Moon and Me

It was there so suddenly, all of it, the power of it gaining height and weight towering above me, coming and coming and always rising higher, stronger -- as mighty as any beast could ever hope to be, and with a grin-- I swear the bastard had a grin.

I knew this was not so much a huge wave as the beginning of a real-life night-mare. Wave or
night-mare--both kept coming, both kept growing into one and the same, exploding finally — like cotton-candy twenty feet in the air—pretty, perhaps, if somehow you found “pretty”, with its teeth bared and grinning, and plunging downward for your throat.

The beast washed over my teak deck and over my cockpit and over me with such violent force my breath left me and my eyes closed as I held on. There was horror on board and still I kept my eyes closed as things cracked and ripped and tore and squeeled. My eyes, as I said, were tightly closed for a long period of time, and when I opened them again I did so knowing I was not going to like what I had to see next

I was right. The mast was gone. The deck as bare. There was another big wet bastard coming, rising, a bigger bastard than the bastard before, and as I watched it rise I began to worry that my friends and family would never see me again. I felt sorry for them and glad for them both, I can't explaine why, and won't, not even to myself.

The next wave came at me, grinned without the slightest sympathy or care, and exploded, and the next wave came and exploded, and the next and the next and the next came, and each time I closed my eyes and held on, sweet faces flew past my inner eye. Sweet faces that looked like me and reminded me of me.

I could hear the dinner conversation; “Whatever happened to dear, old fuck-head?”

At nightfall the waves were coming out like muggers with lead pipes from dark alleys. They came unseen, pounding me without regard. .

I finally went inside the cabin and slammed the door against the outside world. I sat on the settee with my little faded red life-vest strapped around my chest with yellowed cloth tie-straps, and I felt very sorry for myself in the way that old men and young men and middle aged men can feel sorry for themselves when they know they could have done better, and should have done better, and would have, if they had it all to do over again, and people weren't bugging them so much..


Around the time I began to wish the end would just come and get me over with, my life, for the first time, seemed real. Real, like it was mine, and I could claim it, and laugh at it, and I could bet it in a crap-game which I sort of did in different ways many times.

IWhen water began to pour inside the cabin I went back on deck and looked up and saw the moon, yellow gold and full in the suddenly black-purple sky that lost the anger. The dind had died but the ocean remained alive and the moon, was watchinng, the moon, bigger than the waves and the ocean. was like no moon you ever saw.

When I found myself no longer in the boat, I felt a sadness and a shame, but also a conclusion that was not so sad, and not so shameful. What was approaching me in that moment, meaning death and the end of my existence, seemed just and right. My life was a series of starts to big plans and, without exception, always too, with abrupt endings which seemed to arrived with less and less surprise as I got used to myself and my ways, but this time, meaning now, at last, my life was mine and I had it all to myself. as my solo voyage across the Atlantic came to an end, abruptly.

It would have been very lonely watching my boat sink in the middle of the Atlantic if it wasn't for the moon. When my sailboat was gone it was only the moon and me for a long time; the ocean was everywhere around and seemed insignificant--an intrusion, like a third wheel. As long as I kept my eyes firmly locked on the familiar yellow sight I felt calm, almost satisfied. I rose and fell with the swell, always the moon holding my attention.

And then the fishing boat came.

I waved and the little boat blinded me with its spotlight and my life came pretty much to an end when they hauled me up.

They didn't speak English.

They fed me soup.

That's pretty much it.

Nothing is the same now. I'm different. I've become quiet, and the moon seems quiet too; like we don't know each other anymore.

People ask me what's wrong—I seem sad, they say. I am and I don't know why, except the moon and me lost what we had and we'll never get it back. I wink at her from time to time, but she never seems to notice.

And though I try to be nicer to everyone, I find I have nothing much to say, nothing real, nothing I might add to any conversation, or teach, or warn anyone about. I haven't changed enough, I guess, not like you might hope to do, if you ever got the chance to make right the things you made wrong a lifetime ago.




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