In Search of Glassy Water or Finding My Place in the Search for Justice

Glassy. That’s the kind of water we wanted to ski on. My friends and I were teenagers and lived on a lake with miles of shoreline. Hundreds of long fingers of water that led to other fingers. We could wait until the weekenders had winched their boats onto trailers and headed back to the city. The choppiness of the water created by the criss-crossing wakes of frenzied part-time boaters would dissipate faster than you might think. The lake was soothing and healing itself just as we would cut a seam straight down its middle.

The best coves were hidden deep into long channels and around a bend, invisible behind thick tree lines that covered the shoreline. The mirror-like surface would come into view. We throttled back, killed the engine, and drifted. I absorbed the quiet. The perfect surface tension resembled solid ice.

On top of the water, the ski made a skittering sound across the white water being churned by the propeller. The wake opened into a V shape on either side. I would lean to the right, cut through the wake, and onto the glassy water. Now this is what I wanted to feel. The outside edge of the ski cut quietly through the H2O molecules that had just managed to regroup themselves after the weekend rush.

I was tethered to a boat, but alone. Everything else seemed to fall away. All that existed in the moment was me and the water. The hum of the engine seemed like distant white noise. I would lose myself in the joy of skating over a lake at 30 miles per hour. It felt like 60 miles per hour. At this speed, the water was as solid as it appeared.  I could trust it to hold me up. And I could push myself and test the limits of the surface tension to hold me as I made deeper and deeper turns back toward the center of the wake.

When I cut back hard, physics ceased to exist. My physical self was lost for a millisecond. I felt weightless.

My full weight returned when I clambered back on the boat with rubber legs. I was exhausted. Beautiful exhaustion. The kind of exhaustion that puts an inerasable smile on your face.

As a grown-up man I find myself in search of glassy waters. The disturbances of adult life are more complex than the weekend boater churning up the smooth surface of the lake.

The choppiness of bigotry, bureaucracy, bias, greed, and entrenched interests do not dissipate at the end of each weekend. These rough waters are stubborn. Even the best Captain would have a difficult time finding perfect water no matter how many coves he explores.

But I am the Captain. I must cut a seam through hate and intolerance. I must make deep cuts in the social order. I must trust in the moral arc of the universe to hold me up so I can make deeper cuts into my own psyche in order to find those moments where my physical self dissolves, leaving only love and glassy water in its wake. I will search for those smooth spaces between injustice and violence until I am smiling and exhausted.