The Ocean's Pool

The Meeting at the Tides

"It's nice to be alone sometimes, but not on nights like these", a raspy voice said.

And it's right. It was a moonless night. Tiny specks light up the night sky, mirrored on a dark azure hue of the ocean before me. Gentle waves crash around my feet, tiny grains of sand inch beneath with every surf. Standing on the heel deep shore, it was cold. It was a chilly november night after all. Staring out and beyond what my eyes can see, I was momentarily blinded by a lighthouse at a distance as it beams out a steady ray across the sea, warning fisherfolk and shipmen alike of the shallow reef nearby. I was equally startled by the voice, and I turn my head to see a boy around my age, probably older, at a distance.

It was surprising that his voice rang loud and clear, if it was indeed his voice that I heard. He was walking towards the waves with an oil lamp held aloft with his left hand, and an improvised fishing spear of bamboo and metal with his right. A snorkel and a pair of goggles hung by his waist, tied on a rattan string that also holds his pants together.

"Nights like these are good for catching fish, but they are better spent talking about good stuff, don't you think?"

I turned to face him. "Excuse me, are you talking to me?"

"Yes", he answered. His voice was crisp and clear, surreal and almost melodious. "You don't mind talking to a stranger, do you?"

"No, I'm cool." And indeed I was. His voice was familiar, almost like it belonged to someone I knew in the past, but I am sure I haven't seen this boy or talked to him before. There was something about him that seems to calm down the sea and silence the sea birds, like a presence that can soothe a burdened soul.

"Okay, I am from around here. Can you see those little lights there? That's the village where I come from." He was pointing to a cluster of lights at a distance, some dancing with the waves which suggest that his village might actually be houses built on a stilts above the water.

I strained my eyes to make out the faint lights he's pointing to. "Is that a fishing village, where you're from? It seems far from here".

"It is, 10 minutes on boat, thirty if you would rather walk around the cove and follow the shoreline through here. I come here everyday at the same time, but it's the first time I saw you. You are not from around here, are you?"

"Nope. We have a house here, but no, I am not. I just wanted to see the ocean, and this is the closest beach from where I stay."

"It's beautiful, this beach. No one's swimming around here, thanks to those oysters that make the rocks sharp, and the seaweed that makes them slimy and slippery. Dangerous combination if I may say."

"Indeed. I would have stood a little more further into the sea but I'm afraid that the rocks might cut me."

"Here, come." He left his fishing gear by the shore, and took my hand. He was leading me on deeper waters.

"The rocks", I told him.

"The rocks", he answered, "have stood there for years, even decades. I told you, I go here everyday. Just follow my feet, and make sure you don't slip".

"Okay", I muttered, as I put my feet where his had been.

"People are afraid to step into the rocks because they might get cut, and if they do get cut, they curse the rocks' slippery surface, and the sharp oyster shells that cut them. But they never realize that the rocks and the oysters were put there by a divine Hand, and that that Hand will not move the oysters and the rocks just so people can take a leisurely wade towards one of Its amazing creations."

"Leisurely wade? By Its amazing creations, you mean--"

"I mean this." He was staring at a shallow pool in a slab of searock around six feet across. "Go ahead, jump in." I stared at him with worried eyes. "No, it isn't deep", he said reassuringly. "One foot at a time."

"Sea Urchins?"

"Negative."

I dipped my right foot into the pool, and as soon as the water rippled from the movement, the most fascinating thing happened.

"Beautiful, isn't it".

It being beautiful was an understatement; it was magical. Specks of starlight formed around my toes, now my ankle, now my feet. A bluish, faint glow, like faeries dancing with each ebb and flow. I looked up at the starlit sky, no, it isn't a reflection. There's something in the water that made it shine as if the very stars descended into this pool.

I stood in awe. The boy jumped into the water with me, and the splash that he made with his jump lit up the entire pool. I could see his face clearly now, illuminated by the magical, dreamlike , bluish glow of the pool.

"What...what are they?"

"I don't know, and I've been dying to know what they are since I found them. What I do know is that there's something in the pool that attracts them, probably the warmth."

The water was comfortably warm, indeed. I never thought about the water being warm, but that might be the reason why I haven't felt a slight chill when I jumped in the pool despite the icy air.

"But whatever they may be, they make me happy. I have six hungry mouths to feed, and that's a burden that I might probably carry for the rest of my life. For me, life is a cycle of the sea; the tides rise and fall in synch with the moon's silver glow, but such is the way of the world. The fish swim, lay eggs, and die, some end up in our plates, but that is their fate. The sea may be tranquil when the ocean and the skies are at peace, but its currents are ever strong and swift. But not us."

"Not..us?" I interrupted.

"Yes." I looked at him in the eye, round black holes that mirror the glow of the water around us. I was looking way beyond, past his anguish and hardships, into his soul.

"We are never in mercy of the way of the world." He started.

"We exist, and that is the way of the world, but the One Hand that has written all left us with a divine gift. A gift, yes, to live. To live how we choose to live, to see and hear, to touch and feel, to love.."

"We will be forever in awe of the mysteries of the world, but we should know that we are part of those mysteries, an enigma that may never be unlocked lest that One That Has Written All permit that it be unlocked, those mysteries understood. We hold in our hands our own fate, yet they are only revealed as they unfold."

His eyes are closed. He is shutting himself out of the magical glow of the pool. He raised his head to face the skies, and in that moment I knew that he is detaching himself from the physical world, feeding off the omniscient energies of the lifestream.

"The world is young, but we are younger. To say that we know what we should of this earth is an offense to beings who possess a wider, more ancient knowledge of the things that were and things that are. Life is much more complex than the physiology of the cells or the components of the atom that we so unsuccesfully try to understand, but it is also much more subtler than the rising of the sun in the east and its setting in the west."

I closed my eyes now, trying to understand what he is trying to convey.

"The simplicity of life is as complex as the powers that govern us. We may try to, but we will never fully comprehend, like the enigma of this world, or the glow of this pool. We may know what causes the tides to rise and fall, but like the depths of the seas, we can never measure the infinite possibilities of those powers' purpose."