it might talk to me

this is definitely fiction. i live in the center of the country well over 1000 miles from any ocean. i've been married over 40 years and i'm not retired. other than that... it's all true.

I am a fortunate man. I’ve lived my life with an urgency that made it possible to, at this point in my life, chuck it all and simply live. No urgency. No worries and, unfortunately, no attachments. I found a little place overlooking the ocean and I spend my days and sometimes my nights walking the beach or often just sitting and watching the surf for hours on end. I’m not sure why. At first I thought it was the tranquility, but I’ve found that when storms come and the sea turns to foam and the waves churn and the salt mist stings my face and eyes, I find the sea equally fascinating. I think maybe the sea has something to say to me. So I sit. And I walk. And I watch. And I try to listen.

There are a few things that are obvious lessons. The power and vastness of the sea and our relative insignificance. This lesson I learned quickly. Having once been the center of my own universe, it was humbling to find myself as a speck in a world so vast I can’t even conceive of it. I’ve watched ships the size of small cities grow smaller and smaller as they drift toward the horizon, only to be swallowed by the curve of the earth. And each of those ships was full of people, who, like I was, think they are the center of the universe. But poof! They vanish in the seemingly infinite ocean. So just how important are all those universes? How important was mine? Oh, I’m not saying that what we do means nothing. A man needs to work. I’m only saying that perhaps we attach too much meaning to things which are really transitory and we should look for value elsewhere.

The second obvious lesson has less to do with the sea than with myself. As I said before, I sit, watch, listen, think alone. I wonder if I would see things differently if I had another set of eyes to share my world. Perhaps someone to point out a seashell while I’m preoccupied with things in the distance. Someone to shift my focus. To show me what I’m missing. And I have a lot of time to think about that. About all the women who might have fulfilled that part if I hadn’t been so distracted by myself. Regrets.

The sea doesn’t give up its secrets easily. That sentence sounded like it comes from a documentary on sunken treasures, but it’s equally true in my case. Maybe I’m romanticizing. Maybe there is no meaning out there past the waves crashing on the beach. Maybe it has nothing to say. Maybe what I’m hearing is my own voice. But there are times when I watch and wait and listen that I do hear something in the waves. I do see something in the vastness. Just glimpses. Fragments. A voice. And what does it tell me?

It teaches me about constancy. Though the sea changes day by day, hour by hour, sometimes even minute by minute, it also never changes. It maintains its level, its schedule, its place in this world. The wind may whip its waters into a frenzy. Storms my send it’s waves crashing inland. But it always very quickly readjusts.

It teaches me about balance. There is an amazing balance here on the beach. The sea, sky and earth all share in it. I watch the clouds form over the ocean as the warm air evaporates the waters. I watch the clouds drift over me and often feel the rain pour down on my upturned face. Then a little while later I see the water returning to the sea in the swelling river. Ebb and flow. The circle of life. The great mandala.

There is one other thing I have heard as I sit and watch and listen and that is this. Even in my insignificance in the vast scheme of ocean and sky and earth, I am significant in my own way. I am significant just as every grain of sand is and every drop of water and every bit of air. I am significant because I am here. I have a place. And right now, this is my place.

　

Reviews

[Emily B]

This is amazing. A fine read on a day when I must face people I love and deal with loss on such a personal level. We are all part of that. Egoists, all of us, we focus on ourselves for far too long. We expend too much energy on foolish notions. And then a voice, a fragment, an echo whispers to us of the greater things. And if we are lucky, like you, we have learned how to listen.

Thank you for sending this my way. It is exactly the sort of thing I needed today.

[Shelley Holt-Lowrey]

Beautifully executed. You have a way of pulling in your reader. First I see the length of the piece... no spacing.. and then I have forgotten all of that as I start to think as I read.. what I am reading. Your words evoke my own thoughts. A talent unique to you.

To gain experience by circling the sun a few score times... does much to deepen a person. This piece is so reflective of that. Wisdom gained through years. Seems the more we learn, the less we know, and the more we know. Wisdom. Knowing what you do and don't know. All stated very clearly in this writing. With a voice that is like a kind uncle - the one you hear narrating the weekly disney flicks of not that long ago.

I do live near the ocean and.... am now fixing to go plant myself in the one place near that I know will bring about this exact knowing. My insignificance to the whole, yet my absolute importance to the plan. Thank you much Bob.

[bob, small b. aka invs]

shelley, thank you for your kind, generous words and your thoughtful response to this. i think you're very right about wisdom. it has more to do with realizing how little we know than with certainties. enjoy your time at the beach.

[TLK]

This starts brilliantly from the opening note, which sets an excellent tone of the truth-in-lie (or is it a lie-in-truth?). All fiction should be like this.
You start by TELLing us about the shift from urgency to not-urgency. Often, TELLing is awful, because it patronises the reader. However, you SHOW this throughout in the dichotomies of meaning, existence, and visualisation. For example, the (senseless) dashing of the sea -- its size, it's bulk -- against the small ponderousness of a human figure.

The search for value that comes out of this is very pressing, and might remind me of Frankl if I'd ever bothered reading him. (I'm on Kafka right now).

[Lisa Ring]

This dichotomy haunts me. I struggle to accept it but my mind has trouble grasping it fully. I am everything. I am nothing. Your profound thoughts are beautifully written.

[bob, small b. aka invs]

thank you. i don't generally do 'profound'.

[Lisa Ring]

Yes, you do. Or maybe that is how I interpret it. Either way, my image of you is one of a man who thinks deep thoughts and desires a simple life.

[Aimee Mahathy]

Wow, you have actually managed to leave me speechless. *o*
This is simply amazing. I think I'll come back again to re-read this and see if I can find something to say that can sum up just how wonderful this story is.
*applauds*

[cest la vie]

The sea, ocean whatever we call that giant comforter.. I grew up with the ocean as my backyard, so reading this felt like you jumped inside my skin. All you wrote about was detailed so wonderfully. I have told my kids, when I die, waste not a farthing (I mean it) on any burial frippary, cremate me and just lay me on the shore..
This is an awesome read on a glorious weekend morng. Well done, well done.
Lynne

[...]

Even though, personally, I'm terrified of the ocean (haha), I found this ... captivating. It totally held my attention. And you made some great points/things to think about.

Nice prose, too: "only to be swallowed by the curve of the earth". :]

[Mark]

Having spent several years in San Diego as a youth, I will never lose my love for the ocean. We were just there this week, in fact, as my wife and I drove from Escondido to Encinitas just so we could walk the beach again--that's AFTER the fifteen hundred mile drive from east Texas to Escondido, mind! And the negatives are as much a part of the memory as the positives. It wouldn't resonate as clearly without the mounds of rotting kelp, the sand fleas, that screeching gulls, the frequently acrid air; they're all parts of the whole...
Your lines on finding significance in the midst of insignificance touched me. I had once written a poem on insignificance which included the lines, "Like a solitary grain of sand/ On the Zuma Beach of life; Like a solitary seagull t**d/ On the Guano Islands of Fiji; Like a button-down collar/ At a California High School..."; I'll have to see if I can dig that one up. Also, our precious friend Ellen Hammond wrote a fabulous comparison of Man's relationship to God in terms of a droplet of water to the ocean...I shall have to look that title up and edit this review!
If I may, two infinitesimal corrections. In the third-to-last paragraph, you hyphenated "its", but only one time out of five, and your typewriter forgot to include the "a" in "may". Apart from these trivial typos, I find no flaw, and much magnificence in this piece. It the first of you I have read. It most assuredly shall NOT be the last! Mark Teague

[Arthur Henn]

This was excellent. (The whole piece) Its a winner for Emma's contest.

Art

[Ladysue]

Your words are beautiful. Yes, I love the balance you talk about. an amazing piece of writing!

[emmajoy]

Ohh how I agree with your words ... we are only grains of sand, we are only sunbeams - but, without us there'd be no beach, no sweet beams of light, etc.

What a wonderful piece of writing this is ..' I wonder if I would see things differently if I had another set of eyes to share my world. Perhaps someone to point out a seashell while I'm preoccupied with things in the distance. ' That is so true: what we have directly in front of us we can miss coz we're so busy fighting to see what's way, way far ahead and, the same applies to people too.

'It teaches me about balance. There is an amazing balance here on the beach. The sea, sky and earth all share in it. I watch the clouds form over the ocean as the warm air evaporates the waters. I watch the clouds drift over me and often feel the rain pour down on my upturned face. Then a little while later I see the water returning to the sea in the swelling river. Ebb and flow. The circle of life. The great mandala.'

I couldn't select a particular phrase from the above lines, each line, each phrase is an inter-connecting train of thought.. but, you're so right.. there's something about the sea, the shore. Every hour in the same place is different, every sight, colour, scent, shadow and so forth ... and, don't you think that's what life is too.

Your ending is such a moral, not a preaching, self-satisfied moral but, a light, a light that shows what you are and what you feel.

I've found this a very thought-provoking post and, a beautiful one.