Late watch musings

The sea is calm and wind low, too low to fill the sails so we are motoring with the head sail furled and the mainsail centered, pulled in tight in-line with the forward push of the boat. It is past midnight and I am alone on deck, midway through my nightly watch. The moon has already set so only a musty light cast by the stars illuminates the chiseled writhing slate surface of the water. The darkest part of the seascape isthe velvety black of the horizon line. The sky's matte finish glows faintly and is caught in disjointed reflection on the sea. The velvet dark of the horizon cuts across at all sides- ruthlessly f;at and yet bent back around over onto itself, connected to it's own tail forever in every direction. This vista must be the most complete demonstration of the curious nature of what it means to occupy a space, the deceptions of perspective, the illusions of scale. In its stagnancy, the main sail is like an impatient unwieldy massive animal. The material is thick, stuff canvas. The cockpit is mid-ship, so I sit just under the trailing edge of the sail; when I look up around the back of the bimony (the cockpit cover); the main towers above me. As the light winds come from the stern of the boat, they gently fill out the sail to port, then starboard, then back again. I can put my hand against it's sandpaper texture and its movements become the powerful, slow heaving flanks of th an elephant constrained for the moment by the rigging lines that are its reins. The wind arouses a dormant injured pride of the majestic animal in its captivity, and it pulls forward powerfully, blindly, bringing us along with it. The sheer power of the wind is humbling when you see this heavy, thick elephant skin wrinkled and creased over like tissue paper when it blows hard. But maybe the main is not like an elephant at all- at least in active movement. When they are kicked up and flowing in tandem, the main and head sails dance together like giant manta rays pulled taught by the mast and genoa pole. Their choreography reveals the currents and swells hidden in the wind passing through them.
The phosphorescent sparks in our wake are like galaxies that are born and then die again just as suddenly. The time frame of these microcosms are distinct from the systems of starts they seem to mimic from above. Though sudden, the lifetimes of the water sparks mark themselves out onn a continuous linear time line cut into the water by the hull of the boat. In subtle but mind-boggling contrast, the stars overhead shine in a discombobulated collage of movements, each star appearing to us from a different epoch. Sirius,of the constellation Canis Major, one of the brightest stars in our perspective from earth, gives off light that reaches our eyes 8.6 years after it originally eminates from the star. On the other hand, Rigel of the constellation Orion is observed by earthlings 1300 years after the light leaves the star. When I look at Rigel, I am seeing 1300 years into the past. I am seeing the brilliance of the star as it was long before I was even an entity. Each astrological body is on its own time line- the night sky is littered with visions from the past.