The Bohemian Experiment

I travel winding, country highways
past estates sheltered by trees
until at last I’ve gone far enough east and am met
by a view of the cold Atlantic.

I stand on a rocky beach with
thick, coarse, sand.
The sea appears as
shimmering blue stretching as far as the eye can see,
meeting the sky and becoming an indistinguishable
smudge of air and water.
The waves crash against the shoreline which
stretches on to points north and south.
The salty, fishy smell of low tide is in the air,
accompanied by shrieking gulls and
other swooping sea birds.

As darkness sets in the water becomes
harder to make out but
is still unmistakable.
A steady sea breeze
sweeps my hair to the side and balances out the
humid night air.

These are the kinds of nights
Puritan New Englanders dream about.
They work patiently towards this reward through
the cold, unpleasant months of November through May.
This is the reward for their sacrifice and
good practice for ticking away their time on earth
in wait of the promises of heaven.

It is dark now.
The tide moves in,
gains strength as the moon exerts its
gravitational pull and forces it
back toward the shore
as if each successive wave is an attempt
to swallow up the land
only to be turned way and
followed again by another
and another
and another.

The foamy, white crest of the waves
stands out in the darkness,
can be seen racing in from
both the left and the right,
steadily collapsing like a
stack of falling dominoes.
The sea is loud,
making it difficult to hear my companion’s words
so we decide not to talk at all.
We’re content to hear only the steady break of the waves that
have not stopped for all of mankind’s history,
are a symbol of something outside of our world,
something bigger.
The waves are a clue to forces we don’t fully understand
yet never cease to find solace in.
It is steadiness that makes the ocean so relaxing,
knowing that each wave that breaks will
be followed by another
and another
and another
If only the rhythm of our own lives were so simple and steady.

Staring out at the vast dark sea is proof that there are
things beyond human knowledge.
Here is something hopelessly
vast
like outer space
right here on earth.
These are depths not meant for man to enter, and yet,
all the things that make it so awesome
and us so insignificant in comparison
do not feel like a reason to despair, but,
to delight.

The ocean is terrifying at night.
It is a black, writhing body with no borders,
only icy depths full of nothing
and everything
as if my greatest fears are contained in every rising swell.

I strip naked and proceed,
through force of will, into the frigid blackness.
The whole ocean moves.
Swells rise up before me like dark phantoms
gaining shape and size as they close in.
I can only stare dumbly,
too frightened, or perhaps,
too proud
to flee.

Only in the darkness can I understand the size of the ocean.
In the darkness I sense its vastness for I’m
unable to see its limits,
as if it has none at all.
The light tricks one into thinking they can accurately imagine the size of things
while in the dark one truly understands
for darkness allows no safe illusions.

A swell is about to break over me. I
close my eyes and dive head first into it,
open my eyes underwater and see nothing, only
hear the deep, bass of the surf around me.
The world is a dull roar in my head.
I go limp and close my eyes, look up and see the pure,
white light of a crescent moon,
a single streak dancing on the writhing surface of the sea.
My naked body is carried by the motion of the waves,
a piece of driftwood in the tides of time,
carried along by forces much greater than myself.

Realizing it is a release.
I let go of all worldly cares, as if
a babe back in the womb
unaware of the trials of life I have yet to face.
I’m a child of nature floating peacefully in
the amniotic salinity of the ocean.
In that moment I make a firm decision
not to fight drowning, or
being swept out to sea .
I allow nature to have its way with me,
knowing sooner or later it will do so anyway.