The Sea, the Sea, Forever Restarting
It is a roughly six-centimeter-diameter half sphere. And it is crowded.
It is jammed with images and audio sent from outside 24/7 nonstop. It contemplates what is contemplating. It worries about the future and cherishes the past. And it never stops imagining. The imagination suffers severely from one shortcoming—misimagination. Imagination—the faculty that allows us to see the future inherits the shortcomings of memory and perception, which allow us to see the past and present, respectively. The same flaw that causes us to misremember the past and misperceive the present is responsible for our misimagination of the future.
Even so terribly wrong, it will not stop. It wants to make predictions and subsequently wants to control it. Why? It finds it gratifying to exercise control—not just for the futures it buys them, but for the exercise itself. Being effective—changing things, influencing things, making things happen—is one of the fundamental needs with which human brains seem to be naturally endowed, and much of our behavior from infancy onward is simply an expression of this penchant for control.
Whatever it is exercising on, wherever it is shedding sweat, it keeps itself busy.
I wasn’t born in a city close to the sea. Even though I had seen it at a very early age, my primary memories and feelings about the sea resulted from a few books. Especially the two workpieces from Yukio Mishima. The Sound of Waves (潮騷) and The Decay of the Angel (天人五衰) from The Sea of Fertility (豐饒の海).
Whatever topo Mishima tried to attach to the sea, it remains a vague, indistinguishable feeling in my mind. Now, I am standing next to it, and my brain is full of voices screaming or murmuring.
I remember the advice from Ethan Kross in Chatter.
When you’re in the presence of something vast and indescribable, it’s hard to maintain the view that you—and the voice in your head—are the center of the world. This changes the synaptic flow of your thoughts in similar ways as other distancing techniques we’ve examined. In the case of awe, however, you don’t have to focus your mind on a visual exercise or on reframing an upsetting experience.… When you feel smaller in the midst of awe-inspiring sights—a phenomenon described as a “shrinking of the self”—so do your problems.
It was brief. Sea in front of me. I star at the sea.
Did you feel it? Did you feel the stretch so vast and restless? A shimmering expanse of liquid silver beneath the pale touch of the sun. The breeze dances over the waves, cool and salt-laden, carrying with it the faint cries of gulls and the scent of distant shores. I bet you saw them, did you feel anything?
Did you learn anything? Did you learn how to embrace The eternity of rising and falling tides, the existence of millions and millions of drops of water?
Did you feel anything? Did you abandon the contemplations, day-to-day worries, minor ambitions, and anxieties? Did you drop your plans and expectations for others and for yourself?
No. Emptiness. A bit too much void.
They echo the only voice. It is from me. I cannot perceive anything when you are still talking.
So I walked back home. A word I used to refer to where I can have a piece of rest. Now it is only the place to put down my heavy body, which is growing heavier each day.