The ocean exists in every state at once. Heat and chemicals and energy move throughout its bodies in channels and hotspots that never stay still around you: the wavering line where cool and warmer waters meet, a parrotfish nibbling grains of sand just a few metres away from you, a microbe crystallising a new plate to protect its mysterious body, a continuous rain of particles that falls silently.

A space of continuous coming together, falling apart, concentrating, dissipating, all at once, the ocean is a limitless field of minerals playing together to make things and surfaces like crusts, nodules, shells and skeletons that persist for millions of years, or just for one moment; like notes on a page, or knots in a field, with geological rhythms we can learn to read, or to feel within ourselves.

As a prelude and a periodic pause to acting for the ocean, this meditation asks you to be still and to tune into the wild yet delicate biogeochemical equilibrium in which the ocean exists, at this moment: to concentrate, to dissolve, to try both at once, to play with oceanic feelings and mineral gatherings in your mind and your body.

. . .

Closing the eyes

Relaxing the eyeballs

Feeling the boundaries

        slip away

breathing in

into the mineral parts of you

breathing out from the bones

        the ribs, the fingernails

        the top of the spine, the teeth

        the base of the spine

        the ankles, the toenails

breathing through all of the bones at once

each hard part is only a concentration

        a mineral gathering

        a being at once

        a biochemical knot in a field

breathing into the space “between the knots”

[a list of minerals formed in the ocean]

Calcite

Aragonite

Opal

Chert

Dolomite

Siderite

Pyrite

. . .

Opening the eyes

Opening the hands

Opening the mouth

Breathing in

Breathing out

Moving the eyes,

Taking it all in.

Every thing you see – a shoe, a shell

Every surface – a wall, a wave

Is a knot in a field

        A mineral regathering

        A being, for now

        A biogeochemical instant

Letting your gaze fall on one thing, one surface

Breathing in

        To concentrate

Breathing out

        And watching the knot come loose.

Knowing that molecules drift together by chance

        Answering a sense of incompleteness

        Craving stability

        So joining, growing together, and dissolving

Calcite

Aragonite

Opal

Chert

Dolomite

Siderite

Pyrite

. . .

Locating your nucleus

        A knot in the field of the mind

Breathing in,

        Holding that concentration

Breathing out,

        Dissolving the edges

Breathing in,

        Locating the centre

Breathing out,

        Dissolving the centre

Breathing in,

        Concentrating

        Growing a grain, a crystal

Breathing out

        To blow it away

        Rolling it over the seafloor,

        Slowly bouncing over the sand

        And back into the water.

Breathing in,

           Concentrating

           Growing a grain, a crystal

Breathing out

           To blow it away

Breathing in,

           Growing a grain, a crystal

Breathing out

           To blow it away.

Opening your eyes

Tasting the salt on a fingertip

Back into the water.   

Bibliography

What Happens Between the Knots? A Series of Open Questions, edited by Anthony Huberman and Jeanne Gerrity, Sternberg Press, 2022

Oceanic minerals: Their origin, nature of their environment, and significance, Miriam Kastner, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 96(7), pp.3380-3387, 1999