"I know now that there is no one thing that is true - it is all true."

It has been a while since I fell asleep to the sound of waves breaking. I have done it many times but I don't remember it well. The last time in bright recall was in Vietnam. Before that was on the island of Malapascua in the Philippines. The Visayan Sea there rocked me to sleep many nights. I spent a few weeks there and learned to drink hard, and watch the stars. There were no tourists, really, because it was an 'undiscovered' island for tourists and also the Abu Sayyaff crisis was is full swing. I watched Philippine Navy boats park there and got drink drunk with them, night after night. We went to some small-town disco and I don't remember the rest. But I always arrived safe and sound around my hut. Several times I slept on the beach, unable to find my place or just too damn drunk.
Those mornings were hard as the sun shone fully and the waves slammed into me and the children tried to sell me plastic bottles filled with sea shells. But I remember the thunder from the waves the best.
These nights, now, I fall asleep to that sound of waves breaking. My new apartment is right next to the ocean and I spend at least an hour every day looking out the window and feeling grateful.
I can look up and into the mountains or to my left, and far out to sea. Waves.
I quit my job to ride a wave, not even a real wave, but a percieved momentum. I wanted time to pursue what I love.
I am still doing construction on the side; I love it and could never give it up entirely. Now I am just doing private renovations, etc.
Tomorrow morning I have to wipe the vodka-sleep from my eyes and finish with a basement suite. It looks nothing like a place one could live now, but it is taking shape; and that's the part I love the best.
I finished insulating the place today, and I was thinking of the future tenants and how they would never know, nor even think of the time I spent carefully making sure that they would be warm. When I was looking at the pipes that would soon be the shower and toilet I thought of a woman in her early twenties, her first rental, first place on her own. I thought of her in the shower that I was installing. If only she knew, but maybe she did already. Do women think of the nubile construction workers who installed their showers whilst they shower? They should. We think of them.