Malinda Words: Reflections on waves and markings

There are trends and they are referred to as raeli in Sinhala. A back translation would give us ‘frill’ interestingly, like the frills of a kite, sarungale raeli. When I think of waves, it’s always in relation to water.

And when I think of waves, I think of the marks they leave on the sand. Ocean waves do that. Waves rush in towards the shore. Waves recede. And a line is left behind, marking the end point of the particular wave. And this line, so distinct in separating the wet from the dry, relatively, is made for erasure. The next wave obliterates and replaces. New wave, new line. Another wave and this is gone too.

Fascinating.

Looking back I feel the poem ‘Dover Beach’ by Matthew Arnold lodged something in my mind that persuaded me to consider waves and lines. He wrote ‘of pebbles which the waves draw back and fling upon the high strand at their return.’ This reminded him of Sophocles hearing the very same roar on the Aegean and which brought to his mind ‘the turbid ebb and flow of human misery.’

Misery is not what comes to mind when I watch waves and notice the marks they leave on the sand. Rather, it is the vicissitudes of life. The highs and lows. Profit and loss. Moment of glory and moment of vilification. Joys and sorrows. Praise and blame. The waves: they rise and fall. They roar as they crash in but there’s not even a whimper as they recede. The lines they leave say ‘present’ but they are quickly ‘absented.’

How frail these lines are although so powerful are their makers! What marks then do the movers and shakers leave, what signatures of arrival and departure? Not everyone who rides a wave is a professional surfer. When waves collapse and perish upon inevitable shores they are left upon the sand, much like driftwood.

We are human and humanly frail. Being subject to the vicissitudes of the human condition we get excited at times by waves, especially those that are high and arrive with a roar. We are human and therefore remember. We can think back on all the waves we’ve ridden and ask ourselves where they are now, which oceans they move around in, upon which shores they break or, indeed, if they even exist in a way that we can identify them and say with conviction, ‘yes, THIS is THAT wave.’

We are human so we can take note of the lines left by receding waves. We might remember believing fervently that these lines were indelibly etched on a process or a social, economic and political geography, that they would surely bear upon futures. We might recall that things didn't exactly turn out that way. And then we can rush into the water in search of yet another wave that we think will change our fortunes for the better. And we do this often enough.

There are lines that can be drawn and which will take a lot of effort to erase. Such lines are not drawn on water, such marks are not left on sand. There are lines which appear and we know they should not be crossed. There are marks that arise and we know they cannot be ignored. There are moments that make us decide, ‘this, now, is what should be done.’ And then, most importantly, there are indelible truths as expounded by Siddhartha Gauthama the Buddha.

But we walk through unhappy streets, hoodwinked by a streetlamp and a thief, misled by profiteers who come wearing the garb of prophets, we laugh with comedians not realising that we are being laughed at, we sheer politicians who are really jeering at us.

We embrace lines in the sand and let wisdom slip through our fingers. Things are conditional and conditional things are impermanent. It is not advisable to read conditional as indelible and erasable as permanent. Perhaps this is something to think about on this Poson Poya day, which is when you would be reading this: there are waves and the marks they leave and we, upon the shore would do well to observe their respective movements.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]

04 June 2023

Reflections on waves and markings

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