In the sea, an island is rising, black and rough, but is it possible for a volcanic island rise so quickly? Now a giant eye peers forth, water cascades down black scales….it is Godzilla! Dinosaurs did not go extinct, they are dwellers of the deep. I see Godzilla angry, rising up, walking toward the city, the city the gem of civilization. The dwellers of the city have gone too far in polluting the sea from which we all emerged. Godzilla will show them how fragile their land-world is. He has lived for thousands of years. Both frightened and thrilled by the spectacle of Godzilla’s power, people flee. The Empire State Building is knocked on its side, it crumbles to rubble. (On the other hand, it always kept us out, it was for the elite only.) People flee, their cars locked in traffic jams are crushed. Traffic, a curse of a stupid civilization world based on automobiles, motorized-individuals in tin-cans. People flee, but they help each other; they flee, but they find each other; they flee, but they talk to each another; they flee, but they fall in love with each other. The monster retreats back to the ocean, perhaps discouraged or bored by flimsy human weapons. But for a moment a great force of nature broke loose, gave warning, life was on the edge, adrenaline rush made life beautiful and strange. Does such a being exist? Find him in the storms, in the hurricanes and water spouts. The weather gives us warning about when Godzilla will walk. But everyone forgets so quickly, they go back to their sleepwalking world of work. Nothing changes.

Seen from space the planet Earth is Blue (it would be more accurately called planet Ocean), the land floats on the ocean like a bits of flotsam and jetsam; it will sink someday; it will rise again; then sink again; then rise as the Burgess Shales show. Dynamic and thrilling but on a time scale that is inconceivable to us, our planet will be water, and a mix of water and land. The most beautiful of all planets we have the joy to be here today and at this moment. We highly prize ourselves even though we are only “Ants with Beach towels.”

Though I feel I must dwell in the thinner atmosphere of free oxygen of fire and ice and startling clarity. Deep inside I am a creature of the sea.

Godzilla is from a long line of poetic monsters and fantastic critters, real and imaginary that dwell in the sea, found in old maps decorating their outer reaches and forbidden places. The sea is a fearful place when it is angry, the vast unknown, still unknown….but it always represented adventure and freedom. Mariners set off in search of gold or China or perhaps it really was it in search of freedom. Some declined to return and went native, some declined to return and became pirates… and even aspired to pirate utopias.

The Ocean is there, always there, in our sleep, in our dreams, we are floating on waves of joy, uninhibited, unencumbered, free. Surrealists have a profound admiration for the sea, from Maldoror’s shark to the blue-eyed scallop. The ocean is a treasure house of surrealist life forms.