A Line, Between the Ocean and the Stars

We take the train to Busan in the afternoon and board an overnight ferry bound for the Japanese port city of Shimonoseki. Dusk comes as the ship pulls away from the dock, passing the threshold of the Busan Harbor Bridge. It is all lit up.

So are the old ladies. They drink and joke and dance on the decks of the boat as we float beneath the bridge. One of them plays an ocarina, sheet music propped up against an air intake vent. “They are having fun!” Suhee looks over at the group of retirees sharing the deck with us. I smile and glance up at the bridge. “I hope we have that kind of energy when we’re that old.”

The voyage takes eleven hours. After the first hour, the lights of Busan are only a faint line of sparkling dust on the horizon behind us.

Looking up, above this line of city lights is a glow and then, dark sky, deep space. Below this line of lights are tiny reflections of the city and then, dark water, deep ocean. Our ship moves between these two spaces, itself a glow and a reflection, floating along that thin line between the depths of the universe, and of our oceans. Within the space of this thin line is the world we claim to know, the dancing old ladies, the ocarina player, me and Suhee, the city lights, and you, too.

The sea and night sky on board the Hamayuu bound for Shimonoseki / CC BY-SA, P.M. Lydon

All of this is very clear on the ocean in the night, and I breathe it in. For a moment, the distant view, and the sound of the waves breaking against the bow become the main attractions. I could stay out here all night, but as I think this the winds pick up and the staff herds us and the slightly drunken old ladies inside the cabin. “We don’t want anyone dancing their way off into the ocean,” says a staff member, in a slightly more serious tone than one would expect. “Or into the stars,” I whisper back.

The ladies move to the indoor dance floor. Suhee and I move to our bunk beds for the night. I lie down, close my curtain, and think about all the unknowable things and how they are a part of our experience even if we do not know them. I think about smiles and laughs of old ladies, notes from an ocarina, and the city lights, spread out like a line of stars just below the stars of the sky, and just above the ocean. I think how something ties this all together, wraps it up, and delivers it to us in a series of moments. What is this thing? On this adventure, I hope we can come to know it more closely.

Soon it is lights out time and the ship rocks softly back and forth, like a giant crib with a few hundred people inside. Sleep takes over. A good thing. We will have a long morning tomorrow after our arrival in Japan, with a bit of travel to do yet, and no idea how we are going to do it. We didn’t plan that far ahead.

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Thank you everyone for being here with me. This story continues next week, as we arrive in Japan and journey to Mojiko on foot, in an unexpected way.

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