In a past life, I was a mariner.
Or
at least I would have been, were there such a thing as reincarnation.
There are still some religions and cultures that believe a soul, or
spirit, survives biological death to take on new life in a new form;
it’s an especially important part of the Hindu tradition, along with
golden sculptures of sitar-playing elephants. Maybe. I don’t really know
anything about Hinduism.
As
dubious as I find these claims of perpetual reincarnation, it’s a neat
way to consider the distant past – as an active participant, rather than
an omniscient reader of history. I imagine myself as a seafaring
adventurer around the time of the New World’s discovery, foot perched heroically on the prow of a majestic vessel as I scan the open ocean with
squinty eyes. If Explorer Jeff is half as clumsy as Writer Jeff, then
this iconic pose is surely followed by tripping and falling into the
water, soaking my delicate pantaloons. I mentally edit this part out.
A
life on the seas seems a fitting fantasy for this long-gone version of
myself, since the current version is so fond of the waves. This affinity
is one of the reasons I’ve chosen to spend the past several days aboard
a ship bound for a tiny British island in the mid-Atlantic. I’m writing
this before my voyage, and attempts at clairvoyance would be in vain,
since any number of things could conceivably go wrong: Shipwreck,
perhaps, or a violent storm that forces me to return my $20 cod to its
natural habitat. But if history is any indication, the past week has
been fine, and I owe it to a nonsensical love of being whipped about
like a beach towel in a clothes dryer. Maybe I was pocket lint in a past
life.
Certain
people can’t handle being on a boat. There are drugs for these
unfortunate folks. I was in middle school when I first became aware of a
medicine called Dramamine, which purports to treat the effects of
motion sickness. My class was scheduled to spend the day on a whale
watching expedition, and while it was a joyful relief to avoid a
classroom for several hours, the warnings from our parents and teachers
made the prospect seem somewhat frightening, as though we were a covert
CIA team prepping for a hostage rescue. “Take your Dramamine!” they
advised us. “You don’t want to get sick!” What they forgot is that
losing one’s lunch is a badge of honor among the middle school set. You
get treated like royalty, and when you return from your journey, someone
inevitably takes pity on you and treats you to ice cream. Motion
sickness would have been the best thing to ever happen to me, after
puberty and that time I ate a penny on a dare.
No
dice. Turns out I have a cast-iron stomach, which sounds like the
beginnings of a great superhero origin story. In this case, my
superpower was the ability to withstand ocean swells that would make
Godzilla look like a fire ant. During the whale watch my Dramamine was
left forgotten at the bottom of my backpack, stuffed beneath a mountain
of fruit snacks (ate ’em all, no sweat) and bottled water (drank it all,
no big deal). A few of my Kool-Aid -sipping compatriots indeed fell
ill, huddled over their gurgling bellies in the cabin while we pitched
and swayed to the moon’s gravitational pull. I, meanwhile, munched on
tiny sugar bombs shaped like dinosaurs while leaning as far over the
railing as I could, struggling for a glimpse of an elusive blue whale.
The most we saw was a tail. Not exactly grounds for a “Dear Diary”
entry, but at least I didn’t blow my Spaghetti-O’s into the drink.
Years
later, it was a tiny sail boat that tested my fortitude. My uncle came
to Maine for a visit and contacted a friend of his, a boat enthusiast
with a vessel docked in Portland, about taking us out on the water. We
set sail from his slip and within minutes encountered the kind of choppy
waters you’d expect when a meteorite the size of a small nightclub
caroms into the Atlantic. It was at this point that my uncle, swell guy
that he is, thought it’d be a great idea for me to take control of the
boat.
It’s
still debatable whether he merely wanted to test my mettle, or was an
outright sadist. To date, nobody’s been discovered knitting sweaters
while chained to a radiator in his basement, so it was probably the
former. Still, I was incredulous as I helmed the captain’s seat. What
did I know about guiding a ship through rocky seas? I envisioned a
capsized boat about a mile from shore, surround by three bobbing heads
and the vaporous aura of my shame.
Not
to brag – although I guess that’s kind of the point – but with a little
guidance from our white-bearded skipper, I managed to keep us upright.
Summoning all of the upper-body strength in my 17-year-old frame, I
fought the onslaught of advancing waves and facilitated smooth passage
through the tricky spots, which totally would have impressed a girl had I
known any. I also held onto my breakfast without any medicinal
intervention, which is doubly impressive seeing as how the violent waves
were augmented by the size of the boat. Any smaller and we would have
been sightseeing in a porcelain bathtub.
All
of this has given me confidence that the journey of the past several
days has been a smooth one. Were I the type to subscribe to the
reincarnation theory, I’d guess that I was once a cranky old seaman,
peering through a haze of cigar smoke at the flat blue line of the
horizon. Humans have always been adventurers, but the true age of
exploration began when a gang of intrepid souls first decided to sail
west into the unknown, the wind at their backs and a vastness of
twinkling sun-dapples before them. It’s a romantic notion. Multiple
lives may not be a reality, but DNA is, and so maybe there’s something
embedded deep into my genetic code, a message handed down to me from the
generations whispering, “Go. Go see what’s out there. There’s a rich
world waiting for you, and you’re made for it.”
Who knows? Could be that my white whale is waiting for me. Just call me Ishmael.
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