I was on a ship sailing in the Caribbean looking for the way to Antigua to have a drink. The only way to get there was to sail the boat. Sailing open lanes, where there is no hard-fast direction or a singular path, afforded abandoning some other special important event that really meant nothing to inner salvation. I didn’t know I hated or feared life until I was on this boat, sailing to Antigua.

When we stopped in Jamaica, I decided to go into town and have a look around. The cacophonous streets filled with volumes of voices – different tones singing a city’s song of discordant rhythms i couldn’t get a pulse on. I looked around the sea of black faces that seemed covered in a veil of smoke, surrounding the scenes of women coveting chickens, and men cowering on the corner with cigarettes and sweating words. I kept walking in the dinginess – kept going forward to see what I could see – looking for something I wasn’t really sure about. I knew I had to get off the boat – to venture somewhere beyond that drink in Antigua – I had to go into the dragons mouth and see for myself the raw power of the netherworld – the world I dreaded yet wanted to watch with one eye open squinting from the corner of my oblivion.

As a rush of fear overtook me, I quickly turned back toward the boat. Running back to the safe shoreline, the distinction between the land and the sea – between the tremulous groundswell of a city made of quicksand, and the sea-lane that provided isolated safety, the distinctions became clearer. The water seemed to envelope the pain beneath my stance on the boat, while the land seemed to want to show it in all its disgust. Fear made me run faster – afraid that if I stopped a hand would grab me and pull me back toward the dark oblivion. If I paused, too easily the city’s tempting seductions would hit with an unstoppable force, which would change all who I am forever.

My greatest fear – betrayal – the void created by its forced entry – propels me to always turn away – to cower into those safe holes that shield pain – a safe haven to protect my everything – fear of the external lusts, and in the process negating my lust to protect some idea of purity.

When I reached the boat my heart was racing. I told Xavier that I had not found the store I was looking for. I never really explained the store, what it was about, or what I was looking for.

The trance force of the Jamaican islands asseverated the very essence of my fear, my obsession, my self-centered desires, a black hole of total abandon, of total self-indulgent being. To shop in the store of delight only meant death in the end, and warranted me to continue on the sea lanes toward freedom from compulsion……….