Light Traces

12. At Sea

12 At Sea 103 Dalmatian Coast Croatia August The ship set out from Trogir. It was a small ship carrying only a dozen passengers and manned by a crew of four. We were to be at sea for a week, remaining on the ship except for relatively brief evening visits to a few of the cities, towns, and other sites along the way. As the ship pulled out of the harbor and headed southeast along the coast of the mainland, its continual swaying and the loud splashing of the waves against its side offered a constant reminder that we were at sea. The sky was perfectly clear, and though it was late afternoon, the sun still felt very warm on my skin. Yet the air had by then grown cooler, and once we had set out, I could feel its cool dampness as it blew across my face. At sea one is almost completely surrounded by the elements, more thoroughly amidst them than perhaps in any other setting. Open to the sky and to the light that is its gift, one is surrounded by the 104 LIGHT TR ACES sea as one looks off to the high mountains of the coastline that can be seen through the slightly misty air. All are there–sky, sea, mist, wind, mountains, as well as the lines where they are conjoined, as the coastline joins land and sea; all are there, not just as things are present, but with a manifestness that touches all one’s senses and expands one’s very sense of nature. By contrast, when one is on land–except in very remote places–there are always in view things fabricated by humans as well as various other signs of human intervention in the natural world. And when traveling by air in a modern jetliner, one is almost entirely insulated from the elements; and in this setting vision is almost the only sense that remains receptive to them. But at sea, granted the technical, nautical supplement required by humans, there is little else but sea and the other elements around it. Not only can one’s vision be captivated by it, but also one hears the pounding of the waves, smells the briny presence of the water, feels the dampness of the sea on one’s skin. All the senses, each in its own way, open ecstatically to the sea and thus also to the sky, the air, the mountains, with which it elementally convenes. The elements display a distinctive, indeed unique kind of singularity . Each is singular–the sea, the sky, the earth–yet their singularity is such that, unlike things, they are to a large degree absolved from individuality. There is only one sky; it is even one and the same sky, and yet it is not something individual, does not have the form characteristic of individual things. There is only one earth, which is always one and the same; though it can be partitioned, separated off from the sea by coastlines, neither the absolutely singular earth nor its partitioned-off regions assume the form of individual things. 105 AT SEA The elements are not things, even though since antiquity the view has prevailed that whatever in the natural realm really is must be thing-like. If, at sea, one sets such views aside and lets the elements touch one’s senses in the most concrete fashion, then the elements can become most strikingly manifest in their singular, encompassing character. Even the sheer stone of the massive mountain range off in the distance (the Mosor mountain range) displays a certain singularity that a mere stone object lacks; for the stone of the mountains is stone of the earth, stone that is still earth, stone the character of which is determined by its being of the earth, in contrast to an individualized, perhaps fabricated, in any case detached stone object. The more purely elemental an element is, the more absolutely singular it is. The most absolutely singular of the elements are earth and sky. The ship docked overnight at Makarska on the mainland coast and then on the second day sailed around the eastern tip of the island Hvar and on past the ancient city of KorČula. We were bound for Dubrovnik, where we would spend the second night. What caught our attention as we passed KorČula was the high wall that surrounded it. Originally constructed no doubt to protect the city from pirates or invading forces, the...