Sea an Apparition

I recently made a facebook post about wishing the world was under water and that we all lived beneath the sea. Within this post I spoke about the magical blur water puts on speech.  I received comment about how it was depressing to think about because it “clearly” came from a dark place. When I heard this, while I understood where that person could interpret such a mood, part of me felt sorry for the lack of shared vision. I did not intend to suggest that we should all be drowned out…

Picture with me a world were we as a race were conditioned to breath beneath the depths of the deep blue. Clearly there would be limitations that we would not experience had we chosen a land locked life. Hairdo’s and makeup would be obsolete – but I bet fashion would take on a whole new charisma. Comedy aside, speech most certainly would not be what it is today. In this new stage of evolution our vocal cords would not yet be thickened to a measure capable of producing the pitches that can pierce the pressures of the oceans. A generation of mute half breeds, how would we communicate.

Gestures and body language are such important parts of life. Let’s focus again on the life of the land walker. When one human refuses to communicate vocally, the intellectual second may infer the emotions of the first by their body language, facial expression, and gestures. This would become unwritten law under the sea.

Pushing past empty blue you come across a stranger. Refracted light portrays his hurry through displaced currents and countless beads of air struggling to reach the surface. This stranger’s movements contrast your cool easy strokes through the water. Would you assume he was late for work? Or maybe he is upset and just needed to get away. You sink lower to allow closer proximity within anonymity. From below his expression is gleeful. There is no tension in his loose hands as he paddles on. He is simply out enjoying the shimmer of the surface and the waves against his skin. His smile is infectious. You feel compelled to join him as he scampers on.

Not one word was uttered but you were able to understand a stranger. This is possible in the world we live in today no doubt; though, it feels like the art is lost on many. Robotic interactions spam our days and self indulgent moods litter our compassion. Would you feel inspired to join a jogger on the street if they seemed to really bask in that mix of sun and wind that danced around their moving body? Would you know to extend a hand to a woman sitting on a bench gazing out into the world? Would it be evident that all she wants is to be shown love and would you be willing to provide that love?

Words, I feel, sometimes get in the way of true intent. They carry such meaning. Such weight can drag down the message as the strings of definitions and phrasing become tangled. “Careful what you utter, speak only what you mean”, the words I had always been taught. I yearn for a day where I can be under water and a stare will tell you all of my thoughts. My body contorts to make you understand what your ears fall deaf to. Maybe you weren’t listening well enough, perhaps I didn’t say the correct thing. Lost in translation. Can we just be submersed? The dream of living in the sea is magical and pure. I say again, “this world should be under water.”

7 thoughts on “Sea an Apparition”

  1. When I initially heard your idea about people speaking underwater, I didn’t think about drowning or darkness at all but instead had a rather amusing image in my head of a lot of people saying “Blubalubalubalub” to each other with little bubbles streaming out of their mouths. On reading through the rest of your post, though, I found you were imagining a world where people could communicate in a more honest, more direct way without the need for words, which can sometimes distort and obscure meaning rather than convey it. At least that’s how I took it.

    I think I might feel a little uneasy without words, myself. I use them every day in just about everything I do – either speaking, writing, reading or listening to them. I so completely rely on them, I think I’d probably instinctively try to use them wherever I was and whatever I was doing. I’d probably be the world’s first talking mime. (“And look! Now I’m trapped behind an invisible wall. Can you see?”) I find it hard to imagine my world without them, although I am quite attracted to the image of myself taking cool easy strokes through the water. I’d like to be a graceful swimmer.

    I am aware of the limitations of words, though. They often don’t seem to say quite what I mean. Worse still, I often use them to talk only about the superficial. I feel I barely know the people I work with, for example, because although I have the capacity to ask them about their hopes, their fears, their dreams or even what they really think about me, I tend in practice to talk to them about the weather and their weekend.

    On the other hand, I’ve been married to my wife for nearly twenty years now and we often don’t need to talk in order to understand each other. This seems to me to be a very honest kind of communication. (Admittedly, my wife has an easier time than I do since more than half of what I’m thinking about concerns doughnuts or cups of tea.)

    Anyway, I enjoyed reading your post. I’d never thought about language quite that way before, so it gave me something interesting thing to think about.

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      1. You’re welcome. I really have to apologize for the length of my comment, though. I wrote it in a Word document and then pasted into the comment box. It wasn’t until I saw it on screen that I realized it was almost as long as a post! I just got carried away with your interesting theme. I genuinely am very sorry. 😦

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