I have been at sea for eleven days and twelve nights. There are only a few people who exist in the world at this time; a captain, a few deckhands, stewardesses, the engineers, a chef, and me. We exist on this floating strip of teak, sail, and fiberglass in a perpetual wobble atop the twisting ocean waves. The sails were set off the coast of Grenada, a small, verdurous island just north of Venezuela. A series of tacks and ‘barbara-holds’ led us up to St. Maarten to pick up a spare part from the ship’s representative in the middle of the night. From there, we tipped the bow towards the north east; our destination being the island of Faial in the Azores. As the haze of the islands left the vision of our binoculars, we ventured to prepare ourselves for the waves, the wind, and the endless seemingly ‘nothingness’.
Swells engulf the sloop’s hull; caressing and thrashing, an ocean ravishes a ship. The sea-waves stretch out their tongues, licking the vessel’s body, making love to the cruiser, sensually, sometimes violently. Eroticism lifts itself from the coursing froth; tantalizing, pornographic, the ocean tackles us with barbaric, carnal asanas. Lifting the ship out of the water, like a man hoisting his lover through the air; plunging back into the licking tongues, the ocean inundates us into its grasp. Heaving, the ship is fucked into a tingling, painful ecstasy.
Even with the incline and diminishing of the astral planets, traversing the firmament, time seems to be nonexistent. The indication of hours and minutes seem lost in the voyage of days and nights. All the more, the words, ‘day’ and ‘night’ have lost their meaning. The hours are only important to the point that they characterize our ‘look-out’ appointments. Life exists in a series of varying light and dark periods. The rise and fall of the great annular burning star flows through each ageless period, just like the stream of the waves, and the billowing of the clouds. The tumbling of the wind coils around the mast, coursing through foredeck, it pitches across the stern. Time does not exist here. All life is elliptical.
Nothing is out here; or is it everything? I don’t know anymore. We glide along on our journey; falling into a routine of working, eating, reading, and sleeping. Do the others realize the pure isolation of our selves from the rest of the ‘civilized’ world? Being greeted, after every sleep period, with the same oceanic vista, one begins to realize the consequences of immortality. We pretend that everything is normal, a live-able working situation. The reality is that we exist a thousand miles away from another human being and are adrift on an endless wheel. Are we getting anywhere? Are we making any progress; any miles under the keel? A metal plastic machine gives us indication of our position. Marking the distance, speed, and waypoints, where would we be without it?
Drinking water is crucial, I hear. Sipping on an Evian, I consider how detached we still are from our current environment. I dream of sailing around the world without these electronic instruments. Star-gazing to assume a position, and setting sail with no engine to rely on. Naive, they call me; I prefer romantic idealist. Alas, I was born into a time dependent on technology. Old skills are fading from my generation; a behavior to which my ancient self mourns daily. One day, I think, maybe in this lifetime, I will experience something relatable to what the primitive explorers experienced.
At this moment, I hope, I dream, I can feel the wind pressing me on. Adventure calls my unsophisticated self; my heart quivers for the perils and jeopardies of random escapades. What is it inside of me that is desperate for the exploration? The distinctive yearning that would rather be teetering between life and death, between moment and immediate, than sitting in a classroom or at an office desk? A ceaseless ache for distant lands of uncertainty and precariousness? I say, take me world, caress me, lose me; use me and abuse me. I want to live and die.
In the middle of the Atlantic, I write this ode to the ocean, to the adventure, to the mystery, to the nothingness, to the everything.
