Looking Into the Deep

I've been having trouble lately. I have. It's an imbalance in my life, not a catastrophe. But still...

So, last night, before I fell asleep, I asked for help. Some time in the early morning, I dreamed I found a kind man living on a boat on the river. He wasn't named, but he was Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad. He held my hand and it was warm and it helped. I leaned against his chest and it was so warm and comforting. I listened for the rumble of his belly.

He was a brown man.

He didn't rush me. I leaned there against him until I was almost filled up again. He just stood and let me lean on him. When I held up one hand, he held it.

Oh, I needed that.

I needed to be held and comforted. I really did. Thank you.

Then, I laid down on the platform at the back of his boat and looked into the water. Once in a while, I spit to see trout rise from the cool deep. They ate my spit. Ew.

We used to do that at the Marina at Rough River in Kentucky, spit into the water to see carp come up, curious about whether there were treats. We spit bits of our ice cream into the water for them. They were languid, well-fed fish, happy for the extra sweetness. Can fish taste sweetness?

This water was clearer than the water at Rough River. It was like our rivers here, a little bit tannin, but clear to the bottom. Still, it was amazing how the trout were camouflaged until they weren't.

After I looked at the fish, I read some of the books on the boat. There wasn't much stuff onboard except books. Books piled on shelves, sat in boxes, and on tables, all the knowledge in the Universe. The boat was bigger than it had at first seemed, a simple fishing boat with a small covered cabin. But I didn't feel crowded when I went inside.

It was heaven, as many books as I could read.

Suddenly, there were other children there, all curious about what I was reading. Icarus. Wasn't he the guy who flew too close to the sun and it melted the wax holding his feathers together?

One of the kids decided to look it up online instead of the big dictionary on the table. When he clicked the word on his phone, a white bird the size of a man unfolded his wings somewhere on shore. He was malevolent and with the quick reference, could find us where we hid.

More importantly, he could find the book.

The book in my hands began to crumble to dust.

Desperately, I went back to reading before it was completely gone. Some of the words were saved, but it was too late for most of the book.

We needed to read, to read as much as we could of the existing books because the ones that weren't being read crumbled into dust. The unused words disappeared. Without the books, chaos would come.

Shakespeare, Gilgamesh, Faulkner, The Odyssey, even Lindy West, Walter Kamau Bell, David George Haskell. One by one, the books began to flake apart and disintegrate.

Some of the kids didn't want to read. I read as fast as I could. Civilization depended on it.

And then I woke up, wishing I had more time to lean against the man's warm chest, to hold his hand, to look into the deep of the water, to read what seemed like infinite books before they crumbled away in my hands.

I had asked for God's help. That was it. That was the message. Hold hands, look into the deep, read.

Good message.