Freedom Waters

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 Dearest Jessica,

 The last time I saw our father he was telling me about the journey he was about to set out on mapping parts of the coast.  In fact, he told me, "Johnny, a ship is freedom."  That's what he said.  It's been a few years, but I think I understand him now.

The first time I stepped foot on this ship I had just turned sixteen.  Of course I had lied.  That's what everyone does and it isn't like they check anyway.  We had all lined up in our finest and presented ourselves to the captain who didn't really give any of us more than just a glance.  He must not have cared.  That's how desperate people pick a crew, my friend Will said.

I didn't get the feeling until after we left the harbor.  I was nervous getting on the crew, I was anxious to get going on the ship, then I was excited.  The wind began to pick up and it raised the hair off my forehead.  The salt lingered on the breeze and I could taste it.  Fresh air, no stinking smells of the city surrounded me.  I could breathe deeply and not worry about what I was breathing in.  I stretched and enjoyed the sunshine.

Freedom.  I could tell it was affecting everyone else, too.  We all stood a bit straighter and felt the burden of land fall to the wayside.  I do have to admit that getting your sea legs takes longer than I anticipated but I was proud that I never got the sickness like Will did.  He heaved almost everything he ate for the past week over the side.  Some of the older sailors just chuckled as they walked past him.  It took a week but he finally got used to the rocking of the ship enough to hold down his food. 

I feel so free, Jess, you have no idea.  I wish you could be here.  You would love it as much as I do.  The waves against the ship, the wind off the sea, the calling of the crew, the otherwise silence of the vast space around us.  It's like a floating paradise taking us away from the drab gray of civilization.  I feel so invigorated.  Freedom really is on the sea. 

I even survived my first storm.  We had to tie ourselves to the mast and I got dragged about by the crashing waves, but sitting through a storm is worth a hundred good days at sea.  It breaks up the monotony of good days and makes you appreciate them better.  Who knew bad weather would be so welcome sometimes. 

The sea after a storm is something of a marvel.  I don't know if I can explain it.  It's kind of like when we went down to the bay after a storm.  Except in the middle of the ocean with water surrounding you in every direction as far as you can see, it's magnified to proportions of beauty you never dreamed existed.  The ocean turns a blue-gray you never imagined the sky becomes an apologetic watery blue.  The clouds slowly fade into a misty white.

And sunsets?  They are the most spectacular thing in this world.  You lose track of where the sky ends and the water begins.  You feel like you could drown in the sky.  It bleeds into the water and the water flows into the sky.  Watching as night sinks in around us is one of the most peaceful experiences I've ever had. 

As I write this Jess, I'm sitting at the front of the ship enjoying a bit of easy sailing.  I've looked down a few times and noticed the dolphins.  They are a carefree bunch who flip and jump and race the ship.  More proof that the ocean is a carefree place.  It has it's ups and its downs, its gales and absolute calms, but its a place to live and let live. 

When we finally make shore again, it'll be strange.  I am looking forward to seeing trees again and to get a bit muddy, and I'm also anxious to send off this letter to you.  I hope you were able to explain things to Mother for me.  I think she knew I'd run off to the sea some day.  I just hope you are both well.

All my love,

Johnny





Freedom Waters © 2013 Katherine Kovanda

Profitable Weather

When you wake up on a life changing day, do you realize what is going to happen?  No, you don't.  A person gets up in the morning expecting a normal day and then things happen that change them forever, although one could argue that anything that ever happens to a person has indeed changed them forever.

Still, when you wake up in the morning, the first thought is not generally 'Today is going to be life changing.'  I'm just pointing out this just in case that is someone's thought in the morning.

Well, today at lunch I realized that I had forgotten my phone at home when I had rushed out the door, late as usual.  It isn't that I hate my job or that traffic was terrible.  I'm just always late.  The difference is that I was late for being late this morning.  So, all day I worried about missed calls, texts, what was happening in the social media forums.  I felt out of the loop.

I wasn't able to run home to get it on my break because I would have been late coming back and I didn't need any help being late twice in one day.  Patiently waiting for the day to be over was more difficult than usual without my normal distraction device.  So, when the clock rolled past 'Time to go home' I packed up and headed out with everyone else.

The clouds were beginning to sweep in as I started up my car for the drive home.  It looked to be quite the storm coming in and I was in more of a hurry to get home because of the weather reports I was hearing on the radio, interrupting a few of my favorite songs.  My wife would be waiting at home and by now she probably realized my phone was sitting innocently on the kitchen table.  Hopefully she wasn't worrying too much; I was trying not to.

As soon as it began raining I began worrying.  Already the rain was torrential and the streets were filling with water.  I had to slow down to allow the car time to adjust to the water accumulating on the pavement.  Taking deep breaths seemed to help with my nerves and all I really wanted was to be at home with my wife watching the storm out the window in the kitchen.  That was all I wanted.

Pulling into my drive was the most relieving feeling.  I turned the windshield wipers off and put the car in park.  Running through the puddles into the house got me drenched even though it was only a few feet away.  My wife was curled up on the couch in a blanket watching the storm progress on the weather station.  She had a cup of steaming tea on the floor beside her and I went directly to the bedroom to change out of my wet clothes.

A cup of tea was waiting for me when I came back out and I took it gratefully and held it in my hands to warm them up.  We sat quietly watching the storm pulse in greens, oranges, and reds on the television screen.

"It’s a big one, Joe."

I nodded and stood to go look out of the window.  We hadn't had a good storm in so long that I almost had forgotten how incredible they can be.  My wife came in and leaned her head against my shoulder and looked out the window with me.  Then the power went out.  She let out a deep sigh and went to gather some candles while I searched for the lighters.

We had gathered back in the kitchen when a thunderous boom rattled the house and sent the dog howling into the laundry room.  I assumed she was most likely cowering under the spacious bottom shelf in the closet.  I had never heard a thunder clap as loud before and I was sure it wasn't something that normally occurred.  I was turning to tell this to my wife when we were blinded by a flash of lightning and another clap of thunder, just as loud, boomed through the house.  I felt the hair on my arms suddenly stand up and then when the flash faded I looked back out the window trying to assess if any damage had occurred.

"We were just struck by lightning weren't we?" my wife asked.

"I think so.  But, Sam, look at the water," I said pointing to the droplets falling out over the gutters.

They were sparkling more than if light was shining through them.  It was like they were sparkling all by themselves.  I followed a droplet with my eyes watching it hit the ground.  But, unlike normal raindrops, it bounced.  We didn't say anything as we continued to watch the water fall to the ground and bounce before settling into a motionless state.

"What the hell?"

We waited patiently until the storm had moved on past the town.  Carefully we crept outside and examined the droplets that were still lying in piles on the grass.  Sam bent down and poked one gingerly with her finger and she gasped.

"It's solid!"

"What?  How can rain be solid?" I asked crouching down next to her.

Solid.  The water droplets were solid!

"Joe, I don't think this is water."

"It's ice."

"No, it's not," said Sam slowly.

I couldn't understand what she was getting at, but she was transfixed with the droplet in her hand.

"Joe," she said looking around, "there are hundreds of these here.  I'm not sure, but I think they may be . . ."

"May be . . . what?"

"I think . . . I think they're diamonds."

"You what?"

"Diamonds, Joe.  Real, honest to God diamonds."

"Well shit," I said sitting back on my heels.

"Second honeymoon here we come," smiled Sam.

"We'll take them to Bo.  Just to make sure they are real," I said.  "Don't give me that look, I just want to make sure first."

"Alright, but no one will believe us when we say where we got them."

"We'll not say then."

We gathered up all the gems we could find and then hoped to God they were really real.   The next day we went to visit a friend of Sam's father who dealt with gems and precious stones.

"These are perfect," he said, "There are no scratches, perfect gems.  What'd they do?  Fall out the sky?"
He chuckled and we just smiled politely.

"Got your future set is all I can say," Bo finally said taking a little gem and putting it under a magnifying glass.

"Set," he said, emphasizing his point.

We took our diamonds back home and put them on the bed to look at them.

"What are we going to do with them all?" whispered Sam.

"Second honeymoon and then we'll figure it out.  One step at a time."

We smiled at each other and then began to laugh uncontrollably.




Profitable Weather © 2013 Katherine Kovanda

Box or Soul?

Empty Table © 2013 Daniel Hewes

Robbed!  I mean really, robbed!  Three years ago the most important thing I ever owned was stolen from me.  It seems impossible that anyone would want it, but there you go.  Imagination.  Something so important and yet not so important at all.  Well, unless you are a painter or actor or writer or something.  But, honestly?   Who walks into a person's home dressed in black and steals a personalized imagination out of it's box on the table?  

Well, it happened.  And since?  Nothing.  Blank pages, blank canvas, blank mind.  No flow, no new worlds, not a drop of any creativity whatsoever.  I've got to get it back.  Life is so boring without imagination, cut and dry.  I didn't realize before how colorful you make life, but baby, I want you back.

Turns out, you can't get it back.  You have to build a new one.  Well, at least according to my creative therapist.  Theft of a person's imagination seems to be more common than I thought.  It happens to a lot of people.  So, as a way to build it back up and get a new one, my therapist has suggested little exercises.  First is to take a handful of crayons and mark up a page.  Let me tell you, it did not turn out so well.  Black and white can make for a very boring piece.  So my therapist took away the black crayon.  It felt so fulfilling to cover a page in red.  It made me want to use orange and yellow.  So, I did.  Call that progress!

It took me a few weeks to color with the entire rainbow and another after that to use all the crayons in a box of thirty-six.  It feels so good and I've used up all the space in my coloring books.  Rebuilding my imagination makes me happy.  I've missed that feeling.  So we moved on to more difficult things.

Discover the uses of colorful words and reinvent this sentence my therapist instructed.  It took a week to transform "the dog ran" to "The brown dog ran quickly."  Again, progress.  A few more weeks and I was writing paragraphs that were more than instructions in a manual.  The flow was creeping back into my blood.  It felt like I was being filled back up with air after a violent deflation.

It was more than words and colors.  I began to notice things in the streets, on my way to work, on my way home, at home, while I was sleeping.  My life was coming back to me.  Comparisons were flying through my mind, little things you don't realize you think about even when you are thinking them.  How green a shrub is, how little a dog is, how annoying the cars honking are.  You catalogue them away in your brain and store them in your creative center (just in case a day arises when you need them.)  The process my therapist was encouraging was the recreation of my storage space.

With wobbly legs I stepped back out into the world of creativity.  Before, I had been a dabbling poet and an artist.  Then, nothing.  Now, I began to make a comeback.  My first painting, while draining and feeble, was the best thing I'd ever done.  I was exhilarated and proud that I'd forced my way back into being.  Take that! person who stole my creativity.  I have beaten you!  No more dark drab corners of society for me!  I'll take the tree lined streets of magical unicorns and fog horns!  Color coated skies and white sheets in the breeze on the line.  Rainbows in the rainforest, sunsets in the dessert, aliens in outer space drinking tea on Christmas.  The most fantastic things I could imagine were the very things I lived on.

Call me crazy and paranoid, but I changed where I kept my imagination.  It isn't carelessly in a box on the table now.  I rarely part with it.  It's weird, I feel more connected with my new imagination than I ever did with the old one.  My therapist says it’s a proximity thing.  Keeping it closer to me allows it to affect me more deeply.  I'm thinking about keeping it in my soul.  A nice cushioning place for such an important object.  Maybe this is what I should have done from the start but, live and let live, am I right?

My therapist says that this idea I've had might revolutionize the way the human race interacts with its creative center, that some people will really latch on to their new, intimate creativity or that some people will forget it’s there altogether and never use it.  I find that exciting and sad all in one.  My therapist also said that creativity may bleed through into our subconscious once it’s been submerged in the cushions of the soul for a long time.  But no one can be sure as of yet.  It's still a new idea.  All I can say is that I like it.  Colors mean more to me, words sound sweeter, softer, harsher.  It’s a heightened sense of living for me, like it was always meant to feel like this.

So really, what I'm saying is . . . having my imagination stolen was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

Box or Soul? © 2013 Katherine Kovanda

Burning Bridges

Picture Copyright © 2012 Lindsey Buehrer

How long have I stared at that bridge and done nothing?  Years.  That's the answer, years.  Freedom just on the other side and yet I sit and wait for the moment to come when it's all over.  But, how is it possible to live like that?  That's what my dear sister used to ask me.  I suppose she is now my inspiration.  I now have to cross that bridge in her memory.

My sister was everything to me.  She was smart, funny, courageous, beautiful. A loving caring person as well as a fighter.  She knew what she believed in and she acted on it.  That's why they took her.  She had a way with the people; she could rally them with just a few well-placed whispers.

Before, I used to sit across on the banks and look at the fiery burning light of the Over Town.  All of their beautiful lights that glowed hazy and red across the river awed my soul and I couldn't get enough of the sight.  Sometimes my sister would sit with me and we would just peacefully watch the lights twinkling on the other side.  My sister dreamed to see the streets in person someday.

Now that is what I dream.  I dream it because it was her dream and they took her because she believed she had the right.  She, and all of us, should be free to go wherever we please and do whatever we like.  My sister said it didn't matter how we grew up or from where we came.  Some of the people believed her; a lot of people wanted deeply to.  

So, on the eve of a new year, I led a revolution in the name of my sister.  We cautiously moved through town on our side of the bridge until we got to the last sorry, leaning building in town.  We huddled behind it and planned our next move.  Eight of us would provide a distraction to lead the guards away from the bridge while the remaining ten would storm the entrance and muscle our way through to the other side.  What we did when we got there was still unplanned.

Quietly, with our breath steaming around us, we waited as the eight rebels swung back behind the crumbling building to create a distraction.  The wait was beginning to frighten me, it seemed like it had been too long.  But then, a great light erupted not too far from where we were hiding.  We watched the guards react in surprise and then they dashed off to investigate.  A large fire was burning from a warehouse that was challenging the light from across the river.  

Quickly the group I led rushed the bridge.  With no one to guard it, the job was an easy one.  We raced down the bridge feeling the cold air against our faces.  We held out our weapons in front of us, just in case of ambush.  At the midpoint of the bridge we paused to regroup.  I turned around to face our town.  The fire had spread down the waterfront.  All of the old and dying buildings that stood there sadly were in flames.  The trees below were burning and the fire wasn't yet finished.  I prayed that it didn't creep near the housing that lay just beyond the first block.

   

The last few of the rebellion caught us up and we, now having caught our breath, were moving again cautiously toward the far side of the river to Over Town.  We had been told stories of Over Town for our entire lives.  The elders used these stories to keep us occupied while our parents went to slave away in the factories that now burned at our backs.  These stories told of rich men and women dancing and feasting in glorious gowns under the ever burning lamps.  Lamps, the elders said, that could be turned on with a simple switch.  To young impressionable children, the concept was so far stretched.  

As we crept toward our freedom, a euphoria seemed to be seeping into our bones.  It was becoming more difficult to remain composed as the sight of freedom loomed right in front of us.  The beauty of the lamps that glowed so brightly captivated us.  If my sister were still alive, she'd have some calming words of wisdom to instill in the group.  We wouldn't be getting as worked up in the light of all the events around us.  My sister, who knew and inspired so many of the people I was leading, always knew the right thing to say.  

The end of the bridge was nearing and we tried to start staying in the shadows that the bridge created around us.  The light was our salvation.  We moved silently along the metal rungs of the bridge, practically holding our breath so as to not make a sound.  Then the alarm bell began tolling from the depths of the town behind us.  We could hear screams slicing through the air.  We had a choice: Turn back to help our own or march forward to freedom.  What would my sister have done?  I knew the answer, but we were so incredibly close to the other side now.

I tore back through the group, headed to help back in the town.  My sister would have helped her people.  Guilt rained down on me, I should have turned back to help when I saw the waterfront burning.  What would happen now?  All our places of work up in flames.  No prospects of food or money to buy food anywhere in our future.  But then I had an idea.  Something that no one could overlook. 

We raced back in to the town we had so desperately tried to leave.  Pandemonium was in the streets.  Our little group went around trying to calm everyone down, telling them to meet by the bridge in an hour with anything from home they could easily carry.  Spread the message, we told them.  We hurried through town to help; we rescued people from buildings and helped them to the bridge.  The whole town was soon to be on fire.  The fire had been too keenly kindled and the properties of our riverside were too desolate and old to withstand such trauma.  

An hour later, we headed back to the bridge to find over two hundred people standing shivering by the river.  We mounted the steps to the bridge and they looked up with fear and despair in their eyes.  Then I spoke, embodied by my sister's strength and spirit.

"My friends, we have every right to cross this bridge to safety.  We can overcome this tragedy if we move together as one people.  A people who have the right to work.  A people who have the right to live and be happy.  A people who have the right to have a warm bed and a full stomach.  We can leave all of this behind us if we leave now."

I had seen what it would be like if we stayed.  Bewitched by the lights, I knew that if we stayed we would all die much sooner rather than later.  This was the fate my sister had foreseen and now I saw it too.  We had our choice and the opportunity rose grandly in front of all of us now.  

The rebellion had begun.  We were now choosing to refuse to live in poverty where we had no lights, no heat, and hardly any food.  We were packing up our lives while our town burned behind us and we crossed the bridge in one grand display.  They cannot take what is rightfully ours!  On the far side of the bridge we came up to the guards.  They turned and looked at the mass crossing the bridge.  I could see a crowd of people already gathering on the other side of the guards, curious to see such a bright light coming from the dark side of the river.  

What a sight we must have been all covered in soot looking like we'd never bathed in our lives.  But, something in that appearance stirred compassion in the crowd below.  The guards were severely outnumbered by our townsfolk, a mere four to over two hundred.  Wives, husbands, children disturbed from their slumber in the dead of night all rallied together to freedom.  We were begrudgingly allowed to pass from the bridge into Over Town because the crowd was welcoming us.  The ladies, with no regard to their sparkling dresses, ushered us toward the center of town and helped us find food, water, and shelter.  We all stood in the gleaming lights and found it all to be wonderful.

How had we ever thought that Over Town was full of terrible people?  Even the rich have human hearts, my sister used to say, you just have to find a way into them. 


Burning Bridges © 2012 Katherine Kovanda