What is island life?
Biogeographically, it means glorious isolation; an opportunity for genetic drift and the allopatric selection of features curiouser and curiouser. The small get larger; the big shrink. The winged are grounded and the stranded cousins of continental creatures crawl their way into new niches unfilled and ripe for ecological exploitation.
But apart from those privileged enough to live in towers that oversee sedimented shores and horizons ablaze with smoking hulls, there is little to indicate to the rest of us the sense of proximity and interaction with the elements that come with island life at its rawest. Carparks and marinas shield urbane souls from the full fury of a shallow sea, while boardwalks elevate walkers from the infinite richness of life in the undergrowth. The wind and the waves are rarely felt, if at all, and life goes on, untouched and unmindful of the hazards and horrors that lurk beyond the sinking stretches of foreign sand, bidding their time for an era of inundation when the waters will reclaim their right and drown the fancies of men.
How is it possible to forget the sun? And not know the pounding power of the tides and feeling of fragility that comes from floating above a force untamed and untrammelled? How is it possible to feel free in a forest of false glories and narrow hopes? To remember little of the joy of discovery and an unconstrained surrender to serendipity? To see not the movements of the moon in a sky darkened by the shadow of a sinking sun? To step on stars in the sand and feel not a mite of madness at the heavy footprint of a being so light-hearted in his cultivation of untenable dreams?
On a clear night, the hunter hangs serene; his tristar belt and heavenly strength of arms blazes unremarked and suppressed in the hearts of noses so close to the grindstone that they feel not its slow crushing of their ability to savour the sweet fragrance of a spring shower. Forgotten too is Orion's menagerie, celestial beasts red in tooth and claw but mere apparitions on this earth where everything has a price but little true value, reduced and reassigned to trading symbols of bull runs and Bruinic busts.
What is island life?
Glorious isolation, it seems, and the bliss of losing oneself in the pursuit of pain deferred and detached from the future of this earth.
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