. green things rising . preface of a novel-in-progress .

Every man, sooner or later, falls in love with the sea. For them it is the horizon, the future, the possibility that life could be something other than what they ever lived or imagined, a paradise. A journey, an adventure, to return home to and be admired, hailed as a hero. The sea, the last frontier. A hundred years ago, Melville hails it in Moby Dick, saying the great hordes of men flock to the sea, after work, on their lunch hours, just to get a glimpse of the land without cities, the horizon unhindered by man. The sea is the heavens, but more tangible. For now, only the elite rise into space. But anyone can be swept to the sea.

For me, it was water. The great umbilical, the womb.

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