Swimming In the Sea of Story
Strolling around my garden with the sun on my skin, the sea undulating against the rocky beach below, eagles chittering their silvery cry across the bay, I slipped into a state that I inhabited as a child — an imaginative trance in which, even as the soles of my bare feet pressed down on the soft prickle of damp grass, I found myself climbing up a steep bank, skidding on loose, dry soil, steadying myself against the silky trunk of an arbutus tree.
At first, as I scrambled up that bank, all I could see were spring-green bushes, their leaves rustling in the wind. Poplar saplings, with their sharp citrus scent, brushed against my face. Overhead, a wide swath of blue-gold sky.
Then, through an opening framed by salal bushes, I saw it: the Sea of Story. Glittering emerald and turquoise, carnelian and silver under a blazing midday sun, it stretched to the edge of the horizon. The air smelled like new bread and oranges, and the briny tang of olives. Sunlight stung my skin as I slipped and skidded down the bank and dove headlong into the water.
Now, in what we call real life, I cannot swim. But submerged in the Sea of Story I felt as happily at home as a seal or an otter. As I dove down, my fingers left trails of phosphorescence through a sea that glistened like shot silk. Underwater, a turquoise light; stories glimmered and swirled and spun in swift currents. Stories floated by, transparent as jellyfish. Some darted about in rainbow murmurations; others bloomed, pulsed, glowed in solitary splendour.
The sea magnified sounds. In the distance, I heard singing. The throbbing heartbeat of drums. A deep gong over a shiver of bells. I turned to look for the source of the music. Behind me, a man with scraggly hair and snaggled teeth kicked at a bed of coral and shouted furiously at an old woman. She was bent over at the waist, gathering stones off the sea floor. Each time she picked one up, she murmured to it, kissed it, and placed it carefully in a woven basket slung over her shoulder.
After a while, the old woman gathered up her skirts and hobbled off on the trail of a giant clam. A swarm of children ran out of the shadows towards her, whooping as they raced past her and swirled around a massive tree whose branches, heavy with jewelled fruit, swept the sandy ocean floor. In their gleeful abandon, the children knocked the old woman down. Her basket of stones went flying in every direction.
I leaned over to help the old woman up when something cold and clammy wrapped itself around my waist and began dragging me into the shadows of an undersea cave. The thing that had me in its grip smelled like fish, cold, slimy, tenacious as an octopus. I struggled and kicked and yelled for help, but the children were busy playing and paid no attention. The old woman had disappeared.
As the children’s voices receded into the distance, my eyes adjusted to the gloom and I could see the walls and roof of a rough cave that glowed a dim, emerald, green. A deep chuckle echoed from somewhere in the shadows, and a woman’s voice, cool as mint, said: To live in the Sea of Story, you must open your arms wide.
Who are you? I yelled. You kidnap me and drag me here and now you’re talking in riddles! Show yourself.
You humans are so impatient! she replied. Not to mention impolite. She snorted and hawked and harrumphed and then said: I am the Guardian of the Sea of Story. This grotto is my home. You’re here because you asked the Deva of Story for its friendship. You asked to understand something of its magic and purpose, how it weaves the shape of your life, the shape of your world.
All life begins with story. Story is the bucket that dips into the creative flow from which all forms are made and gives each life its own inimitable shape.
Look around you. All the stories that have ever lived are here, in these waters. You humans have fished here for them since before the world began. You’ve shared them around campfires, under starlight, followed them in dreams and visions. You’ve whispered them in the ears of sleeping children and sung them in the dark of winter in the tundra of the Arctic. For eons, your people have shouted and chanted and danced and played, prayed and lived with stories.
I peered into the shadows where the walls of the cave disappeared into the sea. The woman’s voice was a clear bell that rang and rang again all around me. But all I could see was a wild, emerald light dancing across the water.
The woman chuckled again. You won’t see me until you come face to face with the story of your life, which includes the stories of your people, the stories of your place, the stories of all you’ve ever loved, she said.
Begin in the nursery.
The emerald light flickered and blazed for a moment in the farthest corner of the cave.
In the nursery, you’ll find embryo stories waiting to be born. Choose any story whose soul speaks to yours. Ask it if it wants to come home with you. If it does, gather it up in your arms. Love it, nourish it, grow it in your heart, in your belly. Bring it to life; invite it to live in you. Discover who you are when you become the story.
She made that hawking sound again and spat. I distinctly heard her spit.
But first, she said, drop that bag of stories you’re carrying in your arms. Release them into the sea that is their home.
Her cut-glass voice set my teeth on edge. I opened my mouth to protest, but there was a heaviness in my chest, a pressure in my throat that left me voiceless. I saw that I was clutching a great, spiny bundle of stories tightly against my chest. So tightly that my arms ached. The bundle of stories squirmed and wriggled — its thorny edges dug into my chest.
Where did these stories come from? And why hadn’t I noticed them before?
The woman’s voice, neither young nor old, emerged from the deepest part of the cave. Open your arms, she said, kindly. Let your stories go. They have work to do. There was a hint of laughter under those cool tones.
Trembling, I dropped my squirmy bundle. The stories I’d been holding so tightly wriggled free, glided away through the mouth of the cave. My arms felt empty, and cold. I felt suddenly naked, unprotected.
What do I do now? I whispered.
Why, swim around, explore. You’ll find new stories that call to you, she replied. Or — and here her voice dropped into a deeper register — call the stories that are your heart’s companions; they will come to you.
Feeling foolish, I mumbled into the darkness: Here, stories! Here, stories!
No, she cried. If you want your stories to find you, you must call them with all the love and longing in your heart. They must know you need them. You must want them more than anything in the world. When you cannot live without them, they will come to you. Call them like a child calling for his mother in the middle of the night. Like a lover calling to her beloved after a long journey. Like your lungs calling your breath home.
I stood with my back against the peeling trunk of an arbutus tree in my garden that morning and sent my voice and my heart out across the water. Calling my stories home. Hearing them in the cry of wild swans as they winged across the bay.
Each morning since then, I call — and listen. Most days, a story finds me. It slips its hand in mine. It is my beloved playmate, sometimes for hours or days that undulate into years, that become an unfolding life. Story wriggles into my belly, melts into my cells. It makes me more of who I am, weaves me, body and soul, into the story of my world.
Together, we sing of old sorrows and emerging joys. We get to know our neighbours.
We enter the hearts and lives of friends and not-yet-friends. We stumble through the stories of faraway places, and discover they are as near as breath. As true as heartbeat. As real as the next story.