The Wine Dark Sea.

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11/20/2023

Exploring the ship last night, I wandered on a promenade deck to a little crook at the back of the ship, where you could watch the water funnel out in bright, twisting tunnels. Looking over the cliff of a ship like that, these lines always come to mind: “On the edge of safety/That’s where I find peace/Where the black sands/Meet the raging sea.” I sit down with my legs beside me, and lean my head against the rail. Behind me, the cruise ship – a floating testament to everything that is humanity, with its laughter, desire, jealousy, greed, joy, love, hate, determination, oppressed and oppressor. In front of me, everything that humanity has no choice, no control over; the absolute depths of the ocean, the endless churning of the universe; death. There is as much mystery and wonder there as in the distant galaxies, and we stare down into the wine dark sea with the same ignorance, and same strange tug towards oblivion, as we stare up at the stars. That tug tries to tell you – we are one and the same, that endless black and the blinding lights behind me. Each one of us, a disoriented slice of all that is, made conscious and awkwardly stumbling around in search of solid footing in an overwhelming world. Maybe that’s why some part of us – or at least some part of me – always feels tempted to hurl myself into that churning abyss, that all-consuming bosom of the universe. The wine dark sea; the drunken, overwhelming state of being, where despite all the bad decisions that come from losing control, often also show us some of our deepest truths (“in wine there is truth.”) I could dive into that endlessness, lose myself in it, in every sense of the phrase. But no; it won’t be up to me when it comes, I’ve never for a second wanted it to be. It will come to me just as life did; without my input, without my calculations, sucking me back into the endless tapestry just as suddenly as it spit me out.  


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