Mother Moon and Mangrove Fish Tanks

Relearning to feel and connect with other souls after so long

I was never very good with women. Dating was always uncomfortable, trying to hide my own demons and failings while trying to impress a potential date was too tiring. I would try now and again, remember how much I hated it, and retreat to my books and solitary walks up and down the East Coast.

Sure, once upon a time, I tried, and cared. Hell, I wasn’t even bad looking, and I had a generally good sense of humor and loved to try new things and experiment (heads out of the gutters) with what brought me joy or what brought them pleasure. As a teenager, I was a slave to my hormones and sought a way to share that with someone, anyone with a nice rack and a good laugh. I learned to handle rejection, and success, and used it in my personal life like a skilled craftsman. I was immortal, invincible and a wee bit arrogant.

Eventually, I faded away.

This was, is not a bad thing, mind you. I never liked having to balance the worlds of others with my own egocentric desires, wants and needs.

To be frank: I relished the day that I found my abyss. I dove right in. It was wonderful.

Hell, I had been searching for it for years. I needed pain, I needed neglect and isolation, I needed to find a way past my urges and desires and become one with the universe. I sought to find its collective knowledge and understanding. I was like some Starlin-esque comic character, looking for a way to court Death, or rebuild the entirety time in my image.

I read the books I was meant to read, and sought out more. I attended lectures by modern Existentialists, looted with the Nihilists and voted with the Absurdists. I sat under fig trees chanting mantras, while letting go of words upon crumpled pieces of paper. I confronted religions head on, and wiped my ass with their holy books.

Then at night, I would lie upon a grassy lawn and stare at the sky above me and still felt so small, insignificant, and unconnected to it all. Even as I saw stars shoot by, and felt the embrace of the Mother’s Moon. I would just stare and feel the distant gravity of it all, pulling me in and pushing me away. It was torture, raising my arms up to grasp and finding nothing there but air and my own failings.

I had become impotent to the magic I had wanted to create, I had become lost to the world I wanted to be a part of. While I searched for knowledge, my siblings married and had kids, they had business success and financial failures. They screamed at spouses, and whispered obscenities while their offspring slept in cozy beds, ignorant to the turbulence all around them.

I envied them.

Then one day, I found myself driving a jeep that was not mine, a beautiful blond sitting in the passenger seat, her scarred legs resting upon the dashboard as we drove sandy back roads, in search of a jungle hidden in the back yards of millionaires and Pelicans.

She sipped upon stale beer, and gave directions to a spot that only she knew, one where we could find a moment of peace.

As I shifted the heavy clutch, I wondered how I got there, how I had found myself in that seat, driving and following directions. I had no memory of getting into the vehicle, nor of the pizza and drinks laying between the seats. I was only aware of the vibrations of the vehicle, her voice and the way the sun lit up her legs.

Maybe, just maybe I could feel my heart beat for once.

Eventually we pulled over, her secret spot had an abandoned van parked next to our chariot. She got out, and unfolded a small towel and beckoned me to sit next to her. I did. We sat upon the edge of an inter-coastal river, tossing crusts from our pizza to the fishes underneath and talked, although I remember not the words which were said.

We sat there, the moisture from the shore line seeping up from the mud beneath us, mosquitoes and ants feeding upon our inactions, and talked until the sun began to get low. She told me about her dreams; her current one was making a fish tank entirely out of mangrove trees. We laughed at the image that she had placed into our heads, but yet she was serious. Getting up she wiped the moisture and mud off of her red, floral sundress. She began checking the new Mangrove Growths for candidates for her “home for wayward fish”.

She would keep bending over, inspecting each one for signs of perfection, and let out childlike yelps when she saw the webs of a spider on them. More than once she bent too far over and I glimpsed her blue panties, the shape of a stretched out eight burning into my retinas. I tried not to look off course, such things no longer were important to me, but they were such a pretty shade of blue.

Maybe, just maybe I could feel my heart beat for once.

She drove us home, this time she took the wheel, she told me about her near deaths and her near lifes. She told me about her philosophies and greatest failures. We drove on and on, and began to sing the songs that came upon the radio, even the ones that we did not know the lyrics to laughing at the absurd, and feeling the pain of our losses.

She dropped me off eventually, at my home that is not mine, and gave me a hug, driving off out of my life.

I stood there for a minute, the hot Florida sun upon me, and watched her drive off. I thought about my life, my fight to get out of the abyss, my desire to feel the universe, my inability to connect with my fellow humans and the dreams I once had. Then, for the first time in a very long time, I took a step forward; my feet touched solid ground.