OceanHeart

’OceanHeart’ is the story of Nukolo, the OceanHeart, or the human avatar chosen by the Spirit of the Ocean in order to preserve the memory and memories of all life on Earth leading up to the current extinction event.

It’s a lot on their plate!!!

Lucky for them, the Spirit of the Ocean don’t play ’bout who it chooses for divine missions!

With a name referencing both Yoruba orisha and Kemetic deity, Nukolo/Nu is a character that anyone who has felt that the bottom of the world vanished from under their feet... and they learned that they were the bottom of the world...! --can relate to!

After finally meeting the Spirit of the Lake in which they dwelt for years, Nukolo heard and felt a call from all the waters of Earth... a call that they simply couldn’t ignore.

So, our hero had no choice but to the ocean as ambassador to the lake, and maybe even return to their own heart in doing so.

OceanHeart tells an adventurous, deep story of celestial rekindling, recultivation, and reharvesting. At it’s longest arc, OceanHeart is the story of the renewing of vows and reinstituting of the Divine Masculine energies, Divine Feminine energies, and Divine Androgynous energies, as recovered in the body as Pingala, Ida, and Sushumna respectively. These are represented in OceanHeart by the characters of Father Sun, or Benyama, and Mother Moon, or Selinale.

The land itself, and the planet Earth (as Earth is mostly ocean) is represented by Nu.

At the very same time, the omens in the sky that accord with those happening on Earth through the Moon Goddess and Sun God signify a bubbling reclamation of Earth and the land itself, not in an ’ownership’ claimance that relays the land to an object... but in a claimance that allows for openness of spirit, respectfully reciprocal relationship, and harmonious, celebrative, reverent co-existence with the land.

This is a story that bridges worlds;

• between human and cetacean
• between and beyond the basic polarities of all known expressions of life
• between the world of the mundane and that of the spiritual.

One character in OceanHeart who flawlessly seams the mundane world with the spiritual is ’Pohtkau’, who is directly based on Wanda, who was widely known as the first orca in captivity. Nukolo mysteriously visits Wanda in her tank by way of astral projection, and the two of them speak about life, death, dying, and living. We also get to learn more about Poh’s past and upbringing.

Above all, I know that OceanHeart is a story that has a lot of heart, and bridges divides of misunderstanding through storytelling that isn’t afraid to take itself seriously, because it values what it has to say thatmuch. It’s a very ’human’ story.

There is a thread of awareness that belies beneath all the expressions of life as the characters in this book, and it makes for a storytelling experience where it feels as though the story itself is a character in the story. I think the title being OceanHeart (which is the title of the main character’s incarnation) also touches a bit on that interesting self-aware experience.

It is a very matter-of-factly, beautifully written book, with a lot of good intention behind it, and the storytelling is clearly influenced by Studio Ghibli. In fact, one way I’d describe this story is Princess Mononoke meets the 12 Trials of Hercules meets The Alchemist, but on the East African Serengeti and with a focus largely on the water element and its connection to memory, inheritance, knowledge, and true lucidity.