We look at
the sea the way we are.
Ask a man
to describe sea in three words. Desire, escape, phantasy. This is what he won’t
tell you.
Looking at
the sea the way we feel is a human condition. It is an imagination. True
imaginations that are too good to come true. Imagination that relates physical
with the metaphysical. Deep and wide inner void to the extremes of a raging
sea. Such incongruous juxtapositions?
What do you
see when you see from a distance? What do you see when you see the sea from a
distance? What do you think of that sky, of deep dispersing blue, of that visible horizon, of an
accelerating tide, flows and ebbs, with all its howls and noises, like a
calling? How do you think it would go, first step on ochre painted sand,
laminar heat waves, piercing skin with knifelike pains, odd salty air, the mass and gravity that leaves craters behind, that sprinkles tiny grits away, soft cold touches on the back
of your feet, and the imprints you make and you leave, that a tide will
eventually wash away? What do you think the endlessness would be like?
Do we ever
fail to see anything of this magnitude as essentially a masculine territory? Bigger, taller, stronger. Water, water, everywhere. Its profoundest stories we heard, its magnificent imaginations we shared and its heroic mythicisations we revered.
Isn’t it, or at least how men see it, everything contrary of a woman, or again
as men see it? She, caring, soft and gentle vs It, adventure, wild and extreme. Her pragmatism vs its idealism. Patience vs
Defiance. Peace vs War. Risks and return. Risk for its own sake. If only men were
as vocal or more, as articulate or more, as empathizing or more. We keep things to ourselves, too much, and don't talk about what we don;t know. As Ishmael puts in Melville’s Moby-Dick, ‘If
they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, sometime or other, cherish
very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.’
And you see
people, a lot of people, having a good time, clearly. As they like to say,
soaking sun and having fun. The bare skin under a scorching sun is what a poet
would call the ‘velvety recherché’. Grand opulence revealed. This pleasantness
to eye and the ability to stimulate any healthy human mind is unparalleled.
Here is the exotic. Here there are no mysteries, no stories, and no histories. No
one is interested. Here every one is to lose themselves. Which they start with
clothes, their very first identity. It is no mystery that an individual is not such
a mystery without clothes. Everyone looks same, everyone looks to never have
lived any stories, and everyone looks to have lost. Isn't it so very
interesting how (semi) nudity never gives away your story! Do we cover ourselves
with clothes because we want to be read?
You check
in at the beach and stare at the water. You take a dive, treat yourself with the
salinity, and cover up in sand. You look around for faces. Girls, not yet
nubile, are probably the most evident jolliness with their too apparent
excitement, just as they would have been at their first ball, draped in a
demure white dress, high with great ardour, anxious, unrestrained jubilation.
Pretty young faces, chaperoned by her beloved, hand in hand, a threat to human
civilization, daring him to let her go, who seemed like poised with determination
to go start a world war the moment the beloved dared to let her go, which, perhaps aptly, DFW
writes as ‘the vital capacity for creating problems where none exist.’ You see
them glowing in confidence at the realization of how easy it is to make men to
like them. And middle aged couples, quiet, distant, perching down, lulled,
aware of their own personified limits of togetherness, with nothing to say, or
perhaps not wanting to have anything to say, she not wanting to say anything to
ruin the mood and he not wanting to have anything to say that might come after
him later (which most certainly would). Such is our social contract. Such is
the price we pay for social order, from “can’t say a word” when you first meet,
to” won’t say a word” when you’re eventually together. Perhaps government
should make arrangements to make it mandatory to read Miranda rights to men tying knots.
Pro bono. At least the shock would be milder. Duck, Cover and Hold. And
the older couples, bearing with their protruded flabs, not knowing what the
hell they were doing there, or not caring, wondering where all their years went
by, patiently waiting for some part yet to come, and perhaps pitying the young
ones how they too would end like that, and again not caring any of this.
How many
times have we reasoned ourselves with this question of, how shall we put it,
the female conundrum? The female inevitability, and authority. The very idea of
submission to a female, apart from the ultimate inevitable regret regardless of
whom or how, is an implied agreement to play by her rules. Not the ordinary meekness, but outright submission. Fifty plus one rule. She will have the say. Now men need that,
to wish maybe they didn't need that and only to realize they would have needed that anyway. He might have been haunted, but he is still a man.
What makes
such committed men leave their women for another woman? What makes them think
she is any different? Especially when he is not. Because when you spend a long
time with someone, then everyone is someone. Someone is everyone. They all have
same hopes, same fear, same promises. Well, more or less. But men being men,
such unhappy bunch of hedonist shenanigans, always need to fantasize an escape.
Escape from the women around them, escape from the promises they made, escape
from the game they played. To board an unknown ship, to sail and never return.
Oh sea,
thou art the adventure we seek, the escape we yearn, the depth we want to
fathom, the dope we need, the breakaway from what we don’t need, the payoff for
what we started and don’t want to own.
Desire; n. The
feeling that accompanies an unsatisfied state
Escape; n. An
inclination to retreat from unpleasant realities through diversion or fantasy
Phantasy;
n. Something that many people believe but is false
If only we
could go back to the point when we had to make a choice. Everything is possible
as long as you don’t choose. And perhaps this is the greatest disorientation
that bothers male human psyche: I could have done it the other way. Travelling
back to the decision tree of life, never leaving anything to chance, to be in
control. Isn't it why the female
pragmatism always triumphs over male idealism? That there is no turning back. We
will always be inferior to this great feminine wisdom, not because we don’t
know, but because we refuse to know.
Or as
Germans say it, Schifffahrt. A journey on a ship, which looks so wrong,
but isn't.
