The wave has a thousand moods, writes William Finnegan. The wave is an event. The wave is an illusion. The wave disappears when you’re on it. The wave is a train you have to jump to ride.
I eyed the glorious waves once from a secret beach in Mtende, on the southern tip of Unguja. My ex and his staff at the lodge he owned knew about the place and we’d take day trips there, setting up camp in the secluded sandy spot between two towering cliffs.
Climbing down the rocky steps, I looked out at the startling beauty of ocean, cloud, sky and couldn’t quite comprehend what forces of luck had led me here. My body didn’t know how to be at home here so I took cues from my fellow travelers, finding shade under the rocks with a little blanket, watching the men spear fish on sticks and grill them over an open fire. Looked like a quilt of fish.
Always an outsider by design I suppose, I measured the parameters of my loneliness by how well I could regulate my nerves with the atmosphere. (At most, fear). Press your feet in the wet sand, I’d tell myself.
Go watch the women harvest sinewy rope from coconuts hidden under stones in the water. Go greet the fishermen who show up from a parallel universe with no business talking to you, whose faces break into warm smiles when you say hello in Swahili. Go wade in the caves. Collect the clouds like dream coins that will one day return you back to this memory.
Experience, not yet extinct but endangered. If we allow our phones to mediate every facet of our lives, we have two choices with our bodies: ignore them or control them, writes Christine Rosen in “The Extinction of Experience.” What ever happened to the non-quantifiable experience of unmediated pleasure? The you by the sea with your feet in the sand with no intention of documentation? She’s gone.
It’s been years since I was last at that spot, which has been blasted all over the internet as a “secret beach,” and now tourists pay for the approximation of experience. I suppose it was only a matter of time. Gatekeeping beauty is a tricky task, especially in a place like Zanzibar, where those who live there are constantly mediating the crash between tradition and modernity.
I’m home now and I realize how I’ve never gone looking for the secrets of this place. Learning to be somewhere is learning to talk about the land where you stand. The more we spiral into the outer spaces of the internet, the more my body moves in the direction of the forest. I always seem to spot a deer if I’m thinking about one, and that gives me a sense of place.
One time, a doe chased after me. My heart raced. I told my friend on the phone that I was frightened. I hid in a bathroom. The doe kept running. It was never after me! But I felt as though I had to flee. The sun burned bright on my freckled face. I found myself in an open field, exposed.
I heard relationship expert Esther Perel talk the other day about how human-AI relationships are so dissatisfying because the pleasure of loving someone has to do with accepting the risk of losing them—that one day, through separation or death—it will be over. AI relationships create the sensation of unconditional love, but we all know that friction and ripples are the point.
The wave has a thousand moods.
Do we want to be here but nowhere, or nowhere but here? To look or to live, the voyeur or the visionary? Know thyself or only show thyself. These are the ideas percolating for me today. I’m not afraid to surrender to these waves of new experience—one that’s mediated through light waves—but I stand in full defense of the senses.
Transit Slips, #18
I eyed the glorious waves once from a secret beach in Mtende, on the southern tip of Unguja. My ex and his staff at the lodge he owned knew about the place and we’d take day trips there, setting up camp in the secluded sandy spot between two towering cliffs.
Climbing down the rocky steps, I looked out at the startling beauty of ocean, cloud, sky and couldn’t quite comprehend what forces of luck had led me here. My body didn’t know how to be at home here so I took cues from my fellow travelers, finding shade under the rocks with a little blanket, watching the men spear fish on sticks and grill them over an open fire. Looked like a quilt of fish.
Always an outsider by design I suppose, I measured the parameters of my loneliness by how well I could regulate my nerves with the atmosphere. (At most, fear). Press your feet in the wet sand, I’d tell myself.
Go watch the women harvest sinewy rope from coconuts hidden under stones in the water. Go greet the fishermen who show up from a parallel universe with no business talking to you, whose faces break into warm smiles when you say hello in Swahili. Go wade in the caves. Collect the clouds like dream coins that will one day return you back to this memory.
Experience, not yet extinct but endangered. If we allow our phones to mediate every facet of our lives, we have two choices with our bodies: ignore them or control them, writes Christine Rosen in “The Extinction of Experience.” What ever happened to the non-quantifiable experience of unmediated pleasure? The you by the sea with your feet in the sand with no intention of documentation? She’s gone.
It’s been years since I was last at that spot, which has been blasted all over the internet as a “secret beach,” and now tourists pay for the approximation of experience. I suppose it was only a matter of time. Gatekeeping beauty is a tricky task, especially in a place like Zanzibar, where those who live there are constantly mediating the crash between tradition and modernity.
I’m home now and I realize how I’ve never gone looking for the secrets of this place. Learning to be somewhere is learning to talk about the land where you stand. The more we spiral into the outer spaces of the internet, the more my body moves in the direction of the forest. I always seem to spot a deer if I’m thinking about one, and that gives me a sense of place.
One time, a doe chased after me. My heart raced. I told my friend on the phone that I was frightened. I hid in a bathroom. The doe kept running. It was never after me! But I felt as though I had to flee. The sun burned bright on my freckled face. I found myself in an open field, exposed.
I heard relationship expert Esther Perel talk the other day about how human-AI relationships are so dissatisfying because the pleasure of loving someone has to do with accepting the risk of losing them—that one day, through separation or death—it will be over. AI relationships create the sensation of unconditional love, but we all know that friction and ripples are the point.
The wave has a thousand moods.
Do we want to be here but nowhere, or nowhere but here? To look or to live, the voyeur or the visionary? Know thyself or only show thyself. These are the ideas percolating for me today. I’m not afraid to surrender to these waves of new experience—one that’s mediated through light waves—but I stand in full defense of the senses.
Transit Slips, #18
