The things I remember are stepping into the boat and feeling immensely joyful; as if there was no other place to be, and that everything awful that had happened, somehow, made sense and led to this moment, transforming into a new form of lightness. We were on port, not even sailing, and I both begged and thanked the universe for being, again, made sense anew, in a boat. These were the things I had forgotten.
The things I recalled were how beautiful the water textures can be; and sailors please forgive me for what I am about to say, or write, but how irrelevant wind can be, when you’re buoyantly happy. Looking East, and West, everywhere things looked wonderfully new. There were hills, buildings, beaches drawing lines on the coast, a vast horizon to the other side and all was as if it, they or I had just been born. Eyes inquired the coastline as if they had been asleep for millenia, fallen into their eye sockets of a skull murmur, and surprised now by the possibilities in height, combinations of scale, colour, perspective and fog. There’s a saying that in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few; and this was one lucky reset, as if, as always, indicating either good things to become, or signalling the omen of the simplicity of daily life, its mystery and efficiency, in just being.
What a pleasure it was to resee water from above: the lines of currents, patterns of waves and breezes singing in their own vocabulary, made familiar again. The alphabet of movement. Once we stopped, the sea was made more clear, and more dark, and more like a cave in which to dive. Water was deep and I have vertigo, but I don’t think I felt fear. Being in deep water, that I recall, is so different from the beach: more scary and whole, and I suppose, we’re made complete in paradox. We’re either divided, or fixed. I didn’t want to leave; I wanted to be on both sides, both places, water and boat. Yet everything was made quiet, in the calm gesture of the absent winds. The world could have ended, disappeared, and I wouldn’t have noticed. I disappeared into it, the now, the moment, the vertigo, the depth, the blue, the blindness and the seen it all, at the same time; and swimmed and dived, and that was it.
I may have been speechless or not, but I was born again on that day, on that sail. Thank you @svsula for bringing me back to life, and to its endless possibilities.
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