I started filling the pages of this journal on the third day in the passage. I struggled in finding enough comfort to write while I adapted to every movement on the boat on the ever changing surface of the ocean. The first days are always a transition.

What follows are thoughts coming from my journal, quotes from the many books read and entries of the logbook I kept using my Inreach messenger. This device kept me in contact with loved ones and also allowed to keep a real-time tracking of my progress. Report of my past trips are still available on this page: https://share.garmin.com/sytranquility

Alone on a boat in the ocean I was still able to check on the people I love and they could see how I was doing (sailing wise). I also had access to the “weather council” a group of trustworthy people that kept an eye on me while feeding weather forecast and suggestions.

Toward the Azores

I left the St.Marys River in Georgia around noon on June 25. Light wind from WSW wasn’t the perfect forecast to lift anchor and go. It came the moment where I had to leave, no matter what. Land was keeping me as a prisoner and sometimes you just need that extra push start to something. Ocean journeys are no different.

The perk of this rushed departure is to start the long journey with an easy sail out of the inland waters, pushed by the ebbing tide along the placid turns of the river and out of Fernandina Inlet. I could even have a video call with Sara while the signal was still around. The downside is to endure few miles of bobbing around once out in the ocean swell as the light winds were not exerting sufficient pressure on my sails.

While I was adapting to the new reality the breeze increased and took me away from all the madness, complication and preoccupations of land pushing me toward the Gulf Stream.

Day 1 – 75nm covered- 3247nm to Faial – light WSW winds – sky overcast

Tranquility is doing good now that winds picked up. The tank I built is leaking. It is a bit upsetting as I spent a ton of time and money on it. The temptation of going into “shoulda, coulda oughta“ modality is strong but I let it go. It has no use to complain. Not anymore.

Sometimes doing less is doing more, and I tried to do more than necessary during this umpteenth boat refit. I tried to caulk the lower seam of the bulkhead where the water seeps out on the cabin sole, but of course it was not the best solution. When I am on a port tack the starboard locker gets wet and vice versa. I have to live with it.

I left with 250 liters of fresh water, so I can’t say I am in an emergency. The journey goes on and I have to care even more for the water I have left. Alone on board I already had a plan of not taking many showers.

Day3 – 104nm last 24h – Log 275nm- Moderate breeze WSW- on W wall of gulf stream- sunny – ocean very blue

I don’t usually eat a lot during the first days of an ocean journey. I try my best all the time, cooking dishes I can eat bit by bit as I feel like in a constant snacking mode. Now that I am far away from the coast what I do is sleeping a bit longer, reading a lot, sometimes watching a movie. 

When I go to sleep I set an alarm to wake me up every 30 minutes so I can do a quick check on deck before going back to bed. I nap a lot during the day too in an effort not to be sleepy at night. Tranquility seems to take well care of herself as the windvane self steering keep her on course.

I had the plan of moving N aided by the Gulf Stream which flows steadily on a NNW course and to then cut WNW toward the Azores more or less at the height of Virginia, maybe even as far north as Delaware.

Persistent high pressure just off the Carolinas coast are making me me rethink this idea. A maze of puffing winds and squalls keep me busy without offering the reward of great progress toward destination. They are never too violent but I have to constantly ride them and when they are gone I am left with no winds in a confused sea.

Day 6 – 59nm last 24hrs – log 508nm – pushed SE by a squall line – broad reach – waiting for steady SWrlies

Liminal dreaming is very intense thanks to this schedule constant falling asleep and waking up. I am experimenting particularly with hypnagogia, the transition between wakefulness and sleep when bizarre and often insightful dreamy images appear. In this state dreaming doesn’t have the narrative character of the REM phase: It feels like a picture rather than a movie.

The journey proceeds well, I try to bend my mind to the tasks that keep me comfortable while Tranquility is sailing nicely and on course. I get focused on resting without trying to do much.

It feels like a meditation retreat, with no sangha and no masters, just my mind. 

I realize I have the eyes bigger than my stomach. Some of the food I bought is rotting away as I don’t eat it fast enough, I don’t have very much appetite now. I set on a 2 meals per day routine.

Today I dunk the drone in the water, it happened at take off, so stupidly and abruptly that I could not avoid laughing and ask myself if that was a dream. So long for the drone. At take off the machine made an unexpected jerk back hitting the windpilot lines spinning out of control before crashing on the wind generator mast and dive in the ocean sinking rapidly some thousand meters underwater. So long to my aerial photography aspirations. I will stick to writing.

The wind, salt and sun are disinfecting me and the boat from land grime, dust and superfluous gadgets. My mind goes to the dehydrator too but for contrast it seems to be growing to embrace many parts, soaking and expanding in self examination. Many memories, ideas, doubts, any class of thoughts really pass through me as waves. I have little use for them but for acknowledging their presence.

Winds came back in spouts. During the early morning wind changed direction by 180 degrees already a couple of times, before settling on ESE and then gradually turning to S. As the wind increases the washing machine motion is coming back slowly, but I can handle it in return for good speed.

Wind is back since last night. Tranquility leaves just an ephemeral wake behind. I always found this image very poetic. Maybe leaving just a vanishing wake is the best way to sail through life, as we are but a temporary turbulence in the universe.

Day 9 – 79nm last 24hrs – Log 787nm – en route to Azores proceeding N of Depression 5

Depression 5 formed not far from my position, just to the SW. It is giving me a good sling shot effect to the NE bringing NW winds that propels me all afternoon and night. It is strengthening and now it’s been called Tropical Storm Edouard.

As Edouard is passing to the S of me the wind backs to WSW and I struggle to keep my heading to Azores. I have poled out the jib to starboard and secured the mainsail to port side. It seems to work well. The fading winds are keeping waves manageable with limited rolling.

“Modern neuroscience may show us that in fact the opposite is true—our true potential can only be realized through periods of doing nothing.“

Andrew Smart, Autopilot: the Art and Science of Doing Nothing

It is becoming very hard to reach 100 nautical miles in 24hr which is for me the bare minimum for a decent log entry. I should not be surprised. winds are usually scarce this time of the year in this area of the North Atlantic.

My mind can’t avoid to imagine how difficult it was for caravels and other ocean ships back in the age of discovery. They must have spent long days becalmed, stuck in the sargassum sea or in the Azores high, drifting under the weight of barnacles encrusted hulls.

Tranquility is an older design but her light air performance are not terrible compared to heavier cruising yachts. She has proved many times to be a good little vessel.

There is another downside of going so slow. The windvane is giving me trouble. When the boat speed falls below 2.5 knots the pressure on the underwater blade is not enough to engage and it creates a little play in the mechanism that aligns it with the wind blade. The movement of the stern on the ocean swell creates just enough momentum that the cogs slip and get misaligned. When that happen I can’t have the self-steering system behave properly.

With so little wind this mishap keeps recurring. It only takes the right wave and the two parts of the self steering get misaligned. When that happens I have to hang from the stern, push back one cog held in place by a spring, and jiggle the water blade tills it’s back in alignment. It is unnerving. The waves interfere with the rotation of the blade and I am afraid of falling overboard while precariously perked over the transom.

”The nocturnal brain is a Penelope unraveling the cloth of meaning diligently woven during the day.”

Olga Tokarczuk, Flights

The weather council communicated that more calm is expected for the next two days. I am not as concerned as before. For how much I want to arrive to destination, there is a convenient feeling about being in the middle of nowhere not doing so much. I am not racing, I don’t have a client to please and I am enjoying my time onboard. Time has ceased to be scarce, which makes me tackle serious reading. I nap constantly and in short bursts, still I can experience many dreams. 

Day 12 – 89Nm last 24Hrs – LOG 1042Nm – becalmed

I also enjoy listening to music coming from the new speakers I installed when I built the hard-dodger. Dancing is the only activity I enjoy as a way to keep a decent muscular tone. And to be silly and feel alive to the point of being breathless and sweaty. It’s either that I am totally out of shape or that it is a really good work out. Hard to decide which is which. Middle of the Atlantic summer heat also plays a part.

To keep things interesting I can’t just constantly listen to music or music will lose its soothing quality. If I read too much I get distracted. 

Writing poses its challenges too. I find it difficult to type on a moving boat. It is ok for short entries but it becomes extremely tiring to type for a long time, as I have to constantly keep my body upright despite all the acceleration it is subjected to. And I can’t type while lying down. Note to self: devise a writing station for ocean sailing. 

I just had the best experience of the trip so far. All the lights were off on Tranquility, even navigation lights. While in the safety of the cockpit I raised my head to the sky and started to observe the stars. The breeze was pushing the boat along nicely at 4 knots on a flat sea and for one time Tranquility’s heading was perfectly en route with the imaginary line that connects where I am with the Azores. 

The air is fresh and perfect: Tickling cool air on my bare skin, no bugs, no noise, no worries, just an infinte universe unfolding in front of my eyes and bioluminescence sparking in green dots all around Tranquility’s wake. I don’t have to do anything special to experience this moment. I don’t need to power a device, to open the pages of a book or to use any mind altering substance. The Universe above, the waves of the vast ocean and the life it contains are the perfect extension of my mind.

I walk to the bow to see the portion of the sky covered by the jib. There behind the canvas wing the milky way waited for me, rich and clear.

Suddenly two small dolphins out of nowhere arrive to join the party. I hear them jump in front of the bow and the blows from their spout. They produce a bioluminescent wake underwater and disappear as unexpectedly as they came. I have not seen a single dolphin in maybe a week or more and here, maybe a hundred miles north of Bermuda, on a flat Atlantic Ocean I realize that a single hour with my head up in the stars was the experience of a lifetime.

If all the time, money and effort spent were to experience that few hours with the head gazing at our beautiful and bizarre universe on a perfect sailing night, then I can affirm it was all worth it.

Of course moments like this happen constantly if we have the ability to forget our hindrances and desire and petty little problems and just face the wonderful miracle unfolding around us. For me getting as far as possible from everything did the trick, in collaboration with a lot of effort, tears, sweat and exchanges between in and out.

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2

Finally I completed the editing of a small film of my single handed passage from Puerto Lindo in Panama to Saint Simons Island in Georgia, USA.

It is my longest solo sailing to date and I look forward to more soon. I want to thank my good friend Meta to provide the soundtrack with her body and soul.

I described the journey in two posts on this blog, part 1 and part 2.

I hope you enjoy the video, please subscribe to my YouTube channel for more videos:

Some 10 years ago I moved from a life where I was transforming reality with the use of my mind and language to one where this transformation mostly comes from the use of my hands. Today I don’t see any difference in using these two apparently separate tools as ways to learn and mess with reality.

Sailing taught me that the coordination between hands and mind is a learning tool that can greatly improve my health and knowledge of the world around me.

This is the reason why I decided to write about materials, fabrication techniques and night dreams all in one post. I hope I won’t create too much confusion in the reader by putting together so many things, but for me it is a way to synthesize what is happening around me in this very moment.

Lately I busied myself working with a particular material: Fiberglass. I am building a hard dodger, a structure that goes on top of the companionway to protect the entrance of the boat and the cockpit from spray coming from the bow and from rain.

There is another common and definitely more evocative term to describe this structure: The sprayhood, a space sheltered from the fury of the ocean or from its deceitful and odd slaps. Sprayhoods or dodgers commonly seen on sailboats are made out of canvas draped around a metal piping structure that can be lowered and raised according to need.

The hardness in the name of the one I am concocting comes from the construction method I am adopting which will bring to a permanent sturdy structure. The construction method is called glass-fiber reinforced polymer sandwich, or more commonly GRP (Glass Reinforced Plastic).

There will be a post about my new hard dodger with its design and building challenges once it is fully complete, here I want to go somewhere else.

Fiberglass contains the word glass, but it’s not exactly what we usually refer to with said word. What is glass anyway? 

According to Wikipedia it is a transparent amorphous solid based on the chemical compound silica (a.k.a. quartz, a.k.a. sand). Fiberglass is actually formed by glass strands randomly flattened into a sheet or woven together into a fabric cloth. The weaving technique decides the weight and the direction of the fibers, both important factors in defining the stiffness and other properties of what we want to create. Glass-Reinforced Plastic is composite material which come from the marriage of a fiberglass cloth and oil based resin (polyester, vinylester or epoxy) that curing over the fabric forms a plastic matrix that constrains the fibers in the set direction. 

Almost everything man made is a composite of fiber and matrix. Reinforced concrete is the marriage of cement and a steel armature and even papier-mâché is the union of glue and paper.

I have been practicing working with fiberglass since I started living on boats. The very first project I was involved with was tabbing the wooden bulkhead of a head (the boat’s bathroom) on a large sailing boat. The wood had rotted at its encounter with the bilge due to water leaking from the shower pan. Tabbing means to join two surfaces meeting in a sort of perpendicular way with one or more strips of fiberglass and resin forming a permanent bond between the two surfaces. At that time I was working under the supervision of Pedro the boatyard carpenter who was working on different projects on the 51footer and thought I could handle such a simple task. 

That small and simple project opened my eyes to the uses and possibilities offered by fiberglass. Since then I fixed cracked keels, permanently closed thru hulls holes,  fabricated slant gutters to drain cockpit lockers doors up to building a sailing nesting dinghy of my own design an this hard dodger now. 

I appreciate the strenght that this material offers, its light weight and its resilience and the fact that you can create objects of almost any shape. I especially adore its impermeability to water, because I live on top of it and I prefer when water stays outside.

Other than fabricating with fiberglass and preparing for an ocean journey I have been busy hosting Online Social Dreaming events for the past three weeks, connecting with brave and generous participants from different countries in the world. I speak more about Social Dreaming in my website Psychology of Sailing, if you want to learn more about it. Here I will offer a very brief description of this technique for the purposes of this post.

The so called Social Dreaming Matrix is a space where participants safely share night dreams, as well as free associations emerging from dreams. They tell dreams, listen to dreams, look for images that connect them borrowing from cultural symbols and artifacts and from everyday life experience, letting their imagination run free, in the tradition of free association introduced by Sigmund Freud. If something reminds me of something else, no matter how weird or out of context, it means that there is a connection worth exploring.

In this context dreams tell nothing about the dreamer, they become instead a common story that circulates in the room, as if the dreamer was only a vehicle that deposits the dream in this imaginary space called the Matrix.

After the first fase the gathering comes back for a discussion about the content emerged and attempts hypothesis about possible connections with their own life and with society. Making sense of dream images allows the grounding to a more conscious cognitive level.

 What do dreams and fiberglass have in common? They are both ways of transforming reality, which in a way it is a learning and growth process.

Imagine that your brain (or mind if you prefer) is constantly working on processing sensory information, solving problems and making new neural pathways.

Assume for a second that we are awash in an ever flowing river of information (cognitive, emotional, sensory) from the environment and of internal use (control and sensory feedback circuits).

Some of those signals will be received and decoded by higher hierarchic systems, some others will be missed because we don’t have the correct hardware to receive them, we are out of tune and or our bandwidth is full. An even smaller percentage of what we receive will reach the consciousness while the greater part is processed on a subsconscious level, because it is economically convenient, we don’t have the software to process it, and or it is so frightening or paralyzing that it would interfere with our basic day-to-day survival routine. 

Fantasize again with me that all this rich information is finally processed by our mind, when it is convenient, which is basically when we sleep and our mind has the time and metabolic energy to run this complex calculations. In other words, when we are not busy directing and analyzing our own flow of thoughts.

Due to some not yet fully understood neurochemical patterns and brainwave organization we spend on average two hours every night running these simulations which is a particular way of learning from experience. Now consider that, if we only count human dreams, there are some 7 billion minds busy dreaming every night. What we do with this immense learning activity? 

In the past dreams were regarded as important ways to make decision, in many cases were thought to be the voice of gods, or accepted as a way to make decisions for the social good as in many indigenous cultures. In our current society, as science has not yet fully understood dreams, they are often considered a weird happening not worth much pondering.

However not too long ago a guy named Gordon Lawrence from England devised the peculiar technique of Social Dreaming to explore dreams and put them to the service of a collective who shared the interest. This technique steers clear from the use of dream interpretations and other theory-driven approaches to dream analysi, and it looks at dreams as they are.

During the matrix participants spin the threads coming from dreams and observe knots that describe patterns. In the reflection time this preparatory work on the threads is then assembled into a fabric that hopefully would make sense, having a certain grade of “solidity” to our own critical thinking, exactly like a rug or fiberglass.  In this Social Dreaming becomes a practice, a practice in paying attention to the signals that emerge from our unconscious mind and in connecting them with signals coming from other people’s night activity. Interpretation and the personal histories of the participants are interference when we look at the pure signal coming from dreams, the cognitive data generated during our state of maximum relaxation.

The structure of the Matrix we are living in could be described by the properties of the fabric we weave during the day and during the night and how we assemble this thread into a stable pattern. What we want to create, exactly like a fiberglass project or a Persian rug, depends on the design and on the desires of the people reunited to work together. The technology of Social Dreaming  is a discussion where the opinion and ideas of the others are assembled in a bigger picture using the threads that come from a high level learning process that is common to all human being, the dream world. The practice of social dreaming train us to use dream threads to weave patterns of reality.

All those metaphors comes from a symbolic persistent connection between life and weaving. Ancient Greek and Romans venerated the Fates (Parcae in Latin – Moirai in Greek), three old women who controlled the fate of human beings and were on a higher hierarchical level even than gods. They were depicted as weavers and their activity on the spinning wheel decided life and death of humans and regulated what we call fortune.

The verb fabricate also belong to the textile world to put together diverse parts to create something bigger. 

What is reality if not the fabric that is constantly spun by the action of the universe? 

Everything can be seen as a pattern of connections, from the infinitely small like atoms and molecules bound together to the infinitely big structures of outer space. As Homo sapiens we have immense power in creating reality (up to a limit), yet we depend on the elements made available to us by the action of higher level transformations. 

I enjoy transforming reality. The hard dodger briefly described earlier was nothing but an idea developed from imagination and it is now a solid reality that changed the profile of my boat. Transforming reality  happens in many different ways, from designing and making a new structure for my boat to comfort a friend that has lost  a parent and cannot touch her body, to pet and play with the cat that come to visit me now and then, to organize Sociale Dreaming events..

I enjoy messing with dreams. Learning how to use the threads that come from night dreams is an enriching activity that is helping me fabricating new thoughts for myself and for whom I am in connection with.

What is reality if not a shared dream?

Let’s Dream Together…

News have been scant from this medium lately. When so much time passes between blog entries it becomes hard to give reports that would not feel overwhelming for both the writer and the reader. I will try my best to fill this gap as my desire to put out thoughts about the life I am living has not yet faded.

I admit it is a little embarrassing. Where do I pick up telling a story that see me changed so much?

During the past six months I moved from America to Asia, from being married to single, from working on sailboats to motor yachts, from a static, sleepy, stupefied social and political atmosphere to the boiling and brutal social unrest of the Hong Kong protests. Last but not least, I moved from the quiet of Panamanian and Southern US coasts to the vertical, noisy and crammed Hong Kong or, as it brands itself, Asia’s World City.

Truth is that all these changes gave me a lot of things to deal with. I have been extremely busy, to an unprecedented level. This might be one of the reasons of this silence.

With very little time off I struggled to find moments for myself, the necessary empty space where thoughts and ideas emerge. Being physically tired imposes also to rest in those hours where it could be possible to write.

I will end the excuses here. I simply did not write, which is also ok.

Barge Life

Let me start with what I am doing here in Hong Kong. I would spare you clumsy attempt to find a job title for my occupation. It is simply impossible.

The work consists in doing whatever is needed to keep a fleet of motor yachts in good working order, taking them out on charters, deliveries or private missions, but also taking care of the infrastructure that make this possible.

The vessels range from a 40m superyacht to small dinghies, including houseboats, jet skis and other floating objects. The center of operations lies on a 40 meter long steel barge docked inside Kwun Tong Typhoon Shelter. A Typhoon Shelter is an expanse of water enclosed by sea walls where many type of vessels are moored. As you already guessed, these waters are subjected to Typhoons during the summer season and there are many artificial shelters to keep vessels and its occupants safe.

The vessels anchored inside the Typhoon Shelters are protected not only from major storms but also from the more frequent and damaging action of swell and wakes coming from the busy Victoria Harbour, the deep and protected waters in the heart of Hong Kong. In the relative calm of the shelter we are able to perform various projects as well as providing docking, water and electricity to many vessels.

The barge is also equipped with a workshop and all the necessary tools and supplies to maintain and upgrade yachts and boats, including a big ass crane and other exciting equipment, plus a less organised collection of junk acquired by cannibalising other vessels, leftovers of a failed restaurant business, and the odd junk collected from the street. Somehow a heavy wooden sculpture of an elephant found its way to the barge, and now embellish the chillout zone.

I live together with three other people in the cramped quarters of a luxurious 131ft Superyacht which is moored alongside the barge, and is very rarely used. Everyday I wake up and as soon as I step out of the yacht I am on the workplace. Between ten to fifteen workers come everyday to the barge. Many countries are represented on this floating office: Hong Kong, Russia, Senegal, New Zealand, Italy, Holland, Philippines, Argentina.

Unexpected move

As usual the road that took me here was never planned in advance. Back during last Christmas and New Year’s I was living a very confused and uncertain moment of my life. It was then that I received a call from a distant friend.

Roberto, whom you met briefly on this blog, announced that he was working in Hong Kong, where he had set in motion and expanded the operations I just briefly described. The company was growing fast and as the snowball rolled downhill he was in need of fresh blood and sweat to keep it under control.

I was looking for a job, although my research was mostly focused around the Atlantic Ocean basin. Several options popped out, and between all of them the Hong Kong one appeared to be the most uncertain on the table. It sat there as more pressing concerns were unraveling in front of my path.

The job offer left me smitten, a feeling that I observed happen in similar ways during other moments of change in my history. I knew close to nothing about Hong Kong, nor I ever had interest in exploring this country. The only connection I could find with Hong Kong was that Tranquility’s sails were made here, and shipped all the way to Fairhaven, MA.

As soon as my obligations on US soil ended the curiosity about this part of the world grew, and moving to Hong Kong had no reason to be put on hold.

Shock and Awe

Hong Kong proved to be welcoming, unequal, creative, loud, expensive, safe, polluted. I enjoyed many views from the ocean. The cyberpunk skyline, and the hilly green shoulders offer a great contrast. The city is overwhelming, but in a gentle way. Transportation is excellent, eating out and experience in itself.

At first I enjoyed the anonymity of walking by the street without being noticed, meeting new people, exploring different corners by foot. Later I engaged in more social activity. I started to teach Tarot Card reading weekly and participanting to a Writer’s Group. Little by little I met interesting people from all over the world and that for one time had nothing to do with boats.

Almost as soon as I arrived the infamous protests begin. The Hong Kong I am experiencing is unprecedented. There is a sensation of living through events of historical importance, as brave, competent and generous Hong Kongers try to keep the rights and freedom they enjoyed for a long time, and that now is under attack by the influence of China.

I participated to few rallies, out of curiosity. The energy and organisation felt during this events make every other manifestation or protest I have experienced before look like a rookie’s game. The stakes are serious and people stand for their rights no matter how brutal the repression is.

This uncertainty so far has not influenced my work, although recent weeks saw a sharp escalation of the conflict. I play it by ear as the events unfold. What will be of Hong Kong after the war ends? I don’t think anybody really knows.

Tranquility’s rest

In all this Tranquility keep resting her bones on dry Georgia land. She is currently at St.Mary’s Boat Services, a boatyard that proved to be safe and well organized, and that I used before. So far the boat survived one hurricane season, and it’s good to know that she is in safe hands.

Sailing my own boat is for now just a distant dream. I am more focused in building a substantial cruising kitty, and seeing something different. But the dreaming never stops and at a certain moment they will want to leave the imaginative space and mess with reality.

This is my update so far, there is far more to tell but it is hard to condensate everything in a blog post. After long resistance I opened an Instagram account. It is an excuse to force me to capture images more than anything else. This is also the reason why I have not shared it until now.

If you do Instagram you can now follow here: @eye_of_the_mind

This is the quote from Bruce Lee that is inspiring the Hong Kong resistance. I think it should expire everybody, at peace and at war:

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

Here in Hong Kong I joined a Meetup group of writers that gathers weekly to write and share their work. To help the process the group starts writing and sharing props. I randomly picked the one in the title from a coffee mug, and of course I started writing a fantasy piece on Beta. If you read this blog before you know Beta already so I thought it was nice to share this short piece here.

Beta was moving between planes again, flat and beautiful at time, powerful when he puffed stretching into five dimensions, always faithful to his nature.

The fact that I was observing him, slouching on my bunk covered in popcorn dust, didn’t seem to affect his routine. In those moments when he was transmuting back and forth I simply ceased to exist.

That sense of non-existence was just my problem. I felt alone. I thought about calling him back, to attract his attention, and while pondering if that was at all a good idea a big wave struck us.

“What the fuck!?!” the cry came from Beta’s mouth as his eyes expanded and turned bright yellow.

“Relax” I said “There are two more coming”. As the noise faded two consecutive loud thunders shook the shell of the ship. During each acceleration the lanyard held me in place at the edge of the bunk and objects reshuffled into their new quantum position, mostly positioning themselves on a lower positions towards the floor.

Beta simply shifted his weight, he re-arranged his body to reach the famous tilted position and stood there in contemplation while the autopilot was resuming the course.

A quick glance out of the window returned a sky full of stars and a spooky silence, a sign of cosmic perfection in shear contrast with the inner explosion of things and emotions on many planes of experience. I’ve always envied Beta’s minimalism. A freeloading minimalism to tell the complete story.

“Why am I bringin him along?” I thought softly in my head, concerned that he could intercept my brain waves. He didn’t care much about my opinions anyway. Being ignored is the price to pay for having a private teacher, a reservoir of chi, a master of intention.

That sleepy fuck was napping again, his body still tilted to fight gravitational pull, now fully beyond dimensions in a quiet transmutation.

I reached the corner of the bed and picked him up, moving his tiny body upon my chest above the popcorn dust that was stubbornly adhering to my skin. I concentrated on my breathing and Beta raised and sunk following that natural motion. A soft purr was the signal he enjoyed the slow ride.

I was glad he came along for the ride. I didn’t know it would be our last one, even though I knew that he and I will be forever there somewhere between the intersecting planes of existence, beyond space and time.

Yesterday I had the pleasure to attend a party of friendly people in the private home of Lisa and Jim here in Brunswick.

This was the second appointment of an event called Salon, a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, which was launched a month earlier by my friend Lulu.

The topic of the Salon#2 was A-HA moments: Each guest was invited to give a brief retelling of significant moments of their lives that generated insights and understanding.

I wrote this piece following the story. that I told in person in front of the friendly audience. Storytelling and writing are two different beasts, but they have in common a story.

This is the story:

This is my A-HA story. At least a recent one. I have many A-HA moments, which maybe disqualifies the moment itself, as A-HA moments should be particularly special and rare and if you have too many of them they may not so A-HAy… Anyway… This is how it happened…

I had the privilege to spend some days in the beautiful home of Robin and John not far from here, as they were out of town and they asked me if I wanted to stay in their house. I gladly accepted the invitation and find myself to be a resident of So-Glo again, rode my bike around and felt very cool.

As I live full time on a small boat it was great being all of the sudden in such a wide space with a beautiful yard, trees and everything. I enjoyed to take a full standing shower, and small pleasure like put food in a refrigerator.

One of the things that I miss the most is making fires, and Robin and John have a very nice fire pit. So I asked them if it was ok to make a fire because I wanted to burn some old journals that were taking space on my boat and were all full of useless notes.

It felt bad to just dump them in the trash. Not that I was concerned that people can be after my precious information. For that they could just hack my computer. Engulfing the old journals in flames sounded had more purifying feeling.

So I started the fire, not without some trouble to be honest, as it was very humid all around. However the ceremony could not wait for better weather. Eventually I made a very nice fire that took care of my journals with no effort.

I enjoyed to be by the fire with a cup of tea and listen to the wind in the trees. In fact there was some weather coming in but I was adamant to use as much fire time as possible. It eventually started to rain a little so I got closer to the embers and the fire.

All of the sudden I was too close and I was sweating so I adjusted my position a little back. The light rain continued and I was not ready yet to go inside, as I was enjoying being out in the elements. The fire was giving me warmth and protecting me. As long as I kept reasonably close to the fire I could stand the cooling air and getting wet.

Fire is an old friend of us human beings, it’s rooted in our true nature.

It was then that I realized that I had control over the fire, and I could make it as hot or as cold as I wanted playing with the embers and organizing the surface with the long metal pipe that John keeps by the fire.

It was easy. Red – hot. Black-cold.

I was very proud of myself. I was succeeding in burning all the wood already in the fire pit simply by playing with the fire. That made me think about relationships, and how we can choose how close and how far to be in a relationship. We can choose our own comfort place.

If it’s too cold we can poke the logs and make sparks happen. If it’s too hot we simply let it rest. We can and make it red, or to let it go black. I had an A-Ha moment!

Until of course it started to rain heavily. My sense of control got screwed, and I declared defeat and moved back into the house. A quarter of a log was lying unburnt in the fire pit

So I got a second a-Ha moment. In a relationship we are in control until we are not in control.