My discovery for a fulfilling life is to observe and, if lucky, to describe every detail that surrounds me. This seems a simple task, even a trick, but once commenced soon becomes exhausting. If taken serious, it is difficult to relax least a detail is missed. Some writers excel at this. James Joyce and Herman Melville are prime examples.
Reading Joyce’s words from beginning to end (well almost, Finnegan’s Wake is to be delved into rather than read) the books become progressively mired in detail. Mired to the point where Joyce alone can comprehend the language. Granted there are cadres of Joyce scholars who have put in the time to learn his language, but without years of study most lay readers have to take much of what they read on faith.
In Finnegan’s Wake the detail is so extensive and personal that Joyce invents a peculiar lexicon to express his meaning. The tome, for novel is too trivial a word to describe it, is an endless loop of inside jokes that, I’m afraid, is mostly lost on me.
Herman Melville is another detail freak. His novels prior to Moby Dick are wonderful tales of seafaring made more compelling by their autobiographical nature. But as with Joyce, his greatest achievement is overwhelmed by detail. For Joyce it is the intricacies of Dublin and its inhabitants. For Melville it is oddly, whale anatomy.
Maybe my obsession with detail is the “glass half empty” mentality I am prone to. If I miss it, it no longer exists. Or maybe, from a different vantage point, it is the only way to prove to myself that I have tried to know all that there is to know. If looked on this way, the attention to and the knowledge of detail just might constitute that heightened state of awareness known as enlightenment.
As a teenager I thought enlightenment was some thing that came from without. This was the popular wisdom of the day; think of Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception and Timothy Leary’s Turn on, Tune In, Drop Out.
During my twenties I began to understand that enlightenment has nothing to do with comfort or happiness, with location or relationships. Though I did, I did not have to travel west to seek it out in the grander of nature. No sequestration in a mountain cave is necessary. Even as a young adult I realized that Chicago, other than for the traffic, is a perfectly fine place to work on the project.
Granted this goes against conventional wisdom. One is lead to believe that it is easier to reach an enlightened state in La Jolla, CA rather than on Talman Avenue in Rogers Park. The foothills of the Himalayan Mountains, an ashram in India, a mountain retreat in Taos or Vermont would be nice. But even the fact that I am using the word “nice” negates the argument.
If anything, perfect surroundings can be a hindrance. I fear the feeling of awe with the natural wonder can be confused or misinterpreted with the feeling of awe within oneself. My trick is to deal with what I have. As in all things, the most important part of the trick is to work at it, which of course is no trick at all.
So, stop paying the cable bill, leave the iPod at home, turn off talk radio and stay out of the mall. Retreat into everyday life without retreating, realizing that there is no limit to what enlightenment can be. It can be a point of sail on a particularly challenging day. It can be a sunset on a Greek island. It can be not hitting the wall during a marathon. It can be the whisking of a bowl of matcha.
The question that started me on this train of thought is, why cruise? This is a pertinent question to ask while sitting in Northport, Michigan’s harbor for five days waiting for the offending Canadian low to move to the east. There is time to ponder when the barometer drops to 983 and sits unmoving for days.
The answer then might be the dream, a way to live out Odysseus journey. It might be the preparation. It is common to meet boaters that have spent entire lives in preparation, never to leave. It might be the mastery of skills: seamanship, navigation, weather, rope work, systems maintenance and an overlooked but crucial skill, spousal relationships.
Probably it is the common purpose and the camaraderie of the cruising fraternity, all looking for that elusive enlightening experience. Waiting for the moment when the self dissolves and becomes one with the universe. Fleeting as it may be, the discovery that it in fact exists is enough to fuel a lifetime of searching for detail and for the next anchorage.
Volume 5768 (4), 7/17/2009
