A sailor of sorts returns to his city where everyone he knows has never even seen the coast. At sea, where he was at home, he did great things. He survived storms and waves larger than the ambitions of kings, swallowed salt water and spit fire, carried mountains on his shoulders and beat the odds with brute force, knife-like cunning, and knapsack full of dumb luck.
But back in the city, all these attributes wither. His stories fall on deaf ears and his skills disappear into social norms and traffic laws, mundane realities of the urban populous. Wilderness and survival mean nothing here. You could let yourself fade away here because what you know means nothing. Physical strength, mental fortitude, endurance, instinct . . . is lost. It's not needed. The nine to five and the four to close take over, pay day could never come sooner, and when you're done, the television takes over the rest.
Shipwrecks mean nothing here. They aren't real. They're a plot line for a miniseries for an army of couch surfers who have no idea what it feels like to slam into a rock with a boat, miles from home. To be driving along, lost in your own thoughts, and all of sudden be pitched from the back of your boat to the front, to hear the shredding of aluminum and the insane noises of distress an outboard motor makes when it strikes rock, a hundred pounds of rotating horse power flipping up and down, in and out of the water, and then smashing again and again, your only way of getting home destroying itself on the invisible reef beneath you.
The viewers don't know what its like. Boat sinking, a hundred yards from shore, water temperatures barely above freezing, nothing but thick bush and rugged ridges for miles.
They don't know what it's like to be actually, truly, fucked.
But that's okay. They're good people, they're old friends. Room after room of them, party after party. Reintroductions are pleasant, smiles on all faces, but he still feels like an outsider. He doesn't belong, there are very few commonalities here.
Buildings tower high above, icons of wealth, shopping malls spread outward like someone spilled the development bucket and forgot to clean up the mess, billboards telling you how to be human.
But what happens, though, when being human isn't enough. What happens when you need to be more than human, when you need grow fangs or fur or fins?
What happens when the shipwreck is real?
