Born of the land we carry the sea within.
Peeling paint curls on its way to flaking. Above the water line the sun bakes and draws old strokes away. White, blue, red and black for the lettering. The name of this vessel writ boldly for all to see. At the tip of the highest point that meets the coming future. Salt water and sun have their way of loosening everything in time.
Strong, curved walls of wood bend tender years of growth into the shape of a boat. Which floats now, away from the shore. Pushed off the sand with wet feet, strained muscle, love and grief. Trusting that ocean is better than land. For the stories told and the promises made. That the unknown of others is better than known experience. Washed, wished well and set adrift.
More distant with each moment. Rising and falling with each swell. The bow sinking into cresting spray. Allowing the entirety of the world to be taken by unfamiliar currents. A cargo of an adventuring sort. Love, hope and curiosity. From sand to wave. From land to ocean. From self to other. Further and further from the distant coastline. What was once vibrant and full fades away. Smaller and hazy. A long forgetting. Until, at last, the shore is lost and everything is flat, shifting, pointed water.
Then, following the best-try, scribbled, sailing instructions, wet-dry and bleached now, all is staying in the boat. As the last page of well-intentioned paper comes apart. Collapses under its own weight and sincerity, the number one, most earnest instruction, is the last read:
‘Do not fall into the water. It is not safe. Remain on the surface’.
Forever vast in two dimensions. Life as a line where no line exists. Between water and sky. A surface dweller with full contact exposure. An expanse so blue and disorienting. Stay on the surface. It is not safe in the water. The world turns. The black of night saves from the sun and makes the whole horizontal world rushing, intimate selfhood.
In the temporary coolness, the loneliness of the dark, questions emerge. As images, fully bypassing words. The birth of doubt, whether the instructions were true and trustworthy. Longings for depth and knowing the motion of this ocean from the inside.
Heresy hurts and staying at the surface seems safest. It is known. The light, the currents, the spray. The wind and paint and wood. Listen, there is only the surface. Believe, there never was a shore. Reachable. Teachable. Stay away from the beachable. Kept where seen. Away from the abundance of the ocean proper. At its minuscule, uppermost edge. Blown by every wind that passes. Kept from self. Kept impoverished. Easy to attract with a little of what is needed. Far more is taken while surfaced. Convinced the surface is all that the ocean is. Teeming inventions to distract and protract and cause to retract.
So long at sea that the memory of land has sunk. Out of sight. Beyond mind. Forgotten even in myth. So many times the sun and moon have danced across the sky. Forgetting now, complete. Self-abandonment as individuation. Mediation as connection. Life as fuel. Setting fire to the boat. Believing it good. Not feeling the flames. That warm the surface and ignore the deep. Enough to burn but not consume. Even though life at the surface is only consumption.
But still, now. Still and rest. Sleep. Asleep and tucked inside the ribs of this floating world, dawn breaks and eyes flicker open. No sudden rising. Nothing to rise for. Just looking. Blank looking. The grain of the wood. Rusted nails. The bench from where, for so long, water was watched, casts a shadow.
In the lignin-shade beneath the plank, words are scratched into the wood. Peering, closer. Feeling with fingers where the light does not travel. A message. A secret remains. Inscribed on the boat but not of the instructions. Of the boat itself.
‘Depth is birthright. The land holds every ocean. Awaken and enter’.
Words from within. Within the vessel. Heart forged. Bone marrow true. Messages felt not told. Shared not taught. Fresh senses waking and seeing beyond language and the surface and the instructions and the fear. In the first light of the morning. Action now. Body moves. Leaping high, over the wooden edge of the world as it had been. Seeing what is below turn from weathered wood to sparkling water and then, and then, then, arms outstretched. Legs long.
Falling. Falling towards and inwards. Palms meeting, the surface of the world that was comes apart with no effort. Like an invitation never needed but ever-given. Moment by moment the coolness that only water brings floods along the hands, the arms, the head, shoulders, torso, hips and legs before everything is clean, fresh, salt and shimmer. Then liquid silence. The sea within recognises itself without. Being returned Land is never further away than an ocean’s depth.
Returned to the sea we are carried by the land.
