Every ocean has a port
The first section

The man woke up to a faint morning light and looked around. He did not really know if it was early morning. The sun was obscured by clouds but he felt a haze that spread their misty light. He only knew that there were internal forces that urged him forward, toward an idea and a desire. Today, he would reach the small town that he had been on his way to. It meant that he would meet with Ephraim again. It was these thoughts that guided his longing in almost compulsive movements

He got up and began to pull on his clothes and then gathered up his things. After a final overview of the area, he detached raft and let it drift off the shore, as he hoisted sail for the weak wind that swept noticeable along the water.
The mattress felt pleasantly soft as he leaned back against it, while he sank into thought. He could still feel some drowsiness and let the raft therefore be conducted with current and wind, a bit haphazardly. It behaved almost self and he just looked up at times. Impatience was transformed increasingly into a comfortable quiet again. It was as if he had been included in a natural movement that still nobody could affect, a stream of life that brought him forward.
It is when we are prevented on our way, we feel impatience creeping over us, when others put their foot on our own and stop us from taking next step, when powerlessness is spreading. Now he was instead free to run ahead of his own power and his own thoughts.

He looked up at the clouds that moved up in the sky, like a shapeless mass of grey swirls.
Sometimes he could catch a glimpse of a tear, the next moment it was gone.
He took out a bit of the provisions and chewed on a piece of bread and some fish with cold potatoes.

After a few hours an opening glimpse of some islands was seen, to which he steered and where he knew that the open sea began.
He felt the wind got stronger. While the clouds seemed to thin out and occasionally a gleam of the sun reached him like a golden arrow, shot by a messenger, and a notice of the clear sky, as redemptive light of life, a clear mind after cloudy games of mind.

It was slanting rays told about the early morning.
Islands passed and he surmised the open sea. The tension raise, and a tingling anticipation felt. A new world and a new landscape would meet.
Already he saw seagulls hovered high above, that sea independent owners and guardians. Their escape was majestic, when they slipped up, sometimes as quickly as the clouds, sometimes stayed up, in a frozen motion, a golden moment, a drop of time slowly falling down in life's surging sea, detached from a quiet moment of reflection.

The raft glided along the largest of the islands and rounded the extreme point. Suddenly there was the sea spread out before him in all its breadth and mighty. At the same time the sun also broke throw in earnest, and gave the whole scenery a strange light.
It was like a big theatre where the curtain goes up and everything is bathed in powerful headlamp beam illumination. He could now look away along the coast, where the city's contours weakly allowed itself to be seen.
Suddenly, he felt excited again, and began to scout along the beaches after a suitable landing site for the raft. To sail all the way would take another couple of hours.
Soon he found a small bay and steered his raft toward this.
There, he knew that it would also go a highway, a bit up from the beach.
So reached the raft shore and slid slowly toward the shallow bay with shell sand and pebbles. Small tufts of wiry grass loomed where the water did not quite reach. It was possible to make fast to a bush.
Small waves washed toward the beach and the raft was lifted growing up over the small stones.

The man took his backpack and packed down some of what he thought he needed and then trudged up the slope and up over a low hill.
He hurried steps.
Further away there was another ridge. Once up on this, synthesis road some distance away.
He walked along the road and came to a bus stop.
So he stood and looked around. There were few houses on both sides of the road. Most saw just a small side road that disappeared down and then the roof of the house that crouched behind a knoll.

Impatiently he stepped along ditch-bank grass edge, while the occasional cars buzzing by with its rising and then declining sound from tyres on the asphalt, until he suddenly heard a faint humming sound, a bit down the road. Then he saw the roof of the bus as it slowly rose up behind a hill.
It came closer and stopped in front of the bus stop, while the creaking of brakes. So, finally, it was heard a snorting sound from the steel horse, when the brakes are released.
The man quickly jumped on the bus steps, and then went back towards the middle. There was a growl from the old engine and the bus sat back in motion with a jerk. Of pressure he fell backwards, as he tried to sit on one of the seats and then came to shove a girl sitting on the inside. She was wearing a pretty summer dress with bare shoulders and wearing a little white shoulder bag over one shoulder.
Her half-long, summer blonde hair fell over her shoulders and floated together with the skin, as if they fitted exactly together. Her hair was almost straight, but twisted a bit the last bit so that it formed the approach to a curl. It seemed light and fluffy and seemed constantly moving. She threw it back with a light flick and looked up at him. She did not look angry, but was more amused by what had occurred.
The man looked sheepishly at her while asking for apologise. He explained, somewhat hastily, that he was not so used to ride a bus. That he actually was more accustomed to rafting.
The girl laughed and smiled a dazzling smile.
You just can not tell me, she said, and looked at him curiously. Here I do not know that there are some floats anyway.
No, the man said now a little iffy, but I came today. I have not been here in a while.
So the girl said, and glanced at him. As if she wanted to see, yet again, how someone looks like go raft instead of bus.
Then there was silence, and the man looked out over the road and the horizon. The girl looked out the window as well.

The man glanced cautiously at the girl again. It had glittered in her eyes when he had seen her. It was as if the sun had broken through the clouds, out on the bay.
It had been redemptive light and gentle warmth that flowed towards him. Now he glanced cautiously toward her again. He wanted to try to get a glimpse of her face, but she sat with her face turned away. Then he suddenly sees her eyes in the mirror window. In an instant she looked at him, then threw her yes down again.
The man looked straight ahead again. They started coming into the city.
There were houses that lined the road, and there was also the cross streets which led inward on both sides. He knew that Ephraim lived on the other side of the settlement. It was only there that he could recognize houses and buildings.
Suddenly the girl rose at his side. She smiles kindly, looking down at him as she passes. Excuse me, she says, and slides out of row. Then she turns around and says, "Good luck with the raft." I hope it goes well in the future, she continues
The man smiles back and says: Thanks, I hope so too.

The bus stops, they are now in the middle of the main street, a little wider street through the old district, a commercial street that was lined with low, two-story wooden buildings, but still with the old city less pretensions of accessibility, where instead closeness and fellowship kept the houses closer together in rows , cut by narrow alleys shared barracks in demarcated plots, meandering as animating strings replaced with smaller homes, cottages or larger villas in turn of the century style, squatting on low rock formations, or spread over some juicy valley.
Rows of houses on the main street had mostly standing wood panel with the old narrow lat which differed each panel board in a regular pattern of vertical lines. A moulding that gave the buildings a tight pattern, still broken by appointed tons and gingerbread work around window frames and knots. The colours were mostly yellow on the panels, sometimes in many layers that had given a forgiving and a bit smoother surface of old woods crooked whims Facade’s regularity was broken anyway by the ornate corners with white painted woodwork around the gables, eaves and wood banister.
Some houses were also white, mixed with an occasional facade in light blue and white, a concession to a slightly more modern language of colour, while some houses had recent renovations. Otherwise bar century buildings track of the time with irregularities around the grounds, with stone plinths that looked a bit crooked or facades leaning mournfully in the small town-like idyll. A slow thoughtfulness, but also an erected proud of age that weighed quarter's irregular route around the alleys and small back yards rose bushes or small wooden shed.

The girl glides smoothly down the stair and out on the sidewalk, paved by worn stone slabs or rounded natural stones, lined by an irregular gutter in oblique and wind stone rows, separated by wells and black iron bars. Country road asphalt had here given way to the older paving stones irregular road surfaces, where the old wagon wheels and iron-shod horses worn shiny stones, but now given way to today's softer rubber rings. Her feet, with the small white shoes, moves effortlessly. Her bright hair flapping in the wind and an unruly lock of hair falls over her forehead.
She throws a little with her hair and twist at the same time on the head. A moment the man seamed like she looks up towards his direction, but then she turns instantly head back again.
He looks after her as she continues along the sidewalk. She moves constantly soft and smooth. There is a harmony in her movements as the man admires.
Then she disappeared in the crowd.
The man suddenly feels a missing for her. As if they had already known each other a long time.
Their whole meeting was left in him and he feels her voice again.
It's there as a lingering feeling of warmth. He is thoughtful, more thoughtful than he had been before.
He can still remember her face and her eyes.
He was wondering if she might have felt the same as he was, but did not really know. Although he believed it for a while, he then became unsure.

The bus starts again and the houses passing by outside the window. It was a typical early summer day. There was some traffic, but not a rush. Some were off from their jobs, or had just stolen to one hour of own thoughts and cares. People ran in and out of shops to carry out their business. Weekends and summer chores got new ideas to germinate into a longing for a new era of joy and of hope. Growing thoughts on everything life had hidden under the snow and cold and all the dreams of the burgeoning nature and the return of lights magic and enchanting experiences.
He was wondering what it was called, where he would go of, and remember the name Korsberga. So he stretched his neck and peered ahead through the windshield. It would be a large, single, yellow house on the left, before it was time to get off.
Now he could catch a glimpse of something that looked like yellow, further on, and stood up to be ready, and stayed while holding on to the front seat. It shook and lurched into the bus and he took both a step forward and a couple of backward when the bus passed a burrow along the roadside.
As the bus slowed the momentum and swung in towards the bus stop, he glanced out the window and saw the name Korsberga past on the sign outside. Now he threw the backpack on one shoulder and walked, half sideways along the aisle and out through the door. Outside was a plan with gravel, and a small Shelter in wood. The waiting shed had probably been there forever, as he remembered it, anyway.
It had a few benches inside and was wide open forward and with wooden panel on the sides, painted in yellow and white. The walls were full of old graffiti and carved names and small sentences from all years, traces of letters that had been cut out with a penknife or written in ink and pencil. An inspiration of moment for young people's longings and thoughts, small leap of thoughts out from a cramped reality, grasping impulse of the moment. Some were painted over and some were newly made. It served both as a bus shelter on the day and as a youth hangout in the evenings, when they got together and wanted somewhere to sit and talk. Buzzing parked mopeds or bicycles thrown against the wall of planks. It served as the little hut, giving safe and enclosing proximity in a too big world.
A youth's room for rest and a playground for all the unruly emotions and frivolous thoughts that grow in undisturbed closeness of friends and girls giggling and whispering, when their future world would be created.
Therefore, it had also become that worn design it had now, something that people seemed to accept, without actually seeing it, even though they passed every day. Maybe because they had once received their longing confirmed and cut their heart in the archaic board’s mouldings. It was memories from there own childhood or just a landmark on a worn fairway, the difference between the away and home.



First chapter in the book "The man and the ocean of the stars"
Continue from the book The man in the moon boat