As alien as it seemed, it was only the remains  of a simple light bulb. A large lamp at that,  certainly not the normal lamp one might use in the electrical socket of an ordinary house.  No this was a lamp of uncommon  proportions. Something special, an object with a secret purpose to match this unique size. I puzzled over it for more than a time, for as well as the mysterious source, the full unbroken glass form could only be imagined. The missing pieces lay nowhere near here for me to complete the jigsaw , and imagination was all I had. Where had this come from? How had it got  here? The ocean was the only logical answer, I knew that, but this was too naive and still left too many other questions from the real answers I searched for. Such a large lamp  washed up here on the isolated shores of an isolated island in an insolated sea. It seemed  hard to envision a scenario that could land this trash upon these shores, but here it was, defiant and bold upon the rocks with this bright sparkle among the black.

The magical enclosed glass rounded vessel had been floating buoyant on this ocean for  more than a year. Thrown on the storms,  tossed on the great waves, blown with the frantic winds, ever on the move as a restless  being. It was a huge continuance of ocean this  fragile vessel had the freedom of. It was an ocean that this vessel could cut a wide path through, when all it needed was the  smallest of gaps. Any course through this ocean offered a passage way, with few  obstructions of any kind to end its wild  dance and it seemed that it could sail forever, unheeded and free. With an arrogance that defied its own fragility, it had sailed as a living entity in the sucking spitting wash with more than a fair chance of surviving a complete circular polar course right around these cold waters uninterrupted.

It continued in a vibrant frolic, bouncing on  the crests, diving in the troughs, buried by the tumbling wash of white water, but always surfacing to dance onward again and again  with the boldness of a vessel exploring the  world for the first time. A capsule intact as a self in an infinite broiling sea. An unhatched  glass egg with no embryo, no real purpose. As open an expanse as that ocean was, it  wasn't interminable, and it was inevitable that some obstruction would loom through the
wind swept spray that lifted from the surface of this liquid ocean to affront the  passage of this daring vessel made of glass. And here now it was. Dark grey profiles 
reaching from the ocean ahead of these  driving winds and heaving swells that powered the tiny vessel full ahead.

With no steerage there was no escape. Closer the ethereal glass vessel bobbed and jostled  on the relentlessly pouring swells toward the hard black shape of land. It was alive, only as long as it remained in the water and could avoid the brutal hardness of land, for the ocean was like an embryonic fluid that held it in suspension. Ahead, there were immense waves breaking on the shore, not  like the tumbling tops of the largest open ocean weaves it had survived many times before. Here the swells gathered themselves and  rose to their full height. Here, in anger, they  made a final desperate vigorous death throw at the coast line, to bite at the stone, to carve  up the land. Here, in a matter of moments  they unleashed the puissance of all their  energy. Here they opened all their strength stored from the undulative journey around the polar ocean. These were crashing waves, with all the wrath of their last dance as they crashed headlong against the coast line in a sudden explosion of sound and spray. They  stood full, upright with a reflexive arch and curve of their bodies with a sudden thrust,  a last orgasmic frenzy before peeling over
in a thundering turmoil of white water as they charge ahead. An ultimate upward  twist of tautness as they curved up, over  and down with thunder.

But with luck, it bounced off the first rock ricocheting back to the embracement of the churning turbulence of the crashing waves  that dragged the vessel bounding bouncing on the shattered surface onward.   By sheer chance, it dodged the black teeth  one after the other, these teeth that could  shatter it in a second and in a final throw from the waves, it was flung far up the black beach of boulders on the final lapp of wave. But at the last reach of the wanning  waters, there was no escape and in a  crack and smash of glass it broke into pieces against the seaboard of eroded rocks. Over the following years, it lay on that beach, and every time the deluge of swells drove up the beach higher and higher, it was  carried with it, until it sat far up the beach  only as the corroded end of a large lamp gripping the few remaining fragments of glass that sat as sharp teeth amid the rocks. This egg of glass, this fragile vessel was shattered, it could float no more.

Our ships are used always and abuse is rife, they appear as the disintegrating rust buckets of the seas and ours is no exception, but what choice do we have? They are only factories to catch squid and make money for their owners, and we are machines too.  We are only here to catch these squid. The ships are covered in rows of bright lamps, and the engines insistently thump through the night to power the countless filaments.  Each lamp is large, and when we change  the dead blown lamps, we will often keep them for souvenirs for our friends and family back in the home land. They are even quite sort after by some people. But there are so  many that burn out during our time at sea, that we cant keep them all and they end up in the rubbish.

There is so much garbage too, from a crew living sat sea, it builds and builds in a pile until it begins to rot and stink. Until with some reluctance, under the veil of dusk, it is cast aside, over, down, down to the sea below.  Down to the waiting water, the boundless sea that can swallow all that is thrown upon it.  This refuse floats, it sinks, it remains a part of the ocean for quite some time. Davie  Jones's Locker may claim it for good, or it may survive in the sea for a time unknown.

There is packing, plastic wrappers cardboard, tin cans, plastic detergent containers,  glass bottles, food scraps, some paper,  string, a broken radio, plastic bags, fish bones, an old worn out paint brush, an old shoe, a steel bracket and some bolts, cigarette  butts broken crockery, a ripped tee shirt,  some vegetable matter, some apple cores,  rags soaked in turps, a match box, some clipped finger nails, a used pen,  potato peelings, a sports magazine, peanut husks, a glass jar- a corked wine bottle, cardboard box, an  old file, a squashed film packet and lastly  our large lamps that bob like buoys on  the surface as they float away.

Slowly, with the action of the sea it disperses. Some sinks immediately to the bottom; some becomes air born and is blown away, skipping across the surface in a dance with the wind.  Some is eaten by the birds of the sea that  follow the ship day and night for the  chance that this disposal will occur. Often  the crew would dream and watch them  reel in spinning dives for any scrap they could. They could spend hours on the deck as these birds relentlessly followed  across the towering swells. But soon we  have sailed onward and it is all gone.