[SOLO] Lost at Sea [ Distant Tidings ]

[Jun]

Colorists Love...DRABBLES 2016 (A Drabble on the Theme of the Ocean)

[imgleft]http://matope.pixel-blueberry.com/image ... gs_jun.gif[/imgleft]"What is a trip, a slip, a torrent of bits, a streak of streaming mercury? What is unending, undying, unplumbed, unfathomed, unfathomable, fathoms deep and foaming? Unending, without end, the horizon looming, always looming, untouched, untouchable, undying, eternal? What is the sea – what do you see? – what can be seen, what is the ocean?

"What is untouched, unknown, unplumbed, unfathomable? What is pursued, what is pursuing, what is untouched, unfathomed – what can't I fathom? What can't I catch, pursue, pursued, achieve – what can't I know? Why am I always chasing? What is a dream?

"What is a self? What do I know? Nothing. There was a dream. I had a dream, before a self – what did I see? I saw the sea – the ocean, unending, undying, unfathomable, fathoms, fathoms and fathoms and fathoms and fathoms deep. I knew it, when I knew nothing. I knew – what did I know? I knew it was home.

"What is a home? A self, a knowing, a knowing you're home – a nothing. Nothing, nothing. I saw a sea, I knew the ocean. The ocean is home – yet, home is nothing.

"Before I had a self, I had a dream. I saw the sands, the snows, the plains; I saw the Swamp. None of these were fathoms – they were nothing to me. Then I saw the ocean. I woke in sands, and now I had a self, but sands were nothing, they were not home. I walked on sands – I learnt to walk on sand, and once I learnt to walk, I learned to run. I learned to run on sands, and sands I ran, I ran and ran till I ran out of sands. From sands I ran until I ran on plains – plains roll, did you know? Did you know that plains roll? I ran on rolling plains till there were no plains left to roll. And then it was the Swamp, and for a while the Swamp felt unending – I still ran, but there was so much Swamp to run. I danced, I laughed, I riddled, I wept – I met, so many I met, that I laughed and riddled – I ran. I ran and even the Swamp must end, and where it ended, I saw the sea.

"Do you know how it feels to see the thing you've dreamed of for so long? Do you know how it feels to see the sea? Do you know how it feels to know the ocean – do you know the ocean?

"I had a dream before I had a self, I knew the ocean then, and it was home. And now I knew the ocean, lapping waves beneath my hooves, fathoms – fathoms deep. I was home.

"And home was nothing."

He always stopped here, abruptly, turning his head aside, eyes far. As if, if he saw far enough, to the sea, beyond the sea – unending, undying, unplumbed, unfathomed fathoms – he could finally see that shadow, that last part of his dream, that made home mean home again. Until then, there was only the ocean.

END