She of the sea: where the salty and the sacred meet
This year I discovered this beautiful book ‘She of the Sea’. An exploration of the call of the sea and our connection to it, it offers a deep dive into pretty much every aspect of the human relationship with the sea. Not only is it a collection of stunning prose, it’s a call to action. It’s not a book you read, it’s a book you do.
So join me as I move through the book, answering the philosophical, spiritual and metaphorical questions it poses.
And I encourage you to answer them too.
inner sea
What does it feel like to be on the surface… ? Underwater?
My first instinct is to say that I need to be underwater not on it.
On the surface, the breeze is an assault on my skin and I feel untethered, like I might just blow away.
The surface is unstable: here the waves are choppy, unpredictable, too responsive to the winds, volatile, and everything is fast and fleeting.
It’s unknown territory. Even though part of me is submerged, it’s impossible to know just how deep the water is, what’s beneath. It’s a tease, a temptation, that subtly tries to grab my attention: a slight movement in the water, seaweed sliding by, the graze of a rock or shell. Whatever it is, I cannot see, at least not completely. Instead, I get glimpses, shadows and distortions.
Being on the surface is to be suspended between two worlds (maybe more). My body is solid, yet the surface of water is not. I cannot stand on the surface of water unaided, though I long too.
Underwater, everything changes. Sounds shift and soften, my skin is protected from the breeze, my body becomes more fluid, more open and the oceanscape becomes clearer and closer. I feel held.
Under the surface, I have access to another world, another way of being, another way of experiencing. My inner sea and the outer sea can merge together and become one. I become water, I become myself, I see myself more clearly. I feel my body in a way that I cannot on dry land or half submerged.
And yet, the deeper I go, the darker it gets. Colours fade, it gets cooler than is comfortable and I run out of breath. We need night but we also need light, and we need to breathe.
Underwater, I look down and become closed off. The head angled down creates this closing of the body and of the mind. To look up, I must tilt backwards, and just as with looking down from the surface, I cannot see beyond glimpses, shadows and distortions.
Underwater I’m alone, with my body as my only means.
On the surface I have more options, more conversations, more modes of getting around.
It turns out then, that I’m not a fish, as suspected. I’m a marine mammal who needs water and air.
Underwater I can escape the breeze but I can’t ride the crest of a wave.