The King

I'm wounding myself in order to write these words. We're off the island, bye-bye relative safety and sand. I am buoyant in the water, it won't take my weight. But my blood, my blood is heavy. A dead-weight of wounds, a scab of memories. So, I wound myself and I sink. It seems the only thing I can do, devoured by the darkness of the ocean. Darkness, remember, not blue. Not a fairy tale kingdom from a book, no minarets made from coral. This ocean is currents of thought process, beds of identity, schools of fish-fears. Somehow though, for the first time since I have set on this journey, I feel a modicum of peace. Like victims of hypothermia; once you let go, all that might have bothered you is hugged in the cold, embraced into this permeating freedom that stems from everywhere. Like an ocean. An ocean of ice.

Why words? Why have I chosen words to express these things? Did I have a choice? It seems as though not, as if all my arsenal is words and words, decked and arrayed and shined and polished. They look different: long words, short words, shocking words, boring words, words words, not-words words, words in a sentence, words in a sentence, words not in a sentence, boring words, frail words, strong words, words words and so forth, stretching out on this ocean bed. But they're all words. Rotting here, in the depth of the ocean. Every once in a while, one breaks free and strives for surface. Oh. I know this one. This is Freud's Iceberg, isn't it? I never imagined it was a place, but why not I suppose? If corners and books and the Lictor's square are actually places, why not the Iceberg?

Wait. Not-words words? What are those? I pick at the space left by them, the caves that they dig with their flaming not-bodies into the Iceberg. These places, before the ocean rushes in, are where I live, are they not? When I am in the ocean that is. Yes, I swim to one now, created by the not-word "Love". It has scorched a flaming, scorching, embracing, caressing tunnel into the Iceberg. There is air there and a little space to sleep, in the nook created by the not-word "Love". But the ocean thunders at the door, thunders at the space created for me by this not-word. Of course it does. It is in the nature of oceans to flow. There are many who try to stop the ocean: philosophers, artists, scientists, me, my mother, dream. Fear. Pain. Kings.

Where is the King? I think the ocean killed him.