The Breeze Magazine of the Lowcountry, JULY 2018

TO BE TRULY FREE
By: Gene Cashman III
26
The epistemology of freedom is on display each
weekend as the line swells waiting for access to the
May River. All kinds of God’s creation converge, bees
returning to the queen mother, refugees fleeing the
banality and vapidness of modern suburban life,
scrambling and desperate for a brief chance to be their
own captain, their own drunken sailor for a day. Class and
worry left on the shore, those without connection left
longing in the humidity, slack jawed and stupefied at the
armada slowly motoring out of reach of the public dock.
Freedom is a shade tree with many
varied branches and roots that drink
deep from time’s fragile water table.
Dreams and tears all spoken with
expectation of a deliverance, from
a burden, a real oppression, a literal
overlord. Freedom, is the conflict
against some specific thing whether it
real or imagined; the embodiment of
struggle. Then, as one might expect,
there is that one branch on the back
of freedom’s tree that represents
the belief that one should be free
to be or do, or say or wear whatever
they darn well please, whenever
they darn well want to, simply
because of birthright. Sometimes
the embodiment of struggle is
to simply accept that freedom
can be as ugly as it is beautiful.
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Each Saturday morning and especially on summer
holidays pick-up truck after pick-up truck carries on a
two-inch ball the idea of adventure and fun. Open water
offers sanctuary and the opportunity to be something
different for a full cycle of the tide. The boat ramp to
the May is a melting pot of new America. Each pilgrim
distinguished by the manner in which they pay visual
homage to their redeemer. One can clearly spot the
different approaches to patronage. Patriotic bling has
become the adornment of freedom and clearly denotes
this May River armada as distinctly American, but