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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 2 of 2. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by malthus on September 14, 2004, at 17:39:16
I know many things that nobody knows.
I know of the sea, the earth and the sky and an infinity of small and magical secrets.
This time, however, I will only tell a story about the sea.
Water below, lower than the deep and dense zone of darkness, the ocean returns to fill itself with light. A golden light flows from the gigantic sponges, shining radiantly and yellow like suns.
Every type of plant and frozen beings live there submerged in that glacial summer, never ending...
Green and red anemones press themselves in wide meadows to those that entwine transparent jellyfish which nevertheless do not break from their protection, to venture through the seas and their wandering destiny.
Hard white coral entangles itself in ecstatic thickets where velvet shaded fish glide, opening and closing gently, like flowers.
I see sea-horses. In other words, minute sea chargers, whose algae manes spread out in slow halos around them when they gallop silently.
And I know that if one approaches to lift up certain gray snails in a gentle way, one can find a mermaid crying.
And now I remember, I remember when as children, jumping from rock to rock, we used to restrain our impulses at the unexpected brink of a narrow passage. A narrow passage inside, which upon receding, the waves left behind a long splendid veil made of sea- foam, of a rainbow-hued sea foam, obstinate in dying, and that used to whisper, to whisper...something like a message.Did you understand then the meaning of that message?
I don’t know.
As far as I go, I should confess that I understood it.
I understood that it was the secret of its noble origin, and that type of dying sea-foam tried to breathe it into our ears…“Far away, far and deep” ---they confided in us--- “there exists an underwater volcano that constantly erupts. Night and day its crater boils, never tiring and blowing thick bubbles of silver-plated lava towards the surface of the water…”
But the main objective of these brief lines is to tell you of a strange, unknown event that came to pass there below.
It’s the story of a pirate ship that centuries ago would be tossed about, absorbed by the staircase of a vortex, and that would continue traveling below among unknown currents and sunken paved roads.
Angry octopuses gently hugged its masts as if to guide it, while the shy starfish, vibrating and secure, floated in the holds of the ship.
Coming back from his long fainting spell, Captain Pirate, with only one bellow woke up his crew. He ordered them to drop anchor.And in the meantime, coming out of their stupor, everyone ran hurriedly, the captain to his tower, and without taking a second look over the landscape, he began to swear.
The boat had run aground on the sands of an endless shore, in a calm clarity of the shady green moon.
However it was even worse:
Wherever he turned to look out into the distance he could not find the sea.
“Damn Sea” – he shouted—damned seasickness that drives the Devil himself. Go to hell. Leaving us cast out onto the coast…only to return to pick us up, who knows at what sinister wicked hour…”
Irritated he tilted his forehead and gazed upward, looking for the sky, stars and the hatch where that abominable glowing moon would be above water.
But he couldn’t find sky or stars or a visible hatch.
Goddamn. If what was above seemed to be something blind, deaf and dumb…If it was exactly an inverted reflection of that demonic sandy desert where they had run aground…
And now, to top it off, this last inconsistency. Motionless, silent, the luxuriant black sails, pride of his ship, blowing there in the masts as wide as they used to be…and which now, with even the smallest gust of wind, would not sail.
“Towards land, towards populated land” one could hear thundering through the whole ship. “Load daggers, life-preservers. And scout out the coast.” The gangplank quickly lowered, a crew half sleepwalking, disembark; their captain the last in line, firearm in hand.
The sand that they tread upon, sinking them almost to their ankles, was fine, silky…and very cold.
Two parties. One going east. The other, west. Both in search of the sea. The Captain had ordered it. But...
“Stop!” a shout rang out, stopping the scattered trot of the men. “The Boy, over there, the galley boy. And the others proceed. Get going!”
And The Boy, a little boy, son of honest fishermen, frantic for adventures and misdeeds, had escaped in order to embark on “The Terrible” (that was the name of the pirate ship, as was the name of its captain), respecting orders, goes back over his steps and lowers his forehead as if observing and counting each one of them.
“Don’t be so slow…bowlegged…turtle” the pirate reprehends once the boy is in front of him; so small in spite of his fifteen years, that he hardly comes up to the massive gold buckle of the captain’s belt splashed with blood.
Children on board—he suddenly thinks, overtaken by a disagreeable, indefinable uneasiness.
“My Captain”-- The Boy says at that moment, his voice very quiet—“haven’t you noticed that on this sand feet do not leave footprints?”…
to be continued…
Posted by Atticus on September 14, 2004, at 21:28:27
In reply to fiction...The Secret, posted by malthus on September 14, 2004, at 17:39:16
Hi Malthus,
Besides all the dozens of gorgeous bits of imagery in this watery down-the-rabbit-hole fable, such as the weeping mermaids under the gray snails and the octopi entangling their tentacles in the ship's rigging, I'm struck by the telling details such as water-logged sand on a sea bottom that holds no footprints. But I'm also taken by something more, a metaphor for being lost, and perhaps even for one's mental state. The crew think they're on an endless plain of dry land, when actually they're deep beneath the surface of the ocean. Their collective disorientation and their mistaken perception of where they are strikes me as a possible metaphor for depression -- to be so low that you find yourself in alarming alien territory, yet at the same time to be unaware of how deeply you have sunk. This sense of suddenly being swept by a maelstrom into an abyss, albeit a magical (yet vaguely menacing) one in this case, leads me to bring a psychological subtext to this story. Whether that was intentional on your part or not, I have no idea. But I perceive a thread of dark allegory in what at first seems to be a light-hearted adventure. All the great fairy tales have this quality. I can't wait for the next part. ;) Atticus
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