ocean

The water wasn't the same down here. Water is what runs out of the kitchen taps or a playground drinking fountain. It fills bathubs and pools and yes, of course, the ocean- but at a certain depth, water becomes a barrier from all you remember, all you think you know.You're trapped within it, a plaything of it.Focus erodes. Your thoughts mutate. The pressure.The pressure.The soul can't cope with that. It shouldn't be expected to.Humans weren't built for this. There's a reason nothing lives down here.Or nothing should.

There was an ocean above us, held in by a thin sac that might rupture and let down a flood at any second.

There will be times in which things appear hopeless. You will begin to doubt everything around you. You will even begin to doubt yourself. You will think things will never look up and you may be in the deepest, darkest, loneliest place in the world. Everything which had once been infused with wonder may appear disappointing and harsh. You may grow cynical and come to believe that this is simply the way the world is...that one must bear with the unforgiving realities of the world and only hope that it doesn__ get worse. You might grow suspicious of others, as adults tend to do, and close yourself off from the rest of the world. You might just look to the past and reminisce about better days...or you might just dwell in one place for a little too long and become nostalgic for the future. Just remember__egardless of where you are, what experiences you have, and who you have become__hat there will always be those who have loved you. Those whom you may have taken for granted, but have nonetheless, always had you in their hearts and in their hopes and wishes. Lives that you have touched: whether you realize it or not. To separation you may venture, but indissolubly in union shall you drift...you will always be at the whims of forces, both great and small, and far beyond your capacity to control. That__ how all our stories go. Innumerable arcs intersect and scatter into a vast indefinite sea.

Thus was this expedition finished...after having, by its event, strongly evinced this important truth; that though prudence, intrepidity and perseverence united are not exempted from the blows of adverse fortune, yet in a long series of transactions they usually rise superior to its power, and in the end rarely fail of proving successful.Voyage Around The World, 1751

Vast tracts of ocean, whether Polynesia, Micronesia or Melanesia, contain island populations that remain outside the modern world. They know about it, they may have traveled to it, they appreciate artifacts and medical help from it, but they live their daily lives much as hundreds of generations of ancestors before them, without money, electricity, phones, TV or manufactured food.

And in the ocean I will fly to the bottomless pit of darkness

We sat bathed in luscious darkness, Casco Bay's thousand islands spread out before us like a diamond quilt. 'I don't get enough of this,' she said.

I was happy anywhere I could see the ocean.

The ocean has a voice, one that haunts me with its music every moment I__ awake. Even in my dreams it tugs on me, building the ache inside my bones until I can__ ignore who I am. My mother says the water is dangerous, that beyond the innocent whitecaps they__e waiting, but I never hear her over the call of the sea.

A twinge of fear entered Gwenwhyfarâ__s heart. It was the first she had heard of the sea farms lying in the path of danger. She wondered what had befallen a different Norseman of her acquaintance. Had her poor bodyguard, Finn, perished in one of those raids?

Being in the depths of the ocean was like being in the womb, suspended in a liquid environment, listening to my own breathing and heartbeat. Whether it was the serenity and security of being surrounded by this living liquid, or the total distraction of the adventure of the unknown which took me far away from the daily weight of the child abuse and violence at home, I sank beneath the surface, and if only for those few moments, was free.

A beautiful, majestic, and awe-inspiring sea awaits you. And you are welcome to enter however you see fit - to wade, to walk lightly, to swim for your life, or to sail. The decision is yours. No one will stop you from returning to the sandy towel on the shore if you desire. But I__ like to think you chose to come to the sea for a reason. You have been called to the sea. There is something here that you need, and it has awaited your arrival for quite some time.

I watched the enormity of the clouds for several minutes. What I wanted to experience in the water, I realized, was how life of the reef was layered and intertwined. I now had many individual pieces at hand: named images, nouns. How were they related? What were the verbs? Which syntaxes were indigenous to the place? I asked a dozen knowledgeable people. No one was inclined to elaborate- or they didn__ know. __id you see the octopus?_ Someone shouted after the dive. Yes, I thought, but who among us knows what it was doing? What else was THERE, just then? WHY?

Only the ocean kept the same rhythm. Crashing in and slowly pulling back out, it never lied, never changed. It tried to teach them a life of romantic consistency.

Any weapon's only as good as the man using it, and a good man can make a good weapon out of most anything.

I cannot tarry longer.The sea that calls all things unto her calls me

Late, by myself, in the boat of myself,no light and no land anywhere,cloudcover thick. I try to stayjust above the surface, yet I'm already underand living within the ocean.

I know about me. I am the moons sister, a tidal child stranded on land. The sea always in my ear, a surf of eternal discontent in my blood.