The Fisherman’s Dream

I have been dreaming but I can’t remember them for more than the time it takes sand to fall through your fingers. And thats not long enough to write them down.

All I remember of last nights dream is that I was in world made of clouds and people were helping me get somewhere higher.

It’s good to know my dreams are still there somewhere, swimming inside my subconscious.

I’m gonna tell you a story about my favorite dream. But it’s not my dream, it belongs to a fisherman.

This is how I came to discover it. And please bare with me, it’s all from memory and proper nouns and dates escape me. But this is what I can recollect.

I had just sailed to Hawaii and decided to visit The Bishop Museum. I wanted to watch the show on Wayfinding at the planetarium there. Wayfinding is how Polynesians navigated. It involves the stars and currents and intuition. They made maps of the sky using shells and sticks. They made maps of islands and atolls and currents this way too.

I took time to explore the museum before the show started. I was wandering around looking at instruments and skulls and human teeth necklaces and capes made of honeycreeper feathers, when I came upon a statue. He was made of stone and had dark sunken eyes. His mouth was oblong. Like an O that had been gnawed on.

I could see storms in his eyes. I could feel tsunamis and currents and wind crawling out of him. I could smell all the sea-monsters that live in the darkest depths on his breath. It was intoxicating and I shook in the presence of his power.

I looked away. I started to cry. I took a step back. From my new distance I tried to look at him again. I couldn’t. I looked away. I took a step back. I cried. I wiped my tears. I looked. I looked away. I took a step back. I cried. I wiped my tears. I looked. I kept having to look away and step further away. And the tears. So many tears. Like the whole ocean falling from my eyes. I did this dance until I was standing in the middle of the museum. I tried to look one last time, but he wouldn’t let my eyes linger on him.

I ran a few buildings over and straight up to the museum shop counter. That’s where you buy your entry tickets. I said, “Excuse me, but I am having an intense visceral experience with one of the statues.”

I needn’t say more. Not the building it took place in, nor what it looked like. They knew what I was talking about. “You’re not alone, others have felt it too,” they said. Then they told me the story.

It is the statue of a Hawaiian sea god. His name starts with a K and is many syllables long. I’ll call him Shark God because he is connected to sharks and long ago was worshipped by fishermen. The worship of many deities became forbidden beneath the hands of certain ruling Kings and people where forced to bury statues, such as this, underground. So Shark God got buried way back in the day.

Fast-forward to the 90s. A fisherman had a dream where Shark God visited him. He had never heard of this god before, so it was startling I’m sure.

Shark God introduced himself and said to the fisherman “I am buried under dirt and it is cold down here. Please dig me up. Please.”

Shark God told the fisherman where exactly he was buried and also told the fisherman that he would die on a specific date, not too far in the future.

The dream happened again and again and again. So many times that the fisherman could not ignore it.

The fisherman gathered his children and shovels and they set out one night to dig where Shark God claimed he was.

Sure as shooting, they found him. They brushed the dirt off Shark God and carried him back to their home. They made a warm space for him and brought him offerings of fruit and fish and flowers.

All deities need to be fed, imagine how hungry Shark God must have been for an offering… after all those years of neglect. Also imagine how powerful his offerings were in the past…to keep him alive for so long under the earth. Nearly forgotten by all, but still pulsing somehow on the blessings and bounty of the past.

Sadly, the fisherman died on the exact date that Shark God predicted. The fisherman’s kids didn’t know what to do with the statue so they gave it to The Bishop Museum.

The Bishop museum placed it in the building I saw it in. A few years afterwards they wanted to remodel the museum. They began temporarily relocating the collection in that building.

Nobody and nothing could get the statue of Shark God to budge. No man, no woman, no bulldozer, no crane. They tried everything. They were forced to remodel the museum around it!

Shark God is potent, that’s for sure! So much so, that a Japanese fisherman’s wife, occasionally flies to Hawaii to bring Shark God gifts, in hopes that her husband will have a good catch. So you see, I’m not the only one who felt him.

We are feeling the seas strength today. Maybe it’s because Neptune wants us to compose a better song for him.

Our champagne sailing is most certainly over. 20 knot winds and we are on a close reach. The boat is hot. The night was sleepless. But I saw three shooting stars.

Tonight an hour after sunset, we will look for the comet NEOWISE in the northwest, so that we can soak our eyes in its splendor.

Earlier I went to start the engine. We have to start it every other day or so to top off the batteries. Anyway, the cover on the starter button fell right off. So I put gold duct tape around it. We’re fixing everything with gold duct tape. It’s easy and it’s pretty.

Our speed through the water (STW) is almost 6.5 knots, but our speed over ground (SOG) is 4.5. So there is a current pushing against us. From my chart of the worlds ocean currents, it looks like we are in or a little north of what’s called the North Equatorial Current. It flows west and we are sailing east-southeast. So we are loosing quite a bit of ground.

Its wild to me that there are currents in the middle of the ocean. I don’t know why. It just is. Like there is so much water and so much space how could part of it gain more force over other parts of it.

Current is defined as the horizontal motion of water. You got tidal currents wind-driven currents, river currents and ocean currents. We are in an ocean current. They are common in areas of consistent trade winds. Earths rotation and the waters density both have an effect on the patterns of ocean currents.

Getting another year younger feels like I’m caught in a current. Earth’s rotation has got everything to do with that. I wish there was no time. That we weren’t measured in years, but in lessons we had learned or how many books we have read or how many flowers we have grown. That we wouldn’t ask someone, “How old are you?” We would ask things instead like, “How many times have you laid down in the grass?” Or “How many oceans have you crossed?” Or “How many shooting stars have you seen?”

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