郭晉汝
God works in mysterious ways connecting us with the
ocean.
Babies float in mothers' wombs for nine months before
they inhale the outer world; we learn how to swim even before we start
to crawl. And it's with the initial animal instinct that we inherited
that newborn infants are able to instinctively shut down his/her
breathing system when placed in the water. I learned that firsthand
from my childhood when I fell into a pool once and instantly started
waving my arms to stay afloat. At that time I was already big enough to
be afraid, yet my memories now simply hold the vast blueness I saw with
crystal bubbles floating upwards and my falling downwards. My sinking
was more out of my feeling peculiar than my panic.
Every woman has an ocean in her body; their veins
reflect the tide. Freud's disciple Sandor Ferenczi said that the smell
of the womb is like salt water, and men's homing instinct returning to
the ancient ocean makes them long to make love with women. (I am well
aware of the heterosexual assumption here.)
Life sprung from the oldest water area 3 billion
years ago. Till now our bodies still long for the comfort with liquid
sliding through every inch of our skin. We still desire for that touch,
that smoothness as to revert to that world before evolution took off.
Some say under certain times and circumstances, a whale's singing can
sound like human's home sickness for where our primitive cells
inhabited, way before we were even born. Perhaps that is god's way of
reminding us not to forget our origins.
Seventy percent of our planet is covered with the
ocean; seventy percent of our body is filled with water. The ocean is
in our bodies, the ocean is in our veins. This primal origin of ours
clashes with our world through time and carries our deepest dreams of an
ultimate home.