Ishmael's vision of the sea

In my last post, I referred to the opening of "Moby Dick," by Herman Melville. Here it is. I'd never noticed the last sentence below, even though it's a theme I often return to.


"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago- never mind how long precisely- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. 

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. 

This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs- commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?- Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster- tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here?

But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling And there they stand- miles of them- leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets avenues- north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?

Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries- stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever."


 

What does the water say, then?

Nothing, of course - says rational thought. Water has no speech organs, no human agency, and therefore since speech is a human phenomenon, then...(yawn...excuse me while I switch him off.)

But Mr Logical Bore is actually, in his own terms, correct.

To pretend the water says anything to me (or anyone) is, I guess, one of those rhetorical tricks we use to try to express the inexpressible - a state of mind, a state of being.

When I refer to what the water says, I'm trying to note down the effect water, in a few of its multudinous states, has on me and I'm sure on millions of us. I'm not seeking to project onto the water something of me. The traffic is the other way. Whether it's the churning wake of a cross-channel ferry:

the power of a breaking wave:

 or the unexpected peace of an inland waterway amid the noise, the crowds and excitement of a large music festival:

 water will always work, if I can let it.

Much of us is water. It runs through us. Many (most?) people like to sit and gaze out over the sea, or a lake, or just a river or a pond.  There's surely something going on at a profound level. After all, we may love the view out across green fields, but it doesn't have the same pull, does it? Herman Melville writes that if it was sand pouring over Niagra Falls, we wouldn't flock there. (A disturbingly strange thought!)

Here's a bit from the start of "Moby Dick."
 
"Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries- stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. . . Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever."

Everyone may know it, but I hadn't consciously realised it, until it grew on me, slowly and fruitfully. I now know that provided I don't try too hard - or preferably, not at all - and let my awareness rest with the water, its movement, its stillness, whatever changing form it takes in front of me, I am rewarded by some moments of being in the present. A sense of unity and universal presence. 

That is what the water says.

Archhippy/folkies The Incredible String Band had a Water Song:

Water water see the water flow
Glancing dancing see the water flow
Oh wizard of changes water water water
Dark or silvery mother of life
Water water holy mystery heavens daughter

God made a song when the world was new
Waters laughter sings it is true
Oh, wizard of changes, teach me the lesson of flowing

     (secularists may prefer to take God and holy as metaphors, if it helps.)

We change, all the time, as everything does. Nothing is constant. It's change that enables us to be. Perhaps the water holds me because from it I absorb the lesson of flowing, the lesson of being here and now changing in the non-existent present moment.

pier end

On our little pier this morning, they'd left the gate open to the ramp that goes down to the jetty. It's usually locked. I was the only person on the pier. Down I went for a new view of the pier itself.

It was a calm, sunlit, very clear morning, the sort of morning that sometimes gets called "magical." I can see why, but it's not magic, it's greater than that - a chance to feel the complete nowness of it all. Clarity in the world around, clarity inside the mind. No need for exaggerations, or even for adjectives and superlatives. Though it must be said, it was a pretty superlative day!

 I was alerted to it all by a heron coming in to land back at the water's edge - the slow, determined wingbeats low over the water, the little turn and uplift, then a drop onto long legs. I watched him closely, until the heron, the morning (water, hills, sea-smells, buildings, distant workaday noises) and this organism writing to you now felt - identical. The same thing/s.

I grabbed the chance to get close to the water - not the edge of the waves for once, instead I was close to the flowing, ever-changing ripples and swirls.

 All matter changes, flows - the tide, me, even the distant mountains - and all matter is also now.

"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present, all time is unredeemable."

Or - you can't put your foot in the same tideflow twice.

A memory is a present event, the future is a present event, in my mind. The present is the only place I am, and yet it is instantly gone, as soon as it arrives. So where am I?

I am on the end of the pier, in the now, with the heron. That's all I can say, and it won't really do. You can't describe the non-verbal state of mind through words, because it's a state of being. You can teeter round the edge of it with words, but that's trying and of necessity failing to describe a Zen state, it isn't being in it.

Back to the water, then.

I turned and walked up the ramp. I'd been alone on the pier, but now a steadily increasing number of people were walking about. Contrary to my feelings of defensive privacy and anxiety about rubbish and noise in a previous post (the Secret Valley walk), I found myself pleased to see these people wandering around in the slightly aimless and relaxed way you should wander when you're on holiday. I found myself feeling thus, I wasn't trying to be nice. They were welcome by the water, and I hope it spoke to them. I find it usually does.

what the weather said

The forecasters are having a hard time lately. "Sunny spells. 30% chance of a shower" was the word for Snowdon today, from 09:00 onwards. Sitting in the cars and watching horizontal rain and sleet at 11:00 was - dispiriting. We like walking in the hills in mixed weather, but we are not masochists. So this was as near as we got to Snowdon today:

a photo from Beddgelert Forest. We got a bit of shelter walking along tracks amongst the trees, and eventually the weather did, mostly, clear, giving some good views. 

I guess some walkers might have felt frustrated, but there was a general feeling that we'd had a good little walk, it was grand being out amongst it, and we've all been up Snowdon a good few times, so no sense of desperation, no drive to get up there whatever the weather.

I think what the weather said was "be in the present, stay with what is,  make the most of it and don't fuss about what isn't." (i.e. the possibility of hypothermia at 1,000 metres - but also the possibility of an ascent and fine views..)

As often happens, being by water, by the very full little torrents rushing off Moel Hebog, gave me a few minutes of presentmomentness, out of the company for a bit, then back in to social being.

It was a good day, provided you stayed with what was happening, not what could have, or didn't, or still could if....It was a good day, exactly as it was. 

Larkin's religion - a meditation theme

Water
If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.

Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;

My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.
        
                          Philip Larkin

Science can define its molecular structure (H2O I believe) and point out that it is unusual in existing on the planent's surface in solid, liquid and gaseous forms simultaneously. Also, it's the stuff that makes up most of you and me.

Our imaginations and our senses can tell us more, if we stop taking it for granted because it is so ubiquitous. 

In our culture, we spend a lot of time and energy in emphasising our individuality. Consider how long we spend choosing between relatively trivial, if pleasurable, things, so that we feel different from everyone else. 

We are thus seduced into thinking each of us is a fixed item in the universe, a self which feels as though it could and should go on for ever (though - gulp - we know it can't and won't.) This fixed ego perception is, science suggests, an illusion. 

In the face of this painful cognitive dissonance, our desperate chase after trivia, our anxiety about the fact of mortality, we need to feel connected. Not just to each other, though certainly that - but to the universe, to "everything." 

Two absolutely wondrous substances unite us with the planet around us. Air, that passes in and out of each of us every second - we share it, like it or not. And water, of which we mostly are. 

Larkin's insight, seemingly so simple and so lightly expressed, is profound.

Water - a theme for meditation, I suggest, and maybe even a kind of worship!

Why the water? part 2 - The Watercourse Way

"You can't put your foot in the same river twice," wrote Heraclitus. He was reminding us that a river isn't a single thing, it's flowing water, ever-changing, ever moving. You could say that of breaking waves, too. 

You could say it of human beings.

 Listening to the water draws me into the ever-changing, flowing present, of which I am an ever-changing, flowing part. It's somehow easier to feel - to inhabit - that truth alongside water, even though I can feel the same if I listen to trees and grass, especially when the wind moves through them.

Refusing to accept our own mortality sits alongside thinking that each of us is a thing. But we're surely a set of processes, a flow, not a fixed entity. To accept the ageing process, to think and feel that we are changeful and always have been, is to feel at home in this universe of change.

To resist the reality of change is to create an illusion of separateness from the rest of "Nature" (the universe, including each other.) That's an exhausting, hardening, brittle illusion to sustain.

To step aside from all the cultural pressures that reinforce the idea of separateness, of rigid ego, of prefectly preservable self-hood - that's why I listen to what the water says.

Anyone who's seen a river in flood (Eliot's "strong brown god") or the sea in a raging storm knows the power of water on the move. 

Taoism gives us images of water seeking its own way round, beneath, over obstacles rather than battering away at them, yet water wears away the hardness of stone as it finds its level

Alan Watts called the Tao "The Water-course Way." He quotes Chuang-Tzu: "The fluidity of water is not the result of any effort on the part of the water, but is its natural property."

We are not Things, we are Flow. That is our natural property. 

So that's why I listen to what the water says.