Like The Sun Do I Love
See there! Surprised and pale
does it stand – before the rosy dawn!
For already she comes,
the glowing one,
— her love to the earth comes!
Innocence, and creative desire,
is all solar love!
See there, how she comes
impatiently over the sea!
Do you not feel the thirst and the hot breath of her love?
At the sea would she suck,
and drink its depths to her height:
now rises the desire of the sea with its thousand breasts.
Kissed and sucked would it
be by the thirst of the sun; vapor would it become,
and height, and path of light, and light itself!
Truly, like the sun do I love life,
and all deep seas.
And this means to me knowledge:
all that is deep shall ascend
— to my height!
–Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Thomas Common, Part II The Immaculate Perception page 122
I remember that morning. The arc of the sun had just appeared on the eastward horizon of the Atlantic ocean, I paddled the surfboard to just beyond the breakers. All was quiet, the beach sand behind me was yet to be crowded with vacationers, with playing children. I lay on the board, warmed by an ascending sun. Occasionally a gull would fly over, no doubt with gimlet eye seeking a sign of breakfast just below the waters surface.
Everything felt right, all was as it was, and as it should have been. Floating with rocking motion on a slender fragment of shaped foam, I knew (felt) that above and below were infinite varieties of life, things with life-experience that I could not fathom. The imagination of homo sapiens is robust, formidable, and yet an infant by comparison to the expanse of ecosystems, and what about the cosmos with the wheel of our milky way and thousands of other galaxies, millions of planets circling their sun?
My imagination trembled, and still does!
The featured lines in the voice of Nietzsche-Zarathustra offer a better poetic rendering of the life-force that shimmers, dances, ebbs and flows within us and between ourselves and others, human and non-human.
Indeed to love is to sing and to dance!
2 thoughts on “Like The Sun Do I Love”
Today’s quote from Nietzsche is uncharacteristically upbeat, at least from this perspective. Not complaining, just observing.
And your story of resting on a surfboard is so evocative of an early morning that has remained a wonderful memory for you. My hope is that we all have those extraordinary moments when we feel alive. I can recall several instances when I too had those experiences that are emblazoned in my mind.
As I do on occasion I would like to share a poem written years ago that I feel relates to your own words. Please forgive this self-indulgence
The Sea
If I were to write that I am like the sea,
(waves rolling, billowing,
cold and vast with secrets hidden
in dark and hallowed depths,)
I would be lying,
for I know I am not the sea.
I may dip my toe
into the foam along its shore,
feel humbled by churning tides,
and watch as a pomegranate sun
lingers at water’s edge,
still, I am just a creature of the land.
I observe the sea taking without remorse,
giving without desire.
When it kills, it does without intent,
while cradling the essence of life.
Though I am born of water,
I am surely not the sea.
I know of sand crusted layers
rippling across its silent floor,
a place where trilobites once ruled,
where bones and barnacles wait to be entombed.
And just as whales returned home
I ache from an ancient memory long passed.
I envy the sea, at peace with itself,
nothing to prove, no resentments.
It has found its place and settled
into its eternal dance with the moon.
So when I sleep and sink
deep within dreams at last I know,
the sea and I are one.
No apology ever should be given for that poem. Your words tell truth, touching the impartiality of life as life conveyed by the sea. Certainly that is nature’s lesson pointed to over and over, demanding a lifetime’s dedication and practice.