Death of a Liveaboard

2/15/10 1415 hrs. Easterly wind @ 8 knots, Sunny.

Another lovely February day in Eagle Harbor.
Yes, there are some sad looking vessels about. They tug at their moorings like forlorn pooches awaiting their master's return. Whether these craft qualify for the designation, liveaboard, depends on your definition of the term.
With all the regulations restricting liveaboards of late, I wonder if our venerable lawmakers have considered restricting other categories of boaters as well. What about a prohibition against zombie mariners? No Undeadaboards.
Since nothing exists apart from it's contrary, the sailor's life has death as steadfast shipmate, and death's dark aspect attends us all across the ocean of samsara until we reach either the blissful pure land or the fiddler's green. We may recall the words of that sorcerer of the active imagination, Don Juan, who councils his obtuse apprentice, Carlos Casteneda: "Death is your only ally, he is always following you, six inches behind your left shoulder". How he came by this precise data is beyond me. I can only trust it emerged from a very real experience undergone by an equally unreal character, whose presence looms all the larger for his fictive power.
With the physics of color, every hue produces it's after image, it's opposite on the color wheel. When an artist chooses a red, it's compliment, green, is immediately present and demands to be resolved within the whole composition.
As that great western sage, William Blake, said: " Without contraries there is no progression".
Waking is to sleep as life is to death. Given the logic of this metaphysical equation, it is only fair to rule out waking aboard as well. Imagine the shipping lanes of the globe navigated by somnolent sailors snoring through long watches at the helm. But with the advent of ever newer technologies, this proposal may not be so far fetched after all.
And what might be the final solution to the liveaboard problem? Death? They might get life, aboard floating penal colonies, hefting rocks for the bulkheads of wealthy waterfront home owners.
When it comes time for me to stand before Saint Peter or the Lords of Death, as a final act of protest, I would like to pass away aboard Wicca, thereby asserting my right to my own meaningful death aboard.