Duality of Humanity | Duality of Water

I drowned someplace off this shore, so I know it well.

Go where the hissing waves slither over sooty boulders, their corners as edged as their flattened faces are smooth. Blustering wind will guide you forward, grit of sand will sift between your toes.

(You might pick up on a high-pitched whine. Ignore it.)

Go until the coarse grains underfoot soften to the quality of clay, until it suctions at your feet most pleasantly. I know the feeling. In a few moments, the tide will rise, but you are safe for now.

You will feel a tug, maybe within or from around you. Place that compulsion in a pocket, we will come back to it later. Focus.

Because here, you will sense the duality of water. Where mist settles heavily over the ocean, where waves roil to meet their match in the churning gales, the cruelty is so obvious. Even from this distance, your human self is conscious that this ocean bears no mercy in its timeless depth.

Tune in (with your eyes, not ears. It is not yet time) to the scene of milk on sheer blue in the center of this body of water. Out there, fog disintegrates into pellets of rain, riddle the frothy mass. The indents they leave are tiny and temporary, swallowed up so quickly. Maybe it’s not so bad, after all.

Now.

Look down. See the clarity of water around your ankles, toes submerged. You inhale and what goes in is the sound you’ve been hearing all along, right? An unbroken, monotonous thing, doused in the gusts whipping around you. Tune in (with your ears, now is the time), and it mellows your heart like it did mine.

Your mind will naturally flit to fables of sea creatures, echo a fear your sea-faring ancestors instilled in you, but you and I together will brush it off. A tune so metallic cannot be from any monster. It is the work of man, we believe.

Are you paying attention?

Your eyes may have been shut until this moment, but tune in (with eyes and ears both). Ground your unstable legs in water that is now shifting around your knees, and you will find yourself, just as I once did, at those boulders.

Tease that little impulse you felt earlier. Just a tease. Then climb.

Climb onto the one resembling a wind-tossed ship, find the footholds chiseled into its jagged hull of a surface.

Mhm.

Isn’t it lovely up here? Master of your own ship, master of your fate, riding out a storm as the master of the sea.

This time when the sound whistles, whistle along.

This time when you feel an inclination, give into your compulsion.

This time when the tempests pound your back, let it guide you as before.

This time when you sway, when you tilt forward and back in the enemy's embrace, let yourself fall.

When the tumultuous waves haul you under, billow through your clothing, riot violently against your chest. When your everything is futile, when at last you understand the benevolence of the water, you will be privy to the most heartrending wail. It will be a harmony struck against the weeping waves, a melody so bitter its chords might wring the skies of their tears for the final time. And you will wonder, as I wondered, where you’ve heard that note before. You will wonder if it’s something of your own, or mine, or those sirens you never believed in. Or maybe the siren and I are one, and you believed in neither.

You cannot see what I see, but if only you could. The turbulence has slackened, and gradually waves coast over the space you occupied, ripple out from the dent you left.

I drowned myself someplace off this shore, so I know it well.

Now you do too.