Wave Crash Rhapsody

Many thoughts pass me by every day. I picture myself standing on my knees in the ocean, letting each idea race down my salty skin and return to the great depths; then I slink triumphantly to the shore and leave no trace of the water on my shiny, sunny self. This is the ideal. In fact, I am millions of miles from the coast, raised to life by only the planks of the wreckage, alone and horribly damp in a terrific thunderstorm. There is no respite from the storm; there is kicking and breathing, vain paddling in no absolute direction or another.

This is the fact of the matter, that I am waterlogged, held down by the bulbous weight of the tide above. The raindrops slice my face like sharpened falling blades, and with but one eye left with which to see, I've no chance of even hoping to glean anything from the stars above, no less the gloomy clouds in which they've pillowed. And to where are we supposed to go in these disasters? There is blame, surely -- harsh words for the workers at the travel agency come to mind. But at the end of one's rope, blame is an unsatisfying conclusion, one we are keen to set aside if only for the bitter moment, a rotten, dangling carrot. Our next tool for consideration is agency, that trickster fairy that we wrestle both steerable and evasive as fluidly as a shadow by candlelight. Agency, or blame turned inward, will not do here, simply because the reality of the scenario is that one's control over insurmountable tidal pressure is as illusory as total disbelief. Agency, in perfect lockstep with its self-righteousness, is a nursery rhyme, a shepherd's lullaby. We pride ourselves on the control of a situation simply because it is reassuring to feel as though there is control somewhere to be found, if only we could correctly grasp it. Blame, head-high agency -- these are insufficient driftwood, and they will sink under pressure, and you with them.

It seems as though the strongest tool in a shipwreck is endurance, and all its inconceivability. Endurance, that sharks might eventually bay their heads and howl an end to this nightmare, or that a passenger vessel could rear up from beyond the horizon. Endurance walks a separate path from its two companions, indeed taking the rocky road, but its aim is survival, not manageability. The gift of endurance is its weight, the mustard seed of insistence, the opposition to the games its other travelers are all too eager to play. For we are told above all else that God first made the waters, and they are good.