The Seafarer

From the Journal of the Seafarer:

Divining the skies is a way to forget that we are isolated on this small and restless planet; that we were thrown out into a sea of stars without a lighthouse or a compass to guide our way back home.

Therefore, we are destined to wander as seafarers across the roiling waters that cover this earth with our necks always craning up towards the heavens.

Crying, “Is there anyone out there? Can anyone hear me?” until our mouths have grown dry from tirelessly asking, with no guarantee of an interstellar reply from across the universe, overhead in the clouds, or far-reaching from a location beyond the nebulous future that unravels before us.

The seafarer liked to tell stories. They helped to keep him grounded, keep his mind occupied while he traveled. The days were long, the work of maintaining his boat was hard, and if the weather held, the view could be monotonous. Of course, the seafarer preferred calmer weather. Otherwise his work would be doubled at best, and his ship could capsize at worst. It’s just that every day, all there was to keep him company aside from the occasional seagull in the morning and the stars at night was an endless expanse of ocean, as far as the eye could see. Until he pulled into shore, the view was largely unchanging from day to day.

It’s no wonder that the canon of nautical literature is so whimsical, he thought. Without a vivid imagination, the seafarer himself would likely lose his mind. But, dreams inspired stories, and stories inspired dreams, creating an ouroboros of the imagination that could keep the seafarer’s mind running in spite of the monotony.

As a child, the seafarer had craved stories of swashbuckling pirates. Cunning sirens and mermaids whose voices lured men to the bottoms of the ocean. Fabulous water dragons with multicolored claws or scales, who could be coaxed into allowing a traveler to ride upon their backs if one proved himself worthy. Adventurers who dared to sail through the Bermuda triangle, or reclaim the lost city of Atlantis. He had thought that a career in seafaring might lead to a life of such adventure, as the stories had promised. But, in all of his travels, he never did encounter a pirate, or a mermaid, or a sea beast. His charter strictly prohibited him from voyaging across the Bermuda triangle, and Atlantis was as much an island as it was a dream.

It appeared that the stories themselves were his sirens, tempting the seafarer to venture further and further out to sea. Though, no matter how far he traveled, he could never seem to find what he was looking for. Nor could he escape the stench of salt and fish that followed him, even when he decided to dock his boat and come ashore.

Whenever the seafarer disembarked, he would always cup a bit of soil in one hand and a seashell in the other, as if to help convince himself that the ground beneath his feet was as firm and real as the ocean. It usually took a few days on land for the feeling of bobbing up and down across the waves to subside. He would awaken in the middle of the night confused as to where he was before remembering that he had docked. The boat had become more familiar than any home he had ever known.

After rubbing the soil between the palms of his hands, the seafarer would collect bits of wood to build a fire that he hoped would solicit company. He had learned that with the help of an open flame, the smell of salt and fish that clung to him could be made appetizing. Appealing. He used what he had to his advantage, and always offered to share the bounty of fish he had caught that day with passerby. He reeled company in with his fish, so they would stay long enough to listen to his stories. He didn’t usually have a particular story in mind when he started, but would simply allow his mind to craft what it could from the light of the flickering flames, just as it would discern the shapes of clouds during the day or stars at night. He allowed his mind to conjure men and women made of smoke, dancing in the air.

That night, he told the story of a woman. Disappearing, disintegrating. Transforming from human to smoke before his eyes. A phoenix. He tried in vain to catch that smoke, and hold it in his hands, as it made its climb towards the heavens. But, he couldn’t. So, simply breathing her in had to suffice before she was gone entirely.

From the Journal of the Seafarer:

His love for her is like the ocean. Deep in some places, shallow in others, as he draws himself inward towards the shoreline so that all she can see and hear and taste and touch is him before the waves are abruptly pulled away.

But there is rhythm here. Inevitability.

Moods and tides governed by celestial objects forever crossing in their skies. Order in the chaos. Enough to know that this ocean will, “Never refuse to stop kissing her shoreline no matter how many times it is swept away.”

No matter how many times she is left salty. Stumbling. Gasping for breath. Peeling herself up from the sand just so that another tidal wave can come and knock her off her feet once more. And even though she knows what’s coming, she knows what to expect, it is still “discovering the ocean after years of puddle jumping.”

So she steadies herself. Holds her breath. Closes her eyes. Lets him in. She does not refuse his embrace. No. Instead, she allows the waves to keep tumbling over her, softening all of her sharper edges.

But make no mistake. She does not allow this to idly give way to erosion.

She allows this so that she, like the sea glass, can continue to endure.

The seafarer did not want to keep leaving the woman that he loved. He just could not manage to hold space in his heart for her and the ocean all at once. The ocean would always be too vast for his hands to hold, and perhaps that is why he loved her so much.

The ocean never expected anything of him, and perhaps he wanted to live his life untethered; leave his heart untouched.