Sailing is all about the wind. We don’t know how she will be, and she is invisible. My long hair only wants to fling itself, wave wildly and throw itself around in the great excitement of saying hello to the wind. This is the reason I keep it long, for this cacophonous reunion. My hair can do what I have been too strongly conditioned not to do. The unbrushable knots seal our tryst. My skin, too long slumbering under heavy clothes, lost in silent rooms, squashed and numbed, craves this re-connection as well. How else can it know itself or the world.
The caress of the wind around my neck, over my arms, whipping across my back as I pull up the main, release the anchor, let out the jib, sends shivers all through me. My invisible lover. I come alive in our sensational reunion. I am known in each whispering glance. When I let go into the sensing everything changes. The wind takes me into her domain. Beyond being human. Swept into streams of pure movement. Life seen through different eyes. Not pinned down. Not named. Not a place to stay for long. So I return to my body and allow her to travel and rest inside me.
‘Consciousness which has no legs rides winds which have no eyes.’
The sea comes alive in the wind. This ‘alive’ is what we are here for. Froth spewing from the tops of the waves, heavy lace, means about 40 knots of blow. Will we drive the boat into the reptilian swell, or roll along her generous belly. The new wind-waves may fight the old wind-swell for a lumpy, uncomfortable journey. This is how it is with winds when they get into the sea. The old disturbance hangs around for a long time, underlaying, resonating, confusing the new.
Up on deck it is different. The wind is clean. It can change just like that, leaving nothing behind. It rushes at the sail. We are so clever. We can sail hard up into the wind, we can go against her, using her own power. We can use what-ever wind comes up to reach our destination. We are not driven to go the way the wind blow like in the old days of clipper ships. We have discovered airfoil and we proudly use the principle by which wind is indeed created, to our personal advantage. I love this.
The wind fills space. Without the wind the sun would not shine. Empty windless space is dark. The wind is the first element to arrive, the first movement, the first word made manifest. Wind is movement. Without movement there is nothing. Sometimes I wonder why children are trained to stay still. They know this. Movement is life, and they want more of it. I go sailing because I know this too. I want to be carried into the great movement that is life.
These sailing and spiritual musings — and many more — are detailed in Dyana’s Anchors in an Open Sea trilogy, beginning with book 1: The Yoga of Sailing.
