Talk to me
By Sharla Gorder
He called me out, right there on Facebook. He actually resorted to name calling. He told me exactly what he thought of me in no uncertain terms — in Greek terms actually. He called me a thalassophile. I had to look it up.
Alas, guilty as charged. I am “a person who loves and is magnetically drawn to the ocean and sea.” The Gulf of Mexico (America?) is my muse, my playground and my backyard.
(And before I rustle the feathers of fellow logophiles [word lovers], specifically the sticklers among you, let me clarify: the Gulf doesn’t mind being called the sea. Nor does it object to being referred to as the ocean. The Gulf of Mexico is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean.)
I have been drawn to the ocean/sea/gulf for just about as long as I can remember. There are references to it in my diaries going back 60 years. As a child, I drew waves and suns and palm trees with fat Crayola crayons. As a teenager, I wrote angsty love poems romanticizing every aspect of my island playground. As an adult, I brave the annual threat of hurricane annihilation, all for the privilege of living on these shores.
I have often quipped that I must have saltwater running through my veins — and that isn’t so far from the truth. The mineral composition of the fluid surrounding every cell in my body is remarkably similar to seawater.
I found my thalassophile instruction manual decades ago in the writings of transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. The quote from his poem, “Merlin’s Song,” is often cut short when cited: “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air…”
Emerson actually wrote, “Drink the wild air’s salubrity,” its healthfulness. He seemed to recognize, even in the 19th century, the wholesome and invigorating benefits of the seashore. Modern science bears this out.
It’s the whole environmental setting of the beach — the wind and waves, the sun and sky, the salt and sand, all of it — that promotes health and healing. While it’s pretty common knowledge that sunshine is our most reliable source of vitamin D, that breathing ocean air is good for our lungs and that salt water has miraculous healing properties, it’s less commonly known for treating anxiety. But this seashore has been my major source of therapy for more than a decade now.
Anxiety has long been my cross to bear. I tend to get lost inside my head, a dangerous neighborhood after dark. I am inclined to overthink and underappreciate. I get trapped in useless thought loops. I lose sight of my guiding lights. Getting out onto the beach at dawn every morning for at least fifteen minutes interrupts all that chatter and broadens my perspective as I move — literally and figuratively — toward the light that’s growing on the eastern horizon.
Just before dawn every morning, I get up, get dressed and head outside, no matter the weather. I utter a simple three-word prayer as I head down the stairs.
“Talk to me,” I say.
And this island is never mute. There is no end to the secrets she whispers to me at dawn.
I walk quietly toward the sunrise. That’s all.
So simple. So profound.
Poet E. E. Cummings sums it up for me: “For whatever we lose, like you or a me, it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.”
Being lost and found — it’s a human condition as old as time. Some call it grace.
Amazing.
