No matter how close you are to the ocean, it looks vast. To stand in front of it is to be awed by the sheer size of it. On a day with just a little wind, to have the waves come in and break on the beach, slide towards you, and retreat again, and again, and again is to understand the incredible power forever being expended and built back up again, and again. The sound of the wind and waves sings a song that rises up, and up, and up, and it never stops, never rests, and it never ceases to grab the attention of a writer.
Most objects, manmade or natural, look smaller from above, but the ocean just keeps looking bigger. To see a human being walking along the beach coming towards you is to see an animal whose size means nothing when pitted against the waves. To see a human being from almost two hundred feet above sea level, walking along that same beach, is to realize that you were wrong about how insignificant that person was. Any person, any group of people, anything manmade, looks even smaller, and looks less significant when compared to the ocean when viewed from above. It isn't an optical illusion at all. It's one of the great truths of life. There, walking on the beach is the scale of humanity in total, when compared with the rest of the world.
The ocean was here long before our single celled ancestors first divided and conquered rudimentary life, and the ocean will be here long after we humans discover a way to kill ourselves off forever. The ocean sees us as temporary structures. Nothing we have ever done matters even a little to the ocean, and much the ocean does affects us all in ways that we have forgotten how to consider. We marvel at our concrete and glass sanctuaries, and we smile in awe at the power we see before us, benign and beautiful, but when the ocean rises up to move, it moves where it will, and it leaves little in place.
It speaks muchly as to who we are, and what the ocean is, that we still yearn to ride upon the surface of the ocean, and we yearn to be near her. Humans ride small boards upon her most gentle waves, and then they ride small boats on her surface, and then they ride in much larger boats, yet the ocean may take the largest with as much ease, and as little concern, as the smallest. Nothing made by humans survives forever upon the sea. No matter our love or lore, when the ocean's full fury comes then the brave and the screaming die under the same waves. The child and the mother, the liar and the lover, the poet and the saint, the base human monster and the simple man are covered all in watery blankets to be warmed to the bones by fishes and worms. To love the ocean is to love nothing at all and everything there is to be. To live by her will is to accept Death at any moment, on any day, in any season, and to be happy that she left you alive this day, so far.
The Giver of Life is the ocean, from her, not Mother Earth, do we all owe our souls. It is from her wetness that life slid into existence, not the dryness that we ventured out into once we grew into being. It is the ocean, and only the ocean, that has defined us. Are we not mostly ocean ourselves? Do we not contain more water than air, or earth, or any other substance? Does not the very blood in our veins mirror in its own tiny way the very reflection of her? Do we not hear in the pounding of our hearts the echoes of waves crashing? Does our breath, warm, wet, and filled with our life, not lift itself into song, a faint ghostly cry first heard in the winds of the oceans?
Can you not see this? Can you not hear her breathe? To stand in front of the ocean, with the tame tide coming in to lap at my toes, I hear the wind singing of her, and nothing else. The immense power and beauty of her, the sheer incomparable and incomprehensible magnitude of the ocean overloads the human senses. None of us is equal to the task of writing down the words to her songs.
In this moment of reoccurring revelation, I see myself as a tiny drop of water in the vastness and my tears blur my sight. I am nothing. I am no one. I am less, far less, than a grain of sand on this beach. But my tears are made of the ocean, and within me is everything she is, and everything that will ever be.
Take Care,
Mike
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Comments: 16
That is a wonderful and poetic conclusion in this loving ode to the seas.
It also bothered me on some level that I can't really explain. Maybe it was supposed to do that or maybe it's just my water phobia kicking in.
It's the best thing I've read on Gather in a long time.
While I certainly enjoy the heck out of your witty articles....*this* is what I am always waiting for when I check your name out.
Perfect!
Dar Williams Review The Song
When I went to your town on the wide open shore,
Oh I must confess, I was drawn, I was drawn to the ocean,
I thought it spoke to me, it said, "Look at us,
We're not churches, not schools, not skating ponds, swimming pools,
And we have lost people, haven't we though?"
Oh, that's what the ocean can know of a body,
And that's when I came back to town, this town is a song about you.
You don't know how lucky you are, you don't know how much I adore you,
You are the welcoming back from the ocean.
I went back to the ocean today,
With my books and my papers I went to the rocks by the ocean,
But the weather changed quickly, oh the ocean said,
"What are you trying to find, i dont' care, I'm not kind,
I've bludgeoned your sailors, I've spat out their keepsakes,
Oh it's ashes to ashes, but always the ocean,"
But the ocean can't come to this town, this town is a song about you.
You don't know how lucky you are, you don't know how much I adore you,
You are the welcoming back from the ocean.
And the ones that can know you so well are the ones that can swallow you whole.
I have a good and I have an evil, I thought the ocean, the ocean thought nothing,
You are the welcoming back from the ocean.
I didn't go back today,
I wanted to show you that I was more land than water,
I went to pick flowers. I brought them to you,
Look at me, look at them, with their salt up the stem,
But you frowned when I smiled and I tried to arrange them,
You said, "Let me tell you the song of this town,"
You said, "Everything closes at five. After that, well, you just got the bars,
You don't know how precious you are, walking around with your little shoes dangling,
I am the one who lives with the ocean,
It's where we came from, you know, and sometimes I just want to go back,
After a day, we drink 'til we're drowning, walk to the ocean, wade in with our workboots,
Wade in our workboots, try to finish the job.
You don't know how precious you are, I am the one who lives with the ocean.
You don't know how I am the one. You don't know how I am the one."
She reminds us of just how insignificant humanity is in the grand scheme of things. Watching the tide roll in or out, and listening to the rhythm of the waves is one of the most soothing moments in my life... and one I don't get to do very often!
The Photographers Review
too bad we are killing her bit by bit...