The Cuck Rock

 

I’m not exactly sure this is an informative piece of information, but sea stacks can’t masturbate. It’s all I’ve been thinking about recently—recently being the past few hundred years—as I’ve witnessed the supple pink, bronze, and cocoa bodies of the beachgoers, free to run, bounce, meld into each other amidst the nacreous summer sands. I like summer, I think. It’s the season which gives me the most to look at. Sea stacks don’t have eyes or any other sort of biological ocular equivalent, and I also seem to lack what would be commonly understood as a brain, but I do seem to possess a sort of spiritual cognition, or mind, as it were. Thus, I have tapped into what some of the beachgoers refer to as the mind’s eye. My mind’s eye allows me to read lips, so as to communicate this all to you in the proper terminology. But thus far, I have failed to conjure anything akin to mind’s ears or mind’s hands or mind’s genitals. It is not as though these are terms of my own invention. Over the centuries, I have observed the beachgoers refer to the mind’s ears and mind’s hands at least one handful of times each, with the mind’s genitals receiving mention at least four handfuls of times. This is quite paltry though, once you consider the number of concurrent conversations that take place upon the coast I oversee each day, over so many days. I remember there was once a member of the Young Republicans who had brought one of his paramours to the beach, and as he cast his congressional member into her ballot box, he embarked upon an extended diatribe regarding political strategist Lee Atwater, particularly his quote and belief that perception is reality. Within the young man’s own context—and, to be fair, Atwater’s—this was essentially used to coerce the young woman—who had felt uncomfortable with the idea of engaging in public sex—into believing that as long as she could perceive that she was doing nothing wrong, this would become reality. As a sea stack, sequestered to an exceedingly small portion of the world—and, consequently, life experience—I would not dare cast judgment upon anyone seeking the earthly pleasures I myself so desperately wish to engage in. My quarrel has more to do with the young man’s selfishness, his laissez-faire approach to philosophical and sexual conquest. I must capitulate to the potentiality that the Marxist beachgoers possessing—on average—more striking beauty, clearer skin, more elegant movements may play some minute yet significant role in my favoritism towards collectivism and—consequently—collective perception. Perception is reality, but a certain amount of perception proportional to the whole must accumulate before reality is made manifest. This is all to say that God is real because the belief in God has a tangible impact upon the world, in all Their incarnations, for better and worse. This is all to say that not enough people believe in the mind’s hands or the mind’s genitals, which is why I—a sea stack—cannot masturbate.

 

Please do not interpret this analysis as a plea for belief of any sort, as I am positively paralyzed by the thought of exerting any sort of influence upon this world. That was a sea stack joke, as I cannot move regardless of my intent. I have become accustomed to my lot in this life, though I do wonder why exactly I was fated to an existence entrenched in saltwater, stuck jutting from the sea floor as the waves lap and crash against my craggy form. I used to resent summer and vastly prefer the winter months. I used to loathe the tease of what I could not have, the currents more actively catalyzing my gradual erosion. Now I am perhaps more content simply with the reminder that the world stirs around me, and I think perhaps that my erosion is in fact the closest thing to intimacy that I will experience in this lifetime. There is another sea stack to one of my sides and a rather large cliff to the other, and there is a looming sense that we each used to be part of the same collective, though I have no explicit recollection. I also have the sense that each time a minuscule bit of sediment breaks from my body, my consciousness reforms into something new, both me and not me, in the way parents are born anew with each child they create, in the way bloodlines experience a powerful subconscious connection, in the way all things experience a slightly weaker subconscious connection. In this, I feel gratitude towards the sea for splitting me up slowly and for connecting me to my various parts, big and small. In time, I know that I will be reduced to naught but a stump, and then broken down so as to no longer exist in any recognizable way. I know that the individual grains of sand that were once part of me will be far too impure to be part of any beautiful glassware. And they, in time, will know that the purpose of existence is not to hold anything, but simply to connect as they are carried along the currents.