Stepping out, stepping in

I'm getting a little Ishmael these days, if you know what I mean. Maybe it's the conclusion of this tumultuous year or perhaps the possibilities enshrined in the year to come: all the people to meet who will change my life in bits and pieces or great chunks, all the art (paint, food, love) to create with friends, all of those words to pour onto pages I haven't opened yet. Maybe it's my heart cracking open, flailing shut with each passing day, each vulnerable moment. Maybe it's this motion of the sun and stars and sea and all these humans pretending we are not the same carbon hydrogen oxygen, the same dust, that we are something separate and we must fight our elements, ourselves. Maybe it's all the dandelion greens I ate tonight.

But something is unsettling, unearthing, ready to emerge from the deep. I am peering over an icy cliff about to jump into a bottomless crevasse or my fingers are stretching up a wall of stone crevices and I am ready to climb. I don't see the bottom or the top. I just have to trust. Like the invisible bridge in Indiana Jones. As a kid that always made me anxious. How could you step out into the abyss into/onto something you couldn't see? I wanted to fast forward to the part where he scatters the pebbles across so the others could see the path. But Indiana just lifts his leg high, holds his breath, shuts his eyes, and steps forward. And he is safe.

This anxious excitement, this need for movement and air, this Ishmaelean impulse to shrink into heart-sick sadness on dark November (December) nights, to want everyone to know how it feels to be salty and bare... It waits. I propel myself forward and try to hold my hat in my hands so those who can't go to sea (paint their picture, climb their mountain, sit with themselves in meditation) won't be able to knock it off my skull.

It's soon time to chase my whale, to re-evaluate wave by wave what it is I'm truly seeking.

Oh Ishmael!

I was close to knocking off hats of passerby in the street- yet nowadays baseball caps don't fly off as easily as the bowlers of Ishmael's time. Tensions rose, crew departed and arrived, provisions were carted aboard, chairs lashed to tables, radios charged.

It is time to go to sea.

I took a final run on the (at long winter last) warm Florida pavement, past the dirty scattered broken bottle lots and sand-hued Italianate condo complexes, through hedge obscured neighborhoods and along empty storefronts begging for repair, for love, for a chance to show that West Palm could be so much more than it is and should be.
I am ready to leave this state.

It is time to go to sea.

Swordfish and steak on our spattering of plates as the sun set over the marina full of hull after hull of floating mansions. Giddiness sets in as docklines unwind and drop, haul them aboard and here we go! Through the waterway and rows of sailboats reflecting the amber clouds on skyward masts. For a moment I anticipate the hoisting of the sails, the heeling of the sleek white hull, the joy of shutting off the engines and gliding through the Gulf Stream. Then my eyes refocus on the jacuzzi and radar dome, the burbling whitewater wake that this motorboat leaves behind.
And I am OK with that because in this moment all that matters is the open water be it by engines, sails, or paddles.

It is time to go to sea.

As I write, the windows of my cabin are filled with sea foam and sparkling lights of nearby fishermen on the lowered horizon. The chop is still low, the rumbling of the engines soothing, the motion in my cocoon ideal for a pre-watch snooze. Soon I will be on the bridge, red lights glowing, the radar my occupation, the paper chart my enjoyment.

I am content.

I am at sea.