This is one of my 'Island Views' series of what I tend to call 'prosetry' (which is what you get when you cross prose and poetry - the offspring of which is a 'PROEM'). Prosetry has the structure of prose but the imagery, flow and intimacy of poetry. OK I made the word up - but you have to admit it sounds good!

Anyway come - take a stroll through my mind! (It won't take long :-))

I was sitting down by the jetty the other day. It was one of those beautiful sunny days when the ocean looks like so many diamonds on blue velvet. The long Pacific swell gently rocking the water in the little harbour. There was something very restful and calming about the gentle slap, slop, bump that only small boats at rest can make. My eyes drifted and meandered in and out of the scenery but kept coming back to the little boats all around me. Some at anchor, some tied up to the jetty, some tethered to buoys. I found myself mesmerised by their gentle rocking and bobbing. I think it was quite some time before another piece of the puzzle that was my life clicked into place.

The boat is a strange creature, designed for neither land nor sea but rather somewhere in-between. It is a creation that only has meaning when it is upon water, but that meaning can only be interpreted in relation to the land. The whole purpose of a boat is to keep that which is within it dry and afloat - above the water as it were. And yet it can only be navigated by reference to the land and the sky above - places where it has no purpose. Each voyage is defined by the shores it touches and yet the ocean is its only home - and also its greatest enemy. But for all that it is so not unlike the life of a Christian in this world.

If I were a fish swimming in the ocean of life these strange creations, in my world but not of it, would all look pretty much the same to me. Different in size and may be in colour but all roughly of a similar shape. New arrivals would be smooth skinned and unblemished while those of great age would tend to a certain shagginess, a barnacled roughness of skin and the accumulated blotchiness of much time spent in my world. And yet their greatest diversity, greatest meaning, and intrinsic value would remain hidden from me in the air above my world. Much I guess as we can see only the outward appearance of the people we meet every day.

Their comings and goings would remain incomprehensible to me, as if they were driven by something within themselves. Something I could not see but which guided their paths in ways that make no sense to me here below in my underwater world. It would seem that my world holds nothing for them as they journey from places unseen to places unknown. Sometimes steadily and surely, sometimes as if blown about by forces not of my world. Sometimes they fall and become part of my world. Lifeless hulks no more inhabited by the spark that guided them - it has gone to another place not of my world. Sometimes they flounder and wallow until they can right themselves or until others of their kind come to help. And some get stuck - afloat, but going nowhere. Sometimes I feel like I am one of those. Shipwrecked on the uncharted reef of Multiple Chemical Intolerances. Afloat still but going nowhere.

What do you do when you are stuck in the middle of life's ocean? No longer free to roam the seas of the world. I can neither sail on nor am I yet on that further shore. I must spend some time on this island, this island in the Son. How long? I do not know. But while I am here maybe I can build a small safe harbour over there. A place where others, such as yourself, can briefly anchor and join me in some light refreshments. Where news can be exchanged, and maybe maps obtained. A place where others stranded on this island can meet and seek shelter. And out there on the headland above the reef we call MCS perhaps we can build a lighthouse, and perhaps save others from this fate.

D.J. Ludlow Copyright 2001.