I awoke once during the night. I pushed the canopy asideand looked out. The moon was a sharply defined crescent andthe sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with such fierce,contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark.
The sea lay quietly, bathed in a shy, light-footed light, adancing play of black and silver that extended without limits allabout me. The volume of things was confounding – the volumeof air above me, the volume of water around and beneath me.
I was half-moved, half-terrified. I felt like the sage Markandeya,who fell out of Vishnu's mouth while Vishnu was sleeping andso beheld the entire universe, everything that there is. Beforethe sage could die of fright, Vishnu awoke and took him backinto his mouth. For the first time I noticed – as I would noticerepeatedly during my ordeal, between one throe of agony andthe next – that my suffering was taking place in a grandsetting. I saw my suffering for what it was, finite andinsignificant, and I was still. My suffering did not fit anywhere,I realized. And I could accept this. It was all right. (It wasdaylight that brought my protest: "No! No! No! My sufferingdoes matter. I want to live! I can't help but mix my life withthat of the universe. Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry ontoa vastness – how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped viewI have of things? This peephole is all I've got!") I mumbledwords of Muslim prayer and went back to sleep.
The sea lay quietly, bathed in a shy, light-footed light, adancing play of black and silver that extended without limits allabout me. The volume of things was confounding – the volumeof air above me, the volume of water around and beneath me.
I was half-moved, half-terrified. I felt like the sage Markandeya,who fell out of Vishnu's mouth while Vishnu was sleeping andso beheld the entire universe, everything that there is. Beforethe sage could die of fright, Vishnu awoke and took him backinto his mouth. For the first time I noticed – as I would noticerepeatedly during my ordeal, between one throe of agony andthe next – that my suffering was taking place in a grandsetting. I saw my suffering for what it was, finite andinsignificant, and I was still. My suffering did not fit anywhere,I realized. And I could accept this. It was all right. (It wasdaylight that brought my protest: "No! No! No! My sufferingdoes matter. I want to live! I can't help but mix my life withthat of the universe. Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry ontoa vastness – how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped viewI have of things? This peephole is all I've got!") I mumbledwords of Muslim prayer and went back to sleep.