Why is the ocean
Posted under: The thing I love about the ocean is that the longer you look at it, the more secrets it tells you. I spent a lot of time on the weekends
Maroubra whale
on it’s shores, and staring from my balcony just watching it. Colin Thiele (who gave us Gloop the Bunyip) wrote a short story I read many years ago about the ocean having a ledger – as it gives, it also takes away. I like thinking about it that way. Barker also writes a lot about the ocean, it’s a recurring theme of his that there is a dream sea that you visit twice in your life; once the first night you lie with the one you love and the second in the moments before death. He’s named it Quiddity. The absolutely truth and whatness of it all. An amazing word in it’s own right.
Ostensibly, this time of the year, I am staring at the ocean to find a whale. Sometimes there isn’t one there. I do see other things, though. Your eyes adjust, and what was seconds ago a calm blue is revealed to be not so calm after all: there are waves and squalls and creatures moving just below the surface. When I am out on a boat (I have conquered sea sickness using mind over matter. It took me a while, and a few wretched days out, but I can do it now. I just need to watch for the warning signs: everything starts to look as if it’s been bevelled, I need to start giving myself a good talking to and remind myself that it’s all to do with my middle ear), and we are chasing dolphins or pilot whales or fish, I usually end up the spotter, because I can see what the others can’t because they are old salties, and their eyes don’t believe any more the swirl of a marlin sail, a seal chasing the lures.
These days I have yet another reason to love the ocean. It’s begun to represent a connection, between us all. I speak secrets from it’s shores, and let the wind carry them where they will. I do that regularly. And these days, when I’m standing on my balcony I send thoughts and smiles across the ocean, trusting the salt and the wind and the clouds and the spray to deliver it to where it is supposed to go, intact, and multiplied a hundred fold by the elements.
And I guess, that is part the quiddity of all of us.