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51 This Fog I’m lost in fog. Not metaphorically. Not in the middle of life’s journey. But midway between green can “8” and Hadley Harbor, which should be beyond that colorless all-color that might as well be the edge of the earth. I cling to the one gray-black rocky finger of land included in the mortal circle I can see. Depth should be four feet or better to the west of that so I’ll drop anchor as soon as I get there, and wait forever, not sailing and motoring against a current fast enough to make green can “8” look like the smokestack of a drowned steamer going full speed ahead even as it’s sinking. Oh God, I think, though I do not think I believe in petitionary prayer. The sea is bigger than I am, and I always do something to reawaken a sense of contingency. What can I say? My voice to the living would sound pathetic and posthumous as the cockpit voice recorder recovered from crashes, or the too-human postures of the charcoal-colored Mt. Vesuvius victims reaching for help, still, after two thousand years. So, by the compass, I’m going to have to save myself, believe in my belief that’s Timmy Point, no parent or instructor to nod a calm confirmation, lower an anchor, and hope the one rock I can see, shaped like an anvil, isn’t taken from me too by this fog. This fog which, if I live, will soon be metaphor. ...

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