Coconuts can occasionally be seen floating in the ocean, and once they land, they sprout, like this example on Makemo; it's all part of the play
On the Pacific, my dreams seem to become numbed (and by 'dreams' I mean aspirations rather than REM sleep). For some reason, my usual concerns – destination, cash flow, cultural experience, maintaining a reasonable social life, wishing I'd been around in the sixties, the normal sort of thing – become both irrelevant and disconnected when I'm surrounded by sea for weeks, with no contact for so long. The desert was never like this, because however desolate the outback might be, it's teeming with folklore, wildlife, mountains, gorges, strange plants and, above all, amazing people and settlements. The Pacific is totally different, and although I wasn't expecting the sea to be anything like the desert in terms of psychological effect, it's surprised me to feel so detached.
So what if I've got so-and-so dollars in the bank? It's no bloody use to me in the middle of the ocean. So what if I meant to write a letter to blah-de-blah? There aren't any post offices halfway to the Gambier Islands. So what if I haven't showered in two weeks, and all my clothes are smothered in salt crystals? There aren't any people here to meet anyway. The situation is like no other: if it wasn't for the daily radio contact, the whole world could disappear, and we wouldn't have a clue. (In fact, I arrived at the Gambiers knowing that the UK had had a General Election about two weeks before, but I didn't have a clue as to the result. It took quite a bit of effort to find out, too.)
The world of Zeke on the ocean makes me think of a play: a play is self-contained, with a few actors, a couple of different scenes, and a plot (or a destination, if you like), and just like on Zeke, the play is cut off from reality. Sure, plays are normally set in a familiar environment – a house, a garden, a supermarket – but the connections to reality are all in the audience's imagination, and taken as a self-contained entity, a play exists apart from the world in which it plays. How else can one play be a story of everyday life in one country, and a seriously subversive piece of literature in another? So Zeke is like a play, and like all plays the actors don't necessarily behave like normal humans would: there's melodrama, comedy, soliloquy and so on, things that happen in everyday life, but which occur more intensely or dramatically in a play than in the real world, and believe me, four weeks on the ocean in Zeke makes things plenty melodramatic.
One result of Zeke being like a play is this feeling of being totally cut off from reality. I have never felt so truly alone before, yet this doesn't imply loneliness, more an appreciation of isolation. The nearest land is 1000 miles away, and the progress of Zeke at around 100 nautical miles per day makes this distance feel sizable. We're getting there, but it's a slow process, and it's such a radical change from the hustle and bustle of normal life.
