Monday, June 7, 2010
My mom loved the warmth of the sun and the sound of the waves. I came across this writing by Eugene O Neil"Long
Days Journey In to Night". I hope she is at peace
Love Jackie
When I was on the Squarehead rigger, bound for Buenos Aires. Full moon in the Trades. The old hooker driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me.
I became drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself-actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greaterr than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that way.
Then another time, on the American Line, when I was a lookout on the crow's nest in the dawn watch. A calm sea, that time. Only a lazy ground swell and a slow drowsy roll of the ship. The passengers asleep and none of the crew in sight. No sound of man. Black smoke pouring from the funnels behind and beneath me. Dreaming, not keeping looking, feeling alone and above, and apart, watching the dawn creep like a painted dream over the sky and sea which slept togher. Then the moment of ecstatic freedom came, the peace, the end of the quest, the last harbor, the joy of belonging to a fulfillment beyond men's lousy, pitiful, greedy fears and hopes and dreams!
And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the same experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like a veil of things as they seem drawn back by a unseen hand. For a second you see-and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second ther e is meaning!
