Nautical Fantasies

One of the only enduring job fantasies that I’ve had since I was a child, and continue to have to this day, is that of a fisherman. Not just any fisherman…or rather, not just any fisherman on any body of water. For reasons both known and unknown, I can not shake an inexplicable desire to abide at the top of the world; on the Bering Sea, west of Alaska.

There are many things that the world’s population and I tend to disagree on, and climate preference is one of them. I do not understand this worshiping of the sun that every fucking human being seems to possess. I like winter. Darkness. Unbearable winds. If I can survive outdoors without exercising my superior human intellect to insulate my body, I find nothing enjoyable about it…at least on a recurring basis. A warm evening can be nice and all, and even the occasional sunny beach day for swimming and diving, but after time the weather just generates boredom and complacency. I prefer to be thrilled and tested, when it comes to weather, much more than I prefer to be pampered and comforted.

I also fall victim to a certain type of laziness, though it might not be the type you would expect. Physical labor is a joy for me, particularly labor that is repetitive and requires little to no thought…for thought is the type of work that I find unbearable. Having to apply conscious thought and reasoning regarding any mundane thing in particular (and I’m pretty sure that anything "work" related, thought or otherwise, is mundane) on a perpetual basis, or rather, while I’m working, doesn’t suit me at all. Surprising, I know, given my natural abilities…but it is a form of mental slavery that inadvertently destroys that which I love most about myself. If my mind can not roam about at will, pondering whatever I happen to see fit at any given moment, I am simply unhappy….so you can see how the practice of hauling up crab pot after crab pot, while riding the dark and freezing waves of the Bering Sea, would have an appeal for me.

And then there is the sea.

What a place. Being on a boat at night, somewhere in the ocean, is very similar to being in outer space. The appeal of riding the sea for me is very similar to the appeal of winter– it is the act of trespassing into places that human beings should not be, made possible only through human intellect and engineering. The boat, or space craft, becomes one’s world entire…and much like the planet earth itself, floating in a sea of nothingness, we put our faith into that which carries and protects us. But unlike the planet, the boat and the spacecraft are man-made, and as such contain the chance of buckling against the elements, and being swallowed up by the universe…so it becomes a perpetual effort to maintain the craft, once again through human adaptation and problem solving, fighting to protect and love it, so it can protect and love us in return.

And then there is the contrast appeal. Imagine spending two months at sea, with nothing but damp dingy blankets and the company of gruff foul smelling brutes, breaking your back for twenty hours out of every day…and then finally finishing, and setting foot once again on land, falling into the delicate and precise arms of a delicious smelling woman. Taking a long bath, lighting a fire in the cozy wooden house, and sliding between the silky legs and sheets of one’s own wife and bed, drifting off to sleep after rocking and tossing her the way the ocean had rocked and tossed you during your long voyage, peering out the window at the winking stars above the black silhouettes of the firmly grounded treetops…