It’s the freight ships I didn’t expect. Enormous rusted hulls, broad flat decks with stained white towers. My mind keeps wandering back to them. I find myself wondering: how do you get a job on one of those ships? Could I do it? What’s involved? Part of me badly wants to find out… but then I wonder: what sort of people work on those ships? Coarse men, absorbed in a world of working and drinking and fucking? Where would I fit into that company? I’ve seen too much hurt, the consequences of too much chauvinism and objectification to be able to just sit by idly in the midst of all that. It wouldn’t take long for me to be hated in such a crowd as that… and where would that leave me? Or am I simply stereo-typing labour workers, playing off the negative impressions I received from those I knew working on oil rigs?
What I had expected was the islands. Driving up the coast sandwiched between the mountains and the ocean I wasn’t surprised to find myself dreaming of working on the islands. Living away from all this industry and concrete, working outside with my body.
Something is always calling to me.
Come away, come away. Disappear. Escape.
Here is peace, here is laughter. Here is rest.
How long will I feel this pull?
Like a moth following the moon, every lamp along the way urges me to turn aside – especially when the clouds come and darken the sky and the rain makes it hard for frail wings to fly.