The sea.
Full of things within.
Stones, perhaps bodies beneath,
maybe a treasure chest from films, fish, seaweed, creatures unnamed, an undercurrent of silt.
Above, people swim, sometimes.
Ships pass, discarded waste drifts,
and human beings cross borders by boat.
My final chapter used 'waves' for a survivor's mental health journey, they say,
'The ocean inside you needs to be calm,'
and my PhD,
a constant seasickness, the waves unending.
I know each gaze upon the sea holds a different story.
The sea...
graces this thesis's opening page for these reasons,
and the sea is rich,
it is abstract,
it is deep,
Like the moments I shared with survivors.
'What is oceanic feeling? For Sigmund Freud, it is the sensation of an unbreakable bond between oneself and the outside world. Rather than an assertion of mastery over the world as a standing reserve to be instrumentalised by human will, oceanic feeling is a quasi-sublime state in which the integrity of the self is lost, or at least compromised, in a sense of limitlessness, unboundedness, and interconnectedness.'