On Sailing…
As many do and as many do not know, one of my favorite books is Moby Dick by the stellar Lincoln Tunnel tollbooth collector Herman Melville. It is a book.
I read it during a particularly calm and boring time in my life, living in New Orleans and trying everything I could to stay away from my small and Tourette-afflicted roommate. Maybe it was the sheer escapism of the time, or perhaps I did love this classic for all it was worth, but either way, it injected the romanticism of the salt water deep, deep in my drought ridden veins. It was 9 years ago, and I still long for time on the sea.
And I don’t fuck around. When I say long for, you know this body means he longs for some shit.
I believe in all that time, i have only seen the ocean once. In a little place called Galveston, Texas.
Don’t let this nonsense fool you. This was a dumpy beach of a beach. Pardon me, but if this beach were a lady, she would spend all of her time on internet dating sites. I mean no disrespect to internet dating sites or to the, I’m sure, lovely hamlet of Galveston, I can only call them as I see them.
Regardless, I still remember wanting to be swept away into the expanse.
Sea travel, as i see it, is not dominion. I do not fantasize over it in an attempt to control and hold sway.
I see it as a very taoist communion over the untamable. I see it as a staring contest with eternity.
I see it as badass.
Ever since I read Melville’s mad ravings on how to track and kill God, part of my mind has been dedicated to one day learn to sail. It is grudgingly, though appropriately described as a …. ugh… fancy. I hold no aspirations to find a career or find glory in such a quest, I merely need to do it one day.
I need to have that feeling, however it will turn out. I need to be cast away to the mercy of the unimaginable immensity of the cold, cold sea, struggling to hold on to life and identity upon a floating piece of wood.
That sounds like pure freedom.
That sounds like pure release.
I have not as yet done this thing. Sadly. I have just been looking up the price one might pay to learn how to sail in the heart of the country, and I fear I may still be a year or so away from affording it.
It should be known that I have done other things to prepare.
I have spent an embarrassing amount of time reading up on appropriate sailing knots, and have, at times, carried around twine with me to practice.
Like a fucking idiot.
Ha! But laugh not at me. For one day I SHALL find myself upon a stolid plank of detritus, casting myself into the gaping maw of infinity. Floaties on my arms and madness in my eyes, I will lift my chin and acknowledge that which is greater than me. And gain comfort knowing that I will have found the strength to acknowledge it.
