Smile

12 September 2018

You think you are out there exploring the limits.

The limits of the possible,
the limits of the feasible,
the limits of the thinkable.

The limits of the imaginable.

And we smile, when we see you, children that you are, afloat on top of this lake you call an ocean. You are flotillas and armadas and solo navigators and skilled amateurs slashing these waters. You are working, in unison or in competition or in solitaire independence, to perfect the art: in as little movement, in some set distances, in tiny vessels, and even without sails.

And we smile, when we see you, children.

We work beneath the surface. We work above the skies. We crawl around the bottom of the seas. We move earth, and air, and fish. We summon thunder.

We work.

Days, weeks, decades, lifetimes.

We know of the monsters. You scoff at the stories. Even when provided with pictures, you imagine small beasts, that could not possibly be a threat except perhaps when alone and unprepared.

We have been alone.

And the monsters we know, they are taller than we are.

In deep, where they live, we learn to be quiet. To do our work, as grandiose and extravagant as it must be, quietly in the shadows, so as not to awaken these hell-beasts of your nightmares.

We build defenses. Intricate and complex to the initiated, they look repetitive and primitive to the neophyte. We like them. They give us comfort.

We protect you, without you ever knowing. A ripple on the water where none should have been is a failure of our task. When we are at our best, you do not see us.

The tools you use and improve and congratulate yourselves for bringing further than ever, we have as base part of our kit. For the work, though, diversity is everything. Where you might sharpen your words on an ever-growing collection of still lives, we battle in the deep, we love, we hate, we die, we bear, we spawn, we solve, we ponder.

We do not resent you not knowing.

It is the work. It is the life.

It is innocence worth protecting.

You write us in your legends. In your myths. In your stories. In your rumours. Never quite real, to you, we are.

Yet, we love you.
And smile.