The Silent Beach, the Bowl of Stars

The Silent Beach, the Bowl of Stars

Rela­tion­ship is not stran­gled by claims. Inti­ma­cy is tem­pered by light­ness of touch. We have moved through our day like dancers, not need­ing to touch more than light­ly because we were instinc­tive­ly mov­ing to the same rhythm.

A good rela­tion­ship has a pat­tern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The part­ners do not need to hold on tight­ly, because they move con­fi­dent­ly in the same pat­tern, intri­cate but gay and swift and free, like a coun­try dance of Mozart’s. To touch heav­i­ly would be to arrest the pat­tern and freeze the move­ment, to check the end­less­ly chang­ing beau­ty of its unfold­ing. There is no place here for the pos­ses­sive clutch, the cling­ing arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in pass­ing. Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back — it does not mat­ter which. Because they know they are part­ners mov­ing to the same rhythm, cre­at­ing a pat­tern togeth­er, and being invis­i­bly nour­ished by it.

The joy of such a pat­tern is not only the joy of cre­ation or the joy of par­tic­i­pa­tion, it is also the joy of liv­ing in the moment. Light­ness of touch and liv­ing in the moment are intertwined.

When the heart is flood­ed with love

But how does one learn this tech­nique of the dance? Why is it so dif­fi­cult? What makes us hes­i­tate and stum­ble? It is fear, I think, that makes one cling nos­tal­gi­cal­ly to the last moment or clutch greed­i­ly toward the next.… But how to exor­cize it? It can only be exor­cized by its oppo­site, love. When the heart is flood­ed with love there is no room in it for fear, for doubt, for hes­i­ta­tion. And it is this lack of fear that makes for the dance. When each part­ner loves so com­plete­ly that he has for­got­ten to ask him­self whether or not he is loved in return; when he only knows that he loves and is mov­ing to its music — then, and then only, are two peo­ple able to dance per­fect­ly in tune to the same rhythm.

But is this all to the rela­tion­ship of the arg­onau­ta — this pri­vate pat­tern of two dancers per­fect­ly in time? Should they not also be in tune with a larg­er rhythm, a nat­ur­al swing­ing of the pen­du­lum between shar­ing and soli­tude; between the inti­mate and the abstract; between the par­tic­u­lar and the uni­ver­sal, the near and the far? And is it not the swing­ing of the pen­du­lum between these oppo­site poles that makes a rela­tion­ship nour­ish­ing? Yeats once said that the supreme expe­ri­ence of life was ​“to share pro­found thought and then to touch.” But it takes both.

Sep­a­rat­ing and uniting

First touch, inti­mate touch of the per­son­al and par­tic­u­lar (the chores in the kitchen, the talk by the fire); then the loss of inti­ma­cy in the great stream of the imper­son­al and abstract (the silent beach, the bowl of stars over­head). Both part­ners are lost in a com­mon sea of the uni­ver­sal which absorbs and yet frees, which sep­a­rates and yet unites. Is this not what the more mature rela­tion­ship, the meet­ing of two soli­tudes, is meant to be? The dou­ble-sun­rise stage was only inti­mate and per­son­al. The oys­ter bed was caught in the par­tic­u­lar and the func­tion­al. But the arg­onau­ta, should they not be able to swing from the inti­mate and the par­tic­u­lar and the func­tion­al out into the abstract and the uni­ver­sal, and then back to the per­son­al again?

And in this image of the pen­du­lum swing­ing in easy rhythm between oppo­site poles, is there not a clue to the prob­lem of rela­tion­ships as a whole? Is there not here even a hint of an under­stand­ing and an accep­tance of the winged life of rela­tion­ships, of their eter­nal ebb and flow, of their inevitable intermittency?

The ebb and flow of life

When you love some­one you do not love them all the time, in exact­ly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impos­si­bil­i­ty. It is even a lie to pre­tend to. And yet this is exact­ly what most of us demand. We have so lit­tle faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of rela­tion­ships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in ter­ror its ebb. We are afraid it will nev­er return. We insist on per­ma­nen­cy, on dura­tion, on con­ti­nu­ity; when the only con­ti­nu­ity pos­si­ble, in life as in love, is in growth, in flu­id­i­ty — in free­dom, in the sense that the dancers are free, bare­ly touch­ing as they pass, but part­ners in the same pattern.

The only real secu­ri­ty is not in own­ing or pos­sess­ing, not in demand­ing or expect­ing, not in hop­ing, even. Secu­ri­ty in a rela­tion­ship lies nei­ther in look­ing back to what it was in nos­tal­gia, nor for­ward to what it might be in dread or antic­i­pa­tion, but liv­ing in the present rela­tion­ship and accept­ing it as it is now. For rela­tion­ships, too, must be like islands. One must accept them for what they are here and now, with­in their lim­its — islands, sur­round­ed and inter­rupt­ed by the sea, con­tin­u­al­ly vis­it­ed and aban­doned by the tides. 

The most impor­tant thing

How can one learn to live through the ebb-tides of one’s exis­tence? How can one learn to take the trough of the wave? It is eas­i­er to under­stand here on the beach, where the breath­less­ly still ebb-tides reveal anoth­er life below the lev­el which mor­tals usu­al­ly reach. In this crys­talline moment of sus­pense, one has a sud­den rev­e­la­tion of the secret king­dom at the bot­tom of the sea. Here in the shal­low flats one finds, wad­ing through warm rip­ples, great horse-conchs piv­ot­ing on a leg; white sand dol­lars, mar­ble medal­lions engraved in the mud; and log myr­i­ads of bright- col­ored cochi­na-clams, glis­ten­ing in the foam, their shells open­ing and shut­ting like but­ter­flies’ wings. So beau­ti­ful is the still hour of the sea’s with­draw­al, as beau­ti­ful as the sea’s return when the encroach­ing waves pound up the beach, press­ing to reach those dark rum­pled chains of sea­weed which mark the last high tide.

Per­haps this is the most impor­tant thing for me to take back from beach-liv­ing: sim­ply the mem­o­ry that each cycle of the tide is valid; each cycle of the wave is valid; each cycle of a rela­tion­ship is valid. And my shells? I can sweep them all into my pock­et. They are only there to remind me that the sea recedes and returns eternally.

Read Mimi Dixon­s’s per­son­al reflec­tion on this piece.