How far a body can drive on a windless day.
I try to imagine, my head rising
above the ocean as a lonely swimmer, eye level 15-cm. I need that imagination
because in reality my head behind the monitor is not moving at all.
The Pacific.
One moment silent and calm, the following exploding in a cloud
of foam. Always fear of a heavy downpour turning up out of nothing and
hitting with full force.
In the evening evening the air is so quiet I can
hear my breathing the other I listen to the screech of the birds, nesting
with thousands on the little coral islands, flying above me.
I think about Frisbie who could save his four children in an hurricane by
binding them up to the branches of tamanu trees, flexible enough to bend with
the wind until the gale is over.
I am too happy to be concerned about lacking in human connections. I fall in
love with a porpoise following me on my lonely trip of thousands of
kilometers. I remember the first moment I hit upon him and the tender feelings
are coming back up again. A long and curious friendship started. Each night I
felt a ravenous longing, I hung around coming up to nothing, just longing for
that reliable voice. The conflict of taking distance from my porpoise took a
week. Loneliness is back and I am happy.
Sometimes a ship comes aboard. The shock of a confrontation after a long time
of silence makes me drunk, the excitement of talking and listening to a human
voice. Long ago I decided not being interested in mass of people, but one
single voice sounds like music in my ears.
I pace up and down on the beach until dark ann write in my logbook: I have
made a fool of myself, I had almost sold my soul for a soothing voice. Back
on my own I quote the phrase of Holderlin's Hyperion:"Oh yes, once I searched
burning of desire for fraternization with people."
Also here on the pacific my daily routine is ordered like a repeated pattern
ending in coffee on the beach and reading at night. Even though time doesn't
matter anymore I count carefully days months and years forced by the need
keeping in touch with the outside world.
It is a beautiful morning and nothing warns me about an insecure future which
will caught me in a few hours.
The wind suddenly reaches gale
force and cuts my throat. I gasp for air. When I give way to this force of
nature it will be the end of my fascinating tour. I try to shout but even
though I feel the muscles in my throat in motion I cannot produce any sound.
The next moment I realize physical effort isn't important for the situation I
am in now. I close my ears for the interfering noises around me. This is a
moment of solitude.
The red coral are rising up above white beaches are of a dazzling beauty, it
hurts my eyes. It is like looking at a movie with too many pictures to observe
in one go. My head burns and is swelling up, I am roaming the ocean realizing
it is all my creation.
Roving from island to island that is not like an adventure it is much
more, it is the representation of my life. The weeks I spend on Suwarrow
physically a wreck are the mainspring for going on
with my life. I don't want to go back to my past that is where I nearly
escaped.
Even though I get a lot of pleasure out of the calmness of the pacific I am
time after time so proud of each island I hit upon that I want to fix
everything up too hasty. Sometimes I can't recognize my own face because it
is scarlet and gleams of foam and rain. On a strange and ironic way I have
imposed the speed and busyness I wanted to escape on each of my timeless
islands.
Swimming in the Pacific I feel something brushing against my body and I know
if it is a shark I will never get out of here.
Robert