My watch died and knowing my dog’s hair trigger reaction to light and and motion in the early mornings, I sat motionless wondering what time it was for a few minutes. I was quietly recollecting my dreams, something with my work friends, fork lifts and pallets of sod, when the errant paw hit me in the head. It was time to get up apparently. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and one word entered my brain. “Flotsam.”

You’d think that naturally I’d have said “jetsam”, the obvious companion to the clunky nautically themed word, but it took a full 15 minutes to consider them together. This morning, there was only flotsam and no obvious sailing stories to accompany. No dreams or anything. Just a word. Stuck right in the front of my brain for no reasons.

I’m not wired to look at the world for “signs”, from God, karma, aliens or otherwise. I don’t say that with disrespect, I just think that things “are”. The last 4 of my teenage years were spent in a home of recovery and there were a lot of “everything happens for a reason” statements, mostly by my dad. I think I grasped onto this notion then but that it slowly faded over the years. We all want to believe in something. I tried that for a while. To no avail. 

What I’m saying is that this morning the word “flotsam” popped into my brain and I wondered to myself some minutes later if I were super spiritual, would I have sat and analyzed why. Was it a sign?  What does it mean? (It means: the wreckage of a ship or its cargo found floating on or washed up by the sea. Or, people or things that have been rejected and are regarded as worthless). Maybe it’s a sign after all. 

Clearly I didn’t just let it go. I sat down and let the thoughts on it flow, becoming the actual jetsam to the original thought. Small sticks, fish bones, and smelly beach stuff that washes up on the shore. One triggered the other and here we are, discussing signs from the other world in the form of nautical terms and the  maritime laws of salvage. 

It turns out no one owns the actual flotsam and jetsam that washes up on the beach. The googles told me that this morning. As I reminded myself of the actual definitions of the words, a second link brought me to the world of Wikipedia and I spent a few minutes reading about derelict, lagan, and my favorite, the law of salvage. You’ll have to go check that out yourself as I’ve veered off course enough already for a Sunday morning.  I think I’ll start a new band called Law of Salvage. It has a nice ring to it. 

Flotsam may be nothing more than the debris that washes up on the beach or it may be the discarded parts of ourselves we let slough away. We can decide that. This morning it’s good to just consider them. To look at the dried bits of ourselves and the world and wonder how they got here. Where did they wash up from?  What’s attached to them?  

This is some crazy Jack Handy shit this morning but it’s simple and it’s soothing, and I couldn’t let it go. 

#hugsandhi5s