The Last Island

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It is simple enough—H2O—water. Water, a single drop hanging from the sink waiting to be the last drop waiting to fall into a full glass of water. Water, the fresh flow of a winter spring into a freshly unthawed lake. Water, the bubbly foam from the shallows filtering through the soft sands of the shore. All of this is water. Water is the incompressible portion of the realm. Drop upon drop it crushes until only truth is left miles down in the deep where light is forced to darkness and there is no more except for water.

Water is where life is defined by fang and fin that swim about in sight. Life is size becoming invisible in the light in the water. Death is the size of fear floating face down, a mass in the water.

The ocean is four simple atoms over and over and over—the largest of exponential numbers possible—and even then it, the ocean, is beyond understanding. Hydrogen bound to oxygen and sodium bound to chlorine is all there is to the volume of the cubic miles of ocean. I had seen all the natural history programs on the oceans and had completed the required classwork of the oceans at the university long after my first experience with the ocean off the New Jersey coast at eight years of age. The plasma that suspended my red blood cells was seawater after seeing the Deep.

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