The Shallows
I am a big fan of solo adventure/problem-solving films. Think Gravity about a woman stuck in space, Tracks about a woman who just wants to traverse Australia with camels because she’s sick of other humans, or even Castaway because even given its length, Tom Hank’s reminder that the sun will rise is something I cannot forget. I enjoy watching with people but I am purposeful when I watch alone.
It’s become a summer tradition to watch The Shallows, about a woman who goes to a remote area to surf at a hidden beach not many people visit. Out beyond the surf she is attacked by a shark, which remains lurking nearby, adamant she not win. She must use her medical school know-how to save her own life and then, clinging from rock to buoy, figure out how to get out of danger in an element she was not designed for, from a beast that wants to eat her. There’s something so cathartic for me watching people solve their problems, all alone in a harsh environment whether it be total desert isolation, doomed in space with little control, or trapped by murder sharks, all of which can serve as easy metaphors for me in my life.
I get something out of watching them carry out the impossible through a series of many small steps.
First, I must get out of this.
Next, I must tend to my wounds.
Third, assess.
And repeat and so on.
First, the surfer climbs onto the body of a whale the shark was feeding on. Registering the instability of that environment, she dives at the last second and swims to a rock in the shallows, too far from shore. She uses her wetsuit sleeve as a tourniquet, her jewelry as sutures, her knowledge of tides and swimming capacity and calculations and whatever else she can draw from. She collects information and makes observations as she struggles through.
Though I know I would last two seconds in an actual survival situation, watching her add time, minute-by-minute, to her own life using these steps helps me do the same when I feel stuck and bloody on a rock, floating hopeless in space, or a thousand miles from anyone or anything to call upon.
On the rock, the surfer weighs out her options, which are:
a) Stay on this rock and succumb to her injuries.
b) Swim for shore and succumb to the shark.
c) Rest on this rock and make a plan, then try to get someplace better.
It does not look promising. She feels her desperate clock ticking. She makes her choice. Her steps of progress are very small. But she learns. She sometimes tries to make a move by swimming out but gets more injured in the process and is forced to return to her rock with even more wounds to tend to. It gets pretty bleak. While on the rock, she shares the space with an injured seagull whose shoulder she relocates. It was her only friend, but it gives her a boost to watch it recover and fly.
Eventually she watches the shark, studies it, gets to know its patterns as it circles the area. She even speaks to it. She knows she has limited time before the tide comes in and covers her rock. For a while all she can do is lie down and wait, conserving her energy. Then, using her collected data, she eventually makes a break for it and swims to a rusty buoy. There, using whatever resources she can scrap together, she faces her foe once and for all. It isn’t pretty. They are not remotely matched in this fight. But you know, she’s smart, she keeps fighting, and in the end, she wins. She even surfs again, knowing what may be lurking in the shallows.
Shark movies are great. Water is super scary. Imagining the exhaustion of swimming with a monster on your flailing, clumsy heels is such a stressmare. It’s fast, you’re slow. It’s strong, you’re weak. It’s big, you’re small. Will it get you? Will it take you and drag you down? Or can you wait it out and make a plan, stay afloat? Do you learn more about it so you know what you’re dealing with?
I read somewhere that if you get pulled out by the riptide, instead of swimming against it toward shore, you should swim across it until you’re out of the pull. Then angle yourself toward shore. Otherwise you’ll wear yourself out and drown. I think of this tip every time I visit the ocean. I love the ocean, but never swim out too far. It feels too risky.
Over a period of maybe six months, I have been writing a poem. Poems come in different circumstances and moments. I usually write them fairly quickly. This one began in the car and, for the most part, stayed in the car. I have a magnetic phone holder attached to the dash and I’d pull up my notes when stopped at a red light and add a line here, add a line there. Line by line by stoplight I wrote it. I finally finished it— or excused myself from it—and will leave it here now, at the shark tail end of summer, and, like real poets do, name it after a movie I like to watch every now and then.
The Shallows
Ready at the surface
In the shallows and the deep
Caught between and in and out
Of wakefulness and sleep
All it takes is summons
The siren song of thought
Remembrance is a net
I am catcher and I’m caught
I cast away the vileness
Things disdained to keep
But in my haste I fear I scrap
The reasons that they creep
Murky Cogitation-
Demons loom in reeds
I can watch and loathe them
But reflection lurks in seas
Diurnally the treading
Into rhythmic flow
Makes tranquil re-forgetting of
The clutches from below
To fight the unknown current
Recurred by distant swell
I’d rather Intentionality
Or drowning’s just as well.
