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As I gazed back at the wake I dreamed of the ribs of a beached wreck, ribs that had been exposed by planks salvaged or washed away. Was this the catboat's future? A memory of some forgotten past? The vision was clear. The beating sun, the lapping waves, the hot sand, the dry weathered ribs with scarcely noticeable flecks of tan paint. The clear image set itself against the frozen reality of that dark, winter-night's tack. Many keels are laid to end on an ocean floor, wreck on a rock beach or rot forgotten in the yards. What is laid in love and patience becomes an eyesore on the shore, a nuisance to the boatyard or a curio to the diver. For the last time I heard the voice of David. This time very faint, very far away. “All sailors, Michael, are ships of souls as life is not of earth. Sailors without souls are as ships without sailors as each to the other givesI knew ships would be composed of these inner emotions. As sailors held vessels of soul, other cups of emotion could be held by emotional saucers. The science of the old geometry caused a split in our thinking, a split in our beliefs. It would now be hard to distinguish religion and science. The mass consciousness would be forced to a shift many times greater than when we found the Earth to be round or when we found we were not the center, that the sun did not revolve around us. I knew my soul to be composed of substance. I felt a knowledge of changes to occur on this corporeal Earth that I knew I would speak little of: they sounded too far fetched. But I could not ignore this knowledge. A large percentage of the stars seen at night are not single stars. They are binary stars. Groups of two, one revolving around the other. I knew the seven thunders of the emotion brought down by mass realization would change the structure of the earth. Our solar system was to become a binary system. I was sailing my catboat on the watery surface of a soon-to-be-star! I saw this becoming a new Earth. I saw this becoming a new Heaven. In this building up there shall be a casting down. For those on the right side of the Great Separation there would be rapture in this marriage, for the marriage is in the hearts. I looked forward past the mast. I could not see far. If I did make it back, where was all this going? I knew that I was not to know. The designs of the shipwright change with time. Some are improvements. Some are not. The slow gathering of knowledge came because we did not know where we were going, not because we did. We learned from experience, and if we saw too far ahead, perhaps we would not have gained this experience. I was not going to the Island. I was returning to the mainland by choice. For I knew which was the real Main-substance. For I knew which was the real island. I knew my quest was on the inner sea and in the inner sky. I knew the ship of soul to be the true quest. That was what I was really gazing at as I looked forward beyond the mast and into the dark.  |