Some choose to sit on the shoreline, resolved to merely watching
the waves. I choose to chance the waters and I dare to dance the tides. I have
never been one to settle in and make myself comfortable. I may rest this body
on the sand for a time, drying out from the voyage I have taken, but I prefer
to go with the flow and sail the seven seas. It would be easier, some would
argue, at this stage of my life, to permanently take up fishing off a dock or a
pier. Instead of collision with gale after gale, I should find a nice beach and
retire my sails, they say. I cannot fathom a life on dry land, a life without knowing
the wild, raging curls that lick at my hull and tickle my stern. I'm not even
sure that I have an anchor left for to settle my boat in a cove or lagoon. I
could caress them, but only then to drift away. The days I have left to travel
the oceans will not find me stuck in some puddle of safety. I am at home on the
deep and I travel so freely.
The rougher
waters I have known made my journeys less calm, less sure. The wind from the
storm would not have ripped my sail had I not ventured out to face it once
more. No safe harbour I have known; no escape from the relentless whispers of
mist and breeze. Sometimes it seems like I have been sailing out on the waves
forever, but I would not sacrifice this path even if it was to take me to the
bottom of the sea. For all the riptides and every breaker, I go on. I could not
float firm in anything less. Each shift, each commotion is like a lullaby,
rocking me into sweet surrender. I am one with the journey; it takes me where
it will. Past coast and lighthouse, beyond the most southern peak of a distant
land, I challenge each tide and surf each flow always moving, always seeking
some place I have never been before.
I’m not one
to stand on the shoreline, screaming at passing ships, begging them to take me
for a ride. I do not sit in the sand hoping for some reason, some purpose to
dive into the water. Truth is, my life has been a constant motion. I would
rather be tossed and turned, to struggle with the crashing waves, to fear the
hidden reef. I would rather be abundantly soaked by abandon than to live my
life just watching.
"I'm sailing
away,
Set an open course
for the virgin sea,
'Cause I've got to be
free,
Free to face the life
that's ahead of me,
On board, I'm the
captain, so climb aboard,
We'll search for
tomorrow on every shore,
And I'll try, Oh Lord
I'll try, to carry on"
(Come Sail Away, Styx 1977)
The tickets
were mucho expensive; especially considering the other two times we had seen
her in concert. I picked up Ben at 4:15 pm as we had arranged. After a visit
home for a quick change and our stuff, we headed out to see Madonna at the Air
Canada Centre in the heart of downtown Toronto. It was a lovely day for
mid-September and the 14th day of the 9th month held
great promise, full of sunshine and an unseasonably warm temperature. I had
lost a tooth earlier in the day; it cracked and found itself floating in a
mouthful of coffee. I innocently assumed the day could not get any worse; so
much for assumptions. We hit the 401 highway around 5 o'clock, stopped dead
almost immediately by a harbinger of what was to come.
The stress
of making it by 8 pm started talking a toll the moment we crossed over to the
QEW (Queen Elizabeth Way) in order to avoid congestion on the 401. The
beautiful tour of the Guelph Line was of little salvation, journeying all the
way up the Niagara Escarpment and down again into what seemed like hell. The
ride turned to true ugly the moment we hit the freeway. Traffic was lined up
all the way to
Toronto
and our position held little hope of making it in time. Madonna’s first concert
the night before made headlines and it was the 2 ½ hour delay that stood out in
my mind. It was bad enough I had to witness this spectacle for a third time,
but to have to sit and wait that long for the privilege just pissed me off. It
was pure road rage that overwhelmed me when the unreasonable countdown
continued towards the 8 o'clock hour.
The
comments started subtly, each of us taking our turn and venting it off. As the
sea of cars and trucks thickened, comments turned to insult, then insult into
yelling, our contempt for karma and time simply muffled by the glass of the
car. You could tell we were not the only frustrated drivers on this paved piece
of damnation. Face after face, at 10 miles an hour, scoffed and scorned and
ranted on in silence. I saw less traffic in Los Angeles, travelling out to
Hollywood on a Greyhound bus. Mile after mile after mile crawled on into
forever, an endless ocean of metal and rubber tires. I felt like turning around
and sacrificing the cost of the concert for simple freedom and a direct way
back home. Despite the storm, we pushed forward.
Frustration
turned to escapism when I suddenly jumped into a different pool. I sped off the
highway, so sure I knew a quicker way. I was wrong. I failed to take into
consideration all the construction the summer of 2012 had brought to the
Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Resolved to my suffering, Ben led us back to the
QEW with hopes, at least, of resuming the quicker way. With less than half an
hour until the advertised show time, we slowly made it to Lakeshore Blvd. and
even more traffic. I am a confessed creature of habit, most comfortable with
the familiar, particularly in the dense congestion of a large metropolitan
city. So badly I wanted to park where I normally do, but I felt compelled by my
travelling companion and the clock ticking inside of my head. I jumped into the
first parking lot I came across and paid $25.00 for the not-so-exclusive rights
of leaving my car in the hands of foreign caretakers. We fell out of the car
like whales beaching on shore, not yet defeated but well on the way.
I hid my
wallet, foolishly thining that the promotional claim of "protected
lot" would actually mean something for the price I paid. We hit the bank
machine on the way into the arena, bought a few pricy souvenirs, and then
headed to our reserved seating. As the stress of the journey withdrew like the
tide, we sat waiting for her majesty. I left Ben glaring at the stage below us
and headed out looking for the one thing that might calm my nerves, coffee. I
wandered about, asking security guards and service clerks where I could find
the
Tim Horton's much promised on the
marquee when we entered the building. Level after level, staircase after
escalator, I was misdirected, misinformed and misled so many times I felt like
Odysseus en route to Ithaca in Homer's
The
Odyssey. I finally found my Penelope, tucked far away on the ground floor,
but refused to battle more than 200
Mnesteres
for a mere cup of joe. I set sail back to where I had set out from, almost
castrated and only worse for the $5.00 bottle of root beer in my hand.
It's ironic
when you rush and rush to get where you are going, turning moments of
tranquility into cries of despair, only to sit waiting for over 2 hours for the
favour. Just after 10 pm, the lights cascaded, the music roared and a tidal
wave of senses hit me like a wall of wet. Having experienced her at the Air
Canada Centre (ACC) once before, and having travelled to Montreal for the
experience the first time, the jumping, bouncing and gyrating fans in front of
me did little but to amuse. I sat for almost 2 more hours taking pictures and
video for Ben. Upon completion, with a ringing in my ears, we floated back to
the vessel by which we had come. Once the car door was opened, you could
instantly tell we had been pirated.
I was lucky
enough to take my credit cards with me into the venue, but that did little to
quell the raging sea within me. The lack of buried treasure did little to stop
some intruder from ransacking through everything they could find. When it came
down to it, nothing but my wallet had been taken, other than my pride and sense
of fair play.
Resolved to defeat, and
chancing a dangerous riptide, I headed out, back the 100 kilometres to
Kitchener but without my license. Ben was unable to help with any steering as
the motion of this ocean made him rather seasick. We crossed over, back onto
the 401, believing that after midnight would have cleaned up the damage of the
day; to no avail. Right near
Pearson
International Airport,
we were diverted, forced to follow a secondary highway far past the direct
route we wished to travel. Eventually, our persistence, and determination,
landed us back into port and into some sense of safety.
Just when I
thought it was safe to go back in the water, the water tried to come and carry
me away. Although the next few days were spent productively restocking my new
wallet, calm and peace were not long for my world. At first we thought that the
water had turned on by itself, but withdrawing our black shower curtain
revealed the soft and soggy truth. Throughout the day, older toilets had been
replaced on the upper floors of the building. All seemed well with my crapper
as the plumbers left and my coffee kicked in. Around 10 pm the floodgates
opened, in the form of a giant inverted tit hanging from the ceiling over the tub.
As it grew, we just knew that the roof was soon to cave in. I popped the paint
udder like a bubble, not thinking of what might lie within. I guess I should
not have assumed that it was my plumbing that was not working.
Once the
ceiling was cut out and the water drained from the crawl space, I washed my
arms and hands a dozen times, trying to scrub off the invisible shit. As I lay
in bed later that night, I felt like I was 12 years old again, wondering why
God was punishing me for something I could not imagine I had done. I felt like
if karma was a bitch, she had consummated over and over with my leg, perhaps
even my soles. I know there are bound to be rough waters in life. I know that
no sea is constantly calm and smooth for sailing. I am well aware that if this
was the worst series of events that could happen, I was lucky, lucky to have
made it through relatively unscathed. As I tried to drift into slumber, I
wondered if it was over. Was it safe to go back out onto the sea yet?
"Water turns
cold and gets to freezing
Before you even know
it the old girl's easing
Away from her berth
round by the point and out of our view
Off in the mist her
engines pounding
Back on the banks
that old horn's sounding
A little good-bye
A little I'll do what
I must do"
(River Lady, Roger Whittaker 1976)
You can
spend your entire life on the shore, as ships come and go, or you can ride the
waves and travel past the very same ships that might well have passed you by. A
life on the sea has something wonderful to offer those brave enough to face existence
without solid ground. The ocean can be your friend if you let it be. We are
built for travel, built for speed, but there is certainty on the rocks and
hills, assurance no body of water can offer. I prefer to take this trip with a
different view. There is no need for some vigil, as I won't be home soon. It is
a foregone conclusion that a ship at sea will never stay in one place. It will
always find movement, always reaching for the places that it wants to be. We
must travel with caution as the deeper we get, the easier it is to sink. Not
every vessel we pass has our best intentions on board. The rush of something
tidal can sweep you away and the sting of a whirlpool might get in your way.
Out on the
ocean the silence is heavy. The quieter the world becomes, the more you can
hear. It is dark and it is empty yet there is light from the smallest pinprick
of a star and music from the crashing waves. There is peace for those who long
to have it. Those who refuse to sail, most people, are like a burning ship,
quite brilliant but oh so useless. The voyage consumes them, they cannot handle
the ride. They sit on the shore, oblivious to the ocean, the sky and the
breeze. All they see are the waves. They sit watching and waiting for life to
hand over the goods. They do not realize that it is the journey that is the
reward.
“Morn on the waters,
and purple and bright
Bursts on the billows
the flushing of light
O'er the glad waves,
like a child of the sun,
See the tall vessel
goes gallantly on.”
(The Convict Ship, Thomas Kibble Hervey)
Photo
Port Burwell, Ontario
August 31
st 2012
