson sailboat. It will look somewhat like this:

    
The sailboat will be where I live and my home will be where my anchor lies. I'm excited to get going. Everyone that I tell about this idea to sail about the world seems to like it. My plan is to learn to sail the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico, cross the Panama Canal, go to New Zealand to pick up a Kiwi friend of mine and head back to Pakistan. The birthplace of my book, 'The Pod'. It's the place where I learned about the Green Man, Khizr. The place where I found out about Sufism and 'The Conference of the Birds'. It's also the place where I learned to see the world with a new eye.