Antje White
By Antje White
at a College writing seminar: her tutor: Dr. Annalyssa Gypsy Murphy
29th September, 2014
Antje is the daughter of Vernette Roach and lives with her younger sister and mom.
About the ‘essay’ that appears here, Antje wrote: “The reason behind my interest in the ocean being a greater life as a philosophical concept, started as just a story told by my English teacher. It was about a friend she knew in rehab for substance abuse and as a part of the recovery process, the clients had to choose a greater life that they were afraid of. Most people choose God, however her friend decided to go a different route in choosing the ocean since it was the only evidence on earth of something being greater than anything.
It was then in the moment, a week before the paper was due, that I knew what I was going to write about. I felt the rush of ocean just by thinking past the boundaries of the normal steps I take at the beach. I couldn’t wait or get my mind off this concept so I wrote a poem to jot down just a few of my racing thoughts. I felt like I was getting to know the unknown and overlooked Goddess, and slowly but finally overcoming my fear of the mystical greatness.
Relating and becoming one with this “body of water” helped me to understand something that is often just a thought and never talked about.
Antje White
The Ocean: The “Oh She I Am” Goddess
We don’t feel comfort in things we have yet to get acquainted with.
People don’t open their minds, much, past the tunnel vision of selfishness and competition. Maybe because the world is dominantly right handed (meaning people are only using the critical left side of their brain) which limits their ability to think outside the box.
In other words, right-handed people analyze everything and analyzation without creativity leaves the world to be perceived in only black and white. Critical thinking is waiting for another man’s word to be put on paper, and if the ocean is just a body of water then who am I to think differently; science knows best.
Well, let me be the first to tell you that this is a bunch of malarkey, because the political world may be able to constitutionalize your basic political views of the world, but nature should never be just “products of the earth,” by definition. It is rubbish definitions like these, that leave art and the nature of life to be taken for granted.
Nature is emotional, like humans, and it’s as though when we give credence to the ignorance of the ocean’s power, I assume, storms arise to grab our awareness of our destruction to the land.
Sounds pretty jocular right? Well then, the next time you gasp, feeling the internal life-threatening rush from your toes, unintentionally commencing the slippery slope of the mysterious crevasse in the deep ocean, try to then embrace it as “just a lot of water”.
As premised and symbolic of a deity, the ocean is a creator, blessing and necessity to earth and life around it: She unifies and protects any existence on earth. After all, there is far more of it than there is of land.
Before I come off as arrogant or unruly to tradition of sciences for a disclaimer, I have not always viewed the lengths of the seas in this glorious way. However, Walt Whitman and my virtuous college professor, Gypsy, recently introduced me to the concept of undervalued inanimate objects being a possible “greater life”. This is what influenced me to peruse my unorthodox, psychological and totally opinionated views of the world, in writing.
The water mentioned in Walt Whitman’s poem began with the mild description of slavery from “coon seekers” (pg.46). He continued with his reasoning on how immoral the idea of enslavement is, because he also was experiencing slavery: he was a homosexual. After his intriguing comparison, he painted the historical ugly picture of the great American lifestyle and he ended with the quote, “If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing…”
“This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This is the common air that bathes the globe.” – Walt Whitman
The second half of the quote is what really conducted my understanding of how unified the world really is; by the body of the sea.
Furthermore, I realized that the ocean has the common misunderstanding, as the belittling of a self-governed mother, in the present of society. They are both very strong women but, She is the only mass on earth that scientists haven’t been able to fathom. Evidently, today, in order to come with grips of the inner depths of her heart you would have to be willing to risk losing your life; making the sea, the one predominant compose of life that science is unable to touch. It is rumored, that in order to reach the bottom of the ocean, “The nitrogen would bind to the parts of the body that need to use oxygen, and the person would literally suffocate from the inside out.” (Tamara, 2006).
Like a mother who is protective of her child, the ocean seems like She would kill to protect the life in her belly.
Have I gotten your attention yet? Perhaps I should further explain the complexity of a true and conflicting disposition of this Goddess.
Nurture is feeling of comfort and authentic protection is what I feel, at the beach, when She is calm. As She rubs her slippery blanket over the ends of the sand, her soothing voice slithers into my ears and warms my heart, while I peacefully organize my thoughts.
As a kid, everyone has or should have heard the magical sounds of the conch or Shell that has once lived by the ocean. I remember, my classmates and I putting the conch to our ears and listening to her breathe. It sent captivating sensation through my elementary classroom. It calmed the rowdy class and immediately made me reminisce of the times I last visited her. I could relate to her because we were both diverse and She allowed just about anyone to feel this serenity at any point of the globe. She wasn’t huge but, She was infinite and that was repetitive of an immortal-like being or Goddess.
Like most debate in the world, over evolution and religion, I understand why people may feel uncomfortable with this proposition. However, I’d love to hear someone explain all there is to know about the sea and how it came to be by “evolution”.
In Christianity, the belief is that there is a God in Heaven, a perfect place, and by doing good in the world and, although your body would be dead, when you die your soul (and your spirit) would forever live in pure mastering of the earth and bliss. I am a Christian by faith and catholic by culture; and growing up, the bible was the book that explained life from beginning to end. It started with God creating Heaven and an empty earth. Then next series of events occurred over the process of seven days (poetically), which eventually meant creating each day of the week, and the second of God’s creation was the parting of the sea, which was once one with the sky. Everything else that earth currently contains came after the sea. Again, not being absent minded to the possibility of “evolution” or the scientific perspective; the sea being the second thing God created, coinciding with the creation with the sky, and Heaven located at the highest peak of the “sky” leaves me to only assume that the sky is just the spacing between God and “his Goddess” the ocean. There over, before I was able to find this assumption credible enough to include, I surveyed an international group of family members and friends of no relation. The results varied but were overall similar to my point of view: I’m not so crazy after all!
Imagine a body of water that isn’t just huge but infinite, not just earth’s “product” but a necessity for production and life, and not just strong but powerful and magical. In furthering this theory, to average people, the ocean is considered “the most important part of the ecological system and without water not only plants and animals but humans would suffer,” (Vernette, 2014). The ocean is beyond the small beaches that we remember during the hot weather, it is “exercise for the body and protection from disease, a gift from God,” (Vercil, 2014) another person continued stating that, “it provides food and travel and is the most surreal atmosphere one can ever encompass,”(Wingrove). I could include a little of everyone’s opinion during the interviews, but it would be unfair to you, as the reader, to be influenced by my heavily supported theory. In retrospect, it is quite amusing how God always mentioned the sea in a preeminent role to society, while Walt Whitman used it in reference to something that integrated us as a whole, and in both, heroic, descriptions the ocean became more than water, it became a maternal figure who had the purpose of a protection and a dependent.
Riddle me this, how is it that some scientists claim non-belief in a God or higher being, but find pride in being related to monkeys? Or that the scientist could figure out what is past and behind normality in space but can’t answer all questions about their own planet? Meanwhile what’s commonly known as “God’s creation”, a blessing and Goddess on earth, or as science calls it, “a roughly definable area,” is too powerful to figure out for even the advanced monkeys in lab coats. In addition, we have epidemics and serious illnesses in our new and improved genetic drift but, for over a few decades, scientists have yet to find cure. Maybe the cure is missing a sample from the depths of the ocean no one knows about. Can you roger that?
Citations:
Tamara. “Q & A: If You’re at the Bottom of the Ocean or in Space…” Physics Van. The Board of Trustees at the University of Illinois, 02 Aug. 2006. Web. 26 Sept. 2014. <http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=2266>.
