Though we mostly fly now, nothing quiet compares to traveling by water, floating over it inside a principle of physics first defined by Archimedes of Syracuse over 2 thousand years ago. “Any object, wholly or partially immersed in a fluid, is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object.”
One cannot tell, of course, if it is historical fact that Archimedes thought up this principle in, naturally, his bath. How, stepping into his tub, he saw the water level rise as he sat down to settle in. How some of it spilled down over the sides. Gray matter in his head began kicking in sending away a stream of electrical signals which produced in his brain a possible formula to compute the relationship between buoyancy, displacement and the volume and weight of water.
“Eureka! (I have found it! in Greek),” he is reported to have screamed as he ran all over town holding in his hand his mathematical computations; which at that moment, as the story goes, was his only manner of dress.
It is a story which might have been told complete with illustrations by Dr. Seuss. It is how we would like to imagine it. Archimedes running all over town, dancing, screaming his mirth, paper in hand, stark naked. Strings of clouds behind him. And the sea not far away. Sailing ships in the distance. Flocks of seagulls flying above thriving olive trees.
Quite a wonderful way to tell the story of how something as ancient as the fact of boats came finally to become a story of physics, predictable and computable. And whether or not it is true, the story speaks to us of the romance of it, the act of leaving solid ground, stepping onto a platform that moves under our feet, swaying us as if in a cradle, bobbing up and down over waves. There is an immediate fear. Why do we place ourselves in this situation?
We are only addicted to the promise of adventure. This whole idea of being where we are not, in the way of getting to where we are going, from where we have been. Otherwise, we are lulled by it, lulled into the dream, which must derive from a half-forgotten memory of the “duyan”. And which, when translated to English “cradle”, not quite doing justice to it, though perhaps for this it will do.
Which might be why we cannot get over the romance. The fact of ships, how they defy what seems immediately impossible. Near land, they would seem so big. Away from it, in the middle of the vast sea, how we suddenly realize how small we truly are. Even this ship made as it is of steel and aluminum is only a little speck, a floating detritus in the vastness.
The sea is bigger still when the stars are out on a moonless night. Over to the East, Orion with its belt of 3 stars. There, the Dipper. There, Polaris, the North star. This was how they found their way over oceans in ancient times reckoning by stars to take them to ocean currents, which moved them unbelievably faster. The currents would have been what warp speed is to us now.
And yet, there would be times when the romance of it is lost to us, who line up to buy tickets and check ourselves in before we are finally “boarded” into the crowded ship, a good seat or bunk near a window, not so far away from the comfort rooms, not so far away either from the decks.
Here, we look away from the ship into the sea, the islands disappearing into the horizon. The wind plays into our hair and ears as we look as far away as our eyes can see and then we see it:
How the sea is a bringer of memories.
How, she is a storyteller.
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