Many of you who have been gracious enough to follow this continuing collection of barely coherent stream of thoughts would be more than familiar with the passion and periodicity with which the Ocean and it's embellishments figure in my ruminations. Time and again, I have let my puny self be overcome by the grandiose view of the Pacific and several times the sorry imagination that I, in a self deceiving attempt, try to pass off as my creative streak has had to rely upon the primal response that that infinite water hole evokes in me for it's subject matter. But then it really has so much to teach us that to just sit there with our minds closed would be doing a disservice to ourselves that only we as human beings are capable of. Sometimes though, the mind does race and it was just one such day today.
You would probably go, 'What a retard', when I say that all the interesting action in an Ocean lies just at the beach. And I am not talking about bikini clad 20 somethings bouncing around playing beach volleyball, although that's always a garnish that is ever welcome to half of humanity (and some more) and I am no exception. Anyways, what I am talking about here is the intense restlessness of nature just at the beach when it's juxtaposed against its placid solidity far from it. Near the beach, the waves break with the fervency of a bunch of children bursting forth the school gate at the final whistle. They disintegrate into a soapy residue culminating in an intense white cover over the dark blue of the ocean below, accompanied with a constant clamoring that serves well to challenge the otherwise stately dignity of the majestic one. And the waves almost seem to be in a hurry like a teenager who cannot wait to reach the legal drinking age. And like the teenager, it's an anti-climax that awaits their enthusiasm. Their frothy disposition and their fickle form, like youth, is a testimony to their shallowness but like youth, their beauty has nothing but their immaturity to thank. Their existence, although trivial and vanishing, nonetheless is brilliant and ornate. Whereas the deep ocean lies constant with the immutability of death itself and in fact with the magnificence of death (or it's romantic idea at least). Deep and bottomless, it's the painted ocean of Coleridge. Mature and sensible, it's everything that Wilde resented and associated with age. The shadows of the clouds and the peeking Sun on the largest canvas Nature can offer. The brilliant shimmers and the pallid blacks with the vanishing ink of a dying day. And all of it so frozen in time and space that you get a feeling that if only you could hit it hard enough with a hammer, rather than fluidly malleabiling, it would break apart with the din of a window pane.
You must have heard the saying that a fruit laden tree stoops whereas one without any fruit stands upright. We have an unfortunate propensity of drawing parallels between nature and life. Somewhere down below I truly dislike this instinct. The instinct of the Western Aesop (fables) and the Eastern Panchtantra. Why I do not like it is a completely different issue but I guess I am also guilty of drawing some parallels here. And for all that I purport, you have my apologies.
You would probably go, 'What a retard', when I say that all the interesting action in an Ocean lies just at the beach. And I am not talking about bikini clad 20 somethings bouncing around playing beach volleyball, although that's always a garnish that is ever welcome to half of humanity (and some more) and I am no exception. Anyways, what I am talking about here is the intense restlessness of nature just at the beach when it's juxtaposed against its placid solidity far from it. Near the beach, the waves break with the fervency of a bunch of children bursting forth the school gate at the final whistle. They disintegrate into a soapy residue culminating in an intense white cover over the dark blue of the ocean below, accompanied with a constant clamoring that serves well to challenge the otherwise stately dignity of the majestic one. And the waves almost seem to be in a hurry like a teenager who cannot wait to reach the legal drinking age. And like the teenager, it's an anti-climax that awaits their enthusiasm. Their frothy disposition and their fickle form, like youth, is a testimony to their shallowness but like youth, their beauty has nothing but their immaturity to thank. Their existence, although trivial and vanishing, nonetheless is brilliant and ornate. Whereas the deep ocean lies constant with the immutability of death itself and in fact with the magnificence of death (or it's romantic idea at least). Deep and bottomless, it's the painted ocean of Coleridge. Mature and sensible, it's everything that Wilde resented and associated with age. The shadows of the clouds and the peeking Sun on the largest canvas Nature can offer. The brilliant shimmers and the pallid blacks with the vanishing ink of a dying day. And all of it so frozen in time and space that you get a feeling that if only you could hit it hard enough with a hammer, rather than fluidly malleabiling, it would break apart with the din of a window pane.
You must have heard the saying that a fruit laden tree stoops whereas one without any fruit stands upright. We have an unfortunate propensity of drawing parallels between nature and life. Somewhere down below I truly dislike this instinct. The instinct of the Western Aesop (fables) and the Eastern Panchtantra. Why I do not like it is a completely different issue but I guess I am also guilty of drawing some parallels here. And for all that I purport, you have my apologies.
1 comment:
"What a retard!" ... Now you said that! :P
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