The small wooden boat rocks softly back and forth, creaking ever so slightly. Its hull is worn and aged, but still serviceable. It is nicked and scored… so much so that some might call it ugly and others merely worn in. It wobbles delicately on the water, surrounded on all sides by a mist that is hazily lit by an early morning glow. Pale blues, misty grays and a hint of warm sunlight, far away and indistinct, shroud the small boat from everything but the immediate waterscape that is painted in foggy pastels. A figure lies in the boat, reclining with his hands clasped behind his head, his simple brown hat placed over his face. He grunts softly, shifting his weight for comfort and causing a subtle ripple of waves to emanate into the haze. After a few moments of half-awake dreams, he reaches from behind his head, removes his hat and sits up slowly, groggily blinking. He yawns and rubs his stubbly face. Leaning forward he pulls his legs up towards his chest a bit and rests his elbows upon his knees. Looking around, he smiles sadly, the cool mist caressing his face. He has no map. He has no provisions. He has no reference for where he is, what time or day it is, or why he is here. Yet, his mind is at peace by mere virtue of the fact that he is alive.
For all he knows he has been on this small boat, in this morning mist, for all of eternity. This could not possibly be the case though, could it? His mind focuses. He begins to think through the ghostly wisps of fading dreams that still gauze his mind:
“Someone had to have built this boat. Was it me? Where would I get the materials? Where would I get the tools to construct it? I don’t know how to build boats. My clothes… I must have gotten them from somewhere. I must have come from somewhere. I must have a purpose to be out here, on this water, in this mist, in this boat. There must be a reason for it. But what is it? Why don’t I already know it?”
The man looks about for want of anything else to do and then wraps his arms around himself, drawing his legs in closer. He begins to shiver. He’s cold. He didn’t just become cold… he had always been cold, but had just now only realized it. Not only cold, but also alone. Suddenly, the peace in his mind drains away like the blood from a vein, leaving him not only shivering on the outside, but cold on the inside as well. A minor panic begins to build within him.
“Why am I alone? This boat is big enough for two people. Oh, God… why am I alone out here? No one knows that I’m here and I have no reason to think that anyone is looking for me. Is that because no one misses me? Or because I haven’t met anyone yet to miss me…? Was i put out here, alone?”
His face clenches and tears begin to well in the corners of his blue eyes. With a sudden heave of his chest and sharp intake of breath, tears begin to slowly stream down his face. He is hugging himself now, rocking back and forth unconsciously, causing the boat to rock with him on the glassy surface of the water. Minutes pass, then hours. The mist, the hazy light and the water remain the same.
After what seems like many hours, the man hears something… talking. A person talking. They are calling out, barely being able to be heard over the muffling effect of the fog. Almost refusing to believe his own ears, the man sits still. He waits for the voices to stop. They get louder. Within a few minutes, the voice is speaking directly to him. He can no longer ignore it. He turns a watery, red eye to the source of the voice.
A young man sits in a boat very much like his own. The young man continues to paddle slowly towards the older man’s boat. The younger man smiles and greets him. He seems happy, not at all concerned about where he is or what his circumstance happens to be at the moment. The older man sniffs and wipes the tears from his face with his sleeve. The two begin talking and the older man immediately feels better. Not only has he finally seen another person out here, but the person is glib and humorous. He talks of absurdities and jokes, never taking anything seriously.
The two men talk for many minutes. During a lull in the conversation, the older man, still clutching his plain hat, asks the younger about where he came from. The younger man looks confused and asks, “What do you mean? I came from over there”
He waves vaguely in the direction from whence he appeared. He then shrugs and smiles.
“Doesn’t it bother you that you don’t know where you are? Or where you came from?”, asks the older man.
“Hey, look… YOU don’t know where you are either, so don’t go accusing ME of things!” the younger man sneers. He angrily snaps up his oars and begins to row away.
“Wait! No! I didn’t mean to insult… i was just wondering… where…”, the older man lets the sentence drift away into silence to prevent any further harm.
“I don’t need your condescension.”, says the younger man, as he fades from view into the cloying morning mist.
The older man watches the boat and figure fade into gray shadow, his face a mix of shock, sadness and frustration. He buries his face in his hands, eyes pressed so tightly that ghostly fireworks and sparks appear where his sight should be.
“Why do I always fail at being around people? Why don’t I know how to act? The only person I’ve seen and I drive them off with my flaws…”
With a sharp intake of breath, he attempts to steady himself, keep himself sane. All he has is his reason, his logic… there’s nothing else to cling to, nothing else to grasp to keep himself from slipping into oblivion.
“Perhaps”, He thinks desperately, “…perhaps none of this is real. Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe this isn’t reality. But… I know that I am here. I can feel. I can think. I am cold. I can feel the grain of the wood of the boat. If the boat is made of wood… then, there must be trees. If trees, then land. Soil. Lumberjacks. A Sun. I must exist on a planet, in orbit around a parent star. I’m being held down by gravity, and I am breathing air. If on a planet in orbit around a star… then i must exist in a larger universe… what wonders there must be out there. How different they must be than here.”
His resolve shaking and then quickly crumbling, he feels despair creep up his brainstem into his mind, into the very core of his being.
“But… I will never see those things will I? All that exists, for me, is this greyness. This obscuring mist. This, to me, is all that exists.”
“What am i going to do?”
—To be continued—
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