Let The Sea, Lift Me Up.

Over the last two days,
I have lost myself in the exercise of fishing.
I have lived on the water now for almost ten months;
and I have had yet to drop a line,
into the water,
that is my backyard.

I have studied
this vast blue and black vista at great length.
I have acquired nautical maps.
I have tracked the ebb and flow of the tide,
in relation to the passing stars above.
I have spent hours photographing
it's never ending change and flux.
I have endured and revelled
in storms of unimaginable strength.
I have watched as ice crept in,
and turned the all of Old Road Bay
into a sheet of mottled glass.
I have seen much change,
while I have just stayed
the sad same me.

I have embraced this new world,
as my own.
Here, in a place so far removed form my old life,
I have found a home;
where I can place my sadness
into a boat made of folded love letters and photographs;
and set it all adrift on the easy tide that takes all things,
everything,
back out to the sea and away.

I imagine,
all the ache and uncertainty
inside me,
as a gray and heavy weight;
like the driftwood that washes up on my beachhead,
or the pier pilings that break free from their duty
and sometimes float free after a storm.
As immense as these things are,
the current always takes them away
over time.

Where all this heavy substance goes,
is a mystery?
Perhaps,
there is a beach,
just like mine,
on the other side of the world;
where another unhappy soul,
studies the immense garbage
that has washed ashore
into his unhappy life?
He looks at the crazy
gnarled driftwood,
discovers a name carved in it's side;
carves his own name on another branch
of this broken, buoyant tree of life,
and then drags it all off the shoreline
and sets it adrift once again.

Even the heaviest of weights,
can rise up
and float away
on the sea.

So,
for the last two days,
I have sat out on the pier,
and dropped a line into the water.
And tonight,
as the sun made it's way home across the water,
a thin line of incandescent filament
with a hook and a bloodworm,
and a lead weight wasn't enough.
With my usual purpose and dedication,
I began to remove my clothes.
As each piece of my outer layer
was peeled off,
it was folded neatly
and placed upon the rusty crab trap.
When there was nothing left,
but my boxer shorts,
I took a deep breath,
removed these too,
and then,
dove into the water.

Dropping a line into the water
just wasn't enough anymore.

I needed
to baptise me.

Something inside me,
just needed to float.
Perhaps I needed the sea,
to ease and lift,
the weight
of all this ache and uncertainty
inside of me?
I worried.
Had I become so heavy,
that even the strength of water couldn't lift me up?

And like the driftwood,
I floated.
And it was awe inspiring to be so weightless once again.
It was like being in love.
It was like Christmas morning.
It was like the embrace of a lover,
after waking from a horrible dream.
It was.
I was.

And I floated and bobbed about
as the sun set.
And for a moment,
I imagined that I was
just driftwood,
with a lonely strangers name carved in my side,
waiting for the tide and current
to carry me away.