Sunday Scribblings

it's ironic that I love the ocean and the beach as much as I do. I'm really not an outdoorsy person. Nearly as pale as the moon I love so, it takes only a short while in the sun for my skin to burn and bubble up into weeping blisters. I bear the discolorations of sun damage from my feet to my face. Living in a region where summer reigns from May to October, my body responds to high temperatures with headaches, nausea and flare ups of a little known chronic illness noted primarily for pain, scarring and social isolation. My limitations place me inside much of the time, in what may look like a half life but is richer than appearances reveal. The beach and the ocean should be associated with pain and discomfort for me, but if I have a realistic chance to go to the beach, no matter what, I'm going.

Standing in the surf, the tide pulling the very ground from under my feet, I'm at the heart of that great meeting of land, water and air that assures me that the Earth itself is a reflection of the Trinity. There, my own irregular heartbeat is lulled into the pulse of the planet. My body, a cumbersome thing as I move into the oncoming waves, is suddenly something else as land no longer grabs my feet. I become kin with the seal and the manatee, able to stay on land for awhile, but awkward and comical there, graceful and powerful in the element that is truly my home.

I am never more small, as insignificant as a single grain of sand, a broken shell than standing by the surf. I could be destroyed by the ocean. "Full fathom five, his father lies, of his bones are coral made, pearls are of his eyes..." beats a slow metre in my mind. I know its power, know that it can breach any barrier man sets up to block it. I've never questioned why old myths had the world destroyed by flood. It only seems natural that were the world to end for us air breathers that water would be the weapon of choice.

I am never more vast than when I am at the ocean. I feel like my boundaries drop, and I am just one more chain of molecules in that seemingly endless flow. I've forgotten the percentages, but both our bodies and this planet are primarily salt water. I forget that until the water surrounds me, and I know it on cellular level. I know that I am at the source of all life at the ocean. That smell of salt, sweat, ozone, water and decay is the smell of fecundity, able to change with each breath from pure to dank. The ocean holds everything within it, life, death, comfort and destruction. It takes what we mindlessly toss into it and delivers it back to our very feet. Its depths, which conceal so much, only reveal the truth of human nature. The ocean is creation, and it tells me that I should be as well.

This entry is part of Sunday Scribblings.

Sunday Scribblings, ocean