My brother had a globe of the world in his room when I was growing up and when he wasn't home I would sneak into his sacred space, knowing he would kick my ass if he ever found out, and I would locate my home near San Francisco then spin the globe, stop it randomly and wish I was there.

Right where it stopped I'd find myself in another world within a world. Mongolia, Russia, Argentina, Java would stop below my pointed finger and more often my finger pointed to the middle of some ocean or sea. I understood the globe was covered mostly with water but what fascinated me was what was it like in the middle of the ocean. And it fascinates me today and probably will till I die.

I've never been more than a 125 miles offshore, out of sight of land. So, I have a pretty good idea of what it literally looks like, but the thought of being thousands of miles from any point of land feels like freedom. Not the comfortable, familiar freedom that one feels when leaving work or going to recess at school, but the insecure uncertain scary freedom that maybe a child feels when learning to swim when they push off the wall into the deep end for the first time. That's a freedom most of us forget about. The "fuck it, here I go" freedom. 

I will cross an ocean to get to the other side because I want to grow up.

I don't want to play in the shallow end anymore.

I want to be a grown up without a job, responsibilities or dependents.

A selfish man on a quest to find himself in the middle of the ocean like some foolish aquatic astronaut looking into the vast open space, using celestial bodies to guide him away and toward a shore faraway. 

I will arrive tired and weary.

I will sleep and dream in this foreign place. I will be an alien of a different skin color.

I will speak another language and they will ask where I'm from and I will point to the sea. 

They will understand.