I
pour several buckets of saltwater over my suntanned skin. My daily routine at the wash station on deck already occurs perfunctory.
I rub the saltwater from my wet eyes and pour tap water down my dry throat.
Water surrounds me. Embraces me. Its beauty nearly quenches my thirst. But only nearly.
How much more from the well do I need to drink for my thirst to be wholly satisfied?
I sip small, comfy swallows daily.
Ego slows down its death trip.
The whale’s silent scream echoes in the emptiness within.
A place within, where emptiness is experienced stronger than the feeling of the person. A place that is full of life. But no-one can stay in this experience. Because it is the embodied experience that you ARE emptiness that dissolves it in you. Dissolve me there when the ship founders.
The cool evening breeze dries my skin and gives me goose bumps.
I cover myself with Nora’s blue and white striped sweater she gave me that I’ve used every day since. I open the lid of the bench in the cockpit, take out a blanket and sit beside Bo. He accompanies his guitar playing with a humming mantra.
I spread the blanket over our bare legs and put his water bottle in the drink holder on the table despite it not yet toppling over.
He grows quiet after a time and observes me.
“Are you also gonna have dreads, now?”
He laughs and musses my wet hair.
“There’s no point even to try to comb it with all the saltwater and with no conditioner. Once I get to land I’ll probably just cut it off… a small price to pay in case this voyage becomes the end of Samsara’s ocean.”
“Val, I wondered the other evening why you don’t begin to write your speculations and reflections. Who knows, it might become a book… or several. I’d read what you write, easy!”
“Thanks, Bo, but you are one of the few who’d be interested in what I have to write. The vast majority unfortunately seem to not be interested in going beyond their self-made identification and many times destructive lives. On the contrary, the most common in fact is to strengthen our illusory self-image, hardly go beyond it nor question its genuineness. Besides, I can’t write!”
“Well of course you can, I’ve seen you do it several times. And you don’t need to master the tool to convey the message.”
With difficulty, I change my position in the cockpit and ask him to continue playing so lovely as he just did on his guitar.
He places a hand on my shoulder. He is a friend, a fellow human who cares for me from his heart. It warms me deeply.
I try to enjoy his guitar melodies and the starry night, but his well-meant words have created a feeling that I need to do something I can’t bear, don’t want to do. Don’t dare to, although I know I ought to.
The feeling disappears quickly when natures’ great feats reclaim the attention they deserve.
The stars brush the water’s surface. The Milky Way lies like a thick, white strip in the star-filled space above us. Myriad tiny points of light that take their shape from the formless.
It is calm and quiet once again.
I rest my eyes in the infinite space. My gaze is within and without. Infinite space on the outside and the inside. No beginning and no end.
Space, ease and joy are so evident when the egotistical mind steps aside. As if any other state would not be possible, since this one feels so natural and authentic.
Shooting stars come and go.
Just like everything else that moves on the outside and the inside. If the vibrations are fast or slow it doesn’t matter in general, eventually it passes.
What remains, once all has passed and disappeared… and is this authentic state I now experience of the same nature, that it comes and goes? Could I be stuck in my egoistic and often self-destructive mind again?
Dread poisons the innocent body with its mental venom. And it is me, myself, who has allowed it by giving fear my attention.
The moon shines brightly before us. So very far away, yet still so near.
A huge, round ball that appears to be on the same latitude as we are.
But that is just an illusion.
A huge, round ball that seems to vibrate with the same energy, the same life within.
And that is the truth.
The truth of unity in the essence of form.