Swallowed by the Sea

With white sand and smooth stones underfoot the grey sky clouded my vision. We had Crystal Crescent beach stretched out before us and boxes of fish and chips for the journey. A good feeling. We crossed a wooden bridge, a razor that split the world in four. Water below, clouds above. Ocean and bush on either side. My friends and I were looking for a place sheltered from the wind and the people to eat les champignons magiques and digest the world for what it is. I opened up the toxic fungi with my teeth and gazed in wonder: it was bright blue inside.



I fell down to look at the sand and found a single ant on its own journey. The analogy- Ponder the Ant. No direction, no path but the one your feet create. The need to go further, to never stop, to claw and climb your way through the land until you come to the water's edge. You will end your journey in the sea. Your life will end, in the swirling crash when the waves come together and the moments stop. I stared at this ant, talking to it, watching its path for a sudden lifetime. I should have read a Japanese death poem: "My wake leaves little; but as ripples reach the sea, they become great waves." As it crossed the desert of sand I wondered if it had a destination, a purpose. It seemed to be wobbling towards the water. We dragged our feet to make walls of sand to see if this would change its decision. Not at all. It kept going, dragging something the whole way. My friends were moving on. To bigger and better things no doubt. It was both awful and wonderful to watch this creature was flirting with a certain death. The waves looked big to me, but to Ponder it must have been the noise of life flooding in and out. I realised I had to leave, and start my own journey. I hoped that Ponder would drown a painless death and float into a fishy's lips who would be devoured by a shark that would swim to the Bahamas and Ponder would finally come to rest washed out on a warm beach, stung by the sun in a rotting carcass of bones and sand.

We were covering less distance than the ant. Maybe thirty steps in thirty minutes. We were stopped by a red stream- the kool-aid river. Someone had the wise idea to ditch their shoes, and then they all came off. I hurled a couple pairs back towards our camp and the colour flew my eyes through the sky. I could throw shoes all day long. But this little river was a sight to behold. It painted your feet copper when you stepped inside. I admired its shape as it wrapped around the stones and wandered through the grass, with squishy mud on the ends where it swerved and split in two on the ridge. It formed a little pool there and we skipped over the ledge. Beneath this ledge the kool-aid emptied into the sea. There was enough colour and substance and beauty in there to paint the world over again and again. Were they the streaks of pollution or chance? I did not care. It was a stream of foamy goodness and I was sad to leave it.

Stef and I returned to the camp to get juice packs and shoes. There was a path that cut through the bush to lead us home to the camp, and back to the others. But this wasn't just bush. This was a huge sprawling field of thorns and flowers and wild vines, all of them fighting for space. We made it back safe. But the effects of the toxins were coming on strong. I stopped and stared at the sea. I was so happy to look at the world. I remember thinking we should all spend more time observing. Seeing all that can be seen, the patterns and mysteries. I had to go back to the boulders and tell the others that people are ridiculous for not seeing the world as it is, as it should be, waking and breathing and dying all at once. Stef and I ventured off the path to make up time, and we paid dearly. The thorny jungle invited us in, clawed at our skin, and nearly took us down into the ground where the sun don't shine.

The boulders.
Scampering along the stones. Hopping and skipping off them, not waiting for a place to stop, only to go faster and further and on and on. Your feet will find the right places. You wobble and bobble and stumble forward. You stop when you forget to catch your breath. You stop and think of the past. The red river cutting through the rocks was another lifetime. You will never be here again, but it will always be in you. Memories like barnacles, some stick more than others.
I know I have to make it to the hump of stone in the distance, jutting out like the belly of a giant. Is it really there? You don't know until you arrive. You close your eyes at night and see the waves explode in your sockets, you hear the crashing surf. You close your eyes, hands pressed up against your face, and the waves explode into patterns and fireworks without noise.
You remember you were a child, lying on the sand and running your fingers through the million grains and laughing and laughing because there's so much, it's too much. It starts to hurt in your belly. Not pain, but a twisted empty feeling. A hunger you can't satisfy.

I climbed the giant's belly. It was a massive ridge jutting out into the ocean. I peered inside one of the crevices on the way up. A thousand little bugs trembled in the air when my shadow covered their home. I climbed higher, to the very edge, and I sat down. I watched the infinite waves rising cresting splitting.. and then battering up against the wall of stone. They seemed to grow larger and larger. I thought it strange that the water was so shook up and upset. I felt something tug me towards the ocean. I leaned closer. There was a language in the crash of waves. There were voices and whispers and screams. The waves were like people, throwing themselves against one another and shaking with terror. The water would never feel time or decay. I was jealous and scared. I felt like shrivelling up into my insignificant bundle of flesh. Just blood and bones. Those waves would communicate and exist with more certainty than I ever will. But somehow, all the water, all the ocean, everything slowed to an instant here and now at the edge of the world. The savage sea swallowed into the giant's belly of rocks and crevices and shadows. Something happened. I waited until I could feel my soul leaving my body behind, and I tumbled down into the thundering percussion. I felt the silence of death wrapped up against me. I almost died in the waves, but it was beautiful.

The cold grey curtain is tucking in the sky to sleep. You see the monuments to human existence in the tangled blurry distance. Skinny communication towers with red pulsing tips. We drive our nails into the earth to make the necessary connections. They all glowed red together, breathing in and out. Ugly metal totem poles in the sky shared their own harmony.

The tide had come up past the old familiar stones. We had to get back to camp! Stef took off like a guerilla into the distance, flying through a messy path. He rescued the keys to the jeep and the campsite. I dashed faster and faster, skipping ahead of my own feet, and I was flying off the stones. I was a grasshopper, a stonehopper! I soared over crevices and gulleys. I danced. But there was too much freedom. I gambled on a triple one-step and got my foot lodged in a crack hidden by some shrubs. It was less than a second, but enough to twist it, and I felt the reassuring surge of pain shoot through me like electricity. Keep going. Further, further, the darkness is swimming closer.

I lost my other companions, Sean and Jocelyn. They were shoeless joes swallowed by the darkness, and I never wanted to look back. I would return for them after finding Stef, who had vanished. I found his bridge mixture candy scattered, the half-eaten remants resting on some bush. A sign? This way, he must have said. As I crossed the familiar markers, the terrain became less rocky, more forgiving. I waited for a second in the thick murky air. I watched the lighthouse make its pass, lighting a path in the shroud of clouds, alone and deserted. We looked back and forth at each other. I tried to meet the light with my eyes when it came back around. Looking back, my two children had all but disappeared into the night. I could no longer make out their outlines. They became shining ghosts, swinging their bodies over the stones. Up and over, up and over. I slowed down, but knew I wasn't home until we passed the kool-aid river. In a small field of shining stones, I stopped. I could see something moving up ahead. I yelled his name. He shouted back a nonsense. Crashing the silence, two dark furry little animals scurried off into the bush. I turned and shouted something to the ghosts- something in their language, I hoped. They shouted back.