Three Miles to the Horizon (Play, 2011)

Three Miles to the Horizon tells the story of solo round-the-world yachtsman, Donald Crowhurst’s strange last voyage.

I am three miles from the horizon. There are 140 million square miles of ocean on this planet. Salt water covers 71% of the Earth’s surface.
I skim the face.
The average depth of the ocean is two and a half miles, and at its deepest is over seven miles.
I move above all depths.
The world’s oceans mask the world’s largest mountain range at 40,000 miles long, the world’s highest under water mountain, Challenger, is a mile taller than Everest. I am a mountaineer.
I am a traveller of space and time.
The volume of the pacific ocean is the same as the volume of the moon.
I, am the first man on the moon.
The horizon is mine.
I am infinite and, infinity is in me.
I am the faulty chronometer. I am stalled within the time space continuum.
I am the perpetually stationary wave, waiting to meet the shore. Waiting to be pushed on by gravity and the moon. I look to the moon for change, only to see the past.
I am some time from the horizon, but, the closer I get, the further it shifts.
On my face I show nothing but meaningless numerals. The closer I move to the speed of light, the slower I move in the speed of time.
I am wavering and erratic. My hands drive on hopelessly through the banal groups of sixty and twelve. I miss a beat. It costs a day.
Each unique stroke is repeated to infinity. I am infinity and infinity is me.
I am three miles from the horizon. The circumference of the earth is twenty four thousand nine hundred and one miles.
I am twenty four thousand nine hundred and one miles from here. I am the equator.
The rotational speed of the earth is one thousand and thirty eight miles an hour. My place in the universe shifts at one thousand and thirty eight miles an hour.
I break all speed records.
I am three miles from the edge of the world. At my current speed I will fall off into the forever in a matter of minutes.
My course has been determined by the route and course set out by the nautical prophets of the admiralty.
As I slide off the edge of the world I will see all of creation in reverse. I will see it’s workings and underside, I see the underside of the circuit board, the corroded solder joints.
Looking down I will see the pit of forever. Gravity will hold me no-more. My fall will be infinite.
I am at the horizon I have reached the end of the road, the end of the line. The. End. Of…I go no further. I have reached the immovable, ever moving, never ending, infinite spatial paradox.
I am at one.
I have fixed the chronometer, I have set the time.
I am the balance wheel that ensures the changing nature of the sea and the ships motion does not affect the standard of time.
I am a time standard. I am Apparent Solar Time. Solar Mean Time. I am Sidereal time. I am the Prime Meridian. Universal Time. I have shifted the zones.
I, the cosmic mind have explored the labyrinths of the sea.
I have counted and measured the waves and explored the depths.
I have counted the grains of sand on the shores of the time.
I am the quantifier of all human life.
If the waves could roll in reverse for two hundred and forty three days and return me to Teignmouth I would be hundreds of miles from this horizon.
I have become my own disbelief.
© Peter Wyn Mosey, 2011