Read The Return (Enigma of Modern Science & Philosophy) Page 3
My hand was tired from scratching my notes down. My body had many centers of ache now. My hips had become so stiff that now I labored to get my feet into my trousers or even to put on my shoes. I felt the body begin to desert me and I resented it. I had tried to take herbal medications to oil the joints but deep inside I knew it was quackery. I had not that intense belief that is the placebo effect of new age medicine. So I was destined for a creaky old age where the trivial activities of youth become trials of physical articulation.
Yet my mind seemed to be casting its net heartily into the wild seas of knowledge. The drive for wisdom was more powerful than the decay of biology. The brain struggled to keep in touch with the stored data of a lifetime. It was becoming a regular occurrence to meet an old acquaintance and have a blank for a name. Yet everything else would be completely recognizable - the skewed nose, the bright eyes or the tossed hair. It seemed that the sum of the parts was never linked to a proper noun. The name was just an external trinket used for designation. In my mind the person was the sum of his parts. So losing the name was not losing the person. A link to a central name store was simply broken.
These Alzheimer moments never detracted my mind from its ability to concentrate, examine, deconstruct or uncover the many mysterious themes of knowledge that modern science had thrown up. In some ways it was liberating in that I no longer tried to commit to memory words as isolated facts. I concentrated on the intuitive understanding that I managed to extract and I struggled hard to safeguard this intuition.
It meant that thoughts on spurious issues would randomly occur and I had developed the habit of carrying my notebook and pencil, to record them on the spot, else they would seep back into the inner areas of memory. I was like a computer with a great big processing core but a very dodgy memory bank. I had to keep pressing the save button.
These efforts at recording often left me exhausted and I sometimes closed my eyes for a while to blank out all perception and still my teeming consciousness. Now as I sat on the stone bollard with eyes tightly shut I erased the canvas and let nothingness envelop. These moments are un-recordable as there is nothing to record. They are little moments of death in a life. But life is very forceful and the body does not isolate itself for long, no matter how mentally strong the will. Sounds invade and with them come associated images from memory. The cry of a gull extracts the sublime image of a bird, wings outstretched, gliding on an air current uplifted by the cliffs and the waves below.
I remember where I’m going and where I’ve already been many years ago. I had camped out on the cliff top and tried to live the life of a modern day hermit. I realized that I was still seeking the same enlightenment today as back then. At most, the sense of consternation and puzzlement at existence had increased. I now saw life as even more mysterious than the quantum world that was then an unraveling discovery.
I opened my eyes. No point in trying to shut out the world even for these precious moments.
The fishing boat was a mess of nets and fish boxes and it stank of rotted fish. It was only when it pulled out of the harbor and was being buffeted by wind and wave that the smell disappeared, replaced by the sweet saltiness of the sea spray. The boat bobbed up and down as it crashed through the waves. I felt my innards heave with each thud of the bow as it crunched onto the water. I struggled not to let my mind think of sickness. I wanted to enjoy the journey, not spend it in a hell of bodily agony. I bit my tongue and clinched my fists, ready to brave through the worst the sea could offer. The waves lashed over the bow sending a deluge of spray about the boat. Luckily the skipper had provided some old oilskins and I began to actually enjoy the sensation of water washing over my yellow clad form. It was like an absolution and the icy cold water on my face quickly lifted the encroaching nausea.
The ebbing sickness revealed a rising elation. My mind was now hovering over the scene. I was entranced by the beauty of life. I was part of a living work of art where the main theme was framed by the tumultuous gray clouds, the foreground and background was the teeming sea, full of frothing seahorses. Alone on this canvas was a small vulnerable boat being tossed about at will by the sheer power of the elements. No human artist could even come close to depicting the awesome scene. Words were not invented to describe such a glorious world.
There was always this constant reminder that actual living was so much ahead of interpretation. The scientist, the philosopher, the artist can all look at that scene but their interpretation, no matter how modern or sophisticated, will always fall far short of the actuality. The mind cannot recreate the beauty of objective reality. What is out there before me is always better than I can recreate. There is an essential pointlessness to my attempts to capture reality.
A huge wave suddenly broke over the boat causing it to heave heavily to one side. For a moment I feared that it was going all the way over. The blood drained from my face and an icy shiver shook my being. For the briefest of instants I faced the end. The simple three letter word now had impact way beyond its regular use. It had written into it, the terror of oblivion, the existential loneliness of leaving the living, the horror of the powerlessness of the body.
The wave tossed me over and my head glanced off a crate. I felt warmth on my cheek and the sensation was pleasurable for an instant, then the searing pain shot through my temple. I pulled myself up and through the turmoil heard the skipper shouting to me to hold on. In a daze I clutched at the nearest rope just as the second monster wave arrived. The water washed over me and eerily I could see the blood streams flow over the deck. I panicked. A weird desire to jump overboard and end it all flashed across my consciousness. It was like meeting the danger straight on, rather than waiting passively for the boat to be sunk by the merciless waves. The irrationality went, almost as fast as it had come. It was only presented as an escape for my tormented existence in the face of such colossal threat. It was the last vestige of independence of person left.
The extreme conditions abated and the boat was now making headway again towards the island. The skipper offered a rag to clean my wound but the bleeding had stopped of its own accord. Still shaking from the shock, I willed the rest of the trip to pass quickly.