Sandwich Man

The Adventures of Sandwich Man

Episode 1: The Call of the Wild Sandwich

Sandwich Man had all of the normal fillings of contentment- a good job with prospects of career progression, a nice house with a payable mortgage, a lovely wife who worked in a nice job like him, two lovely children, and some nice friends to have a chat with. When they could the family would go off on holiday together, on a little adventure, or to an art gallery. The family were involved in the local community, doing village fetes, looking after the elderly, and generally doing good deads for other people. He would play sport when he could, with a good buddy of his, and altogether kept himself fit and healthy. 

Something though was missing from Sandwich Man's life- the 'Missing Filling'- as he described it to himself. He felt himself to be two pieces of bread, two men- Sandwich Man 1 and Sandwich Man 2- with nothing in between, inside. Such was this internal schism, or void, at times that he would find himself, in private, as Sandwich Man 1 and 2, talking to each other, himself, pondering what this Missing Filling might be, where it might lie? His, their, conclusion was that only if he found the Missing Filling would Sandwich Man be complete and become one, whole, person again who could return to his lovely life and family without this gnawing sense of doubt, void, within him.

For some months now this general sense of internal searching had become anchored in a vision of an Adventure. He had heard tell, on a documentary channel on his satellite Plasma TV, that in the far away jungles there was an Elephant Bone Yard, at the heart of which one would find a great Elephant Womb. No-one had ever come out alive, but it was believed to contain the Missing Filling. The legend was, according to the program, that only the true seeker of the Missing Filling could come out alive. If one entered out of curiosity, or glory, then there was no way back. Sandwich Man though was increasingly convinced that he must be a true seeker, as he had everything of contentment, and yet still found himself feeling empty.

 

He could not though tell his wife, family or friends about the true purpose of his adventures. Instead he decided to invent an excuse, taking two months off work to do a charity adventure, for which he had collected quite some funds from well wishers off the website 'E-Give'. He would first of all Kayak across the ocean, towards the foreign land, and make his way through the jungle, towards the Elephant Grave Yard, and the Elephant Womb. There he would find the Missing Filling, and return to his normal life with all manner of great stories and photos to share, as well as what he was looking for internally; he would return a whole, singular, Sandwich Man. 

He had prepared fully for the great journey ahead of him. His wife and family were not keen to see him leave, but wanted to see their hero in action and would not stop him. As he paddled off into the distance though, across the bay, on a sunny Summer afternoon, he found the event much more emotional than he had anticipated. He felt for the first time in his life a visceral fear, as he cried, wept, to himself some way out into the bay; a strange sense that he might never see his family again, or rather that he, as he was now, might never see them again. He really was, he felt deeply, on an adventure into the unknown- not just the physical unkown, but the existential unknown. Who he might become along the journey, who he might return as, if he returned at all, he could not tell. But he knew there was no turning back, he had to go searching for the Missing Filling, he could not stay at home as this scizophrenic, empty, Sandwich Man of two slices of bread without a filling.

He paddled for days and nights towards the foreign jungle lands, sleeping in his kayak using a specially made bubble that sealed the paddling hole. He had only the wide ocean, the wind, the occasional seagul or shark for company. A sense of awe, fear, wonder, loneliness or peace would wash through him at different times. Sometimes he would, for long moments, even forget his Missing Filling, feeling somehow complete, as if alone, on the bobbing ocean, the sea, the universe, was the Filling he had been searching for. But then memories of his actual life at home would re-assert themselves, and so the sense of the Missing Filling would also return, spurring him on towards his wished for destination. 

On day four the wind cut up rough, and the beginnings of a storm. Increasingly tired from lack of sleep and being holed up in is kayak he decided to sleep it out and take shelter in his sealed bubble, which would right itself if the kayak tipped over due to the air in it. As he slept the storm picked up, until he could feel his little plastic coffin being thrown and spun up and down 10 meter waves, or more. To any normal man this would have been a form of impossible torture, waiting for the next spin and crash in the dark, but Sandwich Man, focusing only on the Missing Filling, maintained a trance like state for what felt like days of this great storm- being tossed from wave to wave, with the wind howling around him. 

By dawn though, after perhaps two days of this horror, the sea calmed and the wind fell and Sandwich Man emerged from his bubble, and began paddling once more. He was wet, cold, but seemingly unafraid. Or rather the terror in him was now commonplace, somehow merged into the waves, the wind, the passing sharks. He was becoming a Sandwich Man of two pieces of bread bonded together by a thin but powerful glue of elemental survival. A sense though that only maintained itself whilst single mindedly battling towards one's destination, through such terrible danger, alone.

After a couple of days of straight forward paddling he found himself relaxing a bit, as if he now understood- he was now nature itself. After all he had survived what it had thrown at him so far, and he continued his journey- day after day of relentless paddling, catching sleep when he could, until he had no idea whether he'd been alone on the ocean for a week, a month, or more.

Suddenly though a freak wave, coming out of no-where, splashed over him and turned the kayak on its side. Unable to right it from within the cockpit, due to the amount of gear and the bubble on the back, he had to slide out of it and attempt to turn it back over himself. 

Twice he failed, weakened by the treatment of nature over the previous 28 days, his only option, being his last, to haul himself onto his stricken vessel and radio for help, but even in this final gesture of defiance, the faint inaudible connection to the outside world came a response with a telling futility that mankind would be helpless in prizing him from the sublime clutches of nature's unyielding grip. He was too far out, it was too dark, they may as well be looking for an albatross. Furthermore, nature would not wait, not even the few minutes for hypothermia to set in, there would be no warm wave of delusion to keep him from the now totalizing infatuations of his month-long host. Drown in the dark skies above looking up to the heavens? Or below into the womb of our past? His weakness gave him no option. His last message to the outside world, delivered in the soft awakening tones to a sleeping partner, which needed no reply, just to let us know, "I'm going down." 

What now for sandwich man? Is he really to fail before realizing his first adventure? Did a mermaid slip him a ham sandwich as he floated into the deep, giving him untold powers? Or did a whale float up and lift him to shore? For the whale that would be putting its own life in danger, for fear of banking. For the mermaid, they do not exist and thus an impudent ending to a glorious tale, this being worse than saying it was all a dream. Our answer: In the practicality of sandwich man's life vest, we can safely say, this kept him afloat as he drifted to shore.

There, a young jungle boy on his morning walk to tree school, stuffed a ham sandwich from his pack-lunch into sandwich man's gob and pushed his jaw up and down until all the contents were forcibly swallowed. By the time sandwich man awoke from the heat of the equatorial sun, somehow aware of losing track of the days, his awakening mind still paddling or sleeping, haphazardly, his mental compass pointing to Missing Fillings in front of him, the loving warmth of his real life at home behind him, and the horror of his deliverance from death's boney finger pointing the way towards the Elephant Womb; These were the three points, forces, of his existence, which had propelled him into the unknown. An awakening delirium, mirages of land, of the jungle, of the Missing Filling, or the Elephant Womb, would rise and fall away in the distance. Another wave came out of emotion as strong as the last known wave to exit him from his path, it was too much; Jungles and Fillings spinning around him, sea in his nostrils, Sharks fins circling in his mind and perhaps in reality, he had succumbed to the womb of mother nature, the sea. A great sense of delirious rest came over him, as this mind closed around him, enveloping his two, empty, pieces of existential bread.

Now fully awakened from the twisted realities of the cosmic serpent's squirming dialogue, sandwich man found a new sense of relief in everything tangible, the sand, the firmness of the ground beneath him, the familiar sight of footprints, which lead to him, then stopping in a mess in front of him, then walked into a distant and safe nostalgia, in following where someone else has tread. This feeling now set in sharp contrast to the flat unwelcoming abstract expanse, void of human presence, which coldly spoke in riddles to its fool-hardy voyagers. These footprints, a vague clue to his survival were partnered by a sublime feeling of happiness deep within his belly. A feeling he had not felt since the lunch before his departure. This he knew to be the effects of a ham sandwich, how it came there he could not begin to fathom, but what it told him from now on, any continuation in his quest for the filling, must be accompanied by this most humble of resources, if he were ever to survive such terrifying odds again.