On waves

Last night I sat on the edge of the Pacific Plate where it rested precariously upon the edge of the North American Plate. It was cold and windy.  A heavy fog threatened. Perfect weather for my mood.

In the fading twilight, I saw layers of ancient ocean bottom where they had been lifted from the sea by ancient Tectonic pressures to form high sandstone cliffs. I was looking at layer after layer of of lives lived and lost. In one sense all that remained were the little depressions, the darker spots and lighter spots where the bones and shells of ancient beings had found a final rest. Is this geological record all that remains? Is this all it comes to in the end?

Does nothing remain but the physical signs of their long forgotten deaths? The details of their lives have faded, but I suppose their moment in time was meaningful to them and to all with whom they shared time.

Their fate has become our reality. Although they knew nothing of us and we know nothing of them, our world, our time, our existences are what they are because each of those earlier organisms lived exactly when and where and how they did. Even that all-important oil that today's foolish empires expend so much wealth and hope to possess only came into being through the slow accumulating death of uncounted oceans of algae.

Looking down to the beach and the distant booming of waves, I saw clearly where the 'life' of a wave ends as it crashes on the beach, but I could not see where the waves begin. After all, no wave actually "begins." They share a deeper pattern.

As surfers, divers, and other denizens of the deep know, most of the wave is underwater.  The bottom of a wave presses hard against the ocean floor flowing in the opposite direction from what we see on the surface.

Bobbing about on the surface, or running along the beach we see the ripples and a little foam, and are impressed by the thundering power. We name our trivial observations "a wave." We objectify it, imbue it with meaning, become attached, poetic.

If we follow the Western tradition we march boldly on, believing that to name it is to know it. We anthropomorphize, imagining the wave has a beginning, an end, and a life in between. But the 'wave' has none of these. It is so much more. It is a visible part of the Earth's breath. The ocean and the Earth do not die with each breath--or with each wave. This is planetary life moving at glacial, metamorphic speeds.

Tonight from my perch high on the edge of one of the Earth's great active faults, I saw beyond the individual waves. I saw the ocean humming at a vibration far below that which our little animal ears can sense. The waves are the vibrations of the Earth's song as it moves across the waters. As the song rhythmically crashes onto the world's beaches, the song shifts to a higher frequency and moves on across the continents.

I could almost see the ocean gently rocking, back and forth, between the continents. Quietly waiting, softly singing--with all the time in the world.