Chapter 6 — Sea
And thus begins Chapter Six.
Now, children.
There I stood.
Before the ocean.
Soaked.
Shoes wet.
Clothes wet.
Hair wet.
Existence generally damp.
And slowly
the rain stopped.
The council looks upward.
Clouds remained.
Water still dripped from everything.
But the great attack from the sky had ended.
And immediately,
the beach came back to life.
Children ran toward the water.
Adults followed.
Families reopened.
Umbrellas lowered.
People who had spent the last several minutes hiding from water
now voluntarily sprinted toward a significantly larger quantity of water.
The council pauses.
Humans are strange.
Children laughed.
People splashed.
Some swam.
Some stood where the waves broke and allowed the ocean to repeatedly assault their knees.
Others chased each other along the shore.
And me?
I sat.
The council nods.
Observed.
For a while,
that was enough.
I watched.
Children playing.
Parents calling after them.
Groups posing for photographs.
Couples walking close to the water.
People existing in that uncomplicated little way humans sometimes do near the sea.
No one appeared concerned with existential philosophy.
No one was trying to decode the meaning of the horizon.
They were simply having fun.
The council smiles.
And somewhere during this observation,
without really making a decision,
I began untying my shoes.
The council notices.
One lace.
Then the other.
Shoes off.
Socks
archive unclear.
But eventually,
toes in sand.
Children.
Wet sand feels different when you’ve spent the last several Wanderings mostly in mountains.
Cold.
Soft.
Shifting beneath the feet.
You step down,
and the earth rearranges itself around you.
I stood.
Looked at the water.
Then looked at my belongings.
The council becomes practical.
Phone.
Wallet.
Shoes.
Things I would prefer not to donate to the Arabian Sea.
I scanned nearby.
Found a family.
Kind looking people.
Which,
children,
is not a scientific category.
But sometimes the Unbegun operates on vibes.
I walked over.
Asked if I could leave my shoes and belongings near them while I went into the water.
They agreed.
The council smiles.
Kind people.
No suspicion.
No interrogation.
Just:
Sure.
So I tucked the shoes nearby.
Then performed advanced anti theft engineering.
Wallet
inside one shoe.
Phone
inside the other.
The council pauses.
Security system?
Invisible valuables.
Exactly.
Children.
The greatest vault ever designed:
Footwear.
I looked at them.
Satisfied.
Then looked down at myself.
The council becomes curious.
Clothes?
Fully on.
Change of clothes?
None.
Towel?
No.
Backup plan?
Absolutely not.
Children.
Ordinarily,
this would be a problem.
Except
I was already drenched.
The rain had done all the preliminary work.
There was no meaningful damage the ocean could now inflict upon my clothing.
Other than,
you know
death.
The council nods.
A slightly higher consequence.
But assuming we avoided that,
the outfit had nothing left to lose.
So I walked toward the waves.
No hesitation.
No stripping down.
No carefully folding clothes.
Just
into the ocean.
The council watches.
Water reached my feet.
Then ankles.
Knees.
Higher.
Cold at first.
Then not.
Children.
The body adjusts surprisingly quickly once it accepts that resistance is pointless.
A wave came.
I jumped.
Another.
I let it hit me.
And then
I played.
The council smiles.
That is the word.
Not swam with purpose.
Not exercised.
Not trained.
Played.
Children.
I floated.
Sat where the water was shallow enough to pull me gently backward and forward.
Swam when I felt like swimming.
Let waves carry me.
Dove beneath some.
Got slapped in the face by others.
Probably swallowed enough salt water to season several meals.
The council laughs.
And I had fun.
Simple.
Uncomplicated.
Fun.
Now.
I had been in oceans before.
Of course.
Family trips.
Friends.
Beaches.
Water wasn’t some newly unlocked biome.
But this
children
was different.
The council leans forward.
I was alone.
Not lonely.
Alone.
There is a difference.
A large one.
When you’re at the beach with family,
there are boundaries.
Don’t go too far.
Stay where we can see you.
Come back.
Time to eat.
Time to leave.
Children.
Reasonable boundaries.
Especially when you’re young.
With friends,
different rules.
Someone wants food.
Someone wants to leave.
Someone wants photos.
Someone is tired.
Someone hates getting wet.
There is always a collective clock.
But here?
No one.
The council grows quiet.
No:
Don’t go too deep.
No:
Come back now.
No:
We’re leaving.
No schedule attached to my body.
Just me.
The ocean.
And however long I decided.
Children.
That was new.
The freedom was not dramatic.
It didn’t arrive like Kasol’s:
Nobody knows me here.
It was smaller.
More ordinary.
But perhaps more intimate.
I could stay because I wanted to stay.
Leave because I wanted to leave.
Move farther in.
Move back.
Float.
Sit.
Do absolutely nothing.
The council nods.
No negotiation.
And I remember thinking
or perhaps only understanding without words
this is nice.
The ancient wisdom returns.
Then,
children,
something funny happened.
The council becomes interested.
I had complete freedom.
No one telling me when to get out.
No external time limit.
No adult voice announcing:
That’s enough water.
Come.
And how long did I stay?
The council waits.
Approximately the same amount of time I normally would have been allowed to stay.
The council collapses.
Children.
Years of conditioning.
Apparently the invisible parent timer had been installed directly into my nervous system.
No one called me.
No one waved.
No one said:
Time.
I simply reached a point where my body went:
Yep.
That’s about enough ocean.
The council laughs.
Freedom achieved.
Same schedule.
Still,
the difference mattered.
Because this time,
the decision was mine.
I walked back toward shore.
Water receding from my legs.
Clothes somehow even wetter than before,
which I had not believed physically possible.
The council nods.
Ocean technology.
I reached the sand.
Sat.
Just sat.
Wet.
Barefoot.
Looking around.
The family was still there.
My shoes remained.
Phone remained.
Wallet remained.
The council applauds humanity.
And children
the beach looked different from down there.
Earlier,
from North Cliff,
the people had been tiny.
Little moving dots beside enormous water.
Now I was one of them.
Sitting among everyone.
Watching the waves from ground level.
I looked down.
Shells.
The council follows my gaze.
Small ones.
Broken ones.
Pretty ones.
Ordinary ones.
Tiny little objects scattered through sand,
each one briefly becoming fascinating simply because I had nothing else demanding attention.
I picked some up.
Turned them over.
Put them down.
Maybe kept one.
Archive unclear.
Children.
Not everything becomes a relic.
Sometimes a shell is simply a shell.
Around me,
life continued.
Children playing.
People talking.
Someone taking photographs.
People swimming.
Vendors somewhere farther away.
Movement along the beach.
And I remained seated,
watching.
The council smiles.
No urgency.
Until
sound.
The council looks toward the water.
An engine.
Fast.
A jet ski cut across the sea.
Children.
Now.
I am a simple creature.
There are objects which immediately bypass every higher function of the brain.
Fast machine on water?
Cool.
The council nods.
Very cool.
I watched it race past.
Spray behind it.
Engine screaming.
Rider leaning as it turned.
And my eyes followed.
Left.
Farther.
Farther.
Until it disappeared toward another section of the beach.
The council leans forward.
And there it was.
A new quest marker.
Not spoken.
Not formally accepted.
Just curiosity doing what curiosity had apparently learned to do by now.
Where did that go?
Children.
This is how wandering works when the machinery is fully installed.
No map.
No recommendation.
No internet search.
Something catches the eye.
You follow.
The council smiles.
A flower had done it in Kodaikanal.
A dog had done it in Rishikesh.
Now
a jet ski.
The council writes:
GUIDE TYPE:
MECHANIZED AQUATIC OBJECT.
Acceptable.
I stood.
Returned to the family.
Thanked them.
Retrieved my belongings.
Phone from shoe.
Wallet from shoe.
The council checks.
Dry?
Dry enough.
A miracle.
I put my shoes back on.
Children.
Wet feet into shoes.
An experience designed by Satan.
The council winces.
But necessary.
Laces tied.
Possessions secured.
Nicotine meter still comfortably full.
And then
I started walking.
No certainty that the jet ski had gone anywhere interesting.
No knowledge of what lay farther down the shore.
No idea how far I would need to go.
Just a direction.
The general direction of:
That looked cool.
The council nods.
And off I went.
Children.
This is perhaps what Varkala was beginning to reveal.
The place had seemed ordinary at the station
because I had expected it to announce itself.
But once I reached the cliff,
it stopped needing to.
Everything became invitation.
The stairs.
The rain.
The ocean.
The shells.
Now the jet ski.
No great quest.
No dealer.
No mysterious guide.
No weight demanding resolution.
Just one small curiosity after another,
pulling me farther along the beach.
The council grows quiet.
And I followed.
Because by then,
that was what the Unbegun had learned to do.
Not always:
Where am I supposed to go?
Sometimes simply:
What caught my eye?
Thus concludes Chapter Six.
The Kind Family.
The Shoe Vault.
The Ocean Alone.
The Invisible Parent Timer.
And The Jet Ski.
Children.
I had come to Varkala because I wanted to know what it was like.
Apparently the answer could not be found from the railing.
So I went down.
Then into the water.
Then back onto the sand.
And when a jet ski screamed past toward some unknown part of the shore
I stood,
put my wet feet into even wetter shoes,
and followed it.
