The Stars and the Cookie Jar

The sea is the sum of all my religious faith: I leap into the sea's arms, and I trust that G-d, in the sea, who could take me if G-d wanted, won't take me this time. The sea is where I find my peace, when no human being can bring peace to me. I am at home in the salt water in all seasons, hot, cold, pouring rain or parched.

I try to respect the water. I try to have a prudent amount of fear. I shape my body to its power: I never expect the waves to bend to me. But mostly, when I go down to the sea, it is a refuge, a still spot even when the water is roaring, a cradle that rocks me, a place I love.


And it is hard right now to love the sea.

It's different, this. It isn't me flinging my own reckless self off a boat's prow into deep, cold water. My life is my own: I am accountable.

But who is accountable to all those people, who had done nothing to risk themselves, who had done nothing to tempt the water? When the sea raced back and reared up, when it came to dash apart homes and boats and leave nothing behind but spindrift and corpses, who answers for that moment?

I can answer myself from tales, comfortless: the sea takes what the sea wants. If you live at the edge of all that water, you prepare yourself for a tithe.

But I can't think that the sea could want so many brides, so many husbands, so many children. I can't find words for this. And now the water is smooth again over all the wreckage and destruction, now the waves are moving in and out like breathing, and I don't know what to do or how to feel, or what to say to everyone the sea left behind.