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Chapter 24: The Sensitive Side of the Sea

  “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

 

  They say that Atlantis doesn’t really exist. Well, maybe they just don’t have the right maps. ‘Coz Navigator Humphrey found it easily enough. About three days after leaving Baffin Island, The TrogDogJonah docked at a port city on the north shore of the famed lost continent of Atlantis.

  Admiral Jack was fixin’ to do some trading with the locals, because he still had some artificial furs, and he was hoping to swap them for something good this time. He figured their best chance to pick up something valuable and neat would be here at Atlantis, a civilization that was reputed to be very advanced. Bert (an avid comic book reader) had especially whipped up their hopes, with tales of electromagnetism, X-ray specs, and Ray-guns. “We could make a killing with a few of those, (pardon the expression)” Jack thought greedily. I guess he was gambling that Atlantis would be at that brief window of opportunity in their development when they had mastered the manufacture of weapons of destruction but had not yet progressed to the point of creating artificial furs. It was a vain and desperate hope, but what do sailors have but hope? Wanting to find out as much information about Atlantis as quickly as they could, Admiral Jack decided to let the crew split up, arming them each with instructions to find out about the society’s alleged advancements, and to report back to him any news of any such items that might be worth trading for.

  Bert and Luke went journeying together, as was their custom. They were pretty impressed by the strange new city in which they found themselves, and they smiled and gaped a lot. The weather was unusually warm and sunny and fair, and it felt very much like spring or early summer, an almost magical feeling after coming hard out of the north. Geographically, it must have been in the temperate zone, but by some mystic force it seemed sultry and altogether tropical. The lookout Gonzales even claimed to have spotted sugar cane. It was a refreshing switch for the sailors, who had endured a polar passage, frozen seas, and the mostly chilly start of fall.

  Besides the pleasant weather, the architecture was rather interesting, having quite a Spanish or Mexican feel. By day the buildings were made of sandstone, and by night, moonstone. Both were jazzed up with lavish use of paints and dyes. The city was really quite colorful. Yellow, Red and Green, Violet, Turquoise and Ultramarine. Lots of happy, exciting colors! And of course, it made Luke and Bert very happy and excited to be a part of it all.

  After wandering for a while though, they started to wonder just where all the supposed advancements were hidden. Basically, apart from being pretty, Atlantis looked just as primitive as the rest of the p.p. of T. People were walking or riding donkeys instead of taking the bus. The one guy they saw who was armed and looked like a sheriff was carrying only a tonfa, not a gun or a missile. There didn’t seem to be any electric lights in evidence, just torches set up on poles to act as street lights come nightfall.94 And passing a restaurant on the corner of Eat Street and Mean Street, Luke coulda swore he saw somebody eating fish!

  “Man, they’re as dumb as the rest of us,” Luke decided.

  Bert wasn’t quite so hasty. “Let’s give ’em a chance. So far we’ve just looked. But the best way to find out if they’re ahead of us somehow is to ask ’em.” He approached a shabby old vagabond on the corner who was wearing brown rags and looking gaunt and ghastly. “Hey!” Bert confronted him boldly, “I heard that you guys were supposed to be real advanced or something. You don’t look like much. Whatsa deal?”

  The poor gentleman smiled at fate and said wisely, “Advance means to move forward. Where that takes you depends on which direction you are facing.”

  Bert the Young and Restless Ruffian, too impatient to dig roundabout answers, said unsatisfied, “Is that what. So how ’bout showing us the way towards Atlantis’s greatest achievement? Or a really smart guy, or something.”

  The rag-dressed man with the calm disposition pointed down the road and advised them, “If you want to see the height of Atlantean wisdom, go this way until you reach the end of town, and look for the Laughing One.”

  Bert and Luke followed his directions, enjoying the stroll down cobblestone streets to the end of town. It was a fair and lovely afternoon, and everyone was happy. At the end of the town, they passed under a wide stone archway, and then the road suddenly ended and they found themselves in a swamp. The boys looked around at the mossy, mushy, moist swamp mess, and then they looked at each other and Bert said, “Gee, Do you think maybe we took a wrong turn?” Luke agreed that Yeah, he would think so, except they hadn’t made any turns. “Or maybe the old man gave us a bum steer, ‘coz he didn’t like my tone of voice,” Bert suggested with a sly, admiring smile.

  Luke didn’t think so. “No, this is Atlantis. They’re supposed to be very advanced. The people would be above using dirty tricks like that, wouldn’t they?”

  Bert smiled and shrugged, saying, “Unless that’s the direction they chose to progress in. I wouldn’t blame ‘em. My own goal in life is to become Sly. It’s a complicated art, and you have to be pretty dedicated to master all the various disciplines. Sly is about 50% Crafty, and 25% Clever, and 14% Tricky, and 9% Sneaky, and 1% Secret Ingredient. With traces of the elements of Dirty, Nasty and Weaselly. I learned that in High School Chemistry,” he lied. (Actually, he learned it playing lacrosse.)

  Luke skipped over Bert’s Elaboration of Sly, and got straight to the point, “Well I guess the old man was all of that, coz here we are in a swamp. It doesn’t look too high-tech, and it doesn’t feel too far-out.”

  Sure enough, it was just your ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill wetland. Lotta wet stuff. Some long grass. Plenty of weeds. Some trees and vines. Quite a number of pools and puddles. Mud. Ooze. A few frogs. A stray salamander. Lotsa bugs. Coupl’aFish. You get the picture. You’ve seen swamps before.

  Well, Bert and Luke looked about, and even waded around a bit to see if they were missing something. They got kinda wet, and got some ooze on their shoes. But they still weren’t seeing any kind of Laughing One.

  “What the heck is a Laughing One anyway?” Luke wondered

  “Prob’ly the old guy when he pictures us splashing around in this swamp,” Bert ventured wryly. He shook his fist at the city behind them, and at the long-gone old man and all his relations. Then he calmed down and laughed and took a baguette out of his pocket and began crumbling it so trout would tussle for crumbs. Elsewhere Luke took a stick and stirred the shallow water vigorously to make whirlpools.. Folks don’t get down to the swamp too often, so hey you might as well enjoy yourself when you’re there, right?

  After they had been splashing about and laughing and goofing around having swamp-fun for a while, an old lady came to meet them, poling her tiny glass-bottomed boat through the thick weeds to the pond in which they played. The boys were surprised. After all, not too many people live in swamps, after all. It’s fun to check out nature for awhile, and maybe even get a little wet wading around; but after getting a soaker it’s nice to be able to go home to dry land and put on a dry pair of pants. But apparently this old woman wasn’t too concerned about such things, ’coz here she was happy and smiling.

  “What are you laughing about?” one of the boys asked her.

  “Oh, just happy I guess,” she replied, with a grinannawink.

  “Yeah, I see that. Happy about what?” Bert wanted to know.

  The old woman shrugged a full of joy shrug. “Everything. Life. How can you not laugh at it all? Life is one big joke.”

  “Tell me about it,” Bert said, fake-cynically, with a wink to his partner.

  The old woman laughed, “No, I don’t mean Life is a joke in the negative sense, like jaded college students do. I mean it’s fun, it’s amusing, it makes you laugh.”

  Luke was impressed, as he thought about it. “Wow, Kinda,” he agreed.

  The Laugh
ing One laughed. She was old, and she wasn’t very beautiful anymore, and she didn’t even feel beautiful, but she had a beautiful feeling, and isn’t that a little more valuable? “No, not Kinda,” she corrected. “All the time! It’s always joyful, fun, laughable. Even in the darkest moments. Just most of the time people don’t get the joke... especially in those dark moments, even though that’s when they could most use the humor! People tend to get too wrapped up in their own sorrows, their own worries. It’s hard to hear the punch line of Life when you’re busy listening to yourself whine.”

  At first Luke thought this sounded pretty callous, and didn’t show a lot of sympathy for those with problems. But after he thought about it, he realized that The Truth Hurts, and maybe what those sorrowful people need isn’t sympathy, it’s a solution! And what better solution is there than Laughter? They say that Laughter is the best medicine; well sometimes it’s the only one: Laughter, and Hope, and just plain good old Life, coz they’re all the same thing anyway, and they all go hand and hand, and they’re all right there for your spirit to grasp ‘em, baby, so reach out and feel the Joy-and-all-the-good-stuff and lemme hear you Laugh, son!

  Luke laughed, just like he had told himself, and sure enough it felt good. Bert just looked at the two Laughing Ones through squinty suspicious eyes, and he smirked. He wasn’t completely sold on the old woman’s innocent portrayal of Life and its joy and humor, but I guess he didn’t need to be, coz he was laughing anyway, at the other two. Her mirth had proven both potent, and contagious.

  “Wow, is this it then?” Luke wondered, (as he quickly scribbled Laughter into his notes beside Rick’s word ‘Content’, and waited anxiously for more.) “Is this the special knowledge of Atlantis that is so widely fabled?”

  “That’s about it. It’s just a simple thing, but simple things are the best.”

  Bert, loyal to his mission, had to ask anyway: “So you don’t have any Ray-guns, I take it?”

  The Laughing One shook her head. “Nope. Sorry. Call us fools, but we learned to see the beauty in the world, not to kill it.” Bert understood, and wasn’t too disappointed.

  Luke was very fond of this woman, and her whole outlook. “Help me learn to see life this way,” he asked. “How is it done?”

  The old woman laughed at his innocence, a kind and loving laugh. “Well, I suppose partly it comes from experience. But, Practice only makes perfect if you practice perfect things! All I can tell you is that you need to practice seeing the good in things, instead of the bad! Keep practicing, until it becomes a habit, then keep doing it until it becomes your essence!” Hearing this, Luke suddenly recalled his trip to the library long since, and reading Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

  The Laughing One was continuing. “Sometimes all it takes is a good will! But other times it takes an open heart and a flexible mind, to look at things from unexpected angles. Let me give you an example, my children...”

  She led them through the swamp to the seashore, and along the coast of the bay to a spot where they could stand on the rocks and watch the waves roll in. She told them to look. And so they stood silent on the shore of the great sea that was known as The Wide Ocean, and they watched the surf roll in--small and gentle waves that kissed the rock and then turned neatly beneath the water like an Olympic swimmer and rolled away again meek and contented. “Do you remember the waves big and boisterous which you cursed when they tossed your ship upon the troubled seas? These are the same waves. They were bold and aggressive then as they pushed you out of their way, for neither man nor distance could keep them from this, their destination. And so they come, from thousands of miles, to their lover the Shore. And in her presence they are tamed, and can only kiss her softly and shyly and melt from her presence... Son, this is the Sensitive Side of the Sea.”

  Bert and Luke laughed at the personification, and at the absurdity of the very notion of a ‘Sensitive Side of the Sea’. Then they realized that this was her intention. She had in fact shown them how to laugh at Life. They blushed and felt warm and glad inside, and Luke gave her a hug and said thank you. She laughed happily at his kind youthful gesture, and thanked him back.

  Luke thought her way of seeing the joy and the comedy in things resembled that of the man he had last met, Rick the Baffin Islander. He told her about that encounter, partly to gauge her reaction to the Bible verse, ‘therewith to be content’.

  Her reaction was predictable--she laughed! “Content? Is that enough for you?” Then, by way of concession, she agreed, “It has its place. Perhaps in hard times and hard places, like he’s in. But don’t stop there if you don’t have to, lad! I’m talking about Joy! Bliss! Absolute Rapture!” And she added a Bible verse of her own: “ ‘Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice!’ Or better still, ‘...rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory’,” she excerpted, and did a little dance, which made them chuckle again. She pointed, “Caught ya”. Then she looked out at the sea and raised her hands into the soft winds, and exclaimed, “How can you be anything less than Joyful, knowing that the Seas love you, the Breeze loves you, and best of all, Jesus loves you!” Then she blushed a little, and said self-consciously, “It almost rhymes.”

  “Hey, close enough for me,” allowed Bert the Hack.

  “Bert here told me something about having a positive attitude and choosing to be happy, too” Luke volunteered, trying to give credit where credit was due, even though Bert had never gone so far as to tell him to Rejoice.

  “But did he tell you how?” the Laughing One asked, with a sudden sharpness to her tone. Luke looked at Bert, but neither one of them really could think of an answer to her question. She supplied the answer herself: “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! Shall I say it louder?” she asked, raising her eyebrows, as if daring them to respond. Bert hung his head as she continued. “To tell you to choose happiness and not to tell you its Source is like the example given by the Apostle James: ‘If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things that are needful to the body, what doth it profit?’ How much greater failure, to not give the things that are needful to the spirit? What did Jesus say? ‘These things I have spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.’ His joy will remain in us. Don’t just choose happiness--Choose Jesus! True, it’s better for our happiness to depend on our own choices, our own attitude, than on the whims of circumstance. But it’s much better by far again for our happiness to depend on God, who alone is dependable!” Then she turned to Bert, and admonished, “Those who seek to teach, ought first to try to learn. Don’t you think?” But then she squeezed his hand and forgave him, and lightened the mood with another laugh.

  Luke wanted to stay with her longer; she was fun. But duty called, and it was time to report back to the Admiral that they’d found nothing to trade for--only something freely given.

  After they were gone, she sang songs to her friend the air, told jokes to her comrades the fish, clapped praise to the Lord her God.