Beneath the surface, I am swaddled in light and colour and the beat of my quiet heart. Kelp ribbons back and forth with each heave of the water, and the anemones’ arms ribbon too, and so do the rays of the sun - they ribbon over the sea floor, the seaweed, the rocks; they ribbon through the water and dapple across my arms.
Swimming above the kelp fields, I see that the fronds are beaded with snails. All the sunset colours of their shells shine up to me. White, yellow, orange, plain and striped. Bright little stars in a galaxy of green.
I let my body go limp; a stomach-down, snorkelling starfish. My limbs sway with the kelp, my breath sways with the water, my mind moves right out of itself.
When I lift my face above the surface, I see that the ocean has done what the ocean will do; she has taken me her way, she has brought my body along on her currents as if I belong to her, as if my body is hers for the taking.
Well, we are both made of stardust, and her movement is a holy sort of moon-magic, so perhaps I will allow myself to belong to her, just for now.
I put my face back to the water, return to the sway of body and kelp.
Time passes. Or it doesn’t. It is impossible to say. But when I next look up, a seal – just a few metres away – is watching me. Her planetary eyes could swallow me whole. I raise my head a little, so that I can see her properly above the swell. In response, she raises her head up, too. We must be a peculiar sight - two round little heads buoyed on stretched-out necks, inspecting one another.
I think: perhaps she is my oceanic mirror, my saltwater reflection. And then I think: I should be so lucky. She is all grace. She dances through water as if it is an extension of self. She sleeps within fingers of kelp. She could outwit an orca. I, on the other hand, am helpless here. I am alien. I am just a visitor, hoping to remind myself of magic. On dry land, the news is glaring and beaming and screaming, and so here I am: looking away from all of that. Here I am: escaping.
Have you ever noticed that the sea distorts time? Or, rather, that the human experience of the sea makes us perceive time in strange ways? It bends. Circles. Origamis itself.
I have spoken to many sea-lovers about this over the years, and almost everyone agrees. It is not that time stands still when you are in the sea, it is that it moves differently. It almost feels like a non-entity. As if, immersed in an otherworld, time becomes otherworld, too. A minute could be an eternity; an eternity could be the blink of an eye.
Some have told me this distortion is to do with the blue; some say it is to do with a sudden shift in perspective; some say it is sea-magic, salt-magic, moon-magic. Magic is a matter of perception, in my opinion, and it is not at all at odds with science, or an empirical understanding of the world. It is a feeling. A spiritual lift. A flight of the mind. And so, yes, it is a sort of magic for me. In the sea, I am bewitched. In the sea, a spell is cast on me, my world, my perception of time. We all open, and bend, and ribbon.
There is a theory that once, time did not exist. I’ll try to explain it using the same analogy that made this make sense to me. Imagine, for a moment, that you are in Antarctica, and you have been tasked with walking south. You are walking through bright white landscapes, you are walking through swirling snowstorms, you are trudging, trudging, trudging southward. And then, one day, you reach the south pole. Someone tells you: okay, and now keep walking south. But you cannot. No matter which way you walk, you are not going to go south. This is not a paradox, nor a problem, it just is. There is no more south when you are at the south pole.
Now imagine that the same is true for time. When you are at the beginning of time – the big bang – it simply does not make sense to ask what came before it. It is not a paradox, nor a problem, it is just that there is no before. Before does not exist.
I love this theory, and I think it is because it is almost graspable. I feel my brain slip-sliding around it, almost finding sense, but not quite able to latch on. I want to say that there had to be something before. And yet I can see that perhaps this is not the case. That perhaps my grip on reality is a tenuous, threadbare thing.
This theory does the same thing to my fragile human mind as the ocean. It broadens it, stretches it, ribbons it out and calms it. It makes me feel small, and wonderfully insignificant. It makes me lose my grip on the here and now (on what here and now even mean).
Perhaps it seems odd that this should calm me, except that in a world where cold, hard, awful facts beam straight from our screens and into our brains every day, isn’t it a relief, a delight, to invite yourself into a realm a little looser, a little lighter? To exist, for just a little while, within the ungraspable? I find it so.
After what could be an eternity of sea-floating, kelp-gazing, seal-meeting, salt-bathing, I swim back to shore, put my feet on solid ground, and find myself a little more alive, a little more whole.
But there, on the sand, lies an eider. He is perfect, and beautiful, and lifeless. A loop of plastic net is threaded around his throat, not tight enough to strangle, but tight enough to starve.
Mary Oliver said: To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
I pay attention, now. I have looked away, so that I can keep looking.
I think we owe this to ourselves: permission to make space for magic, to find breath, to dance in the wonder of the world for a while. That is, I think, the only way we can sustain the strength it takes to look.
The brilliant musician and writer Karine Polwart has just started a Substack:
“History and memory, ecology and community. Missives to a stormy world from a Scottish writer, musician and storyteller.”We’re All Leaving (part of the Darwin Song Project, a collaborative album inspired by Darwin’s life and work) is one of my favourite songs. It is profound and beautiful, heart-breaking and heart-mending.
And finally, there won’t be a newsletter next Sunday (March 30th) because I am spending the next two weeks focusing all my attention on something I am very excited for, but that I can’t yet share any details about. Soon, I hope!
Thank you, as ever, for being here, and I will see you in April.
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The way you write, the way you use your voice, both spoke and written, the way you weave meaning and depth into your letters Rebecca, is nothing short of magical. I feel as if I am there, in the waves alongside you. I can feel the sea breeze and taste the salt. I am swallowed whole by planetary eyes and heartbroken by the eider’s suffering and death. Reading your letters, looking away myself, immersing myself in the magic and wonder of my own tiny piece of existence, gives me the strength to look back. Thank you 💛
I really should know by now that when you float us in magic there may be a bumpy grounding. That poor eider. And so many others… “I think we owe this to ourselves: permission to make space for magic, to find breath, to dance in the wonder of the world for a while. That is, I think, the only way we can sustain the strength it takes to look.” This is so true, so important. Out in nature, looking, listening, time is perceived differently too. Part creative flow, part mental detachment from our tendency to count, to measure and divide. Sometimes I am surprised when I check how time seems to have slowed.
I too am excited to hear about your project; good things come to those who wait supposedly! Enjoy your Sunday Rebecca.