A few weeks back, an email pinged into my inbox.
We’re looking for short, flash pieces for our journal, it said. For people with a connection to the ocean, who might want to write about sea level rise and climate change.
The turnaround time was only a couple of days.
I chewed on my pencil for a while. It’s not a topic I’ve written on before.
How to capture the essence of someone’s relationship to the sea and the changes it’s going through in only a couple of hundred words?
The beautiful question I set out to answer for myself that week.
Here is the answer for you now.
*****
Spooning, definition; lying one behind the other, bodies folded in. Spooning for ten minutes a day increases oxytocin, lowers cortisol, reduces stress and develops intimacy.
Source: Google
I lie down on the sand and spoon the sea.
Just Sunday ago, I looked up at the sky, face to the hot, strong wind and said “Stop”. I squinted eyes, held up both hands, tried to muster clouds, rearrange the sky.
The wind didn’t listen, knew my instructions were all wrong. For a non-believer, you’ve prayed a lot of times, it seemed to say.
Wind whipped, I go back in. The powers out. I send a message to a friend:
I hope climate change comes with electricity.
Today I read:
Pacific Ocean (Te Moana Nui a Kiwa), 165.2 million km2
An ocean so large that all the land on earth will fit in it
Roll up, roll up. The Greatest Show On Earth.
I don’t remember much. I was three, maybe four. The doctors bang my back, hard with their palms. Spit it out, they’d tell me. Better out than in.
It took me a long time to learn to spell the word. Pneumonia. The first letter silent. Many dangerous things begin with silence, I have learned since.
I watch the water rising. There’s a patch of weeds it never used to cover. Now with every tide in, tide out the green of my tidal estuary disappears.
I spoon and watch, watch and spoon. The water over weeds feels like weight. Heavy lungs, heavy land, the weight of water soaked.
I bang my palm hard on the sand.
Spit it out, I say. I know it hurts. Better out than in.
