The sea. Do you have

June 29, 2002

The sea. Do you have to live beside it? Something to make you feel small and powerless seems to be a necessary part of human existence. I have learned that the prairies or mountains can take the place of the ocean in this regard. My body is comprised mostly of water. I am reminded as my liquid center swings gently from fore to aft on the axis of this ship. My first time on the open Atlantic (if the English Channel doesn’t count) courtesy of this ferry to Newfoundland. Up the back end of Cabot’s conquest on a lumbering metal loaf full of everything created in Cabot’s wake. My liquid self will hopefully not assert its position much more than where its at now. The carbon part of me is in the mountains and prairies too. Currently my liquid self is being put in its place.
Soothing first and scary second. A home by the sea has healing powers until the firsts gargantuan squall brings in a threat to property, life and limb. Get in the ocean at the wrong time or the wrong place and the potential catastrophes are incalculable. Subzero temperature, rag doll on rocks, prey to beasts of the deep, exhaustion, rip tides or a scalping at the hands of a drunken power boater. A day on the open prairie can bring all your molecules into pleasant alignment if the sky is big and friendly. In a five minute period it can choose to smote you with any weapon in its arsenal. Golf ball hail, torrential rain, twister, sandstorm, swarm of locusts, giant drifts of sideways snow. Let us not forget the well noted spiritual energy of the dessert. Peyote buttons lead the naked to miracles of survival and hallucinogenic adventure. Magnificent red towers created by erosion, gentle ochre and tan rolling dunes forever. Awe-inspiring. Deadly. Exposure, dehydration, scorpions, snakes, and buzzards to clean your bones to a bleached white. Mountains: avalanche, rockslide, mudslide, large carnivores, falls down a crevass, over a cliff, wiped off the face and into sky by an icey gust. This life threatening potential is part of the attraction.
Beauty on a massive scale is not possible without an element of danger. Sirens call me to the rocks (see the entry on Niagara Falls for the zen potential of natural power). I used to think one had to live by the sea to get one’s dose but I now realize the arrogance of this notion. Massive expanses of anything will do. This country is so good for that. It has massive expanses of just about anything. Even desserts if you count the Alberta badlands and the Okanagan valley. Most people don’t even know that cacti thrive in parts of this nation. Certainly we are priviledged to have plenty of ice, snow, oceans, great lakes, prairies and huge mountains. Our water & carbon innards can be folded, spindled and manipulated readily. I think I have to puke.