What a funny tittle for anything right…But now that we’re already here might as well look into it, no?…”How DOES the ocean really kill you?” Straight off the bat the temptation would perhaps be to say that it kills you by drowning you…that is technically correct of course, but perhaps as correct as saying the matador kills the charging bull when the tip of his sword finally finds its heart. We of course know there is more precedence that “kills” the bull…more that disorientates it, moving its fate ever closer to that inevitable moment.
With regards to the ocean, the most obvious killing element is the water. Ah yes, water, a noble compound in and of itself. We love water, we need it…without it we cannot have that relaxing shower at the end of a long day nor attend to any of the other human hygienic needs. But forget all that because without water we simply cannot live. Yet out here in the vastness of the ocean water becomes an enemy; a foe with intent to kill, to murder you. They say too much of a good thing…here in the most literal sense.
The ocean water is also poisoned…made vile by the salt of the rocks. You can of course give it a go, especially if you intend to end things quickly. Its not like normal water…he is not like normal people…this person…he is poisoned…and he surrounds you, seemingly pervading every nook and crevice of your life…attempting to suck you dry of life…that’s what salt is great for anyway, its able to preserve food because it mops it dry. To a living person however this is a process not unlike being slowly roasted alive…
Then there’s the capricious nature of the ocean…like the alcohols from chemistry class, the ocean is volatile. Today it is your friend…it is calm and occasionally laps at your face almost teasingly. The sound of the rippling waters is relaxing…reassuring. And then before you know it a tempest has risen before your very eyes. A friend turned foe. All the camaraderie that preceded now being revealed as having been part of a well-planned subterfuge…a gambit to disarm you. It batters you to and fro like a cork in the middle of the sea…though at this point you might as well just be a cork in the middle of the sea. He is now your enemy and there’s no doubt about it…he threatens to suffocate you. You try to seize this moment of his phrenia to catch and call him out for what he really is…but just as you try to confront him concerning his evilness, the tempest recedes and the waters go back to normal…lapping at you coyly. “what do you mean,” the waters say…”we’re are friends…look here I give you fish…take…eat…see I’ve already salted it for you.” But you know what you know. You are, however, more intent at quickly burying the hatchet (because...suffocation...is this what waterboarding feels like?) you grudgingly accept this olive branch. In any case, you are famished.
And then as you begin shearing the sinews of raw fish with scurvied gums and teeth, you feel a growing burning sensation as the shadows afforded by the clouds part and give way to the furnace and menace of the sun. The intensity of the orange ball of radiation is unrelenting and you soon lose interest in the fish….the gift he gave you. He feigns ignorance of this all but he couldn’t be more aware; you can see him seemingly unable to help himself from smiling…what is he smiling at…? He’s certainly not mocking you…that’s not possible…you’ve just renewed your vows…but he IS mocking you! What a vindictive scumbag! He has you right were he wants. But you remember that you are a fighter…a swimmer. They used to call you the human fish back at school, the coach was proudest of you. With this remembrance comes a renewed resolve. You will defeat this grinch.
But you soon realise that this vindictive scumbag seems to have amassed a rich arsenal of sleazy tricks over the ages of ancient existence…sleazy and effective…you feel something nibbling at your toes…a shark’s fin flickers past the corner of your eye…or was that two…or three…a school of sharks! What a sadistic, wretched, shameless scumbag! “Bah humbag!”it seems to say…no doubt he wants you dead, as the sharks circle around you in formation…but killing you now would be too easy…its very easy to cut the flesh and cause a mortal wound. He wants that which his knife, hands and menace cannot reach…your “soul”…your “will” to live…that which drives you…the engine of life. He wants you dead and inanimate like himself. You once more consider confronting him…to catch him out of his hypocrisy by confronting him with what he is doing to you. But to achieve this would mean taking your eyes off him and looking under the water to see and point out whatever it is that is nibbling at your feet. But you feel you can’t afford to do that as doing so would not be unlike burying your head right into the bowels of the beast that is trying to kill you, shoving yourself down its throat. Thus the stare contest continues…
Then it suddenly goes dark (or at least it seems to) as the sun sets to the west, seemingly snatching its blanket of warmth as it does so; thrusting you into a world of cold and icy water…icy water that stabs at you like a thousand knives. He leaves you gasping about and visits his friend the moon, far up in the heavens. Together they have their backs to you but they keep glancing back at you, if only to see that you are indeed suffering and whether they should perhaps stoke things up a bit. They don’t talk you. What do you they call it…? The silent treatment? And this moon…who once used to be your friend, giving you light in the dark of night is now the enabler of this monster. So sad…
They invite you to come join them…I know right, as if. Nonetheless you contemplate how you could get to them…perhaps still trying to hold on to some false hope. Come on, all you need is a rocket and a bit of fuel. The ocean must have tonnes of fuel buried in its bowels…as for the rocket…
But somehow you survive….you find land with the returning of the sun. People pull you to shore and you ask them for a minute so you could look back and give him a piece of your mind. “I’ve defeated you, you CRAZY MORON!” you shout back from the top of your lungs, triumphant but feeling very weak, almost regretting your decision to scream, threatening to obliterate your last energies. You shout back at him a couple of times…perhaps he’s just too angry to reply, the moron. But then it slowly dawns on you that what you were dealing with was mindless…he was not your average person. The ocean has unlimited resources and its bowels contain the buried skeletons of those it has bested by wearing out. The crescendo is at the moment they lose their will to live…or when it has grown so weak that their body finds the strength to disown it…and there, left without a will or “soul” to possess it…the powerless body slowly sinks to the bottom of the ocean…were the elements will conclude matters (the ocean never gets its hands dirty). You have a mind to lose, and as for him, he never had one. A huge deficit in the faculties that are meant to power consciousness…and thus he’s your friend one second then your nemesis the next, you being a friend-turned anathema. Whimsical mindlessness.
The moral of the story is to avoid the mindless sea;to not visit nor invite it into your home. You might think yourself strong and greatly resolved, but against a foe with unlimited arsenal, afforded him by the state of his mindlessness, you almost always lose in a drawn-out war. “When a sociopath is beckoning, do not join the game” (Martha Stout)
