Most of the activities which underlie our physical and mental life are beyond our awareness. Occasionally something – an ache in the chest, a strange emotion which unsettles us – may emerge into consciousness, then disappear. The sea, with its surface and hidden depths, lends itself to depicting this human experience of known and unknown regarding self. The enormity of the sea is also a visible image of the enormity of our own inner world – most of it unknown, and also the relationship we have with the universe, which we exist in yet know so little about. The sea holds vast treasures, curiosities, and our history. Not simply because life emerged from the sea, or our blood is as salt as the ancient sea, but because so many ships and shorelines are now beneath the waves. Sometimes these can be recovered, and this depicts our remembering or making conscious.
