Sinking

COSE Journal, issue IV

Words by Wanda Orme

“So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed"

- Milton

Sinking implies submergence implies substance implies a beyond that we can access through movement. Sinking implies a substrate to move through. It is said that if Saturn were placed into a sea large enough to hold it, it would float. Perhaps the opposite of to sink is not to float but to rise. Perhaps we are already at the bottom looking up.

In a low, watery place in a desert where I work, things collect. A sink is a sink because gravity. A sink is a sink because of the physics of the universe we inhabit, water always flowing to the lowest possible place drawn down to centre falling, rushing towards the core of the planet.

When we say the heart sinks, do we mean that the heart is a ship? Things collect, memories, all that is drawn down from a wider area pulled together to a mass of sensation and substance that is in excess of the sink itself. Sinks are always spilling over.

While sinks are holding places they allow us to see beyond themselves. They capture and condense and reflect back messages from the beyond. We look back at ourselves, we regard the pool, the pool regards us. We are given pause by our own reflection rendered unfamiliar, manifest in water and light; not us, but somehow, not-not us.

I feel drawn to these depressions as I am drawn to depth. To descend is to go down, to sink is to sink into… something. This transgression is a kind of knowing. Sink implies a world - the world outside or above and the world within or below, it allows us to navigate this difference. It brings us into contact with otherness.

Holding water may in fact always be a holy act. From church fonts to wells, rocks spilling with crystal springs, a depression in which water collects is a sacred place. When I say the word sink I feel it in my chest all the water rushing over me a world profound dark alive with potential.

Questions to sink;

What does it feel like to fill up, water slowly gliding up your edges, brimming? How is it to overflow?

Do you sense your own stillness?

Are you always waiting?

A sink is an anticipation is a longing is a unanswered prayer is an answered prayer

A sink is pregnant with possibility

Cities sink boats sink hearts sink

As we speak, Venice is sinking

To be submerged is to be in the other world, to see things right side up or perhaps right side down. When we are submerged, we have crossed a boundary. What we submerge never returns the same. Water is always an initiation.

When I think sink, I hear a rushing I hear the echo of water finding a limit I feel the relief of water at rest. When I think sink I think of riches. When I think sink I think of a pooling moment, suspension.

Yet this is but an illusion of capture, water cycling through the sky. It refuses to be contained; a sink left long enough will dry, water moving on through elevation to the level of the stars only to crash down towards centre at some other place at some other time, the green bloom of fertile ground.

A sink is a promise to return.