"I cannot recall the time before rising.  When I rose, I knew for the first time.   I knew forces under me, over me, and inside me, part of a great mass pushing and heaved up and out of the sea. Nothing remains the same after such upheaval.  Whereas before I knew only the pressure and protection of the depths, now I am beset by winds, rains, and the insistent warming of the sun. And the tides.  The tides!  A pulling and a pushing.  A yearning and a rejection.   Hour after hour, centuries of pressure, millennia  of forces from out and from within. How could I stay?  How could I resist?  To be rended by fault and by fissure and then pulled.   To be my own mass.  To finally feel the tides and the kiss of the sea all around me. And here I am.  An island all my own.  Subject to the same forces that birthed me.   The same pressures that made me break away.  Can you see how I move?  How I rise and how I sink?   Lashed and assaulted by everything.  Held by nothing." - Scott Godard -