Seeking

I'm sitting happily in the cockpit of an old but seaworthy vessel. There's a strong breeze that first hits my bare left foot then my chest and cocked right knee at about the same moment. Each gust adjusts our angle slightly; a perturbation fixed by gentle correction to the rudder... too much reaction is worse than too little in terms of keeping a smooth course and keeping things from flying off the shelves. The things are stowed, of course, but there's always some loose potential projectile that has been momentarily forgotten.

..until it reminds us that it should have been put away by clattering onto the wooden floorboards.

The sea is heaving gently, swooshing along the hull.

It glowed with the luminous objections of tiny sea life all night. Minute explosions in haunting blue-green announcing their disturbance like a million infinitesimal "hey! Watch it!"s in the water.

Or maybe they celebrate? Those tiny plankton who enjoy precious little novelty in their watery existence. I think I'll try to see them partying at the passing of my hull, my hands, as they are somersaulting in the turbulence of my wake.

Do they glow unseen by day? Or do they, like us, have times when stress impacts them in wildly different ways?

My own stress is lost here at sea. The endless blue horizon and fluffy clouds give no visual boundary and I find that comforting in the same way that a desert road stretching into the heat shimmer landscape soothes my aching need to see. it. all.

I'll never see it all, this beautiful ball of water and landscapes. The Earth is too large for me to see, let alone know, in detail.

Somehow that knowledge comforts me and compels me simultaneously. With no chance at "success" by completion, I can relax into success by execution which is a better way to succeed anyway.

And so I continue to look, to see how the water off the shores of Mozambique compares to the seas in California, Mexico, Croatia, or Spain.

The differences are subtle.
I'll have to look deeper.Læs mere