On the Shore
Something that I wrote for a free-writing exercise and rather liked. Allegedly in the style of Thoreau, but I’m fairly certain even I can’t write sentences that long.
It is one of the peculiarities of life that our vision often acts as a telescope lens, narrowing down to the objects that we perceive of as being of interest to us, and dismissing others as too mundane and sufficient only to be passed on the roadside. Even on the beach this is true, as you see a child hunting among pebbles for that spark of color that marks a piece of glass far from its home, yet it is also a peculiar power possessed by the ocean and those sights that challenge the boundaries of our horizons, to pull back the focus of our sight until we can see everything around us. Something in the persistent crash of the waves on the shore hooks into our inmost mind and draws it relentlessly out of the protecting crystallized shell that we have made of our routines and possessions. Nothing can stand for long in the face of that pounding surf, and it grinds away the prickly edges of our defenses even as it scours the falsely smooth and covered over spikes of our personalities and reminds us that at the core, we are wild. Perhaps that is why I sit here in the full force of the wind, though there are many places in the lee of rocks where I could shelter my back, pockets full of false jewels and eye catching knick-knacks and my heart centered on a lumpy unassuming piece of burnt sienna and gray rock that I chose, thinking it almost ugly, to hold my notebook. Yet all rocks have their shine and this one is beautiful in its plainness and I nearly believe that, placed aright, it could balance the world.