Floating, immersed in water, listening to the sounds of the sea, watching the clouds; feeling seaweed occasionally brush against my legs or feet, sun, making hot the exposed parts of my tummy, face, legs, arms. Like this, I feel connected to something bigger, to the divine. It is how I like to pray.

***

I always eagerly anticipate summer, mostly because it means I can swim in the salty Pacific Ocean. A return to the water. Now that I live near the sea in Tāmaki Makaurau, my summer rituals involve the water, almost daily. A walk to the harbour to see the brown kids doing bombs reminds me of my summers growing up down by the Waikato River, where I famously almost drowned. I ride my bike to the beaches near my house, which have questionable sewage content, and icky, squelchy sea floors, but where I swim anyway. Inhaling the sting of the salty air, the rotten, earthy smell of the mangroves.

***

Whatever troubles I carry around in my head and body all day (and there are many of them, believe me), I can cast them out into the ocean. The sea is swollen with the troubles of the world, literal and figurative: plastic bags and bottles; the deep anxieties of those like me who come to feel relief/release; pretty, toxic, multi-coloured microbeads; the floating debris – branches, trees, etc. – from the Pacific’s most recent cyclone.

***

***

I know I’m not alone in feeling relieved by the presence of the sea, even though as a Pacific Islander I like to tell people the saltwater is in my blood, bones. Marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols wrote a book a few years ago called Blue Mind: How water makes you happier, more connected and better at what you do. As the title suggests, the book is a study on how being in or near the water has positive effects on our mental health; ‘blue mind’ is the term coined to describe “the mildly meditative state we fall into when near, in, on or underwater.” He describes blue mind as an antidote to ‘red mind’, the “anxious, over-connected and over-stimulated state that defines the new normal of modern life.” Blue mind benefits our general mood, creativity and sense of wellbeing. Blue mind, red mind. Blue mind, red mind.

***

My ancestors, of course, knew about the potency of water long before Nichols wrote this book. Our proverbs are littered with references to the power of the sea, to the need for strong canoes, the forgiveness of easy waves, and the secret doings of creatures that dwell in the sea. Ia lafoia i le alo galo. Taliu a e popoʻe. I’ve often romanticised my own identity, desperate to connect to my ancestral homeland, the salty sea connecting us like veins. When I’m in the ocean I think about being in the same body of water that my people in Sāmoa are in, the same body of water that carried my nana and papa from Sāmoa in the 1950s, the ship arriving in Tāmaki Makaurau. I picture weeks on the boat, hot, stuffy, with a cool sea breeze at night. As they came closer to Aotearoa and further from Sāmoa, and the air grew crisper, maybe the sight and smell of the ocean, as they stood on the ship’s deck, gave them peace: we’re not that far, they might have thought. We’re in the same ocean.

***

***

Red mind. Red alert. What does your red mind sound like? Mine is loud and abrasive, indecent and assaulting. It swears at old people taking too long to cross the road; it curses at the wind for being too windy, the sun for making me sweat, the rain for making me wet and the humidity for making my baby hairs curl up like an unholy halo. My red mind has imaginary fights with people at the recent riot in Wellington, with its sympathisers, with those I’ve deemed selfish and inconsiderate in their blasé attitude towards getting vaccinated. My red mind is in constant doom-scroll mode, flicking through the Facebook and Twitter statuses I’ve seen that day that have fucked me off. Old feuds, new feeds, red mind has a voracious appetite for all of it. I want to drown my red mind and her fears and malice, so I go to the sea, my prayer amidst all this once again.

***

I was recently on a writing residency at the Michael King Writers Centre in Devonport. The house is halfway up Takarunga maunga, and from the verandah there’s a beautiful view of the harbour. The beaches in Devonport are about a ten-minute walk from the house. I get a bit nervous staying away from home for too long – I miss my bed, my partner, our rituals, however banal – and I don’t like staying in old houses, especially old houses near urupā. The first night I was at the house, I couldn’t sleep, waking up every hour or so to check the dark corners of my room for ghosts, afraid to turn my back to the door for too long. The next day I took a walk up the maunga where the house is situated and visited the urupā to pay my respects to a renowned Ngāti Hao chief buried there. Having no luck finding his grave, I was leaving, but then stumbled upon his gravesite by happenstance.

As I looped back around the urupā, thinking I was alone, I turned to see a man standing a few metres away, at the foot of a grave. Approaching him, I heard him speaking te reo, saying a karakia. He beckoned me over, and after a hongi, we stood together, praying. After an āmene, he told me the man at the grave was his ancestor, Eruera Patuone, the chief I had been reading about that very morning. After introducing myself and telling him I was a writer staying at the Michael King Writers Centre on the maunga, he informed me that he was the kaumātua of the Centre. Too uncanny, but also fitting. These things seem to happen to me, especially in times of fear or great need. I thanked him, thanked my ancestors and his. And when the kaumātua asked me if I would be writing about this encounter, I smiled at him wryly and said, “Sure.” I walked out of the urupā slowly, then ran the rest of the way straight to my computer, furiously tapping at the keys to write down every detail of what had happened, scared I’d forget and miss something.

***

During my two weeks at the residency, I tried to immerse my body in the ocean every day to ground and settle myself. I took a screenshot of the tide times for the week and planned my day around high tide, when I could go swimming. If it was in the morning, I would leave early, starting my day off with a walk and a swim. If high tide was nearer midday or the afternoon, it would be something to work towards, a beacon during the long days of writing and reading. Swimming became my daily prayer. I would walk into the water, plunging my head under, feeling the different temperatures (warm on the top, cool below) dance between my arms and legs. I would float, face up to the sky, ears filling with water.

And always I would give thanks, thanks to the Ātua, to my family and friends and partner, give thanks for the opportunities I have daily to love and be loved, and do something good, something new. Give thanks to my ancestors and the bloodlines that mean I exist, today, in this ocean, in the water that swims through my veins, the salty water that I cry. And I would ask for guidance, always, to follow my heart, to always be open to the voice and guidance of the Atua. Praying in the ocean made me feel connected to something greater than myself, and helped me connect to my writing in a way that I hadn’t before. Maybe for the first time in my life, I was profoundly struck by the longevity of my bloodlines – the cold, brackish waters of Scotland; the warm, green waters of Sāmoa – struck by the magical circumstances that brought me here, at this point in time. I plunge down beneath the surface, open my mouth to taste the salt. My day, I dedicate it to you.

***

Years ago, I thought of writing a novel about a future in which we live underwater. The water levels have risen so high that the islands of the South Pacific have been completely submerged. As the rest of the world has continued to ignore the pleas of the Pacific’s smallest island nations – the islands that have faced a visceral and impending threat of climate change – those islands have been forced to adapt. The islands have formed a collective and built a city under the sea. Under the sea, they have thrived, their technology stunning the world’s greatest minds.

As the rest of the world’s nations succumb to the devastating effects of climate change, the world looks to the South Pacific. The wealthiest and most powerful nations set their eyes on the underwater city, want to colonise it, and take it for themselves. On some days, they continue to thrive, and the rest of the world sorts their own shit out. On some days they lend a hand, helping other nations build their own underwater cities, sharing their knowledge. And on some days they lose it all, despite their best efforts at saving their people – someone always wants a piece of what is not theirs. I don’t know the fate of the underwater nation in my imagined future. I think the best fate would be not to have to imagine a future underwater, but a future where our sea of islands can just exist, unafraid of the rising sea.

***

There was a new moon in Pisces this morning. I’ve been into astrology for a long time, since I was a child. I remember finding a big, outdated tome about astrology at a market one day and hauling it home. I showed it to my family, and we sat around figuring out our moon signs, our personality traits and physical characteristics according to the book (Aries: walks leading with head, with purpose; has a prominent ‘Aries’ brow; is susceptible to headaches). This was before the days I could Google every little thing, and I remember justifying astrology by saying that if the moon and the sun affect the earth and its tides, then surely they could also have such an effect on people. We’re 60 percent water. Although the sun is bigger than the moon and has a bigger gravitational pull, the moon exerts a stronger tidal force on the Earth due to its closer proximity to our planet. Our oceans and lakes and rivers move to the rhythms of the moon as it revolves around the Earth, “bulging and dipping”. A high tide is created as the ocean bulges towards the moon. A song of call and response. Lovers separated but ever connected. As the new moon came around this morning, I closed my eyes and said a prayer. Sowing seeds, weaving dreams, feeling the stillness of a pre-dawn morning, a new day to live again.

***

***

The world goes quiet, then it’s loud. The earth’s red mind. I imagine the earth’s red mind is screaming at its polluted waterways, its melting ice caps, its growing list of extinct species, its forests decimated to make room for farms, factories, money. My red mind thinks about the injustices of the world. About the injustices that happen to my people, and tangata whenua, here in Aotearoa – those who face poverty, who face homelessness, who face unjust prison sentences. About the injustices that happen to other nations fighting for their rights to freedom, where actual injustices are carried out, lives taken, families torn apart, West Papua, Tibet, Ukraine. My red mind spits at the person I heard on the radio this morning referring to the police storming the riot in Wellington as “the darkest day in New Zealand’s history.” My red mind thinks of March 15; of the devastating land confiscations from Māori; of the many injustices that surely scale that by miles. My red mind seethes, and spirals, and it’s loud, loud, loud. It writes angry tweets; it writes red-faced responses to conspiracy theorists. My red mind is a red room. And I need to get out.

***

The sun rises on my busy Tāmaki street. A man in camo pushes a bike uphill. The joyful sounds of hundreds of high schoolers, gossiping and cracking up, fill the streets as they file into their school across the road from my house. The leaves on the oak trees are still bright green, but decay is creeping up their edges. The temperature is a few degrees cooler, signalling a slow end to the summer. As much as I say I’m game for a winter dip in the sea, I also know my summer swimming rituals will probably end soon. My body won’t be as hot, won’t be calling for a baptism in the sea. Blue mind. How will I achieve release/relief? I guess as long as I see the water, I’ll be okay.

Breathing in those smells. Watching the people fishing, the boats bobbing up and down, the seagulls squawking. And more importantly, maybe I will remember that I can achieve stillness within. That while my seaside karakia soothes the soul, prayer and a deep breath, no matter where I am, are all I need to feel connected to the divine. My red mind is important, I think. It’s okay to feel angry, lost and helpless. My red mind gets my Aries head fired up (which admittedly is pretty easy to do). But my blue mind reminds me of the joy and the love in my life. The privilege of having family and friends to love and who love me; a warm fale; mean food; getting paid to write. Prayer reminds me that I am in fact not helpless, that there are actions I can do every day to connect, serve others and resist. And most importantly, to love, love, love.