I had a revelation. I have been imbued with the truth, and it has set me free. There is something about losing half of your income that says there’s no stopping you now. I am free, free, free at last! And I know what I’m not. Knowing not is sometimes more important than knowing.
What I am not is a person who likes to write about politics, sports (usually), and most music people, who actually bore me. The movies I like are not likely to be the ones most people like. If you do like them, then you don’t need me to tell you how great they were.
I’m a poet and a storyteller. I like to take people on journeys, some real, some imagined, and some a blend of both, leaving my readers to decide where one ends and another begins. Here’s a tale for you.
One summer in the 1700’s, a boy walked up his favorite hillside, the dark blue sky and white clouds hovering above the water. He looked at the harbor and saw the sky reflected in the sea, made more striking by the white sails of the tall ships and the clouds right next to them. It was as if the sky was the sea and the sea was the sky. It seemed to him that the world could be turned upside down and still keep a steady keel.
Continuing up to the highest point and looking down on the harbor, down on the schooners and whalers, he saw the frigates and warships. The ships that carried goods from faraway exotic places thrilled him the most. He dreamed of the day he would also sail outside the harbor to places of mystery and magic. The sea cried out to him like a mistress waiting in the dark, barely veiled behind a dream, calling to him to learn from the trade winds of life.
On this day as he looked at his town, he wondered what changes time would bring, how hundreds of years would alter what he saw, and about the new and incredible things that would come to his town that he would never see. Oh, how he longed to be a part of this place forever.
Hundreds of years later waking from the dream, a man walked to the top of the hill and looked down, and the harbor spoke to him, as it had through the ages. The city was different, but the sky was the same, and though the ships had engines instead of sails, his harbor remained. As he stood there, he could not help but wonder which was the dream? It was as if one was either, and both existed one inside the other. This place had always been and always would be his place in time. There was more to know, and he knew that the dream would never end and the questions would remain. Which was the dream, who is the boy or the man? Could you turn one one way and one the other and still have an even keel? Is the dream a memory? Is the boy still walking those hills today beside the man?
PS: Yes the mouse is running backwards on the clock.