Akaroa & the spirituality of water

Akaroa is an old french town snuggled in an inlet that leads to the Pacific Ocean, which looks like brain capillaries on a map. We took a boat through the winding inlet out to where it meets the ocean, catapulting me back to a time where little blue penguins were abundant and Hector dolphins weren't on the endangered list. There are caves in the cliff walls where Maori once stored their food before 'refrigerator' was a word and a rocky cliff face that looks exactly like an elephant, naturally carved out by water over time (I cannot describe my obsession with that elephant).

The ocean is thick, timeless, drowning with stories of centuries our lives missed out on. As I sat on the boat I invented stories of young, tattooed Maori boys in a canoe on a calm day, watching the ocean stretch into another world that they, too, were inventing. I invented stories of mermaids, the ones with terrifying faces but beautiful souls, and how they had swimming races with blue penguins and sang with lonely whales. Then I thought about colour and how the ocean here is green like the walls in your grandmother's bathroom, like avocados and algae, but also how it is blue like everyone's favourite colour in fourth grade, blue like a sunny day. I saw the ocean as a great tub of colour swimming, churning over and under jelly fish, whales, wooden hulls of ships.

Water flows through me. It slides in between each finger, every toe and every single strand of hair. It enters through my spirit and out through my soul; it reminds me that I once grew limbs encased by water, that my heart first beat surrounded by it. Water confuses me. It reminds me that though I am made up mostly of it, I can drown into its depths. There is a spiritual recognition that is felt when a human meets the sea, and that is what I felt that day.