Red moon rising

                                               
Hands.
my mother used to say that you can notice change on your hands.
it starts with a constant burning, the result of the ropes you have been pulling. the creases gets dirty, the kind of permanent dirt that doesn't really wash off, a witness to your work outside. your nails turn black if you have any. i tend to not have any, i bite them down. then the burning stops, and your skin turns hard, and white bubbles appear on your palms. then the bubbles disappear and your skin turns even harder. you have small cuts and wounds and bruises everywhere, and you are not entirely sure how you got them. the cuts turn to scars that light up your hands in pretty patterns. another witness. hands.
i agree with my mother.
it begins with the hands.

the good ship tres hombres is in the north sea. i can feel the sea beneath me, moving, rocking, up and down from side to side.
i can see everything around me, there are no buildings (except for the oil platforms mutilating the ocean) no mountains, no woods, no hills, just pure nothing-ness.

no lights at night it is actually possible to see the stars. all of them. i feel like the entire galaxy is open to me, Venus and Jupiter were aligned almost perfectly just a few nights ago, they were among the first lights to appear. and after them came the red moon.

have you ever seen a real red moon my friend? i have had friends describing the phenomenon to me in the past, but whenever someone spoke of a red moon, i always thought "so are we talking orange or just more yellow than usual"
but no.

 red moon, red as in dark crimson, blood, wine red. we saw it rising from the horizon, bigger than i have ever seen the moon before, i stepped on deck for my night watch just as it appeared.
tell me, friend, is there a better place than a tall ship to watch a red moon rising, no sound of an engine just the soft sound of her hull gliding through the water.

a few days after that night we hit a bit of rough weather. we had to douse and set the royal twice. i went up once to douse it. i had been in the galley a few minutes before and heard captain Andreas say, "don't think, don't stop, just climb" and those were the words i kept repeating to myself as i climbed. don't think, don't stop, just climb. it made it easier. repeating something to myself, focusing on something to repeat, having something to focus on, as i went up.

i am afraid of heights. the first time i went aloft, i was shaking so much the entire mast was shaking along with me. i want to have the respect for the heights, i do believe it to be healthy, but i don't want to be controlled by it, to be ruled the way i have been in the past.

and so i sail. i push. because you have to on board, you have to push yourself a little bit, always. the ship becomes your whole world, the people there your family, your home. every morning when i wake up, i feel a little bit different than when i went to my bunk the evening before. and every day during watch, we oil, and sing, and sand, and play the guitar, well others do. i just listen. we tell jokes, and riddles and useless facts. we splice and whip, and climb the rig and we play games at night to make the watch pass quicker. we sleep and we sail, we do rope-rounds and we brace.
greetings from Victoria
10th of July 2015

how naive i was back then.
i am reading what i wrote so long ago, now, and can hardly believe how much time has passed in such a short time.
how much have changed. how much i have changed. a young and carefree little child was writing that. i know that that is not true, i had plenty of cares, plenty of issues, but it sure seems that way.

reading this now, how i sounded back then, before i truly saw the ocean. before i knew just how ruthless it can be. before i knew how ruthless people can be. i learned. they say that experience is a brutal teacher. but at least you learn. by god you learn.

greetings from Victoria
28th of December 2015
i wish you fair winds and following seas my friend.