The Sublime

 I'll post this as a proper entry tomorrow (or later today. TIMEZONES!) but I wanted to quickly jot some thoughts down.

I've read a couple essays on the sublime for this blog, and I didn't really care for them. One of the most popular examples is the ocean. It's big. Crazy big. Big enough to swallow up everybody and not even notice big.

We're on a cruise this week (part of the reason for kind of half assed posting). So, tonight, when I went out to get a little exercise, I decided to stop at a low section of rail and just look at the ocean for a while. The path of the moon reflected in the water is cool. Like you could just step off and walk on it and wind up on the moon eventually. I should've taken a picture. (Maybe tomorrow before I post this). And that's when it hit me. A clenching feeling in my chest and a drop in my stomach. Which, I guess, is like the smallest possible version of the sublime.

I walked down ten decks or so, trying to find the lowest open spot of deck I could and looked out again. The feeling was stronger this time, enough that part of me wanted to look away. But I decided to stand there and just look around the ocean and the horizon and count for a minute or so. The feeling didn't get worse, but it kind of spread out through my whole body. I'm sure being tired helped, which is not conducive to writing a good blog.

I headed back inside, to the 1000% bright all on all the time bar/mall part of the ship, and that was kind of surreal too.

Inside, giant ship with thousands of people and lights. Outside, much more giant ocean that's just dark. You could bundle up all the lights on the ship, drop them down, and it's like they wouldn't even be there.