Day 2

Air / Water temperature: 23°C (19°C at night) / 18°C

Wind direction / Bft: West / 1-2

Area: FORTITUDINIS VALLES (River with medium current) – Nautical chart showing the route

Combuse: Pike (500 g), remove intestines and gills, rinse and pat dry. Cut 200 g parsnips into thin strips and blanch in 4 dl chicken broth for 15 minutes. Mix 2 dl of the parsnips water with 2 dl fish broth and 1 dl white wine. Put pike in a casserole streaked with buttered, add salt and pepper, sprinkle with butter flakes. Add 1 bouquet garni (3 parsley stalks, 1 sprig thyme, 1 bay leaf), 1 sliced onion and the mixture of vegetable stock, fish stock and white wine. Cook fish for 15 minutes at 200° in the oven. Add parsnip sticks to the fish in the roasting pan and cook for another 10 minutes. (More recipes from the Chief cook of «PS Narina»)

It is in the nature of a paperboat that it is hard to steer. Whereby one can ask oneself if a paperboat indeed has a nature within which something is embedded. Or, in other words: What can the nature of a paperboat be? The forest, the tree, the wood out of which the paper is made? The folds that have converted a piece of paper into a boat? The writing that scrambles over the pages? Or the language that rises from the paper like mist over a landscape?

Be that as it may, a paperboat can by no means be steered by language. But one can bring it back on course by flinging it hard against one wall or another. In the daytime that functions quite well, even if one has to make minor course corrections now and again. Far more difficult is steering at night when one is asleep – also when the position of the body can influence the course of the boat. So, does one decide in one’s sleep where one wants to wake up – for, is there anyone who sleeps all night long without moving the body even a little bit?

Above all it is dreams, which make us move about in the night, that also influences which landscape we will wake up in and, thereby, also how our life will progress. That is particularly true when we are sailing over the waters of the world in a paperboat. But is it really different when we are on terra firma? Don’t we wake up every morning on land, too, in an entirely new landscape or setting, and with the possibility of discovering life afresh on this new day?

Our journey has a clear goal: the island of Santa Lemusa. So, isn’t it actually convenient to deviate from the route during the night? I have appointed Oscar as helmsman and commandeered him to also act as night watchman. So far without success – which implies that I have not yet found the right means of communication. It is also quite possible that the goal is not as clear for Oscar as it is for me – what sort of goal has an ant, totally divorced from his native country, who is on a journey on a paperboat?

Next day (3)

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