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The Island |
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It was close to morning when I heard the key noises and the front door squeaked open. “Shit, I forgot to oil the door again” I thought to myself but turned to the PC to make sure nothing problematic was on the screen. “Hi dad” he said and half sat half collapsed into the kitchen chair in front of me. “How'd it go?” I asked to get a feeling of how he was. “How'd what go?” he threw back trying to sense if I was open to conversation or just waiting for him to go upstairs so I could get back to work. “The date” I answered. “Oh, that” he responded just to make sure. “Oh that?” I asked with a dramatically innocent look on my face. “Oh that is what you call a phone call from your second aunt on your mothers side when she needs a babysitter. Oh that - is definitely not what you call the first date with the blond bombshell you have been flirting with and dreaming about for the last three months” That got a smile that lasted for a moment then he frowned a deep “how do I ask you” frown and turned to me trying to find the way… to ask, but not sure about wanting to. I felt the dilemma and decided to help him out like a good dad does when the need arises. “What's bothering?” I asked in my most sincere voice. “Well” he starts but gets mixed up and throttles down. “Well” I say, “is as good as any crime there is… do you want to back it up with evidence or do we go into court and just hope for the best?” “Well” he tries again and then comes to a decision. “I was walking home tonight after we…” he pauses… “after we were together till now.” I decide not to ask what took till now… that is “Did it go ok” I asked trying to decide if he needed a man to man talk or a soul to soul one. It turned out that a little of both. “Oh, it went fine. She's really great and… we had a good time… it's just that… well…” Then it started pouring out… “It was getting late and she had to go and we kissed and it was great and I felt like my chest was going to explode and I looked at her and her eyes were closed and when we couldn't breath any more she looked up at me… she said she loves me.” He stopped to think and I thoughtfully shut up knowing that there was more to come. “It was like I couldn't help it… and I told her that I love her too.” Feeling that this was the problem but not really giving him the credit he deserves I stupidly asked “and do you love her?” He gives me the “god, don't you understand anything look” and hits me with the sentence that made me change the credit range he has with me since then. “Of course I can't love her, I'm only fifteen years old and besides, I don't even know what love really is… so how can I love her.” Bam, all the reasons for having kids rolled into one. They need you and you need them. As wonderful a symbiotic relationship as any nature or god or fate… whatever you want to call it… has created/reached for the good of mankind. God I love them… my sons that is. So in the name of paternal love… and as an excuse that I don't know why I need, and as a way to tell and ask you… I'll put here what I would say to him if the situation noted above ever did arise… and if you know me and my sons… you can probably figure that some time soon it will… Or maybe this is just my way of asking myself… what do you really want… Then he turned to me and asked… that's when I knew that I hadn't completely lost my reputation as an role model and instructor of life's more complicated issues and it made me feel a bit better. “I was walking home trying to figure out why I needed to tell her I loved her. And I realized that even though I know I don't I'm not sure that if I did I would know how it feels.” He looks into my eyes and adds “since you love Mom and have for so long maybe you can tell me what it really feels like or even better maybe you can tell me what love really is.” If he only knew… my reputation would be shot to hell… then again maybe if he knew he'd not have to walk the same path I did and maybe without having a path drawn for him by the previous generation (meaning me) he might find a better path. I wanted to hug him and say “Oggi, my son my son” like it was all just a stupid cartoon series on the kiddy channel… but refrained from the banality and decided to tell him the sailor story. Half way into the beginning of the tale he fell asleep but I wrote it down here in any case just so I don't lose it… and for all the other reasons stated above… it goes like this… ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I met the sailor in a bar on the northern corner of the old port. Not that any ship had been there for decades but it was still called a port and people still came out there… especially on Thursday nights to see what was happening and mingle with strangers... Like they have done in ports across the globe and all down through history. He was sitting on the corner of the bar which meant that he'd gotten here early on and by the glassy look in his eyes he'd spent the time drinking heavily. We all knew him by sight and reputation. He was the sailor. He had sailed the seven seas and the five oceans and from the look of him, had gotten to know all of them intimately. He'd been around the globe more times then he could remember and touched more continents and lands then all of us put together. He was the explorer, adventurer, experiencer we would never be. Well, the evening moved on and I'd had my third beer and since I'd missed lunch this afternoon I was already in the in the “profound life shaking questions” part of the evening. Seeing that there were no interesting blonds on the bar tonight I turned to my left and threw him a question. “Tell me… in all your voyages… all the lands, islands, places that you have seen and been to… what was the most important place you have touched?” I expected him to start jabbering but he turned to me with an angry look on his face. He looked angry enough to hit me and I started going over all the judo moves I had learned in sixth grade but after a moment of quiet the look turned to pain and he said… “Look, we've both been drinking so I'm going to take your alcohol as and excuse and not bash you into a bar sized ash tray for asking that question and I'm going to take my alcohol as an excuse to answer what I know I should shut up about but if you are really serous about the question and are really interested in the story… I will need more to tell the tale… "More"? "Alcohol, dummy." So we had two more …and here is the tale… A sailor's tale… "It was sitting low in the water when I first saw it, real low, I almost sailed right past it without noticing. It was nothing much to see at first, just a bump on the horizon. It was on the windward side and I almost decided that it was too much trouble but I was tired and looked forward to laying my head on something that doesn't move at least for a night… so… I thought it was just another island His eyes got glassy again and I thought it was the beers, it wasn't. "Most of them go like this… When you get closer you can hear the surf If you manage to get over the reef some more trees and a rocky hill later an island of solidity in the middle of the waves I've seen so many There were days when I wondered why I still went on sailing. "But this one was different, wasn't it?" I asked He turned to me with a mean look on his face and I thought it was going to end here but after a second he softened and decided to go on. "So, as I have done so many times before The first thing that surprised me was that there was no reef and no lagoon. It was choppy all the way up to the beach with winds and currents making it hard to keep on course. I can still remember the noise… and the taste of salt on the air. There were a few sandy spots here and there but the rocks reached all the way down to the water. With the waves breaking directly on the base of the mountain, it looked and sounded like a national geographic movie of one of those islands in the north sea with the volume turned to max and the smell and taste added on. I felt like I was in the middle of a heaving, moving, wet, salty hell. After finding a spot of sand and a tree to tie the boat to, I decided to check out the island, like I had done so many times before. I loaded up the back pack with the usual supplies. Water so I don't dry out, a bag of crunchies to make sure I didn't die of hunger, a few short stories and a few poems written by the best expert on tropical islands I could find and the Cell phone to ensure I didn't lose contact with the real world. Thinking back now, I should have known already then that this was a different kind of island. One unlike all the rest but I don't recall that at that stage feeling any different then I had on so many islands before. Oh, there is always an certain excitement I feel when checking out a new island, a sense of being on the edge, of exploration and this island was no different but nothing special comes to mind at about what I was feeling at that stage. Pack on back I started inland. The tree line was really close to the water line turning the beach into a tiny strip of sand and very quickly I was entangled in the underbrush. Actually the jungle growth on this island was thicker and more diverse then any I had encountered before but it still wasn't registering on the profound scale yet. God… was I in for a shock. At first I found the ruins. About three miles into the jungle I stumbled on the paved stones laying on their sides in the bushes. That was a surprise. As tropical islands go there are sometimes run down huts or leftover shelters made from branches and leaves but never the kind of ruins that I saw sticking out of the greenery… it must have been a beautiful house once maybe even a castle… For some reason it reminded me of a castle I remembered from an old book my mother used to read to me when I was a kid… but it was all run down now … years of neglect had left it crumbled. Vines and bushes had pushed their way up through cracks in the walls and holes in the roof… there was even a willow growing in the middle of what had been the living room. A weeping willow I think it's called. By now I had started to realize that not every island is the same and that this one was definitely special but it was still to early to reach any conclusion as to what kind of island I was really on so I decided to keep on searching. I turned inland and started pushing my way up through the jungle. This was one of the thickest jungles I had been through in all my travels. The way the trees were overhanging and the vines and cacti… yep.. cacti… I told you it was a strange island… kept scratching me as I pressed through. About three miles in I suddenly came to a clearing… wide open and clear of brush it was if someone had cleared a place out for me to rest. Some water and a few crackers later I was starting to think about going back… but couldn't… there are days when I think that if I had decided back then to turn back I would have been a happier man. I don't think so and besides… if you dwell on those kinds of thoughts to much you might as well sit at home and watch TV like most people do. I was about five miles in when I saw the mountain. I was tracking through the growth and pushed aside a peculiarly large leaf when I saw it for the first time and the site stopped me in my tracks. There was no way that a mountain that size could be rising so serenely out of the middle of a small island. But there it was… I must have gotten pretty close without realizing cause I was almost half way up one of the small hills that lead up to the mountain itself. It a pretty steep mountain and it must of been pretty high too cause the trees disappeared from it's slopes about half way up and the top quarter was covered in snow. It reminded me of those Japanese litho grams of mount Fuji that keep appearing in every book or documentary on oriental art. Well… I know now what I realized then… that this island wasn't so small which made it all the more peculiar. This was becoming more and more important. An island this size doesn't just crop up every day. What was dawning on me now was that If this was such a big island how come I hadn't seen any signs that there were people around… surely some one or even many some ones had seen the potential and decided to make their homes here. There was no one. Then the mountain called. Someone once said that that the reason for climbing a mountain was cause it was there… well this one wasn't just there… it was calling me, in a language I understood. I could almost imagine what it would be like to stand on the top of that snow covered peak and look down on the rest of the island…" The sailor stopped and the whole bar gave a unified sigh. “I can't go on” he said it's too hard… and with he picked up his beer glass… drank the last swallow and set it back on the bar… upside down. Without so much as a nod he got up of the corner stool and walked out the door leaving all us poor mortals staring at the door and wondering. Some were wondering about the sailor, some about the island. I was still trying to picture the mountain. Ben the bartender walked over to our corner and smiled. “don't worry” he said he'll be here next Thursday and if you wait for the fourth beer you can get the rest of the story for the price of the fifth." To be continued…
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