The Remains of a Brief Life

There was a lot of a lot of different things before, not all bad and not all good, though at the time the bad seemed to outweigh the good, but now that I'm stuck out here, I'm not so sure if that's true anymore.

They told me the sea was freedom, but what freedom is this if I carry the same weight everywhere I go? I left the world I knew, if even only for a few days, to come here to unwind, to find some peace of mind, yet here I am, infinite and unchanged. I started to think, first, of all the material things: my apartment, my car, the women I’ve slept with even if it is very few. One in particular comes to mind, a woman in Paris. We were on a street, though I’m not sure where and I remember it wasn’t a busy street but it wasn’t not busy either. We were sharing a cigarette and a bottle of wine and she asked me, in English, if I knew what God meant by eternity. I told her I didn’t, and she said something in French and I asked her what she said. She told me, “I think it would be beautiful, yet nothing at all.” The way she said it in French sounded far better, almost like it had no English equivalent and that was the closest she could come up with.

That was many years ago. Twenty-five, thirty maybe? And I think now I understand what she meant. The sea stretched out in all directions around me, the stained and sickly smell of pure salty air, is beautiful yet nothing at all. The sea has its own will, swelling whole whatever it wants, perhaps even me when it decides to do so.

The sky has grown pale this evening, like the death of a beautiful woman or a handsome man. I find myself missing that life that I had so long ago. The filth of cities, cigarette smoke, flirting with beautiful women. I suppose I got old, corporate. That sound of people laughing that hated each other, cheap perfume in the air there was life in that corruption. Perhaps salvation is not being saved, but rather finding the beauty in being damned.

The sun is setting, the sky growing darker, calmer. I’m growing nostalgic of lost times. I’m not that person, though maybe I was once. I grew up, fell in love, got a high-paying job, bought some things. What good do those things do me now? What good have they ever done me? Temporary satisfaction, maybe, a boost to the ego or status. Looking out at this eternal horizon, it isn’t the material things that I miss, but the feelings, the experiences, the longing of my wife. I suppose love and the sea are similar in that regard, taking anything they desire and polishing them into something smooth and unrecognizable. That is what love has done to me, though, is this the version of me that is unrecognizable, or is it the other, version of me?

The wind is growing fiercer, the salt-whipped air stinging my face. How long have I been out here, I begin to wonder. There’s something comforting in not knowing. I try to recall the number of sunsets I’ve seen, but that can’t be accurate because I only recall two that were particularly beautiful and a few that were behind storm clouds. How might a man tell time with sense of it. What’s the point of it all other than to have a way to track us through life to death? It makes me think of the time I spent at meetings, at conferences, in rooms of people I didn’t like. The kind of people that I was becoming. I was greedy, cranky, and did whatever I could to mount myself for success. Now I’m questioning what success actually is. I was chasing vanity and power, and in return I lost my family. How long now since I’ve talked to John? Ten, maybe? Back to time. Again, how it controls us, for better or for worse, writing us into the grave, or the sea. Back to the facade of power. How weak and powerless I truly was, how any of us truly are.

I stand up on my small boat, which I have been laying on. I urinate off the side of it. I take my pants off, then my shirt, and let the sun eat me for a few hours. Mother Nature is devouring me, all of me, as if birth and death are the same process only reversed. I feel the boat go up over small swells, rock left to right, the wind only slightly blowing this morning. It is silent, as if the sea herself is whispering to me, serenading me with her beauty. Not literally, I have not yet gone mad. I still have my wits about me, at least I believe so, at least as much wit as I had before which wasn’t very much. I thought highly of myself once, very highly, too highly even.

Then, how did I get here? I came to Hawaii as a getaway, to reset. I had lost the position of CEO to an ungrateful curmudgeon named Paul. I never liked Paul. I felt a failure and all that I believed about myself was proven entirely false. I’m on a small boat, my sail snapped in a storm. Not being a seaman, I figured I stopped trying to find my bearings. Either I’ll live or I’ll die. Either somebody will come to my rescue or they won’t. There’s a bit of complacency in giving up. But nobody will know if I gave up or not. Only me, God, and his angels. Maybe that’s who matter most, maybe they won’t care. Maybe they aren’t there. Who is to say, really? I’ve never died before.

In all actuality, it is time I consider that a real possibility. Death. The idea of it all. The realization that everything is finite. How obscene that the end should be so beautiful. The sunset, how many I’ve seen without a second thought, and now to die in front of one so beautiful seems unfair to Mother Nature. This death does not feel like a reaper, but rather a beautiful bride, a strange, consenting courtship. Make my heart a pearl for some future god to find.