OFF-CUTS!

Where The Sky Meets The Sea

         Have you ever looked toward the horizon at sea? Many people have seen it, but have they ever really looked? The blue seems to stretch on forever, reflecting and refracting one way and the next. Nothing to break the great expanse but the sun's rays. What secrets lie masked behind this natural illusion?

         Could it be possible that this illusion is more than it seems? Do places where the concept of up and down, sea and sky, merge together and become one actually exist? Places void of all and anything, so unaccustomed to life that movement isn't restricted by any of nature's laws.

         Last winter, I came upon a place such as this by complete accident. I fell asleep while fishing in my grandfather's old wooden rowboat, and I drifted out further than I planned to. When I awoke, I was floating in nothingness, as was everything I'd taken with me, the boat, the oars, the rods, the tackle-box. The strangest were the frozen pilchards that I had bought that morning, which gracefully swam through the nothingness as if they were still alive.

         At that moment, I felt nothing; no fear, no wonder, no pain, no love, no hate, nothing. I was one with everything, contentedly insignificant, completely egoless. You've probably surmised that this didn't last. How else could I be relaying this to you now if it did?

         I awoke on the beach, the same beach that I left from earlier. My boat, my everything, all lost to that wondrous blue void.

         This is why I am leaving this note. I must return to this place somehow. The loss of my grandfather's boat, which he crafted from his bare hands more than eighty years ago, should affect me somewhat, but no. I don't care about material things now. All I want is to experience that otherworldly feeling one last time.

         If you are reading this, I haven't returned. Don't weep for me, I know our place here now, and after reading this, you should too.