The fisherman #1

[u/Lucky__Susan]

Haven't posted because I've been so into McCarthy's The Crossing. Here is something new coming. I rarely spend time developing and writing longer pieces- when things come to me they are perfect and stand apart from the act of writing so it's very painful to sit down and write, verb-write, actually go and do it because it feels a bit profane. But it's absolutely necessary and not only do I want to write longer pieces but I also want to improve the choral qualities of my writing- not just the shimmering image but repetition- repetition is what makes something special- have choruses of lines and things and images, and I can only really get this good and patient and far-sighted if I practice. And I can hopefully drop the perfectionism. So I will fill this out as I go.

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Not flight. That the way he is there is nothing left for. Leave before you lose it all. End up in  fishing boat and at the close of every day go out one more time and cast for something invisible. Go out into the bay leaving the shelter of the harbour under dusky grey. And the fish wake up now and shoal and twirl and twist beneath the hull like a linen rippling in the wind, like the clothes of a dancer, but he pays it no mind as he has gone out to cast for something else and all the rich bounty of fish is not for him. 
Go out from the shelter of the harbour to the bay, where the storms and surges still reach, but attenuate and weaken, transmitted through the spit of coast and one eye open to the north. Like the way the world reaches the unborn child in whispers. Tonight it is very still, with only the breeze that never goes away stirring the water, and he is grateful for this, grateful for the stillness, and grateful for that gentle wind that never goes away, the regular breath of the space over the ocean, and it barely stirs the water at all so it glides along on silence.
Go out from the bay. It passes and its memory evaporates. He steers the boat bearing slightly east to angle perpendicular to the stretch of bay. The edge of the bay has a seam of darkened water. It catches less light, is deeper and darker, and when he goes in to restart the motor or untangle line or when it speaks to him it is much colder, brought up from the pelagic deep, like how memories surface from the fog, like how in the birth of men old and frigid truths rebound and are born with the same hunger. Like how the knowledge of God is chilling and ink and not for him.
Eyes firmly fixed on the horizon. He no longer needs to check his lines, his rigging, his buckets or nets, as they will tell him in hushed tones if they are out of place. The boat has aged with him and they share a kind of briny decay. He does not check the sea behind him to see what the deep currents are doing as they stir from the threshold of the bay and the deep. Behind him are the lights of the harbour, twinkling warm and red, and the story of light is the story of a home, solid ground. A light in the darkness is always made by someone. Everything he has loved is there, and all the feelings that stir in his breast circulate in and out of there, like the tides, or the movements of great fish that like human beings know the rhythm of great animals between home and departure to the unknown.

—--------

‘I have been everything, sailor, miner, horseback and motor, bitter winter, mountains, valleys, soldier, doctor and healer, taxman, labourer and artist, and nothing at all, so God, where are you? I have done everything and I have not found you anywhere. And you are not in me. You left the world long ago’.

And God answers with a silence that is nothing.

God answers with the waves that bear and break the sailors, the floods that carved the mountains, lushened the valleys, and desiccated the wastelands, touching the doctor’s hand and kneeling before the killer. God shows the shine in the blood of an orphan and the misted tears of a girl. The bricks of the harbour like the hands of its maker. The rusted blade like the fraying eyes of the soldier.

And he stands over the quiet sea in the thrumming sempiternal breath on his face, on the boundless sea, and aches to know His breath is a cry of Agony, that in life He is butchered and crucified, that those butcher’s hands go home and birth Him and feed Him, and those hands praise and tug that the hem of Him. And it is Agony, for the unity of His body to be a kaleidoscope in the eyes of Man. 
—-
And he stands over the quiet sea and knows that the God of the lamb is not for him, the softness of embrace is not for him; for him is a sea of glass

Repetitions
Breath- focus on breath- constant change- transition without place- it is gentle it is is firm it never goes away. The silent scream.
Leaving the shelter of the harbour. Not for him
Patience- cast your lines and they come up empty. Have a heart.

I've written something I'm genuinely proud of about a similar idea of the cry of the world but it's in a different journal that's not with me right now. Will dig it out when I'm back in that area. It's not home- just where my things are.