If I were a creative writing teacher, I would like to take this picture into my class and assign the students to write a story about the three main objects: the sailboat for sale, the yellow pedestrian crossing sign, and the white regulatory traffic sign.
Boats for sale along the highway are neither frequent nor infrequent around here. But each time I encounter one, I am drawn into an imaginary world. Personally, I never advanced to captain anything beyond a little Sunfish in my Red Cross training class in my youth but, I've been a passenger on enough other sailboats to imagine the romance of the sea life and be captivated by the idea.
I don't know the owner of this boat nor its actual history. I prefer to believe the fantasy I have imagined: that she traveled the world in style and comfort in an intimacy that only a small sailing vessel can offer. Sailboats are places where dreams and romance are alive. Regardless the reality of hard work and endless maintenance and danger, a sailing machine is a living dream on the water, free to travel anywhere and everywhere one's imagination can go, or, to just stay tied up at the dock for a while.
Seeing this boat, I imagine that I see someone's lifetime of adventurers up for sale (pun intended) - a parting of sweet sorrow I expect - the excitement, the romance, the dream, the sunsets, the gentle lapping of waves, the raw power of strong force winds and high seas - all that sits quietly now on those support stands awaiting a new owner.
So, that's what happens when I drive by a sailboat listed "for sale," I might stop and take a moment and imagine.........a life path not taken.......and at 65, the likelihood of starting down that path now is remote..........hmmmm........but not impossible..........
....it was a dark and stormy night, the wind-driven sheets of rain rippled across the bow like drying laundry whipping and snapping on a prairie clothesline............
No comments:
Post a Comment