Planet Ocean

Planet Ocean — this is where we live. The Ocean makes us blue to the rest of universe. It gives us life. We may name pieces of it as we please, like the bits of rock where we perch so precariously, but there is just one Ocean. Its miraculous substance, mindless of boundaries, swills around us in patterns so complex they seem chaotic, so harmonious they can endure for millions of years.

The more's the pity, then, that our senses have come to rest so firmly on utility; on the Ocean's usefulness to our own pressing needs and dimly perceived ends. Our knowledge of it is so slight that it can be likened to that of visiting aliens who hover over, say, Washington DC, lower a dragnet and conclude, because it comes back with Vice-President Dick Cheney in a bullet-proof limo, that all humans are brutes beneath contempt.
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