The Sea (1994)

When I first visited the Philippines in 1994, I took a passenger ferry from Manila to Cebu, an island in the middle of the country. The voyage took about a day. This was the first time I'd been on a boat out of sight of land (with the exception of a much shorter trip in Thailand), and as I sat on the deck looking out over the sea I was inspired by the experience to write the following in my journal of the trip. I generally have great difficulty writing lyrically; this is one of my few attempts at doing so. Whether it was successful is another matter. Perhaps it just proves that I should stick to what I'm good at.

The sea is a vast rippling plain, stretching out endlessly to the horizon. Above it hang clouds in their myriad shapes; ephemeral, delicate islands in their own sea of blue. Occasionally a boat skims its lonely way across the surface, leaving a faint trail like that of a sidewinder moving through the desert or like a man moving through time. For though trails are left in their wake, sometimes narrow and almost indistinguishable, sometimes broad and powerful, in the end all fade away, swallowed by the trackless sea. So, too, do all of our lives and the traces of our passage we leave behind eventually dwindle into nothing as if we'd never been. Sometimes the sea rages, ravaging all before it, just as in the passage of time there occur cataclysmic events which wipe the slate clean, leaving little or nothing of what had been, no matter how imposing.

In the distance rises an island, immobile and unfading, just as our world remains after we go. Or is it truly permanent? No, one day the island and the whole world will crumble to nothing, worn down by the waters of time.

Soon it will be time to go back in, back to the world of humanity, back to reality. Or perhaps that is not reality after all. Perhaps reality lies not in the human world of passion, pain, and endless striving for things that will not last, but with the endless sea.