Tír fo Thuinn

I’ve made my bed in the underdeck of a house-boat: a haphazard collection of broken earth made to float. Truly, the act of living on the water is one of arrogance but, in my case, born of necessity.  I’ve found myself with a terrible case of landsickness, my feet glued to a ground that seeks to swallow me bit by bit, not in one fell swoop.  It feels like an act of aggression stepping on soil so anxious that it holds its breath, waiting for the world to spin off into an oblivion never rolled upon.  On the water, though, there is a pulse of life that gives movement to your world.  She rears up and reminds you that you’re better off somewhere else; you’re thrown around as only that cold bitch can and you learn to sink or swim.  There are few places a man can stand his feet to feel more alive than atop the slippery stream of time-stuff itself.  But man was not made with his best interests in heart and designed with some flawed sight towards struggle or some other nonsense; I must leave behind this fluid that fills my vessel without bursting and reintegrate with the thirsty domain of my ancestors.  The land is where we bury our dead and produce dead in the honorable fashion ( face-to-face is the  right way to kill a person) draws a tax from the weels of our natural sustenance. The blood of our fathers gives raise to the new battalion of the earthen army that seeks tribute in a sort of twisted experiment in pride.   Though man has always been liquid where it counts, our obsession with the monstrosities of clay led us to reimagine ourselves as solids.  We speak as though we have seeds to spread and cultivate in this barren desert, when the sea calls to us with the sweaty, saline perfume that smells like home. We have forgotten the chaos the comes with the swell of potential but also the saturated satisfaction from unexpected deliverance. The mere taste of that effervescence that catches the air just after diverting tragedy is enough to jolt a (wo)man awake to Nature.  Man wasn’t made to live this dryly, scratching his way through life.  So I’ll skip the dock this time, and maybe next time too.  So I can die at sea and sink as me, to the bottom of the promised land, hidden beneath the waves and sheltered from the crashing tides of change.