Day 34

5 October, 2003

Finally Sunday! Not a great nights sleep, although not as bad as a couple of nights ago. Sunny, windy, low sixties, the clouds on the horizon make it look like a possible interesting afternoon.

The fact that one lives cheek by jowl with beauty, on a ship, raises a curious feeling. What does one do with beauty after perceiving it? As it will be coming to an end, I am greedy and want to consume or incorporate the beauty somehow. To feel it part of me so that it can’t be removed. But we all well know the truth of it’s nature. I find I have to become a bit off hand if I don’t want to just spend my days gazing fondly on the sea. A year of London was, maybe, too removed from the ocean (although Richmond Park and Hampton Court provided bountiful beauty close by). Between the week in Cornwall and this trip, I am almost o’ded. I think the relationship to the sea available in Santa Monica is best, but I can’t think of many other assets S.M. has, that are hard to find anywhere else. Indeed, I have felt this same conundrum as to beauty when in Paris. It might have something to do with the consciousness of the limits in time. That old truth, if I knew I was dying tonight, I could even find El Segundo is heaven!

Took an hour after a steak frites lunch to sit in the sun on the forecastle. A truly blessed place. The other is the flying bridge and there at 2230 before going to bed, I watch the moon and Mars, fighting their way through spotty clouds, as I try to pick up any radio. Through all the static, I think I hear something about Israel attacking Syria! But it can’t be too serious, because as the BBC faded into obscurity I heard the start of the comedy panel show “Sorry, I Haven't a Clue”. A show I enjoyed very much on Radio 4 in Kingston. It is of the old fashion variety, and can be side splittingly funny. Oh well. I think one of the particularly joyous aspects of this ship, as sole passenger, is the complete quiet and solitude one wants when communing with nature (well I do, anyway) is so abundantly available.

Sometime in the wee hours tonight, we will start adjusting our course southward so as to conform to the great circular route. No ships for a hundred miles in any direction, still. We passed Hawaii many of hundreds of miles south of us sometime today. American radio comes popping up here and there on my dial searches, oh my, how embarrassing.

The Kirabase are fond of the US because they don’t like the Japanese, who were driven out of the British colony by the US. They provide crews for Japanese fishing boats and claim the Japanese masters are notoriously cruel, including corporal punishment and demeaning verbal haranguing. But then they say the Japanese elements of the crew are usually recruited from prison.

The clocks go ahead another hour tonight. I sometimes think I am suffering a little from boat lag!

Previous/Next