Pat Watson

 I hold my breath in anticipation and then it happens. I don’t hit the trees. I hit the water with a jolt and plummet into the lake. The impact stuns me and freezes my muscles. I rapidly sink. In a moment, not sure how long, I open my eyes to a swarm of bubbles and spinning water. I almost take a breath and suddenly realize some joy that I’m alive mixed with the fear that I won’t make surface before I’m forced take a breath, inhale water and drown. I gain control of my muscles and begin to stroke for the surface. I think I’m near the surface and I fear blacking out. I realize I won’t make it and another episode of this strange dream emerges from the blue depths of the lake.

Not breathing and not drowning, I hang suspended, slowly treading water, well beneath the surface. Looking up, I can see the shimmering facets of the lake’s surface dance out of reach. From a place of deep blue, below and beyond my reach, I see see a piece of driftwood, suspended in the depths, drifting slowly upwards, seemingly coming at me, slowly, as I hang suspended.

As it comes closer it duplicates itself and a second version begins to twist and distort. Another version is revealed and it begins to twist and distort. Another version and another version and another version and it continues until the twisted duplicates begin to take shape into a mass of distorted driftwood that now surrounds me.

From the single piece of driftwood emerges distortion after distortion and I can see that they are all just twisted versions of the same piece of driftwood, bleached by the sun, scraped and scarred by rocks and wind, tossed by tides and cast ashore on this irrational island, just like me. I imagine that each distorted character I’ve seen on this island is a version of me and I’m here to see them and meet them and open my heart to their story and to understand that their distortion is my own, to witness their disfigured faces and recognize each as a part that I have spent years, decades, trying to push away. Pushing them away is what has distorted them. Each has a story and that story is a chapter in my life.