At sea, as the saying goes, two or three times a day you may look upon God’s face. This is why sailors bring their coffee on deck at sunrise, look for birds at midday, and play instruments at sunset. They are waiting for something to reveal itself to them, and their only job is to be on deck to receive it.
As we descended into clear blue, in between the sound of my exhales, I could feel the song of a humpback in my chest. My vision was full of color, movement, and life, and my mind was penetrated by a sound that had originated in another ocean, in another time, in another species. My childhood universe, with flower-picking, tree-climbing, and an animate world, was resurrected in an instant. I felt the opposite of loneliness.
It is no wonder that the sea has profoundly bent the fabric of human consciousness. Underwater or on its surface, our assumptions become slippery; distance, scale, direction, self, “ground,” wash away. The psychogeography of being at sea is one of vastness, apprehension, revelation, liminality, and rebirth. It offers us crystals of time filled with color, scent, sound, movement, and meaning. These moments are enough; they overflow with understanding so that the day in its continuity is backlit by their warmth.
Over and over, I return to a singular thought: if our mind-world is out of balance, what role will the sea play in re-centering us? We must look upon God’s face and then become gods ourselves; we must facilitate our own cultural evolution. Evolution creates endless forms with the ingredients of diversity, challenge, novelty, space, and time. The sea is where we evolve.
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