if Ocean could talk

oh, but they do 🩵🌀🪼

nectar, story & bone is a guest in your inbox that puts words to feelings, to curiosities. I write at the intersections of my life—intuition, identity, ecological psychology and more. I’m so glad you’re here 🌬️💫🍂

{Pssst! paid subscribers, scroll down for my voiceover of this post 🙏}

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If Ocean could talk, what would they¹ say to you? What would they want you to know, to understand? What message would they deliver to you, salty-sweet human and child of Ocean that you are, in this body, in this moment, in this breath?

Pause with that. What comes?

Perhaps doubt arrives first, skepticism. A roll of the eyes, a scroll past these words, a close of this tab. But it’s true: the Earth speaks. And we don’t always listen.

All of the alivenesses in and around us are communicating in every moment—fungal bodies, furry bodies, leafed bodies, elemental bodies and more. We may not share their specific dialect, but that does not inhibit understanding. We are woven with the same threads; we recognize pain and joy in bodies different than our own. We know that meaning is conveyed in and beyond writing scripts and sounds.

A murky puddle-bog on a mountaintop has a different message than a rushing river or simmering hot spring. An ice-heavy branch, arched in prostration hums a different melody than a sapling in spring, than a clearcut grove. You know these stories without singing the same song. Often to hear the message of our non-human kin, we must slow all the way down, slip out of modern-human time (rushing), internet time, capitalist time—and wait. Wait awhile and without expectation or pressure before things become clear. And in our pause, offer up our attention. Not in exchange, but in reverence, allowance, trust.

So I invite you then, to slip into ocean time. Feel the brine and churn, the promise of cold and bioluminescence at depth. Rock with or surf the waves, feel the feathers and hulls floating upon your crown. Gurgle in effervescent glee as you meet the shore, shape the shore. Open wide your every cell as home to beings microscopic, tentacular and unknown. Make way for all of life in the belly of your form. And ask yourself, what message, as Ocean, do you have to share with you, as human you?

the wet coast and the Pacific.

Not long ago an assignment, hatched by Robin Saltonstall, asked me the very question I now pose to you.

I was confronted by it.

I noticed a knee-jerk inflammation of blame, of anger. A desire to tantrum, as Ocean, at we, as humans. I wanted to write up a tirade of woundedness, to spray and surge the page in—what? A guilt-tripped plea that I expected to result in changed behaviour?

I noticed too that I was conveniently separate and immune from this blaming—because I live daily in the experience of sensitivity, of sustainability, in the experience of feeling along the spectrum of consequence that my modern-human climating and choices inflict... blah blah blahbitty blaah! What a bunch of exceptionalistic, individualistic nonsense and privilege. Perhaps my imprint is small, but I am a modern-human, I am a participant in this now. And, would Ocean really talk like that? Have I ever heard Ocean talk like that? No, no I have not. But I suppose some part of me wishes they would, wishes they would scream at all of us trash demons, force us to look upon the acidification, bleaching and garbage gyration we are inflicting upon them, and threaten to swallow us whole if we do not do far better, if we do not care more actively.

Feeling beyond that tantrum of mine and into and with Ocean, I sensed that they do not carry that kind of reprimanding, wrathful energy. Oceanic energy is more of a slow drip, a swelling, a multidirectional feed and loop and weave—not a vengeance. Ocean is wisdom that patiently awaits realization and collaboration, their every drop is necessary to their form and their exchange. Ocean wisdom is moved by and with others—they flow with wind, curve around land, freeze into ice. Ocean bears, dissolves, acidifies, surges, crashes, weathers, erodes and withdraws drop by patient drop, ever in communal relationship. Ocean is our salty mother womb; brimming with ancient, life-giving intelligence that is suffering at our hand. Ocean is speaking loudly in their quiet, amoral, present way—we just don’t (care to) receive it as such.

When I got quiet enough, slipped into dark depths, here is what Ocean said to me.

Ocean: I want you to understand that to live is to hurt and be hurt. There is no place you can exist and be untouched by the sometimes cruel realities of a dynamic planet constantly cycling through birth and death. To live is to endure—to flow with, to change and be changed by all aliveness, by all of life. This endurance involves suffering, storms, chaos, metamorphosis, calm, and every gradient of speed and mystery… To be alive is to give and be taken from, to receive and to take. None of us is an agent in our own right, we are collective. We are conglomerates nested within conglomerates. We have no control but we do have agency. Agency that is always found and defined by and in relation. Movement, flow, cyclicality, change, death, meaning, these are what give us our aliveness; even when frozen, the glacier moves, grinds, affects and is affected. Peace is a human fable, just like happy endings, stasis, stability and tranquility. In my depths, as in the whole of this planet and cosmos, tranquility is a surface facade, an illusion. For every tranquil being or moment, there is a storm of activity raging beneath the surface, somewhere out of sight, somewhere in the lens of a tinier or larger perspective. Peace, if you insist on it being your aim, your refuge, is found in flow. Peace is being rocked and being buoyed, diving deep and coming up for air. Peace is not found in resisting movement, or outsmarting suffering. Peace is found perhaps in taking only what you need, giving more than you think you can afford, and flowing with, rather than against, the changes born of these exchanges.

November dawn.

This assignment has stayed with me, salty foams still lapping, a process unfolding. I share it with you because I trust the meaning isn’t just for me (and because it reminded me of SEEDS).

I invite you to consider the same question. It is rather staggering, I believe, to receive what comes from such an exercise, what surprises, what gifts, what pain. Words fail to describe the generosity of this home of ours; how a hurting, life-giving being continues to sustain us even as we cause them to falter.

What would Ocean have me know?
And what could/will I do with that?

Please tell me what message Ocean—or maybe Forest, Lake, Mountain, Mist—has for you. I’d love to know.

With salty blessings and deep gratitude. With swirling beauty on the winds that connect us all, and buoyancy in the rains that we sip from.
Until soon,

A poem, a book and a song

There is a path beyond ignorance, overwhelm and apathy.
Eight billion small actions matter, and amount...

🌏 Drew Dellinger’s Hieroglyphic Stairway (listen, read)

📚 Hope Jahren’s The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here