ON SHORELINES AND JAWLINES

The mouth of the ocean, and the mouth of a person, both open and close. And both allow the dead and the living to enter and exit through the opening. The mouth of an ocean is the doorway through which fish swim in order to roam the sea, and the doorway through which fish then swim in order to spawn, and in order to die. Surrounded by teeth, the mouth of a person is a gateway. Surrounded by sharp rocks, or rocks ground to sand, the mouth of an ocean is a gateway. The mouth of an ocean holds within it those fish that we will eventually hold in hungry mouths; and the mouth of the ocean opens and closes with the changing tides and the varying and constantly-changing shorelines and rock-collections and moving earth.

The mouth of an ocean takes in water, the vehicle and catalyst for life; and the mouth of a person takes in water, too. Clouds weep above the ocean, and eyes weep above the mouth. The mouth of a person takes in nourishment, and takes in other tongues, and outputs languages and shouts, and stifles those noises that seem more animal because man likes to think that he has evolved beyond that which is animal and primitive and crude.

The human mouth will cease to open and close one day, because it’s mode of opening and closing is limited. The ocean contains a jaw that needs not sockets, and it can open and close in any number of swells and shapes. It will not cease to open or close for a long time. The human mouth will take in air, and will take in matter. The mouth of the ocean will take in all of these things, in all of their forms, most of them the outputs of ocean-creatures who are, themselves, living and dying and procreating. Both the teeth of the ocean and the teeth of man are broken down by the harshness of the world. And yet the teeth of the ocean, when broken down, can be lain upon in the sun and dreamed upon in the sun.

Strange, it seems, that we consider ourselves so different from the earth, with its broken and shifting jaw; and stranger still that we consider ourselves so different from the animals around us, with their varying shapes and sizes of jaws and varying uses for said jaws. I would imagine that man only becomes aware of the similarity between his own jaw and another creature’s jaw when he finds his limbs held between clenching teeth and when he fears for his own life. But such is the selfish nature of man, and in such a way does it blind him and put him at risk.

The jaw is, since primitive days, the bringer of death. It can kill and turn its prey into nourishment. It can also separate one life from another life in chewing the umbilical cord and allowing that life which is new to isolate itself from that life which is less new. The jaw is also a vehicle for love, whether it is utilized in sex or whether it is put to use for speech or for song or for poetry, all of which translate love into some other state so that it might be taken in by those who are willing to receive it.

The jaw also opens to announce fear, or to call out a warning. It is the small and insufficient opening through which the soul tries to escape but out of which nothing so huge and majestic as the human soul could ever really fit. And so in attempting to yell out those things about which we care the most, we fail to express the essence of the soul, and instead what comes out, at times when we most want to shout out or cry out, is a mangled, high-pitched, and abrasive sound known to most of us as a scream. A scream is a sound that reminds us of the pain of not being able to take our soul out of our own body and hand it to someone else, or show it to someone else, or turn it into our craft, or give it to the world. This pain of great, and when the sound resembling this pain is heard, those around the man who stands, mouth open, screaming, cover their ears. The pain of the soul is too much for them to hear, or they do not want to be reminded of the pain of other souls because they are so aware of the pain of their own.