Drifter

In my mind, I let it go.

I let the water sweep me away from the shore.

I let it take me as far as it can.

I wait for a while, to see if its just building up strength to take me even farther.

Because I don't know how to swim out here on my own.

And all the voices on the shore diminish.

They become cartoonish, and then a parody of something that was cartoonish to begin with.

And when I finally get to the point where I can't make out any of the invidual words, I see it for what it is.

Squeals of confusion and doubt.

Bold proclamations of certainty meant to comfort the speaker and frighten his audience.

It doesn't matter what they are talking about.

It could be any randomly chosen topic of half-assed interest in any culture.

Kids talking about baseball cards.

The chatter of worried baboons.

And this is all old news, to me.

I've been here many times before.

I am not satisfied with this.

So I let the water take me down.

And I think.

I think about how some people can get depressed.

How some people, even people like Hemingway, can twist themselves up into balloon animals and kill themselves for things that wouldn't even make sense to a guy in Tibet and would only make an Indian laugh.

How everything we come into contact with is defined by the way we choose to pick it up.

And people pick up a lot of things, but they hardly ever let anything go.

That's how they fill themselves with shit.

Shit they didn't even mean to fill themselves with.

They're all like overloaded boats, full of shit.

And I think about how our overloaded boat could be wrecked in a storm, and we could be washed ashore in nothing but rags on a deserted island.

And we could go swimming every day.

If there was only enough fruit to eat and fish to catch.

And we would never have to say a word to each other.

And you'd realize that nothing I could ever say would be better than a natural smile, or a natural laugh.

And eventually you'd forget all the commercials you ever saw.

And all the books you ever read.

Or whatever it was that told you you were supposed to be something else, something better than you are.

Whatever it was that made you think you should be different than you are.

Whatever your poison is.

Because it has no place, here.

The island isn't interested.

And I'm definitely not interested.

And you would finally find yourself by losing most of what you thought you were.

All that baggage.

All that dead weight.

And you'd learn to travel light.

Because freeing yourself of those burdens allows you to move.

To be more effective.

Carrying a thing around can make it much harder to take care of.

And perhaps you'd eventually be rescued by army men.

And perhaps you'd eventually be returned to the world.

And you'd step off the boat just like everybody else.

Into a land of opportunity.

Fresh off the boat, light and clean.

And the madness would begin all over again as you began to pick things up.

I can't make you let all this shit go that you keep picking up.

And I'm not a storm that can wreck your overloaded boat and wash you clean by force on some deserted island.

But maybe I can make it harder for you to keep picking up all this shit that overloaded your boat in the first place.

Let's go swimming.