човек се прекрачва и влиза в Него-то на себе си
после ми се усмихна и каза: „Светулке“
и ме гледаше, Боже, как ме гледаше – така че да помня този му поглед чак и на онзи свят
аз не съм от времето
This is a glimpse
at a creature that I should call “myself,” as well as at other unmatched ones like me. At all of us. I throw a ray of light at our mutual self, and at what’s hidden in our little days. I don't fall for the collectors for our insatiable minds. This is a travelogue from within, rather than from significant destinations. Don't expect any "wow!" stories and the similar enticements with which the genre abounds by default. Seascoops are a discovery - of the world and of myself the way I always am - the crystal Giacomo! It's all bareback. And it's all in a state of flux. In the heady motion of my constant inner transmutation; in the heady motion of my life's events galloping before my eyes faster than I can perceive; in the heady motion of a sailor (this one is literal) who has only a few hours on land to make a few steps, look around, to pick a bunch of memories and bid goodbye. The delirious haste will slap you at my speed of speaking, thrust you into leaps and bounds from here to there and back, to elsewhere, to nowhere or everywhere. I run. I fly. I live. But I also pause. All at the same time. I have my favorite ability to halt within a second and stand in its transparency woven of a revelation kind of sensation. Amid all the gigantic hassle, these stop-seconds of mine have precipitated priceless "out of time" fragments. These are the treasures of those who have lived. I'm all for treasure sharing. That's what the seascoops came into being for.
They are history to a certain degree, but what they are most of all is the opposite of a narrative. I feel them like the sacred quiet, like the silence that touches you, like a presence. The Everything and the Nothing pulsate in the them, saturating the words with the intimacy of an attitude more than with casual emotions or responses. In that tiny "I" of mine from the seascoops, on a par with timelessness, I cannot but bump into time as well. It is cheeky enough to be present, to gesture and attract the onlookers' eyes. This is how time and timelessness interact inside me within an inexplicable and harmonic juxtaposition, each one claiming its own necessity in a world, which is both perfect and flawed by design.
Well, here I am, the child whose mother guided her to develop her talent as a musician (*I received a classical music education, for which I’ll be grateful to her forever. I graduated from the Music School in Varna with piano, and the Music Academy in Sofia with choral conducting. I had excellent offers for the so-called work realization, but the moment of my life was specific. I finished what was expected to be a career before it began. Shortly after graduating from the Music Academy, I met "the love we can’t do without." We got married in no time, and not long before I started traveling with him)– a country girl found herself in the big white world. Expect endless "Oh’s!" and "Ah’s!" These are the first steps of someone born and bred in a communist country, behind the Iron Curtain, venturing out for the first time. Can't help but reinvent hot water. You might have a bit of a laugh on me… But what can one do, life is not as equal for all of us. Yet, it’s just as equal from within.
"I saw the world!" Everyone who can say this is profoundly appreciative of being able to fly out of his/her coop. My flying out was enabled by my tying the knot with a sailor. It wasn't premeditated, you will figure out for yourself I am not the one to carefully plan and solve her puzzle in advance. It will be getting dark here too, but there is no way around – I promised you boundless sincerity. Waiting for a sailor and living without him were a pain that plagued my soul with the most nightmarish instrument – the fear of his death. Sending him on a voyage was like sending to a war he might not return from. I would compare my torment with a scene in a movie where people were tortured and their leader was forced to watch everything that was being done to them. The unbearable horror made him slam his head into one of those old cast-iron radiators to lose conscience. I had nowhere to slam my head. Each time I experienced everything from scratch - bareback, live, with no anesthesia. Seeing him off and waiting, seeing him off and waiting. Days on end in his pajamas, on his side of the bed, on his pillow, with his perfume in hand – ate nothing, drank nothing, drowned in tears. The Romantic characters are here today. Here I am - an authentic specimen. Until I got the promise, "I'll get him back to you every time." These words gave me unwavering security and peace of mind. The whimpering passed under the bridge. And the chance to take voyages with him opened up before long. I took it up within an instant, so that we would not lose a grain of togetherness. Untogetherness is love too, but it screams out of desire. While togetherness lilts. But it was exactly during our standing apart when we figured out that the innermost core of our oneness was that it was inseparable.
Sailing in a ship was the ultimate challenge. I couldn't even swim! Water sent shudders down my spine. I had drowned as a child and I knew what it felt like. But as I say in my favorite quote:
"There is no higher power than love!
She is almighty!
Even death obeys it.
Желанията ѝ не козируват никому, на нищо, никога!“
Песента над песните 8:6 (Анн де Лесте версия)
Being on a ship you have all the time in the world and nothing to do. If you are an accompanying person. Work takes it out of everybody else. The captain being the only exception. Responsibility is his only burden. I saw close-up how sailors earned their living and what its price was. I was heartbroken. Slave labor is not history - it is still with us today. (*It is no coincidence that some countries have placed the work of a ship mechanic and that of a miner in the same labor category.) One hundred and fifty million sailors all over the world are virtually sacrificing their lives for the sake of their families, writing themselves off to write the happiness of their children and wives in capital letters. Often, the women and children hail from several broken marriages and add up to a hundred mouths to feed. I saw the men and their fate. Cash machines.
He used to work all day, sometimes through the night, a few times reaching up to 72 hours without a break. And the engine room of the ship is one of the most life-threatening working environments, providing thousands of opportunities for one to suffer. Once back, it was as if he had returned from a battlefield. I'll spare you the details for being too off-putting. The inhuman fatigue of his face is what I pray we could erase from our lives altogether. I have been his wife for 20 years and it is still very, very difficult for me to live with what his profession defines as his way of life. But this is what he is best at. So, I had to adjust. And that is why I began writing – as a subconscious reaction to my and his preservation – not to think about how he was, what he was struggling with, whether he hurt himself, etc. women's care, which I have disciplined over time, because of my faith in the big picture, in which all the pieces of our lives definitely and in a predestined manner have their place and meaning. I don't know if I have to answer myself why and how I started writing. The important thing is that over the years I have enjoyed the pleasure of continuing to do so. I want to leave a sound behind us; I want it to be beautiful and true. It's that simple.
Понякога се оприличавам на Андерсеновата Елиза от „Дивите лебеди“ – шия ризи от коприва. И си постоянствам в „шиенето“ вече повече от 17 години – резултатът: 12 „ризи“ (книги). В началото, докато го правех, мислех за бъдещите ни деца. Исках да знаят какви са били мама и тате преди да ги има, какво са преживели, как са се обичали, как са ги чакали. Писах и заради приятелите, които се вълнуваха и искаха да им разказваме за пътешествията си, за живота на кораб. Но как да преразкажеш 2, 4, 7 месеца живот?! Как да предадеш чувството да живееш в изолация от всичко и всички с дни, седмици и месеци извън цивилизацията, само 20 души на борд, всички те мъже, оскотели от желязото и от солта?! И аз, мадам, о, моля ви! С храна, която свършва на първия месец. После сутрин, обед, вечер – месо, месо, месо. Или пък храна има, но готвачът не става и ядеш 2 месеца сандвич с кашкавал от микровълновата. Но това е нищо. Да си дойдем на думата. За бурите. На товарни кораби сигурността на екипажа не е приоритет. Приоритетен е товарът. Той трябва да пристигне невредим и най-вече навреме. Затова се правят ужасяващи престъпления срещу човешкия живот, чиято цена в търговската корабна индустрия е под тази на превозваната стока. Имаме поне 3 гарантирани смърти в бури, от които Бог ни е избавил не знам как, Той си знае. Три дена и половина слънце не се видя в една от тях. Нито слънце, нито звезди. Корабът е въртележка на ужасите, сгромолясва се с все сила в дъното на вълната, която след няколко секундно тресене като в земетресение извън всяка скала, го подема и издига до небесата почти вертикално, само за да я прескочи и да се забие с цялата си маса отново там, в адската ѝ паст. И така на всеки няколко секунди, на всяка следваща вълна, часове наред, дни наред. И движението не е само нагоре-надолу, надясно-наляво, а във всички посоки – усуква, гъне се, трещи, турбините на винта над водата вият умопомрачително, блъска и вибрира, скача и пропада, всичко се събаря, претълкаляш се нанякъде, вързваш се да не се удариш, няма сън със дни, със месеци (в мусоните), преместваш си матрака на пода, поне като паднеш да не паднеш от високо, предметите те удрят, няма укрепяне, няма нищо, всичко „ето хоп и свършва“, но слава, слава Богу, има Бог, който никога не свършва! Много от нещата ги спестявах, докато пишех. Както казва Ники за най-хубавите и за най-лошите работи: „Те са си за нас, Зоре“. Ама сега нещо ми се развърза езика.
So that's where it all started. And where it came to is living on a cruise ship six months a year, free of charge at that, as currently (2018) Niki is one of the senior officers on board and has earned the privilege of having his wife along with him while at work. The last seascoop is from a cruise ship. Yes, we’ve been given this gift too… We are flabbergasted into silence.
So, Seascoops are a series. A five-course menu. The first two, the one from 2002 ("holy land walking the holy lands"") and the one from 2005 ("outside the letters of the books, even the holy ones - I want inside their Author") are from Western Europe, the Mediterranean, and West Africa. Back then I penned them in a notebook. And, to tell you the truth, I didn't feel like writing too long: there was a whole lot of other stuff to experience. Against the backdrop of the last three, the first two seascoops sound almost telegraphic. They are about the size of hors d'oeuvres - tiny bites. This was the result of my hurrying to finish writing and stay alone with the blue for hours. I remember standing on the deck from dawn till dusk, taking photos, hovering, standing silent, bursting with raptures, jumping over my fear, face to face with a mountain of water coming onto our board, you could see the sun right behind it...
In Seascoop 2005, we spent our nights in the middle of the African savannah, sailing for two days upstream the Congo, all the way to Matadi. My few hours in this "city" witnessing bits of the African way of life have become one of my most poignant experiences ever. Incidentally, the most horrific storm happened during that same voyage. We were sailing past Namibia. It rocked us for three days beyond any measure or mercy … We had a glitch in the main engine, it could seize up in an instant, which was equivalent to sinking shortly thereafter. Even if we had managed to lower the lifeboats and somehow make it to land through the forty-foot waves, the Namibian desert, a thousand miles long, would have swallowed us. Nothing has ever centered me as much as our survival after this humongous storm.
The sunniest and most memorable voyage of all took place from December 2005 to July 2006, with Ilia Mutafov as the Captain (Western Europe, West Africa). There was no shortage of adventures on this one either. I snapped from some African virus. Three days and nights, I spent in scrambling for life and limb. We were out in the ocean, with no physician on board. I was saved by God's will and my pastor’s prayer, whom I e-mailed saying that I was dying and he "happened" to be online in his account and answered me in a flash. We went through a whole lot in the course of that voyage: the end of the truce in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, i.e. the beginning of the shootout. We sailed off along with the withdrawal of the UN helicopters. They also shot at us in Nigeria, where in an effort to escape as fast as we could we got stuck in the river (thank God for only a few minutes). But I have no seascoop from this particular voyage. I devoted those seven months to writing my version of Galatians and the Old Testament Poetic Books (Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Song of Songs, and a portion of the Psalms), which later on morphed into a launchpad for Romans and Jews (2008 and 2010). Still later, everything already written, and especially the Romans-Jews, nudged into the world my last book.
Unlike the first two, the last three seascoops are really extensive. Seascoop 2013 ("comes down as lightning and stays within you as the Spirit") hails from Southeast Asia - Hong Kong, Shanghai, South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia.
During Seascoop 2014 ("one strides over oneself to enter the Other of oneself"...) I spent 4 months without coming to land. We meandered between Mumbai, India, and Richards Bay, South Africa, anchoring in front of both cities without going ashore. I won't forget the parade of thousands of migrating whales in front of Richards Bay. This was also the time when our ship crossed the pirate-infested area off the Somalian coast. All the time, we had professional, heavily armed military security on board. These were the four months in the Indian Ocean during the monsoons - the perfect time for inner life, ha-ha! To our comfort, the mad rocking alternated with periods at anchor, so we did take breaks from the horror. During those days of lull, I edited my huge Roman-Jews and penned their gigantic preface. 2014 was also the time when I realized I wanted to have a book out. I felt like sharing my life not only with my loved ones, but also with those thousands of "distant" people, whom I feel in fact as close, being bound in an eternal and wonderful way. My wish grew into a decision, perhaps most of all because several times during our years at sea I was literally standing at the doorstep of the worlds, on the border crossing from here to over There. And standing on that cusp profoundly changes one. You quickly mature to the meaning of everything, and hence to the meaning of your existence as well. You can now see what you are an envoy for. The sea reduces you. It thickens you to the essence of Life - to be with God and detest being without Him. There are no atheists out at sea. We are all clear about it out there.
Seascoops from cruises ("we are the ship people; the passengers are the sparrows on our window sill") is my last seascoop. I have put writing on hold for a while. The New Amsterdam is the most voluminous one, and it is chock-full of experiences and destinations. It comprises five several-month cruises in Alaska, the Caribbean and Europe. Here I found myself amid the big of the big world. People from all continents, races, ethnicities, religions, cultures, here we are – we fall asleep here to wake up over there, by yet another tourist icon, we criss-cross the world far and wide, sharing our days and lives with all their curves, straight lines, loops and upturns. Hilarious, sad, tender and painful - for months on end, for years together, we have been hovering across our shared ocean home. We are no longer those twenty on board. The ship has a crew of over a thousand. Plus 2000 passengers coming and going - new ones flooding in every week. Dozens of friendships and hundreds of acquaintances have been struck.
Seascoops are accompanied by gigantic video and photo material, and it is absorbing enough in itself despite its amateurish dialect (*my time to indulge in photography the way I want has not come yet). You can see the full photo archive on https://anndeleste.com. For what you are going to read from here on, as well as for everything in my humble human life, I want to thank the two and only ones:
The only God - who kept us alive and whose unconditional Love and fatherly care each one of us can rely on in any circumstances;
and the only Nikolay these pages would not have existed without him. The sweetest thing in my life is sharing your life, Niki! The sweetest thing in our life together is that we share the life of God who cannot stop making us witnesses of what Love is and what it is capable of.
At the close of this lengthy preface, I would like to warn you against too high expectations. Please take into account that the Seascoops are no more than my pajamas diaries – deprived of striving for literary writing, sensing the pulse of the market, the most current trends or anything like that. There is room in the world for all these things, but for me too, I hope – it's big enough to hold us all. I'm not a writer, I'm not capable of writing as a pro. I write the way I talk to my friends – casually, but frankly and deeply to my own measure – about everything I find exciting. If I can make someone focus not on the type or quality of writing but on the ideal behind it, instead, it will make me happy enough. Everyone is limited and humanly stupid in their own right. We shouldn’t be ashamed of this, but to the extent possible, turn our limitations into opportunities and tame our stupidity, though we will not quite succeed. We all leave here with few grams of it to last us during the trip. (*At the moment of death, the body lightens - the weight of the soul, as they say)
Last but not least, I would like to put my hand in the hand of anyone who reads my sea diaries and thank you personally for reaching out to them, hopefully in an attempt to add something to your life. I believe you'll get it
An de Lesté
(Literally from Roma language: in Him, in Christ)
***
Обичам моменти като този, когато Ники отиде да вземе прането от сушилнята, например. Вечер е. Свети само нощно осветление. Изгледали сме филм, капещ простота и истина. Отивам до прозореца и поглеждам в тъмното към корабите на рейда. Някои от прозорците им още светят, други спят. Усещам мокрото по палубата, плясъка на бялата по борда. Дочувам вятъра из въжетата на крановете и се чувствам у дома. Полягам по корем. Заглеждам се във формата на нокътя си. Виждам там баща ми. Обръщам си ръката – от там ме гледа майката на майка ми. Уверява ме, че няма смърт, че всички се живеем – един през другия и следващия. По дланта си проследявам нишката на целия ми род назад, назад в епохите. Издигам се над цялата картина. Ясно виждам пътеките на всички хора – от първия до последния определен да се роди във времето. Искали, догонвали, все бягали, че някога да стигнели, кога политвали, кога пълзели – ей-ги всички те – дълбаят с пръст живота си върху надгробните си плочи в кратък епитаф, измежду чиито букви Господ да се смее. Аз съм в този смях, не на плочата от камък. Усмихвам се, защото всички сме смеха.
Вселенската история е сепната изневиделица – Ники влиза в каютата с горещото изсъхнало пране. Топлото ме прегръща и подканя да изпълня женския си дълг – да поставя всичко по местата. Ще сменя чаршафите, ще сгъна тениските за спане на всеки на възглавницата. Той работи нещо на компютъра. Аз се взирам в непълнолетните си думи за моменти, състояния и усети, несъпоставими с всякакви определения.
Оказва се, че животът е непредсказуемо очарователен. Неговият тих гласец ни изолира напълно от шума на останалите претендиращи за звуци.
***
Днес е денят, в който пренаписах изречението от Съразпнат: „Няма съвършени текстове, но процесът на създаването им и по-точно отнова откриване на Бог към нас, е есенцията на посланието.“ Жоржан ми каза това веднъж, докато работехме по неговата книга. Дълго време бях зациклила в първата част от цитата, възприемайки го буквално. Бях вътрешно несъгласна, но все още фиксирана в това „няма“. Днес, обаче, прогледнах за това, че той не говори за нямане, а за имане. Все едно казва: има съвършени текстове, но те са съвършени в по-друг смисъл. Те не обслужват нечий перфекционизъм. Те изтичат от сърцевината на човека – от „откриването на Бог към нас“. Те изтичат от това откриване, така както сокът на елата прокапва своята смола по кората на дървото – по най-чистият, открит и девствен начин. Спомняш ли си как лепне тази смола? Как съединява пръстите ти, колко тежи, какъв натиск оказва, докато се мъчиш да ги отлепиш?
***
пред Пакистан
Обичам присъствието на местните работници, колкото и тежко да е то. Обичам тишината от душите им. Тя смирено премълчава истината за тях. Прави ги да изглеждат мъченици, носещи на гърба си някаква хилядолетна умора, оставила ги без сили дори да говорят. Седят и мълчат. Кой подремва, кой посготвя, кой се е зареял в нищото. Приличат на птици, които нито пеят, нито летят. Имат изражението на животните в зоопарка – изпразнени от всякакъв живот и смисъл, агонизиращи от самота, натежали от проклятието да живеят, осъдени на протяжното, разтеглено до вечност „движение“ на времето, в което секундата е векове.
***
Ричардс Бей, ЮАР
На котва сме. Затова е тихо. Лекият ветрец и шляпкането на водата по булба са единствените звуци. Океанът се е кротнал, облечен в порядъчно изгладената си коприна. Риболовните яхти, накацали по нея, попълват идилията. И изведнъж се чува онова „пфууу…“., а след него още едно „пфууу…“ – нали са по двойки. Фонтанчето изпръсква, телата се издигат над водата и… ей ги, китовете! Само 2 секунди мога да ги гледам. После си отиват. Няма ги за около минута и пак ми се показват – свенливо някак, без опашката. Чак, когато ще се потапят на дълбокото, разперват красавицата – бавно, плавно, съвършено от прецизност и еднаквост всеки път – черна отпред, бяла отзад, с две червени точици във краищата – китова опашка – пред очите ми!
***
На 3-я градус сме. Утре преминаваме Екватора. След 2 дни излизаме от границите на Сомалия. Днес, докато поставяхме точката с координатите на кораба, гледахме към Кения и нейния Килиманджаро.
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