Waves

when she stopped making art,

she became angry,

anxious, irritable, resentful.

she would watch him draw horned beasts,

using only red and black pen on a white canvas.

she would watch him outside a window

swirling acrylics on metal surfaces.

she would browse through her old drawings,

or find a stray red pencil in a drawer.

what had once moved through her?

and where did it go?

early on, when she had felt the first wave  

she got derailed

trapped by her own need for affection

for acceptance, for love.

she abandoned everything to move in with a stranger

she left for the ocean.

every warning was ridiculed,

she surrounded her thoughts with an iron fence.

her body was burdened,

her lungs were tight and closed,

and the thing that once moved through her

became so small as to be invisible.

she thought about it for years.

sometimes she attempted a small drawing,

but she had lost trust in her own hands.

she judged the lines before they were complete,

saw herself as another would see her,

as another might see her.

later she fled,

or was cast aside.

she escaped the narrow path

of needles and crime,

lies and delusion,

denial and fear.

she salvaged what lay just inside the dumpster

and left the rest

to become a vague memory.

and she found herself in a room,

staring out a window.

how long had it been since she drew?

he said to her:
'if you want to make art, make art.'

and she stared at him

with tears in her eyes.

she thought she had to wait

for something to happen,

for a burst,

for an explosion,

for shapes to break open the gates

and explode onto the page.

she watched him standing in the sun

just outside the window.

he never noticed her there,

just a few feet away.

the canvas was on the ground on a blue tarp.

he let the colors mingle,

then would occasionally move

one side of the canvas or another.

After a while

she went back to her room.

From A Simple Place

As always, I start from a simple place.
Consciousness is a phenomenon of information.
I outline the basic properties
that a conscious kingdom must have.
Clouds, dark clouds, storm clouds
Black dark blue and gray
Above the restless ocean.

I forget all early life experiences.
This is the cleaning process involved in new myth formation.
Open space, nothing
Wide open, no color
No shape, clear light.

I have a basket, big, hand made.
So big that someone could sit inside of it
if there were anyone here.
It is made of thick material, like branches
Big and strong and brown color
Very simple shape, like a bowl
But higher on the sides.
The basket increases my capacity
to store new myths in the future.

It is dark now.
I attempt to reduce the persistence of previously learned fear.
Fear is like a house, an old house full of traps.
Myth is based on a circuit
extending into the unknown.
Out there it is dark
the windows are closed
and I am sad.

Consciousness must have two specific traits:
Black stars
and spirals galaxies.
I am moved by this vision
I am turning like a star
I am spiraling like a galaxy.
My heart is beating
I am alive.

I fly high above the ocean.
Just as there are many types of waters,
there are many types of consciousness,
all mingling below me
waves of a million colors
thoughts of a million lights.

I collect thought objects and put them in the basket:
Pearls, rocks, eggs, clouds
Stories, songs, tracks, touches
Colors, temperature, textures, layers
Sounds, words, magic artifacts.
Each object invokes a new question
about the nature of this liquid thought reality.
I reject the need for answers.

I want to take the basket with me.
Then it doesn’t matter where I am going.
It doesn't matter what I find.

I find that I am the basket.
The basket is a thought object
that describes the total energy of the kingdom.
I see now inside of my own skin.
I see new myths being integrated into the Library.
Within me there are worlds to discover.
There’s everything.
Everything is with me.
Its all there:
colors, blue, sounds, smells
scents, cinnamon
everything.
I can go there
Anytime.
All the stories
All the songs
All the newly formed myths of the Library
The future
The past
The present
It's all under my skin.
All this information
integrated in a unified whole
impossible to divide into independent parts.
I am the most basic substance
that perceives self awareness.
I am the Library.
I am the Kingdom

The old myths are now impossible to recall
but a new myth is before me:
A flower
It’s the mother of all flowers
It is coral
It is very large.
I must be able to store this myth and retrieve it efficiently.

As the kingdom
I must be able to store and process large amounts of information.
Star dreams, dusk and light
Darkness, more than large, more than huge.
And all connected.
This connection
allows for the performance
of conscious kingdoms
such as myself.

I have grown new myths
in the Library
throughout this life.
I am inside and outside
They are the same
And it doesn't matter
if I see it or not.
I know now
that I will soon forget
yet again.

In The Dim Light

In the dim, fractionated light of the sunrise, the fourth world was visible.
It was often she found herself outdoors as the darkness faded, as black and the glitter of other places seeped away, her ability to watch them slowly absorbed by the coming fireball and blue tinged ceiling overhead.  Night after night, season after season, she gravitated to the small patch of weeds outdoors, unable to fight the body’s urge for the night air, for the cool breeze which would come in from the ocean, usually full of moisture and the scent of deep amphibian life and the waxy plants that lived in salt water.  She could not resist keeping her mouth open, tasting the elements that had traveled far, changing their form to accommodate new modes of travel, mutating from water to air.
The night was delicious, alive with life unseen to the mass of sleepers. There was something about the pattern of the moon crawlers, carried out undercover, with only a sliver of light and stars. The shadows calmed her, they hid the vulgarity of her movements, muted the body so only the most obvious of forms was apparent, though there was no one to hide from, no one was there, no one was watching.
She swung alone in the hammock strung between two rusted poles, each of which were buried deep in the earth and surrounded by patches of clover and a few sparse clumps of struggling small-faced violets which released their perfume with sensual abandon.
The night was her time to rest, not as most people did, warm in their beds, tucked into the rooms of four walls and closed doors. But she did not sleep so much as sink into a trance. She never lost consciousness. As time moved, flowers opened and closed, she was aware of herself and the sensations upon her arms as the planet shifted and dawn approached, the bitterness of moonlit breezes, the nocturnal insects which sometimes landed on her cheeks and hands. The trance drew her awareness to the gentle swing of the ratty hammock, the cocoon like swath of the nylon mesh as it hugged her body, rocking her like a mother’s arms.
She was out there, wild. The night not hers, but she was the night, her presence affecting it as all attention does. The darkness was the companion who had no words of love, no scolding, it was presence and presence only.  It was movement, contact flow- neither caring for her or in any way disapproving. It moved with her or without. And in her trances, she felt it all. The path of the moonlight as it traveled over and by, the birds, the waves so far in the distance that they became just a whisper.

Eternity

Everything about her was different. I felt something with her that I had never felt with other women. Sisterhood. Something.
Whenever we walked down to the beach we saw dolphins. I never saw them when I went without her.
She wore this perfume, Eternity, and it was the only perfume I had ever liked to smell. Others gave me a headache. And maybe it wasn’t just the perfume, maybe it mingled with her perspiration, the trace minerals in the water that ran from her tap, the aroma of foods cooked with lemon and basil. It was colored by the timber of her voice, a soft but deep sound, slightly nasal, her laughter, a thing like a wave crashing against the walls of her chest before it hissed and bubbled out of her open mouth. 

She was the only Greek woman I had ever met, a student on a visa, sitting alone on a balcony overlooking the pacific where it met the Golden Gate Bridge and the Northern California coast, a princess trapped in a tower, watching the mist roll in to swallow the Presidio.
Who could save her? Who in a land of strangers, in a culture where it was politically incorrect to be a prince, where individuality and isolation deserved merit and everything else required therapy, who could rescue her?
That question, the answers she found in books and yoga classes and homeopathic remedies, everything else I have mentioned, that scent mingled with all these things. And as I have said, it was called Eternity.

In October I found a bottle of cheap perfume among a line of scents that called themselves “impressions of the world’s most popular scents.”
Yes, I found an impression of Eternity for seven dollars in the drugstore. I wore it to a PTO meeting. Leaves twirling in empty space between sky and earth, the fog of Pacifica thick and briny, the taste of hot chocolate from the Café’ near the elementary school, my children, still children in that moment, laughing and skipping and running into the arms of their playmates. Their little hands, tender and warm and smelling of dirt and graphite.
That scent came to be entwined with these things too. With sweaters and sitting in a room full of women snipping satin ribbon, the sound of shears cutting through new fabric, their voices, their stories, their children, my children, prancing in the halls beside us as we prepared for the Winter Bazaar. 
I felt a glimmer of it then, like butterfly wings on my cheek.  Strange familiarity or familiar strangeness, warm and glowing, like almost remembering the words to a forgotten lullaby, or waking in a dream.
Sisterhood. Something.
Eternity.

She was gone by then, in October.
Once when we had gone down to the beach we saw a bride and groom with a photographer. The bride's dress was long and white, the veil billowing behind her in a sea breeze as the groom, dressed in black, darted out of the way of the breaking surf. 
She had been married in Greece, when she was 18, and something terrible happened. Her love had abandoned her and she had been dragged out to sea with the other emotional and inarticulate things that whirled about in the cold dark currents.
The noose her groom had  placed around her neck was made from the rope attached to an anchor, and it pulled her into the icy depths where she forgot all of her names, she forgot that she had ever been human.

When the dolphins at last found her and carried her back to the shore, she came to America. In the United States the broken hearted, uncommitted, and antisocial are hip. So here, she lived with an American man who was teaching her how to be alone in the company of others. He was teaching her to loose heart with a smile and a shrug.

But in September, she called me, crying, and she asked if she could stay a few days. I wanted to tell her yes. I wanted to say, “Of course, you’re like a sister to me.” But I couldn’t.
Shortly thereafter she returned to Greece. There were no goodbyes.
At some point I sent her an email remembering the time we stood together in the water at Coyote Point. Children were flying kites and the sun was warm. Standing there in the water with her, I felt as though I was wading in the same sea that brushed the mysterious shoreline of her heart.
Afterwards we lay in the sun and she told me about men she wanted to introduce me to and old friends left in exotic places. The scent of  grass and sunscreen and sweat, mingled with her voice, her pretty vision for me, her sad stories.
And of course there was, encapsulating it all, Eternity.

A Moment Alone

The sky is black with a few speckled stars. Isa’s black truck is parked twenty feet away in a row of 10 empty parking spots beside the sidewalk. The only thing separating the cars from the ocean is a wide sidewalk and a cliff side covered in ice plants and a few invasive species of grass. 
Isa is nestled in the thick coiling roots of a Monterrey Cypress. The roots are curved and exposed to the air like tentacles that emerge from the earth and then dive back into it after a series of loops.  The trunk of the tree is massive, the bark scratches against her back which is only covered in a thin cotton long-sleeved shirt. The roots hide her body from anyone that might be walking along the sidewalk or the occasional car that passes by, their headlights illuminating the tree for just a second before driving on. 
She is just a few steps and a leap from the ocean.  Fifteen feet below, the waves crash into the rocks, colliding not with violence, but with a persistent relaxed motion that moves forever without rest.  The sound is calming, like a nighttime lullaby.
Isa looks out into the black ocean sparkling with faint moonlight.  The air is crisp with approaching fall. The elements seem more alive, and she feels more real in it.  With acute clarity, she feels the coolness of the salty cliff covered in fine dust, the rough bark of the trunk, the breeze full of salt and moisture, the roar of elements as water and rock meet. 
Her left hand is in her pants, feeling the warmth of her bare skin.  Her thumb and pointer finger are expertly holding a vibrator to her clit while her others hold back the cotton of her panties.  She is hidden there, alone under the cloak of a dark sky, the protruding tree roots and the ocean sounds.
Her eyes are open, alternating her gaze from the sea to the cypress canopy above, barely visible against the dark sky, to her stomach and her legs.  Isa closes her eyes as she gets closer, clenches her abdomen and imagines tied-up young women on stage in front of a barely visible audience, women bent over metal contraptions, gagged, helpless.
The fantasies quicken her excitement and her clitoris swells with blood. She moves rhythmically and opens her eyes, watching the approach of foam-tipped waves and the serene rise and fall of salt water in the distance. 
She is alone out here, alone but accompanied by all the elements. She begins to ride the tide, pushes her breath out a little quicker, tightens her lower abdomen, and she soars over the edge.

Soulless Things

Later, much later, Andrina was caught in the net of a fisher of men. She was a soulless thing like all of her sisters, except for the youngest who had earned hers through sacrifice. But when that priest looked into her eyes she felt a pang in her chest.
What eyes they were, round and silver like moons with amber striations radiating from the darkness of his pupils. His hair too was silver streaked with black, like lightening flashing in a tempest, it hung long around his face, undulating as the sea in the brisk gale that blew over them, rocking the tiny boat.
Helpless in his net, Andrina gazed back through long black lashes and the pale hair that hung limp and heavy around her face. She had never seen a priest before, and so his long black habit revealed nothing to her of his occupation, but it impressed her nonetheless. She had never seen a fisherman wear such a garment.
He did not speak to her at all before he cast her back into the sea, and after following him and singing her most alluring song to no avail, she at last swam reluctantly back to the depths.

As the tides ebbed and flowed the pang in her chest grew into an unbearable torment. Creatures such as herself do not sleep, but they dream with eyes wide open, concealed in kelp forests whose swaying lulls them like a silent song. But her dreams were only of those eyes and the way he flung her into the sea and never looked back. She could not bear to dream, and soon could neither eat nor sleep. She found no pleasure in the arms of the sailors that she dragged into the watery abyss and sucked their last breath from them with deadly apathy.

Desperately, she followed her younger siblings' example. After arduous searching, she found the sea witch in her caverns, gumming the bones of dolphins and drowned children.
The witch drew herself up out of the silt, stirring the water momentarily to muck. Then her one remaining golden eye locked onto the pale face of Andrina and she commenced to indulge in a laughter which began modestly but soon rumbled through the caverns, disturbing other dark things that once lay sleeping.
“Another little mermaid tormented by love.” the witch gloated, “And with a priest, no less. This should profit me well.”
“Love?” Andrina felt insulted. “I cannot love. I’m sick, witch, and I’ve come for a remedy.”
“Silly thing.” the witch said rearranging some bones to form her magic circle. “You are sick with love. You were contaminated by that priest. You’re only hope is to make him love you back. You must seduce him if you wish to be released from your torment. I will do for you what I did for your sister. I‘ll give you legs. Now hurry and leave before you transform. I love to eat things that have legs. You have one year, and if he hasn‘t made love to you by then, I get to eat you anyway.”
The witch quivered as she spoke this last line. Then her laughter swelled again, shaking slimy things from hidden crevices in the deep.

Andrina arrived with the storm, tossed onto the earth by titanic swells of white capped water. She hated the legs from the moment she stood on them and each step brought pain as though a dagger had been thrust into the arches of those horrible feet. Andrina dragged herself away from the angry mouth of the sea and staggered up the first path that presented itself, up to the church on the cliff. Above her the stained glass sparkled in the darkness, red and blue and gold, candle light flickering from behind so that the colors blinked like stars. The priest's boat was torn from the dock behind her and smashed in the waves while the wind howled and the icy rain pricked her flesh like needles falling from heaven. Naked and shivering, she burst into the chapel where her priest kneeled at the feet of the virgin. He turned as the doors were flung open and she limped, wild eyed and chest heaving, across the threshold to collapse in a pale heap.
With the same somber attitude with which he had cast her out of his net, the fisherman priest rose and shut the chapel doors against the storm. When he lifted her from the floor, Andrina wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips against his, but the priest held still as though a snake were at his feet, his lips unyielding. Then very slowly and gently he pulled his head away from hers as she lost consciousness again.

Having never slept before, Andrina lost a week to slumber in the priest's bed. When at last she awoke he fed her broth and bread, things she had never tasted, things that made her stomach sour. He tried to speak to her, but though her eyes remained fastened to his, she could not understand a word that spilled from his tongue. She tried to kiss him again, but he pushed her sternly, though gently, away.

He converted a store room into quarters for her and showed her how to stuff her own mattress with straw and scented flowers. He made her wear a scratchy gray dress and showed her how to draw water from the well. She was made to kneel before the altar with him several times a day. He attempted to teach her to speak his language though she could scarcely manage to feign interest in the coarse sounds that he uttered.
He taught her to tend the garden, but things of the earth withered in her care.
He built a new fishing boat and took her out with him, and here she excelled. She would cast the net and sing in her own tongue until it was heavy with fish. After discovering this talent he sent her to fish alone and tried to teach her to sing his own music. She would not look at anything written on paper, but he taught her to repeat after him and was amazed by the perfection of her memory. She could perform complex melodies if he sang them or played them for her on the organ but once.

Thus routines were established and Andrina fell into step with her priest, each footfall filling her body with searing pain. Every Sunday he rang the bell and one old woman would trek up the path and take a seat in the pews to listen to the mass and take the sacrament and hear the priest play the organ as Andrina sang. Andrina grew weaker with each passing day. The priest was immune to her physical charm. His eyes were more hypnotizing than her own, his passion distilled into religious fervor. Only her voice could reach him and this he bent into his songs of worship, his will stronger than her heart.
Andrina’s pale hair grew brittle and her eyes lost their sparkle. There were days when she could not move about without the assistance of a cane, and yet worse days dawned when she could not rise from bed at all. Her priest ministered to her then and she followed his eyes with her own, as entranced as if she were in the kelp forests of her home.

The seasons passed, 1, 2, 3, 4 and the old woman from town died. Her casket was carried up the cliff by two men with coarse faces and tight fitting suits. They lowered her into the ground and left the way they had come, walking stiffly down the dusty road. Andrina, supported on her cane, watched them go and thought of how she would like to draw them down into the darkness and suck their last breath from them. The priest prayed for the old woman and buried her and made Andrina come into the chapel and sing.
His language was beginning to make sense to her.
“Ashes to ashes.” she heard, “dust to dust.” It terrified her that she could understand this, she who had once been immortal, she who was now running out of time.

That night, she slipped into her priest's bed and he flung her out, just as he had flung her from his net eleven moons ago. He made her kneel with him and prayed for her forgiveness and salvation the rest of the night. As the dawn broke over the sea outside and peeked through his small window he clasped her face in his hands and said:
“My child, god's love is infinite. Seek his love, not mine. The flesh will die, your immortal soul will go on at his side if you abide by his commandments and do his work.”

Andrina formed her mouth awkwardly over the words leaving large gaps between each utterance:
“My flesh was im-mortal…I lost that to be at your side. I have no soul. Your love is my on-ly salvation, since you caught me in your net. Save me, please, save me, my love.” she wept and the priest, taken aback by her first words since her arrival, turned pale and released her warm cheeks. He clambered to his feet and left her alone on the cold stone floor.

Andrina went out in the boat and sat upon the sea weeping. The wound in her chest had only grown in the months that had passed. She whispered farewell to the sea and the long life which now seemed like a distant dream. She wondered if it had been real at all, or if she had always been a mortal creature, the crippled daughter of a fisherman perhaps, weak minded and fanciful. She wondered if she might escape the witch’s appetite by running from the sea and settling inland, she wondered if she would die somewhere surrounded by stone and root and if some priest would lower her stoically into the earth mumbling about ash.

At that moment the sea hissed and bubbled near the small boat and a black dagger broke the surface of the water, a pale hand wrapped around its barnacle encrusted hilt. As the knife rose into the cool air the sea quieted beneath it and Andrina could see the face of her sister, Arista, just under the shimmering surface, black hair radiating from around the pale oval like the rays of a dark sun. Andrina recognized the dagger that had been cast away by their strange youngest sister long, long, ago in the moment of her sacrifice. Andrina herself had been the one to place it in her hand. Now it was Arista who offered it up. Trembling, Andrina seized the dagger, her finger tips brushing against the cool slick flesh of her sister’s hand before Arista sunk back into the depths. Andrina concealed the dagger under her dress and turned the boat back to shore.

The priest was gone for most of that day. Andrina waited for him in the chapel, but would not kneel at the feet of the virgin. She paced and felt the bite of the earth sting her feet. As dusk approached she nearly gave up hope that he would return, but then he came into the chapel looking pale and weary. She limped to him and shaking he pulled her against his chest. For a moment the pain in her heart was eased, almost transformed to euphoria, but then he spoke into her hair, the heat of his breath touching her scalp:
“My child, my vow is to God. I can do nothing to break my covenant with him.”
She tried to turn her face up to kiss him.
“Save me, please.“ she begged, but he held her until she stopped struggling,
“No!” he cried fiercely though softly, “What you ask for is not saving, you would damn us both!”
The sun was slipping away behind the stained glass, leaving them wrapped in gloom. The moon would rise soon. She fell limp in his arms and wept for a moment longer. Her hand was wrapped around the dagger's hilt as she spoke into his chest:
“I will not die for your God.” She plunged the knife into his belly and he gave a little startled cry as he crumpled heavily around her. “Now you can feel my love, as I have felt yours.” she whispered.
The chapel doors blew open, a sudden gust coming up from the sea. Andrina pushed her priest off of her onto the stone floor where he lay bleeding and gasping like a fish. She took hold of the hem of his habit, and wincing from the pain in her feet, she dragged him out of the chapel and onto the dirt path.

Storm clouds were gathering over the sea and the lightning flashed over the water. Silver against black, like his hair. She pulled him through the dust, ashes to ashes, down the path cut in the cliff, the dagger lodged in his belly, his blood spilling into the earth as they went. The moon was rising, silver over the water, like his eyes, as she stumbled and fell and crawled still dragging him behind her. Her knees were torn by the rocks so that she too bled and her blood mixed with his and with the earth.
On the beach she struggled to her feet and dragged him into the surf, then collapsed with him where the sea met the land. She wrapped her arms around him and sang her most alluring song to him, waiting for the waves to pull them free. The mouth of the sea opened hungrily around them and swallowed them up, pulling them into the deep.
Now Andrina gave him her kiss, drawing him down, down, down with her into the inky depths, far beyond the place that nets can reach, mortal dreams peeling away from them in their descent. She was a soulless thing like all of her sisters, except for the youngest who had earned hers through sacrifice, but when that fisher of men looked into her eyes it left a wound in her heart that not even eternity could heal.

Peril At Sea

White shirts and water and old men and old jokes and leather shoes and a long white wall and I found myself on a boat, a ship rather, a huge traveling machine that embraced me in metal arms. It was noisy and busy in there. The noise startled me out of the strange thoughts that had just been running through me. Dislocated fragments of words and images, visions of correspondences and breaking points, twisted thoughts, mangled thoughts, thoughts I immediately forgot.
I looked around myself and I quickly found my place within the crowd, I quickly found my allocated purpose, my duty, my role in the scheme of things.
I was on a large transatlantic ship, an elegant old ship heavy with history and tall tales lost in the deep blue waves of the high seas. There was a feast happening in the main salon, a sumptuous chamber which invoked a kind of luxury that I had rarely experienced directly. The floor was cushioned by thick red carpets that made you feel as if you were walking on clouds each time you took a step. The elegant round tables were all covered with white or pink table cloths. There was an enormous chandelier hanging over the center of the dancing floor, twinkling with golden light.
I was tired in the middle of all of the frantic movement, tired and slow and hesitant. So many people surrounding me and yet I felt all alone, totally separated from the celebration that was happening all around me. My hands trembled slightly but I wasn't really cold, my eyes watered but I wasn't really sad. I wouldn't want to say what I felt because I didn't have a word for it, I still don't. I didn't know why this was happening, that was clear. But then again, I didn't know why anything was happening at all, why anything had ever happened.
There were people everywhere, all of them enjoying themselves in a way that spoke of certainty and financial security and a kind of carelessness that came with it. Laughter came from all directions, waves of laughter that washed over me with such strength that they nearly pushed me over. They seemed to insist that I should set aside my thoughts, these waves of merry washed in champagne.
It was definitely hard to think clearly with so much noise, so many bits and pieces of unknown conversations, so many scattered statements, so many loose words. My mind would try to grab onto one phrase but it had soon been displaced by another, and my own chains of thought would be broken by the collective mental discharge.
I was removing the dirty white dishes that constantly piled upon the table tops. I saw several of them in my hands and noticed there were more to be picked up. I was wearing a black and white uniform that clearly distinguished me from the guests. The uniform was simple and standard: a white dress shirt, a black vest and a bow tie. To clear the tables was my job aboard this ship. At least one of the jobs I was meant to fulfill.
I looked around to catch a glimpse of my fellow workers. I could see other men and women wearing the same uniform I had on, each with a job to do, each with their hands full of dirty plates and utensils or walking back from the kitchen with freshly washed plates full of hot food.
While we worked, the crowd feasted, it moved as one large being of many heads and many arms. I spotted Vicky among the workers walking out of the kitchen. She was a quick glimpse of recognition among so many faceless strangers. Of course she was here. Where else would she be? I tried to catch her attention but there was too much happening and it was all moving too quickly. I soon lost her in the haze of movement.
I continued to clear away the unwanted remains. I felt so separate from these people, from the feasters, from the workers, from everyone. I felt clearly marked as someone to be ignored until needed, a part of the rumbling machine, a kind of moving breathing furniture.
"They are the Other. All that is not me. All that I can see and everything I cannot." The thought went through me as I looked at the guests laughing, eating, drinking. I could feel the floor weaving slightly under my feet, more than I was used to, more than seemed reasonable or comfortable. "There's no use in asking for a reason. They are that which you cannot control. They are that which moves beyond your grasp."
There was soft music coming from large speakers at one end of the room, a kind of soft jazz without claws that could be easily ignored and set aside as sonic wallpaper.
There was the tinkle of clinked stemware and the scrip scrape of knives scratching plates. Little ribbons and pearl centerpieces adorned the tables in a fixed simulation of living flowers. Round men in tuxedos bared toothy grins as I passed them by. Maybe they intended to flirt with me, maybe the alcohol had robbed them of their skills of distinction and they now thought I was their friend, their wife, their mother.
Women in satin and taffeta wore tight hair buns and white gloves. They never looked at me unless they had a particular request. Some of them danced with a cultivated air of nonchalance, some of them lightly swayed as they talked to each other. Their shoulders were bare and tanned, their faces were painted. Artificial flowers, like the ribbons and the pearls.
I scrambled to keep up with the pile up of dirty dinner ware. At least that was something clear for me to do, a task I could understand. I carried a toppling stack back into the kitchen area, wrestling with my own turbulent feelings which threatened to take me over, thoughts that slid down the side of my cranium like avalanches of words and letters spilling away from their original container. I avoided the steady stream of workers which all came in and out through the same door. I looked for Vicky among them but she wasn't there.

* * *

As I crossed the kitchen doorway, I was greeted by a rush of warm moist air. It could have been a relief from the aimless confusion of the party, a direct rush of heat that was clear and distinct in its manifestation. It would have been a relief but it wasn't. It felt heavy and uncomfortable. As soon as I walked in, I wanted to get out, I wanted to escape the sense of suffocation, the oppressive weight of the hot air.
The cook was a middle aged man wearing a huge white chefs hat, white pants, shirt, and apron. He had a clean looking thick mustache and large black eyes. He was leaning against a counter, sweating profusely and talking to a smaller man with brown skin and narrow shoulders. The smaller man mostly nodded to whatever the cook had to say, with an obvious subservience that made my skin crawl. I was not sure if he even spoke the same language as the rest of us. It didn't matter to the cook. He just kept on talking in his loud boisterous voice.
I felt very small next to him. Without realizing I was doing it, I stopped to look at the two of them talking, to listen to what it was that he had to say in such a loud strong voice that made the kitchenware vibrate in resonance.
He glowered down on me when I looked up at him, he stared directly at me while complaining boisterously about the incompetent level of help on these journeys. I immediately blushed intensely and moved away. He was obviously talking about me. He had to be. He had looked right at me as he talked. I felt afraid of him, afraid of his opinion, of his judgement. I was afraid and yet I would have given anything to have him like me. Obviously he didn't and there was nothing I could do to change that.
I heard louder laughter coming from the main room, even louder than before. I suddenly knew that in the dining room the situation would soon be getting out of hand. Intoxication would breed further intoxication and shameless acts of debauchery. This was the kind of party that could go on all night, growing wilder and wilder as time went on. A mad celebration of wealthy decadence. More than expected and yet somehow understood. I knew these things happened. I didn't look forward to them but they were somehow unavoidable. They could be surmounted, they could be dealt with. This knowledge lived within me in a place I couldn't pinpoint.
I walked away from the cook who was still talking loudly, his voice travelling like a strong committed melody over the grueling rhythm of the crowd. I felt his eyes on my back like heavy cables of steel that reached invisibly from his mind into my muscles. I didn't like it. I wanted to get away. I wanted all of it to disappear.

* * *

Without meaning to do it, I found a metal door that led me to the outside. It was an oval shaped door on the side of the kitchen, the kind of door you only find on a ship. I found it behind the shelves where all the supplies were kept. I had never seen it before. I had been in this kitchen many times and yet I had never noticed a door right there. It seemed unlikely that I would have never seen it, that I would have missed it each and every single time I had been in here. And yet there it was, waiting for me to open it.
I made a sudden decision to walk through it, without having a clear thought of what waited on the other side, without a clear anticipation of what I would encounter. I had no real expectations, no urge for discovery. I simply wanted to get away, I wanted to go elsewhere and that was exactly what the door promised. Elsewhere.
I stepped through it and I let it close behind me with a loud clang that resonated in my ears like a gong. I found myself outside, on the edge of the ship, under the dark cloudy night sky, looking at thick ominous waves that battered the ship like amorphous giant demolition rods. There was a hard rain coming down and a strong wind that made me shiver as soon as I stepped out. It felt somewhat good for the cold raindrops to hit my face harshly, tiny water projectiles propelled by the raw force of the wind that seemed to make the entire world shake around me. I shivered and the whole ship shivered with me. It reminded me of something but I couldn't quite place what it was. It wasn't something exactly pleasant, and yet I welcomed it. It was the change I had been hoping for.
There were two men outside with me, standing by the railing, their silhouettes framed by the night and the waves. One was about my age and the other one was much older. As soon as I heard them talking it became clear that they were father and son. It was also clear that they had some kind of official capacity aboard the ship, some kind of authority that lived in the structure of their spoken sentences. It was as if they carried their certifications on their voice and their demeanor. There was no need for badges when you could carry yourself this way.
Like the door I had just walked through, I had never seen them before. It was a large ship, full of strangers, but it still struck me as odd that I would never have run into them. And yet they seemed to be where they were supposed to be, they were in charge of a situation, a situation that involved me.
The older man was dressed in an elegant dark suit. There were golden cufflinks on his sleeves and his shoes were polished to perfection. He had undone his tie and unbuttoned the white shirt underneath it. In the twilight darkness of the outside, I could see a bit of his hairy chest, long white strands of hair that betrayed both his age and his old fashioned masculinity. I found it oddly attractive. I wanted to lay my head on his chest and go to sleep.
The younger man wore a thick white sweater. His pants were a light beige color and they were splotched with water. He seemed just slightly less sure of himself than his father was. But there was a hint of the same elegance in his movements, there was a touch of the same hard earned stability in his stance. His longer hair was a shambles from the wind and the water. The older man's hair didn't seem to move at all. It was as if the whole world couldn't touch him, as if he stood invulnerable no matter what came at him, no matter what violence transpired in the immediate vicinity of his personal space.
They turned towards me as soon as they saw me. Almost as if they had been expecting me, or at least expecting someone from the inside to show some level of interest in what was going on outside.
"We will have to sink the ship. There's no way around it." The old main said it with an air of finality that seemed beyond question. I nodded slowly, unsure if I was understanding correctly, unsure if I was even meant to hear this. Maybe they were confusing me with someone else?
His voice startled me when it erupted above the thunder of the waves. I sensed that I would be ready to believe anything that vibrated in those resonant timbres.
"Don't worry," the younger man said, looking at me with an air of tender nobility, "it's common practice. It's the only thing we can do in this situation. We have done it before. Many times. Everything gets wet but we survive. It's the only way. It's certainly not pleasant but it's the only thing we can do."
"When the boat goes down," the old man said, again with a thick deep voice that seemed the very incarnation of authority, "you will feel a pull on you...a very strong pull. The ocean will rise up around you and pull you down. You will have to swim very hard towards the surface, harder than you have ever swam before. You have to make sure you don't get pulled down. Do you understand? At that point it's important to resist the force that will be pulling on you. Just swim towards the surface as hard as you can, don't follow any impulse to give up. You will be tired, a voice in your head might say that it would be good to surrender to the force all around you. It will seem like a pleasant option. Don't listen to that voice. Set it aside and continue to struggle. Don't surrender. Don't give up. At this particular point, giving up is not a good idea."
Again I nodded slowly. I wasn't sure if I could even swim that hard. I looked towards the tall waves that slammed against the sides of the ship. In the middle of those waves, I wasn't sure that I could swim at all. I wanted to ask questions but they all accumulated at the tip of my tongue and refused to make the final jump out of my mouth. Instead I just looked at the two men and they looked back at me. Our conversation was over. I turned around to go back inside.

* * *

I ran back to the small cabin I shared with Vicky. I felt dizzy with apprehension and a sort of aimless confusion that didn't give me a firm footing on which to stand. As soon as I had changed out of my wet clothes, I started to put my papers and jewelry into plastic bags so they would not get lost or ruined. I sealed each one carefully, moving as fast as I could manage. I tried to not get bogged down looking at these things, but every once in a while I would stop to focus on one, a ring, a necklace, a tiny photograph, a little clay figurine. I would remember where I got each one, who gave it to me, who sold it to me, who was there when I got it. I would remember the incident that surrounded each item like a cloud of blurry images circling around an empty sun, a tiny thing that couldn't be grasped, a vortex of longing that didn't have a clear conclusion, a distinct end. Most of these things were basically worthless from anyone else's perspective, and yet they still held some kind of value for me, some kind of weight. I wondered if this would be the last time I would ever see them, the last time I would ever see anything at all.
I put all these little bits of property inside a small blue backpack which I placed next to my bed. My mother had given it to me when I was preparing for this trip. At the time I couldn't think of why I would need it. Just as I finished arranging the backpack and all the things inside of it, Vicky walked in. She was still wearing the uniform we had all worn for the party. Her long blond hair was a mess and there were raindrops on her face and jacket. She had been outside like me, maybe she had walked through the same oval door I found on the wall of the kitchen. I didn't ask her about it.
She closed the door behind her and started to undress. As she changed, she talked to me without turning in my direction. She talked in an exaggerated whisper. I looked at her naked back as I listened and I felt a mixture of worry and excitement coming from her voice.
"They are digging a grave for the boat on land. The captain radioed ahead to let them know what is happening. This is probably the last time we'll be together in here. Anything you want to save, you better hold on to it."
I pointed to the backpack and she nodded. I wanted to say more but it all seemed pointless. She was putting on a tight rubber outfit, the kind used by divers and surfers. I didn't know she had this kind of equipment. I had no idea where she got it from. There was obviously a lot of things I didn't know. Was my whole life a long line of avoided questions? A pattern of avoiding obvious clues even when they sat right in front of my face?
Up to this point, I hadn't uttered a single word while Vicky explained the procedures we would follow. She was being very detailed and methodical in her explanations. I listened as carefully as I could but suddenly I couldn't hold it any longer.
"I was not aware that there was even a remote possibility that I could die on this trip..."
She turned around and looked at me with wide eyes. She stopped in the middle of getting dressed, and just looked directly at me. I looked up at the few rain drops still shining on her cheeks. The yellow light of the cabin made them shine and shiver, like tiny stars on her face.
"There is always a remote possibility, at least a remote possibility. There's no such thing as total safety. Nowhere. Never. You should know that already. You should definitely know that from now on."
Again I nodded. These things seemed so self evident, things a child should know, things I should have been taught when I was growing up. But who would have taught me? I had never thought about the underlying possibilities before. If I had, I didn't remember. I had certainly never confronted them face on, I had never looked into the bottomless abyss that lurked under all my seemingly innocent choices.
"Did you give your parents a way to call you?"
I shook my head.
"Maybe you should call them. Just in case..."
I looked at her and then at my cell phone resting on my night table. I hesitated. Maybe it was better to not call. Maybe it was better to not know what was happening, maybe it was better to remain innocent just a little longer. Maybe it was better to find out until the crisis had passed and a resolution had emerged, whether good or bad. I couldn't imagine listening to my mother's voice while those huge waves kept crashing against the side of the ship, reminding me of the imminent presence of radical change. To hear her voice against that background would break me somehow. It would make me weaker and I needed to be strong.
She shrugged her shoulders as if she could read my thoughts.
"There's another suit in the closet behind you. You should put it on. We might have to swim for hours if we are still out on international waters. There's always a chance we might get picked up fast, but we shouldn't count on it."
I went to the closet and opened the door. I took out the suit that I found there. I had never seen it before. Again, it seemed strange that I had never noticed it. I ran my hand over its contours as if to convince myself that it was real. Were they distributed while I was working at the party? Had it been there all along and I had simply ignored its presence?
I had already changed into jeans and a T-shirt as soon as I came back to my room but now I undressed once again to change into the rubber suit. I felt somewhat embarrassed to have Vicky standing there, looking at me naked. We had both seen each other naked countless times, and yet this particular night I felt more naked than ever before. I felt as if she could look through my skin straight into my insides, straight into the inner forms that I would forever want to hide.
I could hear the waves outside getting louder, the waves beyond the walls of the cabin, beyond the edge of the ship. Outside was the Other. Everything past this wall of pale skin and this head of short dark curls was the Other. Everything. I was scared to be outside, I was scared to lose my limits, I was scared to lose my self. I was scared of it all. I felt small and weak and completely vulnerable, naked in front of the world which looked at me through Vicky's eyes.
All the stories I had ever heard, all the years of memories that I would never have access to, they were all trying to flood into my shaking mind. I didn't want to go outside to meet the Other. I didn't want the Other to come into me, to turn me inside out like an old sock and change me forever, damage what I had come to know as my world, twist it beyond recognition. I wanted to close my mouth tight so the Other wouldn't find an open doorway in the middle of my face, I wanted to close all the gates and tell it to go away, to come back when I was ready. And yet I wasn't sure that I would ever be truly ready. Not for this. Not like this. Not for something so utterly final.

* * *

I was standing next to Vicky, overlooking the open grave that would be the final resting place for the ship we had lost at sea. People had gathered around the dark moist hole, waiting for the broken bits to be moved in, broken remains of what had been a proud seagoing vessel not too long ago, a place to dream, a place to wonder, a place on which to stand and look out at the vast blue emptiness.
"It was a hard choice, to sink the ship, but it had to be done. There was no other way around it... you know? It could have been some other ship, it just happened to be ours. That's the way things are."
Vicky said it offhandedly, as if she knew I needed her to talk and she just grasped at the first thing that came into her mind, regardless of whether she really believed it or not. I felt vaguely grateful for her words, even if I couldn't understand them, even if I couldn't walk straight into them and make them my home.
I looked at her and she looked at me. Her blonde hair was still wet. My own curly black hair was wet as well. I could feel cold drops of sea water running down my neck, slipping over my shoulders to slide down my back.
Her blue eyes were even clearer than I remembered, as if they held the essence of hope within them, a kind of gentle hope that drifted easily over calm waves of doubt. We were both shivering even though the sun was already shining high in the sky, already slowly burning our skin, already slowly evaporating the remains of our cold midnight swim.
We looked at each other intensely for a moment, two sets of eyes wide open and staring, each looking into the Other, each exploring the wide open mystery that was hiding behind the Other's eyes.
What is it even possible for me to stare into the reality of her and not the illusion created by my memories? The question seemed more urgent than ever. The moment in the cabin, the moment when I stood naked before her as the ocean battered our ship into submission, that one moment had opened up wounds that I didn't even know I had, it left me with burning questions I couldn't quite formulate, doubts I couldn't raise past the boundary of my eyelids.
Was there really a Vicky out there or would I soon wake up to find that she had only been a dream? If there was no Vicky, was there a "me"? Was this "me" the thing I most cherished? The ship that took me through the oceans of reality until I came to let it sink into the turbulent vortex of the void?
And when it was finally gone, what would be left behind? Would I know when it was time to sink the ship, or would it surprise me like a little open door I had never previously noticed?
Vicky smiled at me as if to tell me to give up my questions. I smiled back but the questions persisted, even as she put her arm around me, even as I smelled her sweat, even as I momentarily believed that she was real, that she would remain steady and firm and I would continue to smell her presence as the years went by. I rubbed my nose against her skin and she giggled. A tear rolled down my cheek but she didn't see it.

* * *

That night I dreamt I was in the middle of a big feast but I was not a waitress. I was walking among all the guests completely naked. They all stared at me with big invasive eyes in the middle of blank faces that said nothing. The fact that they all looked at me without any clear reaction made me even more embarrassed, more humiliated to be so completely naked in front of all of them. So many strangers, so many people I didn't know, so many people I didn't want to know.
If at least one had tried to say something, if one had approached me with interest, wanting to caress my body, wanting to kiss my lips, if some of the women had laughed, if they had made a comment, any comment at all no matter how mean or off-handed... but there was no reaction at all, not even a whisper, not even a sigh. I just walked naked among them, unable to even cover myself with my hands.
I wanted them all to go away, I wanted them all to disappear and take away their wide open eyes.
I wanted them all to stay and talk to me, I wanted them all to be my friends, to love me, to want me, to cherish me, to hold me.
Their presence and their absence, both frightening, both desirable, both recurrently impossible.
I wanted to be gone but I was afraid to leave.
I wanted to vanish but I was afraid of the emptiness.
I woke up alone and covered in sweat, the wet sheets stuck to my skin. I looked up at the ceiling and thought about the waves that I had been so afraid of, the waves that surrounded me from all sides no matter where I was standing, the waves that would eventually take everything away. I could hear them crashing against the walls, I could hear them eager to come in to release me.
I was naked in my bed surrounded by water. No shirts, no old men, no jokes and no shoes, not even a wall. Just water everywhere, getting everything wet, taking all forms away and leaving me with nothing.