Gretchen Rubin’s new book Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World, has got me paying even more attention! In the second chapter, she explores how hearing anchors us in the world. This is timely for me because I have a hearing test on June 21. Yesterday, I wrote in my journal:
I yearn for the sound of the ocean. I remember tossing pillows from my bed onto the balcony of my beachfront hotel room. Plopping myself down on them, I listened to the waves. It is a sound that is deep in my fascia – the part of me that holds all my organs together. I can feel it the most there, which is why I think the ocean is so grounding for me. Later, I sat on the beach, closed my eyes, and just listened. In solitude, I wanted to hear the perpetual sound of the waves. They are ancient. Deep-seated. Grounding. When there were other people around I felt like telling them to leave me alone so I could listen.
Though it’s been several years since I’ve been at the beach, the sound isn’t absent from my body yet. I can still hear the waves and smell the air and feel the breeze on my cheeks and the sand on my feet. Isn’t that wonderful?
Still, I ask myself, wouldn’t it be better if I were there? I long to be there. I want to be in solitude and experience the ocean again.
I then begin to suspect what’s going on is the longing I learned about in psychoanalysis. Today it’s the longing for the ocean. Not to get in it. Not to swim. But to hear and feel the waves. In the past, it was the longing to merge with men. Still further back it was the longing to live south of Grand Avenue where there were big trees. Before that, it was to be Annette Funicello on Mickey Mouse Club.
But now longing for the ocean reminds me of when I first heard Sigmund Freud’s phrase, oceanic feeling. I knew deep in my bones that these words described the feeling that I was longing for.
I long for oneness with all reality. I hope I can hear it.
