↑ Vantage pt for Jay Levine at tippity top of crow's nest before he jumped.
Das Boot: the first and perhaps most profound of the Dreamscape categories in that it describes not only the day-to-day adventures of a Caribbean escape, but also a moment that was much of a fulcrum or a rubicon for everyone involved, both a gathering and a dispersal. They were all twenty-four or twenty-five years old, an age where everything in the past seems like prologue and the next turned page is where the story really begins. There was a lot of debate about what comes next: plans hatched, destinies reconsidered. And soon after: Sebastian heading for Brazil, Christoph to Argentina, Helene to New Zealand, our pal Jayson and Natalie both to New York City. And the more we studied these pages, the stronger the urge became to apply allegory and deeper significance to everything that was written. And although 'reality' strongly resists such neat and tidy structuring, nonetheless here it is.
-- Eds
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Das Boot (31/33)
December 25, 1990
Choose a different dreamscape
XMas virtually, once again, over. FEAST around a merry blaze w/stars and ocean and all sorts of good vittles. And today, it was very true, and as it should have been, and was, sang with the delight of any final day in paradise. Diving the light blue in search of fish and, later, a submerged + rusting wreck which we found w/the aid of professional divers docked above Colossal. Reminiscent of After the Storm (Hemingway), where narrator finds a sunken pleasure craft the day after she goes down. An obvious metaphor for woman as good old ____ ____ said (C-school). Nonetheless, floating gently along the surface with that rusted hulk stretched out beneath me, eerie + clear through the dusty water, and the diver’s bubbles streaming from the gaping hatches, prickly and blinding when I would float above + in them (the streams of bubbles), I felt the onieristic warping of submersion toward fiction. It stretched so large, disappearing for a period into deeper gloom, then bulging up brown + blotched w/algae all along for another 30 ft before dropping suddenly into the white sand. Must have been 75 feet at least. “First there were the birds, then me, then the Greeks. And even the birds got more out of her than I did.” (Hem).
But, simply, an all around active and rewarding day spent in and out of the water. I watched Sebastian repeatedly spinning a fishing net which would fan out before sinking into the aqua depths. No fish were fooled. Lucky fish. I cocked and shot a spear gun… at nothing, just for the feel. Later I watched the spear spin off it’s leash and arrow down to the seafloor. Chistoph retrieved it.
We set up our table on the beach while the sun sank toward the horizon. Padded barefoot along a poisonous-snake (local) trail in search of the coconuts which Sebastian subsequently monkeyed after, scaling a 30 ft tree to whack the hairy fruit from their perch. We hauled logs for seats and boulders to support the planks of the table. And as the sun set and the moon shone strong from directly above, we cooked and ate our xmas feast and now I am full and tired and ready to savor the 7 hours of sleep until the alarm jerks me toward the airport at 5am.
And the St. Alamé bobs peaceful + content, ready to drift another 10,000 miles if called upon to do so.
Goodnight, St. Alamé. Merry Christmas.