The Ocean Speaks

In honor of my brother Phil who loves to sail and to write, here is an excerpt from an essay he wrote about the sea.

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Despite the ocean’s restless ambiguity, its confusing contrariness, its utter disregard of us, its entirely predictable infidelity to us – No! because of all those qualities - the ocean speaks to us of human life.

Early it is foggy along the bay, and in the coves and sometimes, in mysterious ways, out on the open water. The soft refracted light blinds us to the existence of anything beyond the self,
the blanket of suspended moisture absorbs the sound right out of the air, so that even my ears are fogged over with the quiet.

You sit where you are, or you slip along in hopeful ignorance - a vessel wrapped in a cotton womb –unseen and unseeing in equal measure; adrift, with neither sense nor sensibility; startled equally by the slap of a diving seal, or the peal of a driving ship, uncertain which to marvel, which to fear.

Warmth, like reason, melts the impeding moisture from the air, redirects the light, revealing the boundaries and the options of my passage, focusing the scope and limits of freedom’s range.

A wind luffs my sails, tousles my hair, stirs my spirit. With Donne I am amazed: ‘Who ever made fair ship to sit in harbour?’’ Life is to be lived: the sins are found in doing nothing, or when doing, fearing all is reef and rocky shoals and swirling torrents. I plot against the laws of time and current, tide and wind; accept the right of sea and sky to change their mind; the course, the plan and destination, the trimming and the choices - they are mine.

A playful wind calls me from its compass point, suggests a line of travel across its path, hints that I might reach my object with perhaps some minor tacking along the way, and promises some unexpected byways as I go.

Industry has placed at my hand as finely balanced a device as ever was. Then meet the day with quiet equanimity. Trimming sails and guiding rudder, eye fixed to the horizon, I harness the power of sea and air to my rapturous purpose: man, machine and nature find perfect equilibrium.

Becalmed. The word belies its meaning, deceives the mind. A word perchance invented by the fickle wind as cover for its perfidy. The wind, she teased me, enticed me, gained my confidence, drew me out to reveal my path and ways.

Then, vanishing into itself, betrayed my trust and tries my soul with the frustration of indolence. All is still, the wind propelling me only to idleness. The hardest truth in life, this be calm. Lying still, I am solitary witness to a perfect line of dolphins sweeping past about their business. Be calm.

And then it is the other thing to make you laugh and scream, and rage and weep.

The wind rushes at you across the sea, hurls a concatenation of watery ridges into your bow, whips the waves to spray, flaps your sails, slaps your face, saps your spirit, flays your soul ‘til you cannot tell between sea and air, land and sky, spray and tears, hope and fears.

You struggle to know the horizon and keep your course, your bearings, your mind; you sweat to fix your sails, praying the reef you set is the only one you see; you strain to hear the bell bouys mark where ocean ends and land beckons, to see the line of lights where reef ends and passage is allowed, to know the awful moment when grief ends and luxurious tears afforded.

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Happy Birthday, Phil. Good sailing, sweet breezes and safe harbour!  And thanks for your superb writing.

Photo Sources:
Scenery - Family collection
Dolphines - Creative commons
Sailing in rough seas - Yachtpals.com