W
e sit at a round table under an orange parasol and order breakfast.
My daily food intake has not been its usual since my accident. The first four days at the hospital my nourishment came via an IV and has thereafter been mostly soups and easily chewed fruits.
I’ve lost a lot of weight and the ribs on my right side show clearly and distinctly under my skin.
Nora looks up from the menu when I order a fruit salad and a large glass of water.
“Shouldn’t you take the opportunity to eat a big meal, sister? You never know when the next fish will be caught at sea… but, sure, there won’t be much fresh fruit either for a time…”
She returns to the menu and places her order for fruit salad, toast, Caesar salad and a big glass freshly squeezed orange juice.
Bo orders the same, minus the ham and chicken and Janek takes the ‘American breakfast’ consisting of eggs, bacon, fried potatoes and a soda.
“Are you completely healed after your accident?”
Nora looks at my right upper body that bulges out under my top.
“I don’t know if I’m all healed… it still hurts when I move or cough and I want to sneeze as little as absolutely possible.”
She strokes her left eyebrow with her forefinger a few times and looks at Janek, as though awaiting his response to what I just said.
He changes position in the chair and turns toward the restaurant.
“Ah, come on! Where’s our food?”
He shoos the dog away with a quick hand movement and a kick.
Doubt appears again at once.
What have I got myself in? I don’t know these people, who are they? I will be stuck on a boat far out to sea for more than a week with them… why? I can’t even sail and besides, I’m half handicapped and sometimes in pain. How did I even decide to agree to this trip? I could still pay my way and pull out… or…
While my mind creates escape plans our food is served and my attention is transferred to the fruit salad on the table in front of me.
Janek briefly recounts his story, of his sailing competence, that it is him who is captain on board and accordingly him who decides and makes all decisions.
He continues telling us that Nora has much good sailing experience and that she has participated in many tough boating trips and will be the primary one to help with the sailing.
Bo and I will also be needed to relieve nightshifts, where we will be in teams of two and we will also need to learn some basic sailing.
With watchful eyes I observe him. He appears to hurry along to present as much as possible in a short time.
Fast talk from the mind has always stressed me. And neither have I ever understood meeting others while wearing dark sunglasses.
Janek points his whole hand at Nora and says she will now briefly tell us about herself.
She is 28, was born in Dubai but moved at the age of six with her mother, father and two older sisters to New Zealand. She continues her story with convincing authority behind the words: her father was a clever sailor, so she has sailed nearly all her life and participated in several bigger and longer boating trips.
She pauses a moment and Janek then points at Bo with his whole hand.
Bo stretches his slouched spine, gathers his thick, woolly corkscrews into a big bun on top of his head and begins his story by saying he is 25 and that he grew up in the north of Sweden. He was educated at university as a theologist but decided to travel a few years, as he felt like a palm among pines. He has visited many ashrams, holy masters and gurus in India and Bali. One of them gave him the name ‘Vasistha’ which we may gladly call him.
I ask what the name means and he explains: wealth. The master who gave him the name said that some are so poor, all they have is money. And some are so wealthy their whole soul is filled to overflowing with love of life. It is this he wants his new name to remind him of.
I wonder how he met the master and if he needed to go through any special rite or initiation to acquire his new name but Bo doesn’t have time to answer my question.
It is now my turn to briefly present myself, Janek deems with his hand gesture.
I drink some water, try to find a comfortable position on the bamboo stool as well as the beginning of a suitable story lacking its ending.
The girl with pink flowers in her hair who has served us, places a bowl with four fortune cookies in and our bill on the table. We divide the bill and open our fortune cookies. Bo laughs loudly and heartfeltly and says he will become rich.
“I interpret my fortune’s prediction about becoming rich as richness of heart, since I’ve got my new name,” he continued, satisfied.
Janek eats his cookie but leaves the fortune unobserved.
Nora reads hers quietly and leaves her paper on the table.
I follow her lead, read quietly, place the paper on the table but keep it in my mind.
Janek wants to continue where we left off before life inserted something other than what he had planned.
I drink yet another sip of water and start nervously and by heart to present my full name and surname. Another swallow before I tell them I had turned 30 right before I ended up having an accident on a Vespa in India. That I lived in England and that after a difficult autumn semester as an art teacher at a school in London I had decided to quit my job to travel for an indefinite period.
I hear my story being told.
Feel an inadequate authenticity behind the words, despite the fact that every word agrees of the circumstances I’m describing.
Don’t really know why I have always had this aversion to telling about myself. Perhaps because I’ve always had the perception that we are so much more than merely our ‘person’. A person consisting of a personality and a history which is in constant change. The meeting and the experience with myself beyond the person already took place many years ago.
It takes experiencing the negative consequences of the person’s often selfish and arrogant reactions and lifestyle to desire to move beyond it.
But for the ‘person’ all change is a threat, this is a characteristic of ego.
For life, change is completely natural and an obvious part of one’s dynamic existence.