Ammi Midstokke: The sound of enlightenment
Sometimes, when I am trying to meditate, which they say is good for us, I listen to the sound of the ocean because I need something louder than my brain.
The brain can be obnoxiously loud. Mine is forever reminding me of what groceries are needed or that I have not called the insurance company or that I meant to trim my nails two days ago. When particularly petulant, it resurrects the horrors of life to remind me of parental guilt or that one time I asked a menopausal woman when she was due.
The sound of the ocean patiently making sand, alpine lakes lapping at rock and soil, rivers rumbling with the silt and stone of millennia, these noises are a palliative to the raucous of politics, pantry lists and panic of my mind. I read a book once where the author said if our minds were an incessantly rambling friend at a party, we’d have long evicted them in no uncertain terms. While I’ve lost mine a time or two, I can’t seem to get rid of it entirely.
As luck, and two flights, and a bag of overpriced peanuts would have it, I find myself at the edge of a real ocean this morning. Or rather, the edge of a partially submerged volcano. Bodies of water this large don’t have edges, they have the benevolence to not swallow mountains. This Pacific could, with a mere quiver of the seafloor, swell up and rise like a mare on its haunches, then gently wash the slopes of Ka’ala of the people and their fragile stick homes, swallow them into its briny belly to be digested by the primordial microbiome of the sea.
People talk of her power when we ought to be observing her patience. My guess is, she’s not going to count to three.
We are oblivious though, with our tie-dyed beach towels and our flip-flops and our reef-safe sunscreen, feeling chuff at our ecological awareness because we brought our own stainless steel water bottles. There are some sounds in my brain that even the drone of the waves cannot drown.
It is the noise of nature we need to listen to right now; its collective sound the rising voice of warning. Birds are changing their songs to be heard over the groan of cars. Storms blow harder so we might hear the crack-crash-thump of sacrificed trees. Floods flow with savage disregard for the cuteness of things like man-holes and sewer-grates and the brashness of bridges and borders.
From the sea we’ve come, to it I suppose we shall return.
As I run away from the shore on a muggy afternoon, I cannot leave the sound of the water. I climb into the thick canopy of a steep slope, zig and zag my way up a verdant cliff until I am high above the water, its frothy white ribbons a kind of shoreline tease in the distance. I can still hear it over the sounds of the songbirds and even the peacock’s prehistoric protest at our presence. Everything smells like the lusciousness of unstoppable growth here: earth, leaves, sweet floral nectars. Man-made structures left unattended are reclaimed by leaves and vines and grass that eat their way through metal, concrete, glass.
These tropical places are not like deserts where time happens in the slow creep of millennia. In Death Valley, the dried-out stream we walk down might have not had water for 100 years. The history of our littering is mummified. The thick, undaunted growth of places like Hawaii restore a hope in me – a hope that when we’re done with our destruction, the planet will simply reclaim itself, swallow our bones and our planes and our highways and let the rest of life carry on. We are but one species.
There are other outcomes still available to us, other paths we could choose.
I watch some of them as I leave the trail and run along the road that parallels the beach. There are camps in all states of permanence, constructed primarily of defunct vehicles (there is an apparent preference to minivans) and recycled tent parts. I am reminded of India, where the people living in slums build entire homes out of twine and discarded potato chip bags. I think, poverty is the true recycler.
Then the sound of the ocean fills my head again. When I get back to where I am (a writing workshop with a gaggle of people who have better vocabularies than I), I peel off my shirt and shoes and walk into the ocean. I don’t know why, but she doesn’t swallow me, just soothes my aching joints and sets me back on the shore. This is how I know the Pacific is still an optimist.
Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammim@spokesman.com