Breach (a different kind of post)

Today, my iPhone told me to read something different. Thank you, Bible app. You are kind :) 

Yes, I read the Bible on an iPhone. Don't judge!

Since I am taking a break from the Book of Exodus, I thought it might be fun to publish something out of the ordinary for me. A different piece of writing. A piece that I am still working on. 

Breach

I hated the ocean. I loathed its massive, breaking sounds that drew me to the borders between rushing water and wet, dark brown sand. In this place, I would wonder—feet barely following the other, and carrying my empty mind along. The ocean reminded me of the vastness of all that is, of the unknown. And being faced with it, felt like looking at myself and seeing only a deceptive surface. Felt like madness. A shell here and there. A creature spread out, unidentifiable. Living, dying matter, but always the in and out of the tide. Always the noise like the inside of a seashell, and the memories of stealing them from the beach and taking them home, where as a child I would tuck my ear inside with dreams that I might escape my landlocked world.

The oceans here are covered with a thick, yet sheer curtain of wet and cloudy gray sky. I remember reading that early settlers risked their lives in these fogs of the Northwest, as their boats would break against hidden cliffs. They would snap. Cave. Crush the adventurers within. When the fog shows up, I am the captain—blind, anxious to reach the shore, but filled with visions of snapping, cracking, and drowning—dying before I ever get the chance to press my toes into the fine sands, or breathe the air of majestic trees. I am standing on the beach with a pit in my stomach, while my friends, who are sick to their stomachs with taffy and caramel corn, tired from bumper cars, snicker at me from afar. My hood is up over my head. My eyes are on my feet. My head is somewhere else.

But now, something is different.

As the icy water rushes over the tops of my pale feet, red polish glimmers in a white sun. I can feel the cold invigorate my body from the ground up, and a piercing energy ignites the dreams that are dormant in my mind. My sails are up. I’m standing on the edge of a cliff, and I am ready to dive into a new pace. I can stand there, with my eyes opened or closed, and it doesn’t matter. Through it all, I can see whales racing to the surface and pulling themselves out of the water into the cool air where their bodies are light for a moment, before they smash back into the depths of the sea. They are always moving. And they know something that I don’t. It is a something that I used to fear—that I was afraid I would not want to know, or would never understand. But now I see myself further out than the borders between rushing water and wet, dark brown sand; I see myself as a speck in the midst of blue, and up close, on the leather canvas of a sailboat. A thin epidermis separates my world from the world of the whales, and I am laying on my stomach full of butterflies with my head over the edge, face down, eyes staring into the white foam that flows from the edges of the platoons on both sides. I’m waiting for a breach of truth; without it, I am dreaming of what it might be. And that alone keeps me at peace while I am here, at the mercy of the wind.