Reflections from Behind the Glass

By Jasper A. Lee

We see the world through various glasses—rose-colored glasses, glass ceilings, even the looking glass. While our greatest insights arise from seeing things through these glasses, it is not until we look beyond them that we understand who we are and who we can be. When we cannot see the glass, we risk being trapped in our own glass cell, or, worse, a house of mirrors of our own making.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781664138247

Jasper A. Lee

Having spent time in different cells both real and of his own making, he has found that ability to tap into his own stream of consciousness—honest, visceral, and not always what he expected.

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REFLECTIONS FROM

BEHIND THE GLASS

JASPER A. LEE

Copyright © 2020 by Jasper A. Lee.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 04/13/2021

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

819308

CONTENTS

Preface – Choice

Foreword To Revised Edition

TIME FOR A DIFFERENT JOURNAL

After So Long, It Seems

The Great Wall Of Doubt

The Divine Is Indeed Sublime

The Neurotic Tide

Don’t … But … Why

Intensity In Any Form Is Intimacy

Tangential Orbiting Celestial Bodies

F.K.A. Little Miss Sunshine

That Word, Say Clear Now … L——E

The Kitchen … Really

Return To Before

Source Of Anger

Rub Up The Wrong Way

It Is Just Our Nature

Lost And Confused

Guide Me Where You Want To Go

One More Thing To Always Remember

Miss You … Just Cannot Explain

Everything May Indeed Mean Nothing

The Edited Parts That I Deleted

Be My Valentine?

Melancholy And The Infinite Sadness

Love Redefined … Honestly

Intensity Only Fuels Intensity

Embarrassing But Still Necessary

Less Embarrassing Yet Still Not Easy

This Does Not Change What Has Happened

Lost At Sea

You’re Right … One Day At A Time

Cumulative Effect

Cumulative Affect

Doubt … Not In You Or We But Me

Obviously … Well, Maybe Not … So Thank You

Filters Work Both Ways

WHOSE NEEDS ARE BEING SERVED?

You Uncomplicate Me … And That Terrifies Me

Love Is Many Things … It Shouldn’t Be Confused

Inconsistency … Uncertainty … Questions

The Guilt That Remained

ANOTHER CHAPTER

A New Beginning

Feeling … Fear Of Feeling

Where Is The Balance In Life?

And Still All I Want To Do Is Run

Natural Or Naturally Talented

I Had A Dream

Distraction … Avoid … Delusion … Descent

Darkness Recedes Because Of Your Light

A Novel Approach

BREAK POINT

I Am Sorry … So What?!

Lost Or At A Loss

Silence Is The Burden

SEGUE IN THOUGHT

A Prelude To …

Permission To Express To Be

Complete ‘N’ Absolute Nonsense, Tool

Unfair Cop-Out

Stupid Is As Stupid Is Allowed To Be

So What If She Meets That Person

I Don’t Know … Does Not Mean No

ALONE ISN’T A CHOICE WE MAKE

Darkness Once More

Need To Start

The Struggle To Be Still

There Is Something New … And Disturbing

It Began Resolute And Still Dissolved

Distance … Disinterest … Disdain … All The Same

Finding The Drama

And Still It Is Only About You

All It Takes Is A Moment

My Final Letter … Not My Final Words

Something Isn’t Quite Right

Again, You Are Right … Click

Moving On

Physical Reality

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE TURMOIL

Cautionary Word

Four Words

How To Begin

Semantics Should Matter

Life Of Experiences Or Experience Life

Expectations Can Often Lead To Disappointment

Only Remember The Failure

We Deserve Better Than This

So Why Say What You Said

What Has Happened

Choices Made

Fact Is … Then … Does Why Matter?

Who Does That?

Doppelgänger

Stuck Between Moving And Waiting

Reflection To Realisation

A Life Less Ordinary

Impartiality … Practically So Hard

Choices, Expectations, Understanding

Closing Note Of Thanks

PREFACE – CHOICE

Throughout this work, there will be paragraphs and pages, like this, where I have felt the need to explain myself, either before proceeding or because of how parts have drawn out feelings and emotions once something was completed. Sure, it would be considered a disclaimer of sorts, but I did not want to remove a thought, while at the same time thinking that thought was unclear in my own mind. So in order to allow you to see the process of understanding I went through, and I think, more importantly, to try and show the changes to my own filters, biases, and, in some instances, opinions and beliefs, I have continued to insert what I call pivot notes. This, however, is likely the most fundamental and has a bearing on the entire basis of this composition and, indeed, might be interpreted by you in any number of ways. I only hope that you might, in order to appreciate what this means and why I have written it, have the courage to ask me to explain and then be kind enough to take the time to understand my response.

Love is many things, but despite what has been said about it, it is still a choice. I chose to fall in love with a woman for whom this work was composed. A lady that inspired me to discover who I am and for whom I remain entirely devoted. Sadly, the object of my affection was a woman that I believed someone could be, hoped that person could embrace and, most importantly, thought that person could trust in me enough to know that I would remain with her as she explored who that woman is and what that meant to her. I was wrong.

Desperation sparked the relationship that roused these words and forced me to compromise parts of who I am. Loneliness and detachment made me blind to the distinction between the woman I was falling in love with and the person that she chose to be. Falling in love is something I have done more than I should, each time in the hope that by appeasing someone, appealing to what I saw as what they needed, that love would be enough to keep them close to me. It has, however, taken this person, to help me bring my words and thoughts together for the first time, rather than the piecemeal verses and pages from the past. It has also taken embracing being still emotionally for me to appreciate the fiction from reality and my expectations from her capability and capacity.

Love is a choice. We choose to make excuses for those we love. We justify changes because of those we love. So why do so many people choose family over love? Accept that behavior of family can always be excused, or refuse to acknowledge the influence of family?

Love is a choice. If we choose to love, then we should be willing to open our eyes to the love before us as well as the love we believed we had found. If we choose to love, once we have opened our eyes, we should want to understand. Once we understand, then we must want to love, each other, not just ourselves. Love is a choice I doubt I’ll make again.

FOREWORD TO REVISED EDITION

I am not sure whether you had this in mind when you suggested that I should consider publishing something; however, it is likely the only piece that I feel comfortable publishing for several reasons. When this body work began, it was intended for an audience of one, with the purpose of underscoring many of the feelings I had. Those feelings I did not think I would discover again until you chose to enter my life; but those feelings, like the intended audience for this work, have evolved in a way that I neither expected nor thought necessary. In saying that, I would like to clarify, in the hopes of avoiding confusion, which I am fairly certain can be found in the words contained in these pages.

There is a sense of dedication, homage even, in the initial work that I can attribute to how grateful I felt in being able to express myself, but more so in your willingness to accept the different expressions I wanted to offer. There was a stage in my life where having the freedom to express my feelings to someone gave me the strength to climb and discover my own abilities against the backdrop of a life that I had always wanted. Yet in that ascent, I soon lost that connection with why I was driven to strive far beyond my own vision, becoming lost to my raison d’être. Instead of looking within myself for why I might have felt the way I did, I was consumed by where I discovered I was able to go, and again forgetting why I had the strength to get there.

Over the years, gradually, almost imperceptibly, I became someone that, until recently, until you, I was convinced was a better version of who I was and that only needed the right person to accept me for that. In return, I would love them and offer them a blind devotion that would prove what they meant to me and how I felt. Thankfully, and I say that with more than a touch of sadness and still with a fair degree of pain, you made the choice that you did to walk away; but most importantly, you did so without explaining and without allowing me the chance to do the same. That is indeed something I am more grateful for than it may sound, and that you might realise; but I believe I owe who I am now to that entire course of events.

Being forced to not say what I wanted to say and, more importantly, consider why I was saying what I was saying is something I am unsure whether many people would do, and if they do, whether it is a comfortable experience to endure. Unlike things I wrote in the past, which were able to gain their weight from a framework set by someone else and facts that could lend themselves to little interpretation once considered within that framework, the things within these pages are open for such a wide interpretation and hold meaning that ultimately only matters to me though I wanted so much for them to matter as much to you. After all, it was because of you that I found these words and for you that I believed writing them down would benefit. That benefit, I see now, was so I could convince you of who I was, despite believing for a long time that who I was, in fact, was the person you should accept into your life.

While I have not changed my belief that you should accept me in your life, the person that I have discovered I can be is some distance from the person that penned the words always intended for you. Words that I now realise, were also intended to reveal to me feelings I did not know, appreciate, or comprehend fully until all that I had were these feelings and the conversations within my head.

Reflection should not be confused with reflecting, something I have considered many do—a misinterpretation of the word, something you would know far too well, that I believe about so many things. Misunderstanding is too simple, given the ways we can communicate and the difficulties we experience with hearing. Reflection is looking at yourself, what you do, and why you do things without the benefit of a mirror of any kind. Taking the words that you have said for the echoes they leave instead of asking someone to remind you or having the chance to read through them again. Reflection is making yourself revisit things, removing the bias and filters that were there in the moment as well as those that have been developed throughout your life. Emotions in any moment can be easy to identify—not always, but far easier than those that have been created over a lifetime of experience. If you simply go over what has happened like looking at yourself in a mirror, you are likely to recall what happened; but ask a blind person to describe you after running their fingers over your face, and you’re likely to get a far more different assessment of your face. The tracks of your tears become easily discernible to those who aren’t looking at your face.

You accepted so many of the things that I offered—in fact, everything, for a time. Always grateful and always willing to show how what I did made you feel. Therein was planted a seed that I allowed to poison how I felt. As insidious as it was noxious, that seed made me blind to what you were going through and more and more deaf to what you were trying to tell me. That feeling was a machismo and arrogance that I believed was me becoming my old self and, indeed, a better version of who I remembered that I was.

It was not your fault, please let me say that before going any further. You are not to blame for the things that I did. It was never your fault. It was a choice that I made, which I never quite realised what it meant. That I did the things I did on the basis of doing them for you, or for us, or because of either means only that it was easy not to consider and weigh what I was doing because there was a predetermined reason. I would never have had to make the choices if you had not been in my life is true, just as saying I would not be writing these words is as true had you not chosen to come into my life. That I am writing these words and that I can write them at all is only because of the choice that you made; but all the things that happened on each day and in every moment since is a choice that I am keenly aware that I made and, until recently, never questioned nor wanted to understand.

There are emotions contained in these pages that are raw and expressed in ways that I know to convey them. That is one reason for the confusion that you might find going from page to page, because in the course of our time together, I found myself uncertain about what I was feeling as much as why. The only constant was a need to make sure that you were able to see so that you could understand, and if you could not, that you would inquire so that I would explain. Aside from the occasional question, there did not seem to be much that I wrote that did not strike accord with you—something that I realise only now did not mean that you understood, nor did it mean that I had been clear with both what I wrote and why.

Only until there was silence from you, and what I wrote was constantly misunderstood, was I forced to answer my own interrogations, to be ruthless with my inner conversations, to accept being alone with who I was.

Though at first it was like being locked in the observation cell. Things taken the wrong way with explanation only partially heard, this time there were no fifteen-minute check-ins, no timeline for being allowed out; in fact, in reality, I was free to do whatever I wanted, but struggled. Taking the juvenile approach, not uncommon for me, resulted in familiar conversations, extreme emotions with more accusations and blame than acceptance or consideration for anyone except me. Thankfully, I grew tired and annoyed with this same person, and though I tried to overcome these feelings, it took longer than I had anticipated. Of course, in that time, there was no longer tension between us. You had simply washed your hands.

I understand that it takes courage to walk away from things, but turning your back on someone who is struggling is neither courageous nor kind. Similarly, accepting one kind of behaviour from one person yet chastising another for similar actions is hurtful to yourself because you chose to turn a blind eye toward one and equally hurtful to the other, especially when the other person is able to identify their behavior and wants to change. But the thing was that for me to change for you would have simply reinforced the original state of affairs using different sets of behaviors. I would still be fueling my expectations on the basis that I was able to do something to appease you. Ironically, you had said similar things for some time, albeit in words that I found harder to embrace.

Being selfish to your own needs and loving yourself before you have the ability to love someone else never sat well with me. Then again, my self-image always made taking compliments difficult. And yet, by understanding my needs and seeing someone other than the person I always believed I was, especially without that person who had looked over my shoulder and whispered in my ear for so long, being in that observation cell no longer felt as traumatic as it had been.

I found my voice. Not the accusing and arguing noise that for so long kept me on alert and constantly needing to prove myself. I found my rhythm. Not the buzzing and screaming and thumping that pushed me to such erratic states. I discovered how language can be as expressive through silent expression, and experiences on my own became personal and inspiring. I found something being left alone. That solitude is something that continues to terrify me, but not because I need and want someone to guide me or to inspire the things I do. I found that in doing the things that I do, there is satisfaction despite the fact that they are not for any particular purpose. I found that letting my mind see, rather than my heart or my eyes, I am finding direction and communicating a sense of myself that I am embracing.

Most of all, my conversations are looking for reasons and understanding, whatever they may be about, not excuses and justifications for the past. A past that was both out of my control and completely my fault. A past that I will no longer rely on as a compass for where I might find myself but use as the foundation for the strength that I am building every day. A past that does not haunt me anymore. A past that I still have regrets about but has made me understand some things I cannot be forgiven for and may never get the chance to say sorry. Realising that it is not that I don’t care; rather, things are not my concern. Accepting that expectations are useless, but choosing to continue to love someone is not pointless. That a journey without direction is pointless, but there is nothing wrong with having a journey that doesn’t have a destination. That saying you don’t or can’t is more than fear and yet is nothing that anyone can do anything about until you tell yourself that maybe you do and possibly you can, if you are willing to ask for help.

In the desert, anyone can appear to walk on water

TIME FOR A

DIFFERENT

JOURNAL

While in the past things were written, and so many thoughts unraveled, much of that has faded, and so the words were deleted. Why remember what you wrote when the reasons that you wrote them never really seemed to matter—at least that was the reasoning and the feeling as others continued their lives along paths that were never meant to include me.

This is not wallowing in self-pity—maybe pangs of regret for memories that could have been. This is being able to express what I feel with a critical difference that the past never offered. I have found someone—you—that wants to know and understand, unafraid of asking, despite being guarded about revealing anything. But that is OK; that is what relationships are meant to be about—learning.

So by remaining as open as I can be about things that will from time to time appear across my mind, I hope that you will be able to learn more about who I am and decide for yourself whether I am someone that you can see yourself loving in the way that I find myself loving you.

Nothing is in any sequence or priority, simply words that I want to remember, words that you make me want to say but which often make little sense or never find the right moments. Thank you, Julia, and I hope that as this volume grows, so will your understanding, trust, belief, and, indeed, love. Love you.

AFTER SO LONG, IT SEEMS

Stirring, yet motionless. Warm, peaceful. Has it been so long since this has happened? To be able to wake up and you are still there. Of course, you were never there before, and yet I can’t remember without you. But now you are here … still. Your aroma, your scent fills my mind, rising like steam from your body. Inhaling, I can’t stop my senses from starting, leaping, sparking, arousing inside me, within me all over.

My hand involuntarily reaches for you as I watch, almost detached, wondering whose hand is moving toward your back, exposed, inviting. I wonder what you will do when you feel that hand touch you, until … I am reconnected in the second my fingers touch your skin, completely invested in the sensation. Burning through my fingertips drawing my hand against your skin. My reactions are reflex now, gently laying my entire hand against your shoulder, the rest of me jealous that it must wait and hold back.

Don’t disturb her. She’ll realise she should not be here.

You’ll make her recoil, and the regret will dawn on her.

Why can’t you just keep your hands to yourself.

Your body instinctively moves with my caresses, rolling back toward me … not away. Your hand reaches up from in front of you to find my own.

She’s not pulling away.

My hand, like everything else of me, is yours; and I allow my body to follow as you draw my hand to your lips and kiss it, softly, sweetly, without even opening your eyes. Barely pausing, you continue to pull my hand around your body, your own blanket it seems, to warm you, nuzzling back against me, needing to feel my body against you. I hear the softest moan … of…contentment.

Without questioning, despite the anxiety of this abruptly ending, I find my body tight against your back, your hands still clinging to my hand.

You want to be here. You meant to fall asleep. You will stay.

This has not happened for such a long time. But this is not like it felt the last time. The years have provided so many things: scars, lessons, experiences. Inundated with regrets, doubt, fear because of all the things of the past, filtering so much of every minute we have shared, up until this moment.

I drape my other arm around your stomach and feel your breath continue, unchanged. Squeezing you slowly bringing you closer, I feel your fingers clasp mine tighter, until yet another moan escapes your lips. Your muscles clench, but in anticipation, not resistance. You push, but not away or back; you push yourself into me, urging me to tighten my embrace, still wanting more, as much as I do.

It is different because we are not new at this. There is not the fear of innocence between us but, rather, the fear of the ultimate. An ending that we were once ready for to throw down the possibilities, vain as they seemed. To allow the dreams of a future that we had hoped for remain some fantasy that would never really happen, until fate, it would appear, decided that those fantasies deserved a chance for reality.

Innocent and inconsequential, mundane almost; and yet there was revealed an undercurrent between us that moved continents gradually but unceasingly. Our own pasts resisting forces that we never even contemplated. However, physics has its laws and without at least an equal opposing force, an object continues to move. The object of my desire, I had little choice but to allow myself to be drawn. Despite your own ability to resist being far stronger than mine, this time I would go with regret. I would not go without a pledge; I would not go.

After such a long time, so it seems, I am home.

THE GREAT WALL OF DOUBT

The greatest enemy is the enemy within. A relatively simple truth, one would argue. The alternate is also true. It is the events of your childhood that can set the foundations to soar or to hide. Having support from your parents becomes crucial, if they choose to take your side of events or encourage your natural inclinations. Having a sibling that you feel comfortable turning to in times when you are unsure of things or when you need someone to look up to, if they choose to take you under their wing and stand by you in times of uncertainty. Having teachers that encourage and nurture your strengths plays a vital role in determining what you have the ability to achieve, if you stand out among the crowd enough. Having friends that help lift you up and enable you to become more than you could be alone, if they bring out the best in you rather than encourage your dormant vices.

When you can’t reach out to your family and don’t understand how to talk about things, you start the process of doubting yourself, without really knowing that the seeds being planted will set the foundations for the rest of your life. When you say less and less but look for anything else, not understanding that the void being created will become the sound chamber for your future. Innocence in childhood means not appreciating how each little fracture and every slight deviation sets the tone through which the rest of the score to your life must be heard, irrespective of how it may actually sound. The stones that are thrown may not touch any bones, yet their weight is the foundation of a wall unable to be seen, difficult to comprehend, insurmountable to overcome, and a prison of your own doing, all because a child is not supposed to know what all this means.

The child remains though, trapped within, their cries are screams impossible to hear yet distinct in their reluctance to allow you to accept or believe. A constant source of concern without knowing for certain why it continues, how it drives, and where it directs.

As adults, we strive and reach and leap with seeming ease, and yet continue to falter and stumble to our knees. A recurring sequence of events populate the past, that should have been different that should not have fallen apart. There are justifications and commiserations, reassurances that all is forgiven, that it will be all right in the end. But there continues that niggling voice from deep within, merely a whisper yet always convincing.

How can you argue with your voice that you’ve contained, born innocent then tainted somehow. Resentful and bitter by taking all the disappointment and shame. Forgetting and ignoring those things that should have ignited a flame, a beacon that should have guided a different path for your life, but blame turned to anger that only brought strife. Making your feet swift in times that seemed good, expecting the inevitable pain that never appeared though you were sure that it would.

How can you go back and undo the things that started this process, creating that wall that now is your fortress? The wall was built silently through the years when you should not need to care. Things that were fleeting now return, a tidal wave of despair. The world has so much to offer; the options are always there. But from behind this wall, the enemy that remains is just scared. The enemy within is the child that you were, the one who is tired but won’t seek a cure. A way to become someone who didn’t disappoint, who didn’t let people down.

The constant feeling of being unable, incapable, without worth. The doubt festers, unable to be soothed, eating away at your senses, corrupting things you do. Justifying and rationalizing, you learn as you mature; but how can you argue with the child that you thought you were? You cannot go back, and you can try to let go; but in the end, you are left once more with the child, that voice that says no.

I think that things are changing. I hope things have turned. I want to be someone worth more than what I was. Maybe there is a chance. Maybe this does not have to be. Maybe you can help me heal.

THE DIVINE IS INDEED SUBLIME

Standing there in the doorway, smiling as you always do, I cannot help it, you ignite and stir within me a feeling deeper than desire, more consuming than lust. When we talk, I can manage; but in the flesh, my sense rarely is heard above the clamor of every other emotion. It is more than how you look, and not just through my eyes. Slender legs, a testament to earlier days, in and of itself; of course, there is a physical appeal, that goes without saying … no, in fact, it should be said to remove any shadow of a doubt. But what if I am treading on ground that I am not supposed to explore, to make a statement so bold. But that is something that I want to avoid—being brash or presumptuous, taking liberties about who I might be. Instead, avoiding anything said, I reach out in the hope my touch will convey what’s spinning in my head. At that moment, just as my fingers extend, you begin to turn toward me, allowing me the chance to reach out and caress your cheek rather than simply run my fingers through your hair. At the instant that skin meets skin, a smile draws across your face as you lean softly into the palm of my hand, magnetically pulling my entire body toward you.

As my free arm raises quickly your catch your shoulder, I feel your hand against my side, maneuvering around my back and drawing me closer to you. Instinctively dropping my reach down to your hip, allowing you to complete your embrace across my shoulder, I use my hand to guide your face, that smile, to my lips. Somehow, our bodies meet, our embrace not complete. I keep your face so close to mine but resist the urge to kiss you, instead wanting to linger in your gaze to once more run the line of your cheek, to understand the curve of your face, to remember how you look to make sure that you understand what I have been trying to say.

Without a word, I know that you can hear what I feel when your arms draw me closer. With only the slightest of pauses, our lips finally converge, together so sweetly. The taste and texture of your lips are overpowered by the sensation of your tongue pressing against mine, immediate and persistent, but not impatient, sublime. That word keeps repeating soft in its tone, smooth and deliberate, everything that your kiss is—a sensation that ignites deeply a desire more intense than I realised I had within me. Lust is discarded; there is now something else, a need and an urge that I have found in the motion of your tongue with mine, dancing, teasing, so tantalizing that I find myself unable to breathe but not willing to let go, to pause.

Instinctively, my reflex is to draw you closer, ignoring anything else, to not let you go. I feel your arms respond; the pressure against me fuels this primal urge within me, but not base, far from it, something more intoxicating, a sense that is overpowering my ability to think. All I want is more—more of your kisses, more of your lips, more of everything you have to give. Feeling your body start to move against me, I hear you ask a question that I am more than willing to answer.

Without allowing our mouths to stop, the hunger obvious by the way our tongues pirouette, effortlessly dancing, taking turns to lead and be led, my hand finds the nape of your neck while my fingers traverse your hips round and down, cupping your cheek to guide your hips against mine, so that you can feel me against you, asking, needing, yearning for you. Your leg responds, moving quickly out and around, allowing and inviting, but your hips say all that is necessary, firmly pressing you against me, but a soft moan sends me into a spin.

Holding your raised leg, I quickly reach down to lift you up; your arms, agile, find their place around my neck as your legs lock around my waist. Entwined, I find the wall behind you and firmly, but without abrupt force, pin you against the wall with my hips, raising myself up against you, shifting my weight so that my hand counteracts my upward thrusts by steadying your shoulder, fingers clasping your neck. Your arms, in unison with mine, pull me closer to you as your hips rock and flex, opening wider your legs, reinforcing your intentions accentuated by another, more intense moan forced from beneath your lungs.

THE NEUROTIC TIDE

Conspiracy theories aside, more people have walked on the moon than have reached the deepest parts of the ocean. The tides move because of the effect that the moon has on the earth, and yet more of the ocean has been chartered than is actually understood about how the human brain actually works. So does it, then, make sense that understanding how someone’s mind works yields frustration at the best of times and complete dismay at the worst?

Try not to think about …

Don’t worry about that …

What do you think …

What do you mean …

How do you feel …

Simple statements, objectively, yet subjectively a completely different story.

The ocean at its deepest reveals nothing at the surface, and yet near the shore, you can read the surface like an open book. Yet they can be equally dangerous; seeing, knowing, or understanding the dangers do little to help avoid disaster in open seas or approached shore.

In simpler times, trying to know what someone thought almost never arose, and with that, we did things that affected each other, oblivious to the consequence. People, likewise, created stories and myths about the oceans, like the sun and the skies, things that were divine and impossible to control.

We are told how actions affect us and to express everything despite the consequences, to embrace our feelings and respect those of others in everything we do; but what if we don’t actually know, or worse still can we understand, in which case, how can it make sense?

Being able to explore the ocean yields wonders and warnings; knowing helps us charter a safe passage and prevent catastrophe; understanding