Trial by Water
A short Tragedy in series, with illustrations.
Feel free to print.
Every night, the horizon vanishes between the sea and the sky, and the view of the open waters fills me with terror. Out there at the beach there is only darkness, and it is the heaven and the sea, the vast, high, and deep. I dig my heel into the sand and drag my foot, lining the verge of intrusion of the sea, marking my uncertainty of fate. The darkness sends sweeps of black lines that transform into crashing waves, white like millions of teeth. I always run away from it, abandoning the ruins of my marked edge of comfort.
You cannot simply run away from the sea foam. The unending waves will always reach you, even after years of forcing your personal estrangement, even after you have already learned how to banish into the darkest depths of your consciousness the old memories of your whole family at the beach, happy, contented, complete. The sea is a vast and deep reservoir of memories— memories that come back to you, at you, wave by wave, crumbling the shores of your cognizance, drenching the driest point of your awareness with the slightest lick of ancient, salty froth. You can never escape it.
The deep, salty water grips mercilessly, like a vise. The dark sea knows nothing about moderation. Rocks and shells wash up on the shore, beautifully broken and disfigured, bearing signs of exquisite violence, of graceful pressure, of random tossing of waves. To drown is to surrender to the water’s fatal embrace. To submerge and never surface is to give up and let the teeth of this ancient, immense vault of remembrances take over. I have dealt and wrestled the imaginary jaws of this monster. I have fought and tasted its tears in my mouth. I have cried with it bitterly.
I know a story about the crime of the sea. The old people in a seaside village once cautioned us to stay away from the water when the wind begins to smell like the stench of fish, for the sea must be ready to take lives then. They say long ago, the sea fell in love with a fisherman. But the fisherman did not return its love. One day, the fisherman came out to cast his nets in the deep. The fisherman did not return home since. And also, since then, the sea took whatever it wanted, whenever it willed.
Suppose drowning is merely a question of chance, a probability. Suppose that the sea’s claiming of lives is not out of vengeance, no matter how it looks like an unconscious exacting of payment. The sea knows nothing about the transactions of the conscious anyway. The sea simply accepts what is lost. After that, the sea owns everything—the lost, the sunk. What is banished into the depths is an offering to the unknown. What is given up, once sunk, can never be retrieved. Suppose I struggle to keep my head above the water, or… Suppose I try to understand this.
There was I, and then there was the sea. The sea and the sky are all and one, and darkness was its color. I, on the other hand, am unusual, an anomaly in the greater scheme of things, an absurdity between the undulating waves. That night, I remained as I, but the sea and the sky has become one, as darkness, and it is singular, and honest. It is the truth. I try to argue with the sea, but it grips my throat, it clutches my ribs, it tries to question me instead. Are we one? It asks. I cry.
There is a story of a woman who was taken by the sea but was safely returned to land. She was never the same on her return, and her son and husband painfully took notice. Every day she stared at every container full of water, spent long hours taking her bath, as if what the sea has shown her under it has captivated her mind and never let her go.
It was a sad story. One day, authorities discovered the body of her son in the bathtub, head submerged under water. They never found the woman.
I never found her.
Oh, if only the winds have arms and hands! If only the rocks and corals underneath could rise at every plea for help! If only morning could come sooner and separate the sea and the sky, make sense of my difference in this unified blackness! I wish I had the strength to go back in time, change every scene, flush out what is undesirable, abandon drawing lines between what is and what should have been. I crave for horizon. I crave for the sandy shore, the family of three sitting under the sun, happy, contented, complete. I crave for air.
Is it a crime to claim? Is it a crime to embrace what we think is ours, never let go, and struggle when forces try to wrench us away from them? Is to grasp this thought to claim it too? Is to grasp, to comprehend, and to comprehend, to claim? In claiming should we never let go, regardless of justice? I never let them go. Or, did I? Were they taken as my offering? My arms and legs grow weary. The sea interrogates me. Is it a crime? Perhaps this is how things should go. Was it wrong? I sink.
