Idled Souls

My friend Captain Markos, Master of the White Water, is always up to speed and enjoys a good debate. With inspiration squeezed from a few bottles of gin to tide us over, he and I could stay up until the wee hours discussing the facts as we know them.

After these shared all-nighters, he would sometimes invite me for a sail around the island of Crete on his sleek racing ship, The After U.

He’s always had me sized me up fairly well. I know nothing about sailing but he would typically only call me out when he needed extra ballast, to keep his boat better trimmed while racing in the unpredictable wind common to that area.

On one particularly sunny and beautiful morning many moons ago, I signed on as his mate for a highly anticipated competition. As I recall, the winner of this event would earn the respect of all the old sailors in the harbor, a race that was tailor-made for a seasoned seaman with the honed skills of Captain Markos.

But on that day, before that race had even started, just after we had escaped the harbor and reached the open sea, Captain Markos called it quits when we were caught off guard by winds which suddenly gusted over 30 knots. Even the heavy weight of my extra balance could not keep the ship from swaying violently, the top mast sometimes tipping dangerously close towards the water.

Several attempts failed to sail us back into the safety of the harbor when the intense breath of a greatly disturbed Poseidon blew against us each time, forcing us to constantly turn away at the last moment, and the Captain bravely faced an undesired alternative.

Quickly and calmly changing our tack, we would sneak behind one of the hat-like islands off the coast, take down our sail, and motor in. It was the only safe way to go, he said.

As described, he made this decision expeditiously, calling on his years of sailing experience to instantly alter our course. He had witnessed his fair share of tragedy in these waters. I had heard curious stories about an unexplained scuttling or two near Pyraeus, perhaps an odd recollection of men once overboard.

Yet, even if weighing an obscure fear of near catastrophe, I could tell his decision was reluctant. The last thing he wanted was to have his fellow sailors in the harbor seeing him coming in on engine. This would surely disparage his reputation as Master of the White Water.

In preparation for such a confrontation, I suppose, he began cursing Poseidon, the seas and the winds in such a comprehensive manner which I have only rarely heard. His colorful description of the “Force 5 gale” which placed us squarely on the nose of the dragon seemed repetitive in nature and pointed for the ears of someone other than myself.

But I soaked it all up and after we made the short trip to the protected leeward side of the hat-like island off the coast, we stowed the sails and unfouled the lines. With a loudly audible amount of disgust regarding his predicament, the Captain then beckoned the small diesel engine which reported instantly with a shutter, a black poof of exhaust, and a monotonous putt-putt noise to push us on home.

Assuming our fate, we settled down. Captain Markos reclined in his spot near the tiller and I found an open spot on the top deck near the mast. With the sudden life-threatening danger now all but resolved, with only the solitude of a leisurely return across a vicious sea to keep us company, we resumed one of our previous discussions regarding the mysteries of our soul …

So, then, I think we agree that Plato’s tripartite soul is a bunch of ancient rot, right?

I’m afraid so. I can’t buy it.

Well, you can throw that old book away, then. We have no use for it.

Assuming it is still something, I mean, do we all have a soul? If we sense it, surely we can describe it.

Exactly, I think it’s more of a sense, really. It’s that inside thing that tells us what’s right or wrong sometimes. Does that help?

Nope. I want to know if it is created of the same stuff as everything else. Does it have a mass like all things? Is it so small, invisible or just out of our grasp? That doesn’t seem right and I detest the hint of odd spirits without any tangible definition.

Hell, we sense all this stuff. I mean, we see the sky, hear the birds, smell the ocean, feel the ship we’re sitting on, and taste the salt in the air. That’s the five things. At least I still sense all that. Your vices probably destroyed one or more of your faculties by now.

… we both laughed at that …

But we weren’t always able to feel this, were we? When we were young, little babies, we didn’t have a proper sense of things, did we? Who is to say we do now?

Hmmm … assuming those things aren’t all illusions. How would you know?

If we don’t trust our own minds and our perceptions, my friend, what will we trust? Funny, it seems all these perceptions are only memories. And you’re right, those memories are rarely accurate.

Think back to your first memory, ever. What was it?

I think I recall falling down a stairwell at the age of about 3 or so.

Yeah, same for me, it’s like my first memories are all some sort of local calamity, you know? It has to do with pain.

That may be our fist lesson in life but that doesn’t mean the soul has a physical property, that it must have some body to it. I think that’s just your mind at work, locking in and recalling those horrible things that hurt you. I don’t believe the mind and the soul are the same thing.

People think about things, fantasize and so on, but that’s not the soul. The soul makes you aware of your own existence. To me, that’s what separates us from all the apes. They don’t know what they are because they have no soul. They don’t even know they exist.

They have no soul or they don’t recognize it? If our first memories are clouded, if we can’t even say for sure when these things came about or what the fog clearly surrounds, then, even with our knowledge now, can we firmly say when we first became aware of our own existence? Weren’t we just like apes once? And why can’t we remember that?

Perhaps the mind of the ape just hasn’t matured to that point yet. You know, I’ve always been struck by that look in a baby’s face when it sees its hands, like it’s the first time that he realizes he has hands. There must be some point in our life when we have that same experience about our soul, if it exists, which I’m not saying it does.

So, the question is when do we become aware of our existence? Is that the point when our soul becomes real to us? Then, are we just aware that our mind becomes aware or are we aware of our true soul? Which is it?

Couldn’t the soul just be that, a matured awareness of the mind itself? Couldn’t it be that a mind, as it grows in ability to think and process ideas, takes in all the sensual clues and eventually comes to understand that it exists within a living being and identifies with everything else that surrounds it? Couldn’t the soul just be defined by that awareness, just like a physical sense?

You mean, not a real thing but just a sense of something that is real.

Maybe. Or maybe just a sensory thing alone. Couldn’t it be just like our own nerves, as in the case where we sense physical pressure of some sort but not the nerve itself?

Well, it could be wrong. Our other senses are often wrong, if that’s true. But I don’t think they’ve detected a soul nerve yet.

Yeah, OK. But couldn’t the soul just be nothing more than that odd sixth sense? Is that what all the evidence suggests? It senses something inside the gut while detecting a connection with the all of everything outside the skin.

If so, what does it sense besides awareness?

Why must it sense anything else? But if it is, then it is the most enlightened sense because we don’t know right from wrong without it. That’s hard to explain. Still, at the point of awareness we may find that it was there all along, hiding just outside our understanding.

Then again, like you say, it might be illusion. It may mean that we just conjured it up, an odd mix of fantasy and experience in our own minds.

Aw, crap, we aren’t going anywhere with this. Aren’t we all saying the same damn things over and over, just in different ways? When will we learn?

What did you do with that book?

… The captain nodded his head and scratched his graying beard. I looked to the hat-like island off to our right. Then I noticed the small white house on the hill of the coast to our left. I quietly wondered what I would learn about myself by living in a quaint little cave like that, passing my carefree days so close to the ocean.

The boat rocked and swayed gently as the turbulent waters defied our slightest progress. The putt-putt sound of the little engine gradually muted and we both drifted off to contemplate our mad ideas alone and in our own ways.

I awoke a few hours later, my throat bone dry and my lips burnt from the unrelenting sun. I opened my eyes expecting to see the bustling harbor eagerly awaiting our arrival, a throng of fellow sailors anxiously pacing the docks, standing by for news of our safe return.

Instead, I saw the sun getting low over the nose of the dragon and the same hat-like island on the starboard and the same little white house on the hill to the port.

I called down to Captain Markos. He was still slouched near the tiller and when he heard me he jumped a bit, acting as though I may have startled him. Most likely, I presumed, he was tending to his complex captain duties or lulled by the sea into a momentary deep thought while I was napping.

Captain, I began, am I wrong or is that the same little house on the hill to our port, the same little house that I saw an hour or so ago?

Captain Markos slowly turned his head and, although his eyes were shielded by dark sunglasses which hung firmly over his beet red nose, I could tell he was spying that little house very keenly. He faced it for several moments and sized up the situation while our hollow boat bobbed in the empty sea, our engine still putt-putting away.

Then I saw him show his teeth in pain, white crusted slivers of spittle and beer breaking free from the corners of his mouth. Another of his bitter curses against the gods broke the serenity of the salty air. He rose in a lightening flash, a few empty beer cans collapsed and crashed on to the deck as he stood back from the tiller and kicked the engine’s gear handle with his bare foot. With a lurch and a few groans, the boat pushed ahead, suddenly propelled by an unexpected leap into the forward gear.

And then it dawned on me. We had been in idle the whole time.

Cheers,

Mb