This old brown boat's been tied up at the pier too long under
unruffled, pale skies of aquamarine. The yellow strand runs
flat and passive, untrampled even by happy children, between
a few ramshackle bait houses and deserted gas stations. Her poor
gunwales grow rotten with barnacles and worms; she's been
sequestered too long in a calm, protective harbor where
sandpipers madly scamper and lost grebes scream. She was
made to travel, not rot in place, cut off from space and experience,
with ever deepening texture and character, but atrophying,
infertile discernment.
Apathy of the spirit is subtle; death is not, and the politics
of the moment tricks us into false pretensions we may be
years in penetrating and discarding. This modern art, though,
is made in the moment, not raised like medieval cathedrals down
generational centuries. We inhale, we exhale life; we live;
we must live right now before we die, before we die, before we
have to die, for no one else can do it for us, not even on Lost or
Arrested Development. And when did the sluggishness begin?
When, the spiritual ennui set in? You know. You know precisely when.
You've read your Joseph Campbell, and you're familiar with the
call refused. But someone keeps on calling you, paging you,
pinging you, poking you, beseeching you, entreating you, reaching
out for you, texting you to get up off your withered laurels and,
like Beowulf, disembark on one more dragon hunt at least. Splash a
fresh coat of paint on that lonely boat and let's move out onto
deep water.
