‘THE KENDAI IS a fake bluefin, a hatchery bum, with no more understanding of the
sea than a concubine in the court of Genghis Khan.’
Pilots who ditch their planes and take to a life raft qualify ipso facto for
the Goldfish Club. Crossing-the-line humiliation brings protection by
order of King Neptune. Copies of certificates, for these and similar
maritime decorations, sidestep the forces-wide supply systems. Rarely, a
local command will make unofficial use of the regular print shop.
1st – The Sea Change
The tidal reach is the amphibian experiment, a marsh lab fermenting
unattended in the moonlight. Study the documentary Zone, momentous
like its prequels. Without currents to bring them morsels, terrestrial
creatures learn to move their heads. They growl and stand their ground.
2nd – The Sea in Contention
The surf and the tide continue their uneasy dialogue in the stadium.
In the green corner, prudentially checking pebbles in a prospector’s pan:
the care of the soul. In the blue corner: the doomsday machine, with its
tactic-swallowing strategy, skilled at using the enemy as a weapon.
3rd – The Sea of Dreams
Wild years in Malibu: ‘a way of life on the wave tops’. Life magazine’s
rubric rides fathoms over the soulful undertow, beguiling sociopaths
surfing on breaking families, among California beach girls hating each
others’ hair as much as Maui surf girls love each others’ hair, and comb it.
4th – The Sea Cure
Erectile problems crave healing foam: strip off, plunge in, for the closure
of old wounds. The Baltic is perfect: an avatar of Venus, rising, would
complicate matters. Tourist bars are suitably distant, their music drowned
by contact calls of supplicants hitting the cold sea, genitalia retracting.
5th – The Sea Cave
Humankind against nature: this is the triumph of the species. The blow
hole is the least of it. Musically, all agree, the show is a failure. But the
spectacle is unprecedented, thanks to a genius lighting crew. Virtually all
creatures here are stone-eating, imperceptibly enlarging their habitat.
6th – The Violated Sea
Solo yachtsmen fall prey to a melancholy deeper than separation. Please
let this not be grief – imagine how you’d feel, discovering that you’re
sailing on the corpse of love, eerily free of scavengers, amid seabirds with
full stomachs starved, drowning, victims of the sky god’s condoms.
All six – The Sea of the Unconscious
We learn the truth at a round table in a land-locked country: minds are
jellyfish on cosmic currents. Hence simultaneous invention, often taken
for plagiarism. Logic today, mana mañana. Our words are either rock
pools or icebergs. The night sea dive will take us to archaic wreckage.
♦
Introduction to Six-Way Mirror | The Index of Hexagrams and Cantos
