Adrift

WAYNE’S WORDS
Volume 5 Number 09
Adrift

A couple of weeks ago another person close to me passed away. This time I mourned the loss of the Father of one of my best lifelong friends.

Funerals are such strange events. There are so many tears and broken hearts and at the same time there are many smiles and lots of laughter.

As we cry about our loss, we also smile as we reflect upon the good times that were shared with our loved one.

Thoughts of our own mortality also rise to the surface with so many questions and so few answers. After a while, the internal Q&A seems to focus not on when or where we will die, but on the services. Will people remember me? Will anybody actually show up? Will they shed tears? Will they smile at memories? Will people remember me as a good person?

I know that I have had thoughts about all of this and I have had conversations with countless others who have pondered the same things. I am sure there are also people who don’t care and live their lives with no conscience or remorse about mistakes or guilt about people they may have hurt, as long as they had fun. Those are not the kind of people with whom I associate.

Then there is the dream. I’m not even sure if it is a dream…or was. Maybe it is a thought. Maybe it is a waking dream. It is one of those thoughts that are hiding behind things like a dream almost remembered. Understand my confusion? Anyway, it is something that rattles around in my brainpan.

I want to try to remember it. As I write this, it is Halloween Night and it seems like as good a time as any to try and rip this nagging beast from my subconscious. So, please indulge me.

I’m alone. Not lonely, but all alone. There is absolutely no one else. I remember being afloat. Not effortlessly like weightlessness, but more like floating and treading water. I know it takes some level of work.

In fact, I am in water. I’m in an immeasurable ocean and there is no land in sight in any direction. Every horizon I look toward is vast and distant. All horizons curve with the shape of the Earth and there is not a single dot of land anywhere.

It is not water now. It has turned. I cannot see beneath the surface. It is opaque. It is like I am adrift in a sea of black ink. It is like the color of crude oil, but the consistency of water.

The sun is overhead, but it is not at all hot. It only sheds light. In fact, as far as the temperature of the air and the liquid is concerned, I am quite content. I squint as I look into the sunlight reflecting blindingly off of the liquid’s surface and notice that there are indeed objects floating nearby. I try swimming toward the, but I make no progress. All I can do is tread “water” and stare at them.

Some time passes and I notice one of the objects has drifted within reach. I grab for it and pull it toward my body. I now have something to keep me afloat. It is unrecognizable. It is just an object. As I float with my arms flung across this…thing, I try kicking my way toward other pieces of who-knows-what, to no avail.

More time passes.

I see something in the distance. Not on the horizon, but still very far away. It is a boat. It looks familiar. It doesn’t look familiar because I know the difference between a trawler and a cuddy cabin. I don’t actually know anything about boats: I looked up those two aforementioned boat classifications. It doesn’t even look familiar, actually. It feels familiar. I scream and wave, but cannot be seen or heard. It is strange, because I can plainly hear laughter and other sounds of happiness over the distance, the sound of the motor and the sloshing of the “water.” Whoever is on the boat seems very happy and carefree.

More time passes and so do more distant boats. The boats are of different sizes. All with the familiarity and happiness of the first. All of the boats seem to have the same inability to see me adrift. More objects float closer to me. I pull them in. Though I cannot tell what these objects are at this point, they don’t seem to signify any material possessions. (If any of you have seen my “stuff” outside the dream, you know it is all a hodge-podge of used furniture and electronics.)

More time passes.

I am growing very weary. Though I have these objects to help keep me afloat, keeping my head above “water” is proving to be quite a task. The sun is in the same place that it has been the entire time. The boats that pass seem to just happily disappear over the horizon.

I am here.

Adrift in the black.

Alone.

I try sleeping. It doesn’t work. I just lose my hold on the objects around me and begin to sink in the black “waters.”

More time passes.

As I look down at the debris that floats around me, it all begins to take shape. What I have thought was flotsam and jetsam from a shipwreck turns out to not be that at all. They are all pieces of my past. There are letters I’ve written and received, drawings I’ve done, poetry I’ve scratched down and music I’ve loved. There are things I’ve made. Dinners I’ve cooked. There are items that always held a place in my heart: a quilt, a stuffed animal, photographs and so on.

Some more of the debris become distinguishable. It is not as pleasing to see. Before my eyes a heart, a brain and two other things that have no recognizable shape materialize. Though they have no real form, I know that they are a mind and a soul.

Then I look at that over which my arms are flung. It is a body. I look up the body and see the head. I don’t want to believe what it is. I am not sad or afraid. I just don’t want it to be what it is. How can it be what it is? The body is mine. The face belongs to me.

I am the flotsam and jetsam.

And the dream ends.

That is the freaky dream that was tucked away in the recesses of my mind. I couldn’t pull it all forward until I started typing this blog. I guess it is pretty fitting that I wrote this one on Halloween.

Until Next Time,
Wayne