Night Swim

The summer was in full swing. We had been wandering along the sea for several months. Wanton, young and carefree. It was lovely and golden, and we were small, inexperienced gods playing at being people.

Tonight we were going to remain here, at the beach where it was sheltered and quiet. We had all gotten used to setting our bivouac quickly and in all conditions.

I was not keeping track of how many people we had become along the way. Every day new people came and imperceptibly joined us. We were a magnet of colourful mass, a huge chewing gum of characters, moods and stories. We were an irresistible commune. A tribe of the lost, searching for themselves.

I stepped away from the noise and became engrossed in the sea. The water thick and dark, so black and slow. The waves stretched out and somehow sad. I thought that even the sea must get tired sometimes. But what from? How might it be feeling?

I knew what I had to do in order to communicate with it. To dip into its soul now and immediately, to infuse myself with its mood so we can become one. To begin speaking its language.

I took off my clothes and stepped towards the splashing mass. Slowly I let its liquid caress embrace me and its wet soul coax me in. I relaxed my whole body and we merged. I left myself to its nobleness, to its power to do whatever it wanted with me, to speak to the water inside me. I was only a small element of the whole. I was here not to fight and conquer, but to listen and simply be.

Its colour soaked through me and I became dark like it. It filled my thoughts with waves and unfamiliar yearnings. My body became a seashell playing to the rhythm of its heart, while my song – its voice. Flocks of seaweed began rising from the bottom. Like huge, heavy hands they opened up, living messengers of an infinite consciousness. These were its neurons, which swallowed every one of my movements and breaths. Its seaweed arms embraced me, shuffled me, studied me. They whispered to me impossible to pronounce sounds and words, information that could not be told or repeated again. It spoke to my DNA. It left a secret message, even to me.

Together we were an intelligent, great being that could smile.

I relaxed like a star on its breast and we remained like this until the sun awakened us to life again. It was already rising above the two of us, shining and strong. Me and it. Having read my thoughts, it spilled me onto the shore. I touched solid ground. The world spun. Reality straightened me up, gave me the full weight of gravity and flooded me with "earthly" sensations.

I looked around for the others. The beach was strewn with wooden totems, stuck in the sand. Some crooked, others tall and pointed like a scream towards the heavens. It resembled a ritualistic village, the faces of each bringing to mind a mask frozen in a different emotion. These were Gods frozen in time. I peered at them and recognised in them my companions.

Then I understood that the sea had left me with a gift, that of immortality.