alive

When you live by the sea you notice things, different things than in the city. Like how the coastline is in a constant state of change. It is a living thing and stuff moves, like sand, and stuff appears, like seaweed and pumicestone, and stuff disappears, like froth from foaming surf and sand banks that create surf breaks. Rocks are exposed and then hidden, channels created and diverted, the tide takes great chunks from the shoreline and deposits it elsewhere. You see what happens when the wind blows hard, when it is from the South or the East, you see what happens when it rains, when the tide is high, when the swell is low or when the sun shines hot.

And when the swell is up and the tide is high then the sea sends its waves to pound the shore, a raw energy and power that is beyond being contained.  I am wary and entranced, drawn inexplicably towards the great heaving mass that defies everything and everyone. It fills me with a sense of ‘aliveness’ and is a relentless and foreboding reminder that we are small and inconsequential in the scheme of things.