text: As the sun rose that morning, he stood there at the stern of the ship, both hands on either side of that fat, cumbersome wheel. The sailor had spent many days and many nights clutching its wooden rim. The wheel was stiff. It cooperated like an sick old man being forced to squeeze every last particle of existence out of his broken body. The sailor had not been in the company of another for a very long time. His sanity had parted ways with him long ago, and he’d accepted that. He never mourned his sanity. It slipped away quietly one day, undetected. The sailor couldn’t remember the last face he saw. One afternoon not long ago, the sailor found he hard time visualizing a face, any face, in his mind. He found this troubling. He squeezed his eyes tight, blanketed his forehead with his palm, trying very hard to recall a face, any face at all. He tried hard, but with no success. He was neurologically constipated. He gave up, and several troubling hours passed. He was then hit with a solution to his problem, one which should have been obvious, but it hadn’t been. The sailor was relieved to rediscover that included with his human body was a human face. His hand rediscovered his old face, and it seemed foreign. All of this sticky apparatus attached to the front of his skull. It seemed so crude, so obscene. He wondered how he ever got my in his old life ashore. How was he able to converse with another person while their head apparatus flaps around, crude and sticky just like his. He‘d regained his ability to visualize faces, but he really wish he hadn’t. Perhaps having souls operating these faces nullifies the horrific nature of them somehow. Normalizes then over time. The sailor had not been among other beings with sticky apparatus at the front of their heads for an eternity. The sailor’s unaccompanied mind travelled to many places which were and continue to be entirely inaccessible to the sane mind. The sailor had a benefit in being aware of his insanity, and thus he didn’t feel he had to question and judge himself for the many odd notions and probably irrational ideas he would have from time to time. He was insane, and insane people are licensed to do insane things, he figured. He wasn’t going to attempt to suppress his eccentricity. He decided that long ago. Some fortunate people can travel beyond the sane, and return unscathed. The sailor however, had been too far gone, for far too long. He was not going to be returning to the lost world of reason and rational, linear thinking. Sometimes the sailor would invent imaginary people. They never stuck around for more than a day. The sailor liked variety. These weren’t imaginary friends. The sailor enjoyed the company of imaginary strangers. The sun continued it’s ascent into the empty sky. Long ago the sight of the morning sky may have raised a corner of the man’s mouth. It’s quite possible that in the man’s ancient past, he enjoyed the crisp morning air, gazed at the heavens and sighed a contented sigh. It’s quite possible that this is one of countless fragments of this man’s truth which have been whisked away by a gentle wind. All who have lived have known the work of this wind, some more than others. The delicate way of this wind seems spiteful. A gentle breeze passed by the one who walked the earth with his heart gleefully exposed, unacquainted with the wind. The sky was spectacular and the grass felt like love and smelled of something sweet and eternal. Not one person has gone from A to B without cursing the ways of this unstoppable wind. They wave their fists, they shout vengeful violence at the great thief. Their verbal fists find themselves without satisfaction. This breeze can’t be battered, just as water cannot be strangled. Many have tried this as well, when gratitude for it’s service is replaced with resent. For some, the service of water seems to only prolong the heavy days and the bloody nights of disassembly, dissection and reconfiguration. For some, the water appears to be the wind’s accomplice. The wind, the great thief, the water, the great captor of man in disguise.