B
o’s water bottle rolls quickly round from side to side on the table in the cockpit.
The toilet door isn’t latched and bangs.
The windmill works diligently.
The sail is hoisted and filled with the wind’s potent energy.
A rope is knotted foremost on the railing and hinders me from sitting at my place.
Janek tied it there a few days ago since he considered it to be unsafe for me to sit there for such long periods of time.
I squint out over the darkening sky. A whale’s enormous tailfin hits hard on the wave-filled ocean before it disappears. I think I see a long, black finger pointing down towards the water from the dark cloud cover appearing to grow, a bit away from us. The sea’s energy still feels quiet. But something ever lurks beneath the surface. I try to ignore the nagging feeling that leaves me no peace. But I cannot, for when vulnerability is at its greatest, intuition cannot be denied. Survival instinct then takes over.
Janek and Nora converse. I do not understand all they say, but the energy behind the words conveys seriousness and worry.
I don’t want to accept my intuitive interpretation. It isn’t possible, Janek has said we would not get into any more storms. Now there will only be calm seas until we reach land.
I realise how quickly we humans create an illusory confidence in people with authority in various contexts, despite that we perhaps should not do so. How dependent we are on a leader, one who implies with their correct words that they can show us what is right, who can take us to land. Our inner pathfinder seems to have lost our trust and lacks the courage to want to hear its voice.
A familiar pain in my ribcage makes itself felt. I have scarcely felt my bones healing recently but my mental fear seems to be projected on my body.
It’s hard to breathe as if I can’t take a proper breath anymore. As if my ribs will be broken once again.
Every little vein and cell in my entire body hurts again. My spine seems to have lost all its supportive musculature and I need to hold onto the mast to not collapse.
I look worriedly over the black, rolling sea. A whale’s song echoes disconsolately between the waves’ increasing roar. The octopus holds a firm grip on my ankles which seem to be glued to the deck.
Janek shrieks and swears to Bo to close the toilet door after himself and to put his water bottle in the holder intended for drinks. He throws the bottle at him. Bo shields his face with his arms.
With difficulty we get ourselves into our harnesses on an ever-rockier vessel.
Lightning illuminates the terror in Bo’s pale face.
The waves grow higher every time they crash down over us.
The rope hits hard and constantly against the mast.
Saltwater runs from my nose and eyes.
Cold raindrops lash my face.
The night is dark. Clouds cover the entire sky. No stars shine to guide us. Not a shooting star in sight to give us hope that something higher hears my prayer.
Blind, drunk and wild horses gallop inside me. There’s no use trying to contain a storm. Wiser to ride it out in acceptance.
It all went black right before I heard Janek say the wave is surely twenty-two feet high soon after it thundered over Nora and me on the starboard side.
Everything around seems to disappear. But the pain in my body is still there, more clearly now than it has been for a long time. It makes it all unbearable. It should not be here now; it has almost passed. But the pain doesn’t leave you until it is finished with you. Not until you have learned to go beyond it. To a place within where you can regard it more objectively, without rating, questioning or regretting it. Where it is experienced from an unmarked perspective, where it is solely a powerful bodily sensation – nothing more, nothing less.
Energy manifested in the body that emerges and disappears like everything else.
But I am not there at that place within. Now I am in an inner conflict because the pain is back, because we are encountering a storm although we weren’t going to. I am in conflict with life itself.
So ludicrous.
So arrogant and respect less of me to believe I know better than God, what is best for the entirety.
God seems to want to test us one more time.
Bo cries and laments with his face buried in his hands.
Janek crosses himself and kisses his crucifix between the waves whipping us.
Nora squeezes my hand and it feels as though every bone in my body breaks again.
At this moment it is hard to decide if what I am experiencing is a dream or reality and what the difference is between the two.
At this time, I ask myself who writes life’s manuscript. And how we’re chosen as characters in this play – so full of adventure, drama, conflict, passion and love.
A predetermined puzzle where everything has its calculated meaning and everyone fills their function.
A dream that only the awakened can fully understand and thereby act intuitively for the good of everyone.
We will all, eventually, consciously seek this awakening. It is our evolutionary development as humans.
This is the highest purpose with our existence.