Collaborative survival
The water’s edge is patchy, ragged, ever-shifting, full of temporalities. I walk along Australia’s Bondi Beach navigating this unruly line between ocean and land: a boundary full of entanglements, fabulist in its intermingling of ephemerality and immutability. Other humans and non-humans gather at this periphery between two worlds, each of them managing the space in their own way: fearfully, delightedly, or purposefully. Those who delve deeper into the waves give themselves over to a position of precariousness, where the ocean dictates their movements, their safety, their provisional stability.
I admire them as I tiptoe cautiously towards the horizon, sinking deeper into the water until my feet no longer touch bottom. I tell my mind, “let go,” put faith in my ability to float and a strange new domain. I look around, trying to grasp the contours of this environment. I marvel: from where I have been gently swayed by the current I can see neither shore nor nearby swimmers. There are no trails to guide me anywhere, no buoys to plot a course. It’s just me levitating in endless liquid. No progress. No linearity. No future. I quell the momentary panic, sigh, and gaze up. It’s the closest I’ve gotten to being in the moment, lately.
What if I could center this way of thinking? In trying to figure out a life amid economic and environmental ruin, how do I allow vulnerability instead of fear to transform how I behave in this unreliable system?
The beach is a constant state of flux, a give and take between two modes of matter. Landscape is remade through seasonal and epochal cycles, not a singular march forward. Time — for the grains of sand, for the flowing tide — is not measured one-dimensionally, but in slow incalculable motion. There’s no happy ending for a liminality. Within this continuous changeability, nonhumans alter air, water, and earth, creating co-habitats for one another — burrowing homes in the dunes, foraging food using thermal streams, digesting plankton on the ocean floor — without fixed assumptions or destined plans. How can I assemble my existence in such multidirectional patterns?
Back on shore, I listen to the polyphonic symphony of gulls, dogs, humans, and surf. Some would call it a cacophony of cawing, baying, cackling, and pounding. However, though the sounds may be in dissonance, their gathering rhythms remind me of our shared planet, our shared attempts at life-building. Bird, dog, ground, human, water — we are all in perpetual encounters with one another, giving and receiving in numerous ways intentionally and accidentally. There is no self-sufficiency. There is no clear-cut analysis of who is winning or losing.
If I persist in the fantasy of autonomous survival and decision-making, then I will perpetuate the harm caused by systems of extraction and acquisition. The happenings at Bondi beach, the way compositions coalesce and disassemble, teaches me there is no grand equation to flourishing. Rather, it’s about paying attention to the big and small, the center and peripheral, the order as well as the chaos. And then, like the terns maneuvering between land and water using drafts or the shore itself slipping positions, I can respond to chance, interaction, collaboration, and indeterminacy with coordination and open imagination.
TRAVEL NOTE:
“Blakwork,” by Gomeroi poet Alison Whittaker is an autobiography of a different nature. Blending prose and poetry with satire and reportage, this book examines our relationship to ourselves and the land we come from.
As the world continues to burn and life for all beings becomes more precarious, how can we create and maintain collaborative connections?
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A wonderful reflection … and taking place in such an environment. Bondi Beach: It is timeless in itself and is part of so many generations. Rightly or wrongly we regard it as our back yard.
As you say: “Time — for the grains of sand, for the flowing tide — is not measured one-dimensionally, but in slow incalculable motion.”
I often find myself lying in the shallows of such beaches, washed by the waves like driftwood. Reflecting but at the same time wondering what it is like to be washed by the tides of time, of change …
Ah, my friend, how poetically you phrase it. I feel we are all “washed by the tides of time, of change,” even though often we may not realize how slow that change is. Wishing you a most healthy and happy new year!
I hope Australia is a great adventure for you … a timeless land
It was truly lovely! I’ve long wanted to visit and the chance to do so was a dream come true!
As always, your splendid words and photos carried me away and made me think. You bring up so many valid points and criticisms, and I like your conclusion. We need to give up the old, destructive ways of living on this marvel of a planet and try to make the polyphonic symphony less dissonant and more euphonious.
Ah, thank you for saying so! I’m always so heart-warmed to hear my words have such an effect on you. 💜
Happy New Year my friend.
My very best wishes to you and yours…
Thank you! Wishing the same to you and hoping this finds you healthy, happy, and well.
Working on it. 😉
Take good care of yourself. 🙏🏻
This really struck home for me: “No progress. No linearity.” We in the Western world – or maybe just me? – are trained to think in terms of progress, a linear progression. After all, many western museums are organized thus, as one example. But I love the idea of being in the water, just existing, not striving to be something or somewhere else. Good things to think about, going into a New Year.
Speaking of which, I wish you all the best during this holiday season, and may 2024 bring you new opportunity and adventure!
Thank you for your lovely comment. Wishing you a very wonderful new year as well!
Go with the flow, is pretty much my life 🙂 as you say one stroke at a time.
Haha. 😁Yes! I would imagine as an artist, you have to get used to the unexpected and uncertainty of the creative life. It’s really hard and takes so much mental practice to not want to control more things for us! But, as you say here’s to one stroke at a time!! 🥂Wishing you a lovely holiday season.
Rhythmic and intoxicating writing ~ “It’s just me levitating in endless liquid. No progress. No linearity. No future. I quell the momentary panic, sigh, and gaze up. It’s the closest I’ve gotten to being in the moment, lately.” And we float right along with you; great post.
🥰 Thank you for your generous praise! Hope this finds you well and enjoying a lovely November.
What a beautiful, thoughtful piece! I’ll succumb to the temptation to say that I floated along on your lovely prose, felt the push and pull of your ideas, like a seabird on an incoming tide.
Thank you for such lyrical praise! It lifted me up to the clouds.
There are so many good analogies and metaphors for a better approach to life here. Let’s hope more of the world can learn to coexist flexibly and respectfully. Well said!
Ah, thank you! Life requires a lot of willingness to realize how little is in our control and that’s difficult for the human species. I hope we get there too!
What a lovely piece you have written. That endless balance, shifting, interplay of so many life forms – how do we fit in it all. How should we be in it? Love this.
Thank you! Delighted to hear that you enjoyed the post so much.
What a timely post BT! The world is at war again, or more accurately, it never stopped being at war. For that reason, and for other personal ones as well, I did something recently for the first time — I went to a float chamber. It’s like floating at sea, only in an enclosed salt-water tank. Though light and music are available in the chamber, I opted for full sensory deprivation. During the hour, an initial sense of panic eased into bliss as I floated and disappeared into nothingness. I even fell asleep for parts of it. Only when my thoughts turned to present day chaos (away from awareness of my senses), did I realize how much “awful noise” we carry around with us everywhere we go.
I hope you continue to find what gives you balance as you navigate this complex world.
e
thank you e! How marvelous that we both shared similar experiences during this time. it’s so easy to get caught up in the noise and feel helpless. exactly what the world would like us to feel. these moments of returning to ourselves remind us to continue being the tiny points of light and love and hope we all require from one another. wishing you balance as well as we approach a new season and the end of the year.
Thank you! xo