We wave goodbye. We wave somebody over. We wave a flag. We wave away an objection, a memory, an inconvenient truth. We speak of waves of grief, waves of migration, waves of panic. The same word keeps returning, carrying different cargo each time.
Perhaps that is what words are.
Waves.
Nothing solid passes between us. Only movement. One mind disturbs the air. Another receives it. Most of what we call conversation is simply taking turns making waves.
Some reach the shore.
Most disappear.
England is an island. Well, almost.
Japan is an island.
That we know.
Both are shaped less by the land they stand on than by the waves that surround them. Their histories arrive from the sea. Trade, invasion, stories, weather, departures, returns.
Do we share waves?
A storm leaving Japan may eventually disturb the waters off Cornwall. A word spoken in Warsaw may find its way to California years later. Nothing simply stays where it begins.
The old Japanese fisherman knew this before the rest of us. He watched the sea every morning knowing that the wave arriving beneath his boat had travelled further than he ever would. He did not ask where it had come from. He simply learned to meet it.
You cannot hold a wave in your hands . You notice it arriving. You feel its force. Then it passes.
Listening then as surfing. Not controlling the wave but allowing it to carry you for a moment before letting it go again. Conversation less an exchange of objects than an exchange of movements. I make a wave. You answer with another. Somewhere between them, something briefly exists that belonged to neither of us alone.
Then the surface settles.
Until the next disturbance.
Until the next word.
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