We will leave today. Fabien arrives to wake us up and we finally set sail. Before we reach open waters, we buy some large chunks of ice to refrigerate the ham and cheese we have for the sandwiches during the sea crossing. I take a last glance at the town of Cartagena, that looks out proudly over the Caribbean sea. Once we are on open waters, the boat starts bumping a lot, and, well, I get seasick. The highrises are long out of sight when I have to throw up. My stomach as to remain empty for the next 48 hours. I just lay down on my narrow berth and switch sides like I am frying myself. Dreams revolve inevitably around the subject of good food. Steaks, pineapples, grapes, lamb chops, kebabs, fries, smoked salmon, lobster, garlic-shrimps, old cheese and mangos. It’s amazing how creative an empty stomach is. What am I? What is this? Am I really looking at the bright sight of seasick starvation? The delirium boosts creativity and it doesn’t kill me. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, to quote Nietzsche at least once in this story. I fry myself in my own sweat, it’s boiling hot in the berth, I turn around again and again, there are stones in my stomach. The equilibrium organ plays mad. I need a plastic bag the captain hands it to me relunctantly because it’s the only thing next to glass the Ocean does not like to swallow: plastic. Everything else is biodegradable. You can throw in tin cans, paper, cork – no problem. I dream about the Ocean as a giant organism (and it’s not too far off a comparison, I am referring here to Lovelock’s “Gaia”-hypothesis) and the Ocean knows how to keep her equilibrium in spite of the mess a 10-figure bunch of ignorant bipedal monkeys keeps making of her. I turn around on my bowel’s command, fry my other side, dream about good food again, and creativity. Can we artificially put ourselves in such a state that everything just pours out of us? Can we? Should we?
May 14. First day at sea.
