Stories of the Sea

Many of the stories in this collection were mediocre, several were good, and a few were excellent, making it well worth the read, but only when in a certain mood. Though the stories featured a variety of plots and characters, they were united by a kind of reflective melancholy, a loneliness that was not exactly sadness, a stillness within storms.

It is inevitable, I suppose. To look out on the sea and dare attempt to comprehend its vastness is to realize the insignificance of oneself, the tininess of all human action. To look up at the stars provides something of the same experience, but with the sea it is more immediate. Man has not been given the stars the way he has been given the Earth, but to see the ocean is to realize that we are strangers even in our own home. Unlike the stars, the water is at hand. We can set foot in it if we wish, but wandering out too far will lead to certain disaster.

There is far more water than there is land, especially if one thinks about it three-dimensionally. The land is two-dimensional only. It is measured in area. The sea is measured by volume, and the immenseness of the extra dimension, of the depth which the land lacks, weighs on the soul. We are excluded from that depth. There is a world alongside ours that differs in magnitude so much as to differ in kind, and it is the bigger one. In fact, perhaps it is not our world at all. Perhaps that bigger world is the world, and we are living on two-dimensional anomalies on it. The thought is enough to make one shudder.

If you let it. By all means, on a cold and cloudy day, read of the sea, but not too much. Immerse yourself, if you will, but be careful not to drown.