The Ocean Breathes Salty

I found this journal entry that never got published. It wasn't published mainly because I felt that it was incomplete. I still feel that it's incomplete... or that I can't completely articulate my thoughts . But it was the thought that stuck in my head the most while I was there.

4.2.08
The Ocean Breathes Salty

I could watch the ocean for hours. Especially here. I am fascinated by the unpredictable motions of water in the South Pacific. In one way or another, the water dictates every part of my life. I am surrounded by it. I mean this both figuratively and literally (it sounds really romantic and everything, but in reality it's the truth!) For example, if I have class, or a meeting/interview at a certain time, but it's raining, then I have no choice but to wait until the rain passes. My notebooks and all my papers are molding and disintegrating from rain damage. My hair is never dry. Neither are my clothes. It seems like everything I own has been overtaken by the South Pacific Sami.

And the sami has consumed my ipod. Life goes on, but I am having serious music withdrawals , and I plan on not eating lunch for a while so I can purchase a CD player when I go to American Samoa this Thursday. I'm thankful that my friends are willing to share their music with me though, even if it is Shayne Ward on full blast at 3 in the morning when I'm trying to sleep.

The hardest part is falling asleep at night. I realized I've been using my music to mask the noises of growling dogs... noises of barking geckos... (which for a while I thought were coming from the cockroaches)... children getting their daily sasa... flying bugs around my ears... screaming room-mates... Shayne Ward/Chris Brown... but maybe all this is showing me how American I am-- afraid of natural things that happen all around. I want consistency. I want a familiar tempo. I want to believe that when I sleep, the world around me sleeps too.

Before I came here, I always thought the ocean just fills in the space that land hasn't already created. I thought that land is fixed, and that the ocean just moves around it. But then after watching the movement of the water and seeing how it tosses and turns and crushes shells and rocks into tiny grains of sand, I'm beginning to see that the ocean defines the shape of the land just as much.

I'm starting to learn that life can be likened to the ocean-- it's unpredictable. It's inconsistent. And it can be disrupting if you try to remain in a fixed and undisturbed state. Learning how to let go and move with the ebb and flow of the sami is a gradual process, but it's one that I'm beginning to take on...