Floating Driftwood
Having awakened from the stupor of my 20’s, I am resolved to more throw myself at the world.
A man, looking out of his Zone 1 London balcony onto the River Thames, watches an insignificant piece of Floating Driftwood and internalises the inanimate object. Bobbing for breath above the water, borne ceaselessly upon the tide, its fate otherwise pre-determined, with little agency to control the currents. This observer cannot say what caused it to become adrift but its trajectory tells you all you need to know. O god, your sea is so great and my boat but so small.
In the same way, a doctor finally quits smoking after trying hundredfold before. They smell tobacco laced on their fingernails while delivering resuscitation for cardiac arrest. Jarring clash of life and death played out in the nostrils.
A baby on board sticker is taken as a sign from the universe and acted upon.
An Incelibate finally gets laid and immediately is drained of all pent up frustrations.
A chance roll of the dice gives Yahtzee.
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Truly, life conversions rarely, if ever, work to a rational human’s ignition & intuition but are mapped to an unconscious cosmic calendar. Often, all it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanist man too lunacy. Living an authentic life may be the prescription.
A gentle sadness has shrouded me in persistent melancholy, that has numbed and alienated myself from life, as only self-pity can. One always seeks help too late, rather, than too early, and I hope there is time to spare. As Robert Frost wrote, “the only known way out is through”… you will get through.
So, what does this (edited) stream of consciousness all mean? — Does this make a pirates life for me then? — Embracing a lifestyle I once might have silently persecuted as ‘too precarious / too nomadic?
I can say that, as much as I can, will strive to live by a new compass. Magnetic North may not always be pointed True North as I traverse my old world. Yet, something meaningful has changed within me and time will tell what I make of it. The cardinal points on my compass will be:
“Not when I came to die, to realise I had not lived” Henry David Thereau
“Its only Hubris, if I fail” Julius Caesar
“Life is long enough and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested” Seneca
“One life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded” Ralph Waldo Emerson
I will endeavour to keep at this, with a promise to write each week. You, dear reader, will be a judge of an afflicted man. And that is that!
