Soul of the Sea





How deep is the ocean?
How high is the sky?

How far is the journey?
From here to a star?

~Irving Berlin


This forum—a website of my own as a platform to share stories—raised concerns common to all who create: privacy. Respecting others’ privacy, especially if it involves my family, has always been critical. I was confident not much would be disturbed since most of my writings here are fiction and even in non-fiction I go to great lengths to ensure anonymity unless explicit or implicit permission has been granted. However, what I was not anticipating was for this website to become a tribunal of inquiry about who I am. I thought I had addressed it all in the “About” section but apparently it hasn’t been sufficient.

It began with my writing being compared to established authors which left me humbled (my work has yet to be published); I wasn’t prepared but I accepted. Then came analysis, thorough dissecting of my essence, but my armor remained my friends who truly know me so I survived. Then, somehow, somewhere, unbeknownst to me, the person writing (not necessarily the narrative voice) got buried deeper and deeper into the background. What I had been teaching, what I had been intending, had finally happened: the story is bigger than you.

And so it began: there was no need to worry about privacy, the more I wrote the less visible I became!  To some extent this is intentional but inherit in this development is that others will fill in that silence on your behalf.

This is my attempt to answer, what is now my second most frequently asked question, “Who are you?” It used to be “Where are you from?” When this question surpassed the other, I do not know.



Sometime in June 2010 I discovered an amazing photographer and artist via Twitter: Terrill Welch. On August 20th, 2010 I came across a posting of hers which had a photograph of her painting, “Only The Sea.”

She wrote below the posted photograph of the painting:

It’s me. It’s me. The sea, it’s me, it’s me.

Calling, calling, calling.

Winds blow clarity into my being, while the sea continues to call. Every ounce of my earthly body is drawn forward… heaven-ward. I remind myself – it is only the sea.

This wee painting of a mere 8X8 inches on gessobord mounted on a 2 inch birch cradle has only one image… the final image. The painting spilled onto the surface like a wave coming to shore. No effort really. A simple whuuwwwwiiisssshhh! There it was. Well, actually hours had passed but I didn’t notice. I didn’t stop. I painted. I remembered to breathe. That was all.

Sprout Question: What will mesmerize you?


I fumbled for an answer and typed the first words that came: having this painting would mesmerize me.


Thereafter an exchange of emails followed where I did my best to articulate why this painting might as well have been the painting of my insides.  Yet I felt I had failed to convey how much this painting meant to me. Moreover, I was perplexed by this urge to convey the why. People like artwork; they buy. End of story.  The more time passed, the more consumed I became with the painting. This was also when I realized how people possibly became ‘collectors’. Later I would learn my understanding was inaccurate—some collected art or anything for that matter just to do so.


Eventually I bought it. For now the photograph of the painting even serves as my current background.

I asked Terrill to not announce the purchase as I wasn’t ready. To my surprise she more than understood and agreed. I am grateful for that.

It’s taken me three months to sew together the cotton candy understanding of why I had to have this painting, to get permission from others whose names I mention, to explore the intention behind sharing what follows, and finally to articulate it.


Who are you?

Song of the Sea to the Shore

by Robert Fanning

Unraveling velvet, wave after wave, driven
by wind, unwinding by storm, by gravity thrown—
however, heaving to reach you, to find you, I’ve striven
undulant, erosive, blown—

or lying flat as glass for your falling clear
down: I can’t swallow you. So why
have I felt I’ve reached you—as two reflected stars,
surfaced, lie near—as if the sky’s

close element is one in me, where starfish
cleave to stones—if you’re so far?
I’ve touched you, I know, but my rush
subsides; our meetings only leave desire’s

fleeting trace. Every place I touch you
changes shape. Shore, lie down—
undo. I’ll fill your thirsty bones with blue.
I’ll flood your every cave and we’ll be one.


Who are you?


I was born old and yet I never grew up. Whatever you can understand of that paradox is reflective of how far you can scratch the surface of knowing me.

I was very young when my mother and father sat me down and without any context told me: “Annie, a body of water is only as beautiful or useful as when within boundaries. The moment it is out of boundaries it is havoc. Do you understand that?”

I was six years old. I nodded and of course didn’t have a clue what they meant. How could a boundary be a requisite for something boundless? But I have had to untangle this paradox the hard way and practice what I understand every day most consciously.


Like the ocean there are parts of me that I have yet to explore and there are caverns that are so deep that I can only stare into the abyss from afar.

I am multiple shades of blue although I love red.

Darkness scares me yet that is when I see most clearly.

I recall floating on a small raft boat with my youngest brother on the Pacific Ocean some years ago. It was all beautiful and joyous until we got farther and farther away from the shore. And then a wave of panic rushed through my entire body: I could feel the pull of gravity shift. We were deep already. I was scared and wanted out, back, away. Yet that is also when I felt if I stayed longer I would come to yet another profound understanding about myself, life, and others.


I am in awe of the sea and yet it scares me. I want to be near it and yet it daunts my sensibilities. We want to explore the sea yet we are afraid of it….planning our vacations around the shorelines where only the most superficial waves dance and then wonder why we want more.

And yet we all bring ourselves to the sea….again and again…

Because

“The soul of the sea is in you and me.”

The word soul comes from old English word “sawol” which used to stand for “spiritual and emotional part of a person, animate existence.” Sometimes said to mean originally “coming from or belonging to the sea,” because that was supposed to be the stopping place of the soul before birth or after death.



Sometimes another is better equipped to speak on your behalf. I share the following from my best friend Erica who has known me for over twenty years. Erica, also known as RhapsodE, is a seasoned performance artist, educator, actress, and poet.

She wrote what follows inside a card in July 2009, a July that would mark as the beginning of a tsunami of events to be followed throughout 2009—as if 2008 was not enough.


On the surface this may appear to be a near tragedy, something else to lament…but introspection would reveal the depths, the strength, and expansiveness that is you.

1. To be able to sense the slightest imbalance in your core and to act with immovable conviction towards the truth…

2. To act on faith and draw forth all of you, lay it out blatantly and perform surgery on that which needs healing…

3. The willingness to change your mind about all that you have ever loved and emerge with the truth that you are indeed “your best thing” and deserving of all love.

The tide has brought you your most intimate self. Each wave has presented another seeming challenge or near challenge…and you can now see each one as a beautiful piece in the sea of life experiences that wave and sand have shaped….

And just when it seems that each tide (and change) brings with it the same as before, you see that the tide also takes something with it each time it rolls away. Each ebb and flow offers the beautiful opportunity to pull into its magical depths something that at once was painful, something that you have outgrown or must let go…

…Now is the beautiful time to embrace the depths, the strength and expansiveness of you.

The ability to face what the tide brings in and offer up what can be taken back….

Who can have such a beautiful force? Who can curse the wise flow of God’s most intricate life system?

Then how can you think anything less of the ocean that is you? In your depths you know your needs, in each decision and act you grant yourself what you need and release what you do not, you even change sandy surroundings with each step….

You are the ocean, annabella, who understands your flow.

You are limitless, held bound only by the miracle that is gravity…

So you can…you must love all that this brings, all that you are…

For you are the ocean…

nothing….

no where….

no one….

will ever convince you that you are less or lead you to believe otherwise

or distract you

from the truth

You are the ocean…go where ever you want….you are love…live however you want….

The tide will always bring you back to yourself.



The sea that is me, the sea that is you, mesmerizes me. There is much, too much, to explore to give up despite how it has been and is.

I too doubt plenty but I know we can’t sustain on deceptive feel-good platitudes that define our human condition without going deep. I am only one conduit working with other creatives so we can all stay afloat until everyone catches up.

Life’s paintbrush has caressed me with textures that feel like scars but they only highlight my curves and depth. Like the sea I too fall into an ocean of which you too are a part. I write for the most selfish reason: I can’t contain these stories without you, dear reader. I am the sea and need to meet other seas and where we all meet is a common ocean, and in my most abstract understanding we go so deep that we flip over to a galaxy where we shine down on earth as stars.


The original idea was to do what I had to do—tell one story—and call it a life.

But stories are living apparitions; where they find one heavenly host through whatever medium (photography, drawing, painting, social justice, poetry, journalism, education) they impart the storyteller’s address in the wind so other stories can find a narrator. Perhaps this is so to ensure that no breath is in vain after all?

There are stories that live in the wind and stories that roam in the galaxy under the sea. I can hear some clearly and for others I must responsibly juxtapose the missing pieces.


That’s all who I am: a woman decoding cosmic serendipity and synchronicity to share stories.


~a.q.s.


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Words fail me to express my gratitude to the Universe for a friend like Erica. All I can offer, with full confidence, is that I have never taken the gift of her friendship or her for granted.

I owe my faculties to some very close friends but especially to Erica and Vuyo when typhoon winds tempt me to destruction. They—along with my family—are my gravity as I spiral to infinity.

I am not listing the names of my closest circle of friends here (they know who they are). I am very cognizant that I am extremely blessed to have these people in my life who are my reflection, my emblem, my weapon, my escutcheon. I wouldn’t—-I couldn’t—be where I am, how I am, without these friends’ unconditional support and love for nothing else but me to be me. But like Erica wrote above, and my friend Dawn has taught me, this is much in part due to the fact that I am constantly refining who orbits my closest circle. This means, very much like the sea, I let go as often as I welcome, and hopefully more compassionately than the sea for the ocean can be ruthless as I am well aware.

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Below I have listed some facts about the ocean that are of interest to me personally from The National Ocean Service (NOS) Education Team:

  • Although the words sea and ocean are often used interchangeably, in terms of geography a sea is part of the ocean partially enclosed by land; the sea is located where the land and ocean meet.
  • Sunlight entering the water may travel about 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) into the ocean under the right conditions, but there is rarely any significant light beyond 200 meters (656 feet).
  • The zone between 200 meters (656 feet) and 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) is usually referred to as the “twilight” zone, but is officially the dysphotic zone. In this zone, the intensity of light rapidly dissipates as depth increases. Such a minuscule amount of light penetrates beyond a depth of 200 meters that photosynthesis is no longer possible.
  • The aphotic, or “midnight,” zone exists in depths below 1,000 meters (3,280 feet). Sunlight does not penetrate to these depths and the zone is bathed in darkness.
  • The ocean is blue because water absorbs colors in the red part of the light spectrum.
  • In the deepest ocean, the pressure is equivalent to the weight of an elephant balanced on a postage stamp, or the equivalent of one person trying to support 50 jumbo jets!
  • Most scientists agree that the atmosphere and the oceans accumulated gradually over millions and millions of years with the continual ‘degassing’ of the Earth’s interior. According to this theory, the ocean formed from the escape of water vapor and other gases from the molten rocks of the Earth to the atmosphere surrounding the cooling planet.  After the Earth’s surface had cooled to a temperature below the boiling point of water, rain began to fall—and continued to fall for centuries. As the water drained into the great hollows in the Earth’s surface, the primeval ocean came into existence. The forces of gravity prevented the water from leaving the planet.
  • Life on Earth is found in conditions ranging from the coldest arctic ice to extremely hot hydrothermal systems on the ocean floor. Microbes are also found in very acidic conditions, very salty conditions, and very alkaline conditions. These microbes are called “extremophiles” (which means ‘lovers of extremes’).
  • While conditions on the surface of the Earth where humans are happy are likely to be extremely rare outside of our home planet, the range of conditions in which microbes are found on Earth are more likely to be found on other planets and moons.
    • Some areas of our oceans, for example, may be similar to conditions found elsewhere in the solar system.
    • Jupiter’s moon Europa is completely covered by ice, but the tidal energy generated by giant Jupiter is so strong that a global ocean likely exists under the ice that could be 10 times as deep as what we find on Earth. Many scientists think that hydrothermal vents may exist at the bottom of this vast ocean.
    • This is exciting news, because microbes are found in abundance in hydrothermal vent systems in our oceans.
  • Understanding extreme life on Earth might help us identify environments on other moons and planets where life could exist.
  • The light emitted by a bioluminescent organism is produced by energy released from chemical reactions occurring inside (or ejected by) the organism.
    • If you’ve ever seen a firefly, you have encountered a bioluminescent organism. In the ocean, bioluminescence is not as rare as you might think. In fact, most types of animals, from bacteria to sharks, include some bioluminescent members. Also, bioluminescent are found throughout marine habitats, from the ocean surface to the deep sea floor.
    • While the functions of bioluminescence are not known for all animals, typically bioluminescence is used to warn or evade predators), to lure or detect prey, for communication between members of the same species.
  • The average depth of the ocean is about 4,267 meters (14,000 feet). The deepest part of the ocean is called the Challenger Deep and is located beneath the western Pacific Ocean in the southern end of the Mariana Trench, which runs several hundred kilometers southwest of the U.S. territorial island of Guam. Challenger Deep is approximately 11,030 meters (36,200 feet) deep. It is named after the British survey ship Challenger II, which first surveyed the trench in 1951.
  • Storm surge is the water that is pushed toward the shoreline by the force of winds from a hurricane or other intense storm. When combined with normal tides, the surge can create water levels 15 feet or more about the mean water level. This rise in water can cause severe flooding in coastal areas.
  • A tidal wave is a shallow water wave caused by the gravitational interactions between the Sun, Moon, and Earth. The term “tidal wave” is often used to refer to tsunamis; however, this reference is incorrect as tsunamis have nothing to do with tides.

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