Squid Ink

I sometimes wonder if scientists are sitting in laboratories mixing up diseases, just so they have something new to discover. I love to discover. To explore. To escape. Who doesn’t? We are all restless without novelty.

Restlessness feeds everything, even secrets. People always want to know and be the first to know what nobody else knows. To not know or to be the only keeper of something hidden, breeds delirium. I’ve seen secrets grow tentacles and eat a swarm of people, even their queen, and all that royal jelly.

I try not to hold onto anything. Except harmony. I know nothing. I keep my hive empty. On purpose. There is less to lose that way.

Here is my treasure map: to find me all you have to do is turn north, then east, then south, then west. Then do it again and again and again. Until you’re dizzy. It’s a circle. X marks the spot. We all fall down.

When you get to me you will see what I really am. Number 1- I am a feeling that has no name and is all out of focus. Like yellow velvet. Number 2- My blood is made of a nectar nobody’s ever tasted mixed with melted snow. Number 3- We can only communicate through green sea foam and guitar strings. Number 4- I am a two-hearted river with a mouth made of mercury and the sea is my pantheon.

Did I dream the sea into being? Or did I sing myself into a spell that tumbled into its waves? I am thrown face down to the sand, then tossed back to the water’s top. There is nothing freer than losing control. Stirred and shaken. I’m an atom bubbling up into the eye of God. Pregnant with the power that was the beginning of everything’s everything. Call me cornflower blue. Feed me fish and pomegranates. Kiss my go to hell. If you really want to. In return I will stain you with my squid ink and we can both get lost on the landscape of adventure. 

Is there anything else left on this earth to pioneer? Deep sea, deep space, deep hearts. We have almost excavated everything green into a new riddle. Now it’s turning into mush and marsh. Pretty soon we will all become crocodiles, holding our breath just to breathe. Underwater. Let that ricochet until it touches your tropic of cancer.

Any flower could wither in the wrong hands. How many times have I, myself, been plucked at my roots and perfumed into a blue haze? That’s what happens when we mistake desire for love. That’s what happens when we forget the sacred part of a ritual. That’s what happens when we cling to financial profits instead of spiritual ones. Everything becomes a paradise lost.

Sometimes I wish life was made of silver paper and I could just keep cutting back into existence everything that I am missing.

Anyway, nobody ever said extinction was gonna be easy. Loss never is. But it’s happened five times before. We can handle it. Get naked and keep your head up, honeydew. Drunk, drink the rain and keep rising. We can share an island made of coral. And make something out of nothing. Just like dragonflies did when they outlived the dinosaurs. I’ll build the sailboat. As long as you keep feeding me a fire that I can swallow. Together we can spill ourselves into whatever still is.

I don’t know what else we will find there. In the pit of oblivion, what bubbles?  Is it made of the same salt and mystery as my tears? Can I bottle it up and call it love?

It doesn’t matter. I’ll give everything a new name and grant it a new myth. And all of those myths will turn everything we already lost into gods. Like Chilean flamingos and polar bears and golden toads. That’s how I will keep them alive at the end. With songs and stories about their magic. I’ll light candles in their honor. I’ll seduce their skeletons into daylight, offer them love letters, then toss them back into the deep end of the sky. I’ll keep the scent of spring in each breath that I breathe for them. For them, I’ll kite the wind and sunbathe the ocean for them. For them, I’ll keep fishing for anything pure.

That’s where you will find me- then- at the end. Over there, creating new beginnings.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

*Speaking of new beginnings, I am sailing to Tahiti next! Stay tuned for more on that adventure. x

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

* If you like these salt covered tales and are not already receiving them directly to your inbox, just go to wildernessofwaves.com, scroll to the bottom of any page, enter your email address, and click the “sail along” button beneath it. Then go to your email and click on the confirmation email that WordPress sends to you. Voila, now each post will sail straight to your inbox. Subscribing helps me to continue this journey. X