Never Get Out Of The Boat

So you’re on this boat.

You’re near enough to land if you want some of that, but you don’t exactly want to leave the old life. The old life in this case is not the bad old days B.C. Those are way gone. In fact, they mayn’t even be optional for you anymore.

Sorry.

That’s what happens when you obey. The upside is good, real good … though sometimes that wavers in our minds when the flush of Hey! I didn’t drown in that cataclysm! dulls its hues a little. We look about, we’re on the boat, and life is settling into normal.

You don’t even mind the stench as much as you used to.

*

Yep, you rode the boat out of that place — old days, old life, old man — and into some smooth sailing.

If only the rain hadn’t stopped.

As long as the rain kept up, and people needed the boat, and in some ways the boat needed the people too, decisions were easy. Just stay in the boat. Don’t drown. All good.

Bam.

The boat found Mount Ararat, or parts thereabouts.

Now the instructions are different.

Go.

Do Stuff.

Make a Life.

Get Outta the Boat.

*

It’s like at the end of “The Truman Show,” when he takes the boat out, and the waves crash, and it is full on raining,and then it all stops, and he hits land, of a sort. He hits something solid anyway, and gets out, opens the door, and steps through.

“But what does he do now?” asked a friend in the group I saw it with.

“Anything he wants,” I said.

You begin to see a problem.

Because this time we’re a little bit on our own.

Go.

Not entirely: we have guides — human and historical, written and regular.

We have the command: Get out of the boat.

But just as we realize there are so many things we can do … “anything he wants” … we also realize … oh man Oh God there are so many things we can do.

Not all of them good.

And anyway … despite our pretty good early obedience, we’re not always ready to get out of the boat and do any and all things we want. Many of us, I would venture most of us, like the safety of the boat, even if it’s a little cramped sometimes.

Some of us jump right out, splashing about in the waves, getting sand in our hair, finding out we can’t yet … swim.

Either way, we can’t stay there forever. We have to do something.

Go.

*

Take Jonah.

Jonah got out of his boat by getting into one.

God said Go.

Jonah went somewhere else. Went off and did “anything he wants” in the bad way. In a good way, too, in the end, and in that God certainly had things covered. But sometimes we don’t know the full story until it ends.

Obedience for Jonah would have been to go to Nineveh. Don’t get in the boat.

Dissent for Jonah was getting in the boat, heading in the exact opposite direction of the city.

Jonah: boat-rocker of the first order.

He refused the Deity, and ran away.

To mess with God, he got on a boat.

The winds rose and the waves grew.

And, like Noah, he didn’t want to get out of the boat.

But he did man up, and he got out: head first and with help of the crew.

He ended up a boat-rocker of another kind, going to Nineveh and dissenting s’more — only this time he went against not God but the prevailing zeitgeist.

Kinda funny: Jonah’s boat-rocking, bad-tuding, in-God’s-face dissent served him well. Not to mention a good portion of the people of Nineveh. His manner fit the man; his talent fit the task. And probably God knew it would.

*

Never get out of the boat.

In Apocalypse Now, this is the advice given to Martin Sheen’s Captain Benjamin Willard.

But they do — they get out of the boat. (NSFW) And a tiger chases them back into it.

“‘Never get out of the boat,’” says Willard as the boat speeds away, .50-caliber machine gun chattering. “That’s goddamn right.”

Yes.

If all you have is a .50 caliber machine gun.

Never get out of the boat.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

Read More »

And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

Read More »

What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

Read More »

Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

Read More »

Random

All Things Considered

This could go a couple different ways. An image likes could be Veteran’s Day, it’s not, or Memorial Day which, though closer, it’s not. Could be about a song (actually a poem) I found only a few months ago or an automatically somber meditation on mortality that’s begun before you’ve even begun to read …

Read More »

Closer

Norm’s is the kind of restaurant where across the street there is a long car wash, a 12-unit apartment building, a donut shop open most of the hours Norm’s is open, a strip mall with a “Luxury Day Spa” between the cigarette store and the cut-rate auto insurance broker: “Free SR-22 Filings!” the sign says. It’s

Read More »

More Research Necessary

A report from the lab — She’ll talk sometimes, make an endless series of noises with inflections and rhythm and pauses. Or she’ll just scream for as long as she can. — this from my son, the father of the girl in question, and questioning. Hmm, I said, I still do that. But for she,

Read More »

Tesla Girl

Someone the other day called Elon Musk both an “inventor” and “a badass” but he is neither. Let me say flat-out, upfront, and clearly it’s good that Musk — entrepreneur behind the Tesla carmaker, companies involved in solar power and space exploration, and who was previously part of PayPal — is alive. We need people like him

Read More »

Related

Animal Planet

We’re watching Planet of the Apes. No, not the Charlton Heston one — this one. Only it’s supposed to be this one, from last year. So we’re on the middle one, the “first remake” (excluding the 17 sequels to the Charlton Heston one) and it’s by Tim Burton, with all that that entails, from Helena

Read More »

The Professional

  shows up every day stays on the job all day commits to the long haul sets the stakes high, sees they’re real is patient seeks order demystifies acts in the face of fear accepts no excuses plays it as it lays is prepared doesn’t show off masters technique asks for help doesn’t take failure

Read More »

Tesla Girl

Someone the other day called Elon Musk both an “inventor” and “a badass” but he is neither. Let me say flat-out, upfront, and clearly it’s good that Musk — entrepreneur behind the Tesla carmaker, companies involved in solar power and space exploration, and who was previously part of PayPal — is alive. We need people like him

Read More »

Bread

“We’re sorry,” said the man, pointing. “We ain’t much here.” The woman, they guessed his wife by the way she puttered around, doing many small things but nothing really, was shaking her head. The two were indicating the table, which indeed was sparse: bread of some kind, though it looked fresh baked at least, with

Read More »