Paddling backwards & forwards & backwards again.
In the middle of a vast, unchartered segment of the ocean lies a small wooden rowboat commandeered by a leathery, faceless sailor. Nobody knows how it got to where it is, or what it is doing there at all. We don’t know where it’s going.
We’re not sure if the sailor knows either.
We’re unsure of how it survived, with its wooden hull continuously drenched by the saline waves that it calls home, permeating every fibre of its body and urging it to break down, degrade, give up. The sailors deep wrinkles, sun-speckled forearms, calloused hands belie season after season of hard paddling.
And when a particularly large wave crashes into it - the interior floods, swirling around liquids of indistinguishable origin around the man’s feet, some which lay on the surface like an oily murky residue that cling to the exposed skin of the sailors ankles.
But drop by drop, the water drains out, and the beating sun dries the surface of the patterned wood that was once hidden deep beneath in its murky soup. And so it dries - now covered with a new sheen of grease, oils, salt and damp - yet appearing the same as it did last week, last month last year… appearing.
Forwards, and backwards and forwards again. And the sailor keeps paddling.
So, when the large storms manifest, with waves the size that no other sailor can begin to fathom, and the rocking lurches him to the edge of the boat’s skeletal frame, with a screaming, howling wind that pierces ears, supplicating him to give up, give in, let himself fall to the depths of the oceans belly…
Forward and backwards and forwards on the paddles. And the boat keeps moving.
And when all is still - and the ocean appears as though it is not an abyss of confusion, chaos and mania, but a clear, lucid sheen of uniform glass, when it would seem that the sailor can place his straw hat to shade his face and allow his skin to soak in the beauty of a cloudless, reverent sky…he grits his teeth and shakes the comfort out of his mind.
Pushes back and forth and back again.
There is no time to waste he mumbles to himself - the sea is large and exciting and unexplored. And even though the destination is unknown to him, he feels his stomach light up with the same excitement as when he saw his first shooting star as a young boy. Or earthquake. Or eclipse. This journey is his own, and although that pierces his weathered heart with loneliness, he mends it with the thought of sharing his experience of the sea with his fellow sailors when he reaches the shore. Wherever that may be.
So he keeps paddling.
All while on this same boat.
...or is it the same boat?
The endless soup of the mind is both comforting and stressful to every sailor. The only thing that keeps us going on and not be swallowed by the abyss is to keep striving for greater things - to learn, to grow, to build… to paddle.
And so, I’ve decided to write.
I don't think I'm particularly good at it. The last piece of structured writing I did was when I was 15. I won an award for a poem - something about a buddhist monk deep in prayer - and was invited to read it to the whole year, and subsequently shoved it into an unnamed desk drawer.
I’ll write for myself I thought - who better to tame the oceans but me?
So if not for anyone else, why write here? Why release my thoughts to the cold void, uncertain if what I say will hold any meaning?
For my fellow sailors on the shore. To get them excited, to let them know that their tribulations aren’t just their own, to connect - even if just to experience that with one other sailor. For the ones that might have not made the same voyage as me, or who have not made their maiden one. To explain to the sailor who only had to cross arctic seas what its like to have the desert winds blow against his sail, and for the water to be so thick that it offers no refreshment when splashed upon his face. For the sailor who’s struggled time and time again with unfavourable winds, to show him the best way to sail and seek the pockets of fast moving air that will take him home.
Some stories will be like tiny anchovies, barely noticeable on the surface, and others will be as grand as a giant squid with a silhouette that dwarfs my skeletal wooden vessel. Some will talk of the beauty of a still morning, others about the chaos of a storm, and others still about the best way to patch a hole in the base of a rickety boat.
So i’ll write about biology, science, dogs, physics and literature. things that excite me, and things that might excite a fellow sailor on the shore.
Because whilst the ocean is ever changing and dissimilar, they all are made up of the same fundamental billions of minuscule, drops.
And besides, if nothing else, at least this prevent me from flooding my whatsapp group chats.
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