Last night I dreamt about the Ocean.
We were preparing to launch our various vessels from underneath a pier. Mine was a barrowed paddle board. I had hoped for a kayak.
The venture was proposed by someone else in our group, all of us men, but I cannot recall any faces. They were friends, some brothers-in-law, and all of them new relations to me. I was new to the area, knew nothing of the water, but this was all brushed off as old hat to them.
“Let’s go out on the water. It will be fun.”
It was to be a simple day of floating and paddling about on the blue. I have been wanting some of that since I moved here. Not the floating and paddling per-se, but just some doing. I don’t do enough; mostly I sit, read, and settle.
As we approached the shore I was surprised by what I saw. The beach and sand sloped steeply down from us, but the waves as they rose and rushed out, were ten stories tall. Yes, the waves were going away. They were tall and rough and strangely headed out to sea and not the shore. From my vantage up above I watched the arched backs of the breakers with little people bobbing about, looking like ants.
The water and sky were a blackish blue, lined with hard shadows like an HDR landscape run amuck. As I stood and marveled at what I thought looked quite severe, the others quickly and jauntily unloaded their two, ten person row boats and moved quickly down the slope to a pier jutting out into the heaving mass. I shouldered my borrowed paddle board and followed.
We did not go out onto the pier but under it instead. I hopped from rock to boulder watching as the well drilled crews in front steadied their boats and began loading up the oars. The dark water bubbled around, pushing and pulling like waves do, spitting foam and spray, not white but grey.
They were happy and busy and paying me no mind.
I was afraid.
Brohammas 