Redux

I'm tired. I don't feel well. In fact, I feel let down - like I've asked for bread and I've been given a stone. A friend of mine told me that this year. I understand. I don't understand. I don't know. I have trouble knowing. I mix metaphors. I sabotage style.

I've been in the ocean for a while. At first it was very cold. And I didn't have time to adjust. I was just dropped in it. Then, slowly, I grew used to the water. It's become comfortable even. More - I enjoy it. There's risk and adventure in the ocean. There's possibility in the ocean. There's uncertainty in the ocean. The thing that just bumped up against me - was it a shark or was it driftwood? It makes a difference, you know. Crabs scurry by my feet. Shells crunch under my feet. I imagine the formal demise of these breakables filling the ocean with deep concussive booms - like a U-boat being struck by a torpedo. But they don't. The shells suffer quiet deaths, the noise of their destruction subsumed in the breaking waves, in the every day, in the ordinary.

I am an odd little mollusk wanting to be a U-boat. Death comes to both, but at least one is heard. I want to be heard. I want to be something. Someone. I'm just a servant of God. And other people are servants of God. It's all rather mundane, isn't it? Isn't it rather ordinary serving the Creator of All, the Redeemer of Man? It's just so . . . been done. People I don't like do it. People do it better than I do it. People have made names for themselves doing it, but not me. Is that what this tripe-post is all about - me? Heaps and heaps of tripe.

Steve Martin finds his name in the phonebook, "I'm somebody! I'm somebody!"

Not so long ago I wanted to make an impact in this world. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to get to the end of my life and realize that I had not wasted it. But I think I've just been heaping tripe in a different pile. It's just another way for me to be somebody. Another way for me to be the hero of a story that's not mine. Another way for me to be a rock star. I don't want to be a servant of God. Hell! I want to be like God!

A wave knocks me over and rolls me along the sand. I'm burned and scraped and so very tired. Who's stronger, Sophie? Daddy or the ocean? The ocean. Yes, that's right. The ocean is stronger. Wave upon wave, full of kinetic energy. I'm beached. I'm burned. I'm more beluga-like than Christ-like. I have sand in my butt crack.

I come out of the ocean briefly, but I have to go back in. The water's colder than I remember. But I'll get used to it again.

A ghost crab is on the beach. Its sandy eyes pop perfectly into its shell and then pop out again. Its eyes are cleaner and, I imagine, more useful. Staring at these people. Two big. Two little. Staring people. Staring crab. Each puzzling over God's creation. How perfect the crab! Ar! Ar! Ar! Mr. Krabs - salut! Calm and white and content with whom you are. With whose you are. No brain that hurts from trying to understand what you are meant for. No brain deceived into wondering what you might have been. Salut, Mr. Krabs.

Ar! Ar! Ar! The crab is delightful.