Zen Sailing with the Details of my Dreams

I’m going sailing tonight. I do every week no matter the weather. Well, except for those weeks when I don’t really want to. Those weeks I go sailing twice.

Most people, especially my friend Meryl, don’t know this about me. They think I’m not the sailing type. They think that I wouldn’t be out on the water again, not after the boom hit me in the head. They assume I had my fill at a 45 degree angle when the captain buried the rail and I declared that people weren’t meant to sit and stand at the same time.

I didn’t like being face to face with the ocean floor.

People think that such events preclude me from being the sailing type. They’ve decided that I have an aversion to that nature stuff. That could be because there’s hardly an hour when you can’t find me on my computer. Still I’d think that my friends would know I’d find a way around these minor details. Who doesn’t know of my love for the sky and open spaces? Who’d expect me to be conventional in my approach?

I don’t own a sailboat. I don’t talk about sailing. I only go sailing at night. Alone. Here in my living room. My friend Duncan calls it Zen sailing.

The Little River Band is playing “Cool Change” and I’m under a soft full moon rocking with the waves to the music. I see the Chicago skyline. I see some lovely additions. Navy Pier has the dark, blue lights of the Plaza Uníta in Trieste and near the Hancock is the building that looks like the Borg that I saw on Hong Kong Island. Along the shore line is the blue-green phosphorous effervescence they call the ghostly glow.

That’s the advantage of Zen sailing, I get to add details.

I turn the music low, lie back, and look to the moon for inspiration. The strings and waves take away the world but bring the people I care about close to me. Now I have time for them. Now I have time for everything. My soul expands to fill the space. It’s space. It’s the freedom of childhood in summer. It’s the luxury of time. It’s the prosperity of space. It’s the richness of living.

I wonder at the moon, thinking on my father. The moon softly smiles on me, a strong and gentle light. I think of nothing sitting comfortably in my skin under the starry, starry sky. Whatever I was fretting floats off like so much smoke. It’s gone, not meant to be. I start to remember things I used to know and things I knew before I was born. I know where I fit in the universe. I can touch the sky.

And in the distance is an island I can go reach should I ever need one.

I will sleep well tonight. I’ve been sailing peacefully with the details of my dreams.

—me strauss Letting me be