First, when I was little, I had animals and I had wood nymphs, or other story book things. I don't remember them very well, but it seemed like a happy time and sometimes I wonder why they all faded away.
Then later I had God and JC, the very holy ghosts. They were my childhood friends, you could say that we grew up together. We came to quarrel and eventually had a permanent falling out in my more fearful years of teenagehood, which were plagued by turmoil and doubt. I don't know why I was never able to forgive the father and son. Maybe I'm too ashamed to return to them, or maybe everyone hates them so much now that they're too deep into exile to ever return. I hear that they only live in scary places with poverty and uneducated people that live in trailers.
I found other Gods, around me I had placed the forms and spirits of ancient beings from the east. They were an exciting group, varying wildly in their manifest forms. Some were blue and green and sat in poses of serenity with their eyes closed. Others among them waved many arms in rage and had necklaces made of skulls. They were frightening and were in perpetual flame.
I was eventually dissatisfied with them, or maybe I just forgot them. I guess I left them behind with my more rebellious, experimental years. Did I just grow out of them?
Then I had Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Angelina Jolie, really just for lack of anything else.
I liked Lindsay Lohan the best, I followed the course of her antics with zeal and eager interest. But she calmed down and slowly, she started to disappear from the magazines and blogs that had once regaled her so fervently, and the best way to phrase it is that I became bored of Lindsay Lohan, and I became bored with the rest of those gods.
Then things were quiet for a while and I felt very alone. It was a horrible, horrible feeling that I found myself afflicted with. It was a loneliness that made me feel tinier than a part of a cough, a loneliness that no family, no friend, nor any lover could expel.
Then one day I went to the local library and, for reasons I myself can't understand, went looking through the archives of past residents from my town.
I ran my finger down the list of names and stopped at Charles Tillinghast Cushing, who was born in 1810 and died in 1864.
I liked his name, so I searched through more archives (you'd be surprised at the extent of the records that they keep in these provincial libraries!) and found more information about him.
Of course, all of this could have been more easily accomplished on the internet, but I think the ceremonial aspect, me leaving through those ledgers in the empty little library, was one of the most important aspects in the meaning that my introduction to Charles Tillinghast Cushing came to bear.
In his day, Mr. Cushing had been a shipbuilder regarded highly by all in the shipping industry and beyond. His modifications on the design of the clipper ship were acknowledged as the most innovative additions to the form as had ever been seen. A president even made a voyage to England on one of his ships!
He built many ships. There was the Bald Eagle (extreme clipper), the Mastiff (extreme clipper), the Abbott Lawrence (medium clipper), and the Chariot of Fame (extreme clipper), and those are only a few of the names that helped place Charles Tillinghast Cushing's name amongst those of other glorious figures in history.
What a wonderful man. He had a wife and two children, both boys. But one of them died of the spotted fever, a common disease at the point in history.
In the picture of Charles Tillinghast Cushing that I found, a very solemn old portrait, he is dressed in silks and finery. More than one gold chain is visible coming from his shirt pocket.
It is impossible to tell whether he is looking at the camera or not. The portrait reveals a pose and demeanor which, in my opinion, prove the sitter's aspect to be that of a true ship builder: a man of omnipotent power and a man of mystery.
How are you to know if his eyes (or mind) is on you, or whether he is thinking about his ships; ships that will always be sailing onwards, towards something so fantastic that the frail human imagination can't even begin to conceive of. But whatever that place is, Charles Tillinghast Cushing's ships would rush towards it unstoppably, like a courageous gallant galloping to free a maiden.
How could anyone have forgotten about Charles Tillinghast Cushing, that noble and glorious deity of the sailing men? I certainly wont forget about him. But then again, there are a lot of old picture frames that once held portraits now lost forever.
I scanned the portrait of Charles and had it replicated in miniature so that I could put it in a little locket that I now keep (at all times) around my neck.
When I go to sleep I say, "Good night Charles, I hope your waters are calm tonight." And When I wake up, I yawn and tell him that I hope the day will bring wind to his sails.
Charles Tillinghast Cushing is like my patron person, my patron departed soul. I do believe in Charles Tillinghast Cushing.
I think it would be a good thing if everyone could find their own Charles Tillinghast Cushing, someone long gone and far away that they can still talk to like a great friend; otherwise people might get too lonely.
