Dead Reckoning

1. 
   

   

   Dead Reckoning

   
   

   dead reck·on·ing

   noun

   noun: dead reckoning
2. the process of calculating one's position, especially at sea, by estimating the direction and distance traveled rather than by using landmarks, astronomical observations, or electronic navigation methods.
   
   
   The title of this piece, Dead Reckoning, came to me from some deep interior, as an echo, as if calling it out its own name. I wasn't sure of the precise definition of the term and so have looked it up in the online dictionary. Since then, I have been pondering the meaning, as I make sense of it as a title for this drawing and as a metaphor for life's journey. 
   
   
   Dead reckoning...I think it is what we do....I think it's the way we navigate our life at sea, each of us charting unknown waters in our tiny vessels. Somehow. Our internal ways of knowing allow us to look back to see where we've been, estimate the course of our recent passage to figure out where we are. And there are days and times, when we are lost at sea, as common experience for me, when our sense of dead reckoning feels less reliable and we wish for sure landmarks or other sound methods of navigation, to find our way forward. 
   
   
   And yet, I remain certain, that each of us knows more, we carry more intelligence inside us, than we credit. And even as I often wish for more accurate navigation, I find myself wondering if those outside pointers, mileage markers and other voices from our culture are interfering more than we realize. The sky goes on forever, but we are each crossing our own ocean and we must listen for our own dead reckoning.