Entry tags:

god, ocean, quiet, reflection

The waters moving over the face of the Earth

The other night I was feeling a bit lumpish, so I went for a walk on the beach at dusk.

Tahunanui Beach, a slender slip of sand about 2 kilometers long, is situated about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) outside of Nelson City Center.  During the day, it is packed with families, a lot of whom appear to be trying to drown in the strong currents around low tide, and couples walking their highly anthropomorphic dogs.  During the weekends, the roads next to the beach are packed with "boy racer" types, otherwise known as your usual small town kids who hang out in their cars and try (vainly) to pick up girls.

But at dusk, the beach is transformed.  Before the streetlights come on but after the sun has settled behind the mountains, it becomes a place of grandeur.  Thee old lighthouse beacon is a single point, like an early rising star trying so hard to touch the earth.  The last embers of the sun shoot up over the mountains, and whisps of clouds form molten pink candy drops in the sky, settled on an impenetrable backdrop of indigo-blue so deep it defies description.  The water stretches out to meet the sky, and sometimes, even on clear nights, you can't tell where one begins and the other ends.  It is charming, in a Buddhist sort of connection between heaven and earth kind of way.  Nirvana, the place of the soul's departure.

At low tides, there is a sandbar that juts out about 500 meters into the water, separated from the rest of the beach by a salty trough of sea water about 6 inches deep.  The bar, shaped like a fire poker, gets narrower to its point.  Standing at the end of this point, you can look back over the beach.  A further step backwards, so the water tickles your ankles., and you're standing at the very border of the elements, in the midst of the gentle war between earth and ocean.

Some nights, the mist moves in after the sun sets, and it feels like you are the only clear thing left in the world.  The only person with any definition, as the rest all moves slowly through the water.  At that time of night, the gulls have moved off to their nests, and the beach is quiet.  The mist muffles the sounds from the road, and only the gentle hushing noises of tiny, tiny waves surrounds you.

At times like this, I feel like a Colossus, a giant being astride the thin shell of water that covers our small blue planet.  At times like this, I can feel how land, whether a continent the size of North America or a tiny sand bar in the Cook Strait, is simply an interruption to this overwhelmingly large element.  I feel the terror of the flood, channeled into tiny caresses around my ankles.

Yet there is comfort there as well.  This water, this unthinking force, always in motion, rising, falling, conducting vast amounts of energy and life across the globe.  Motion without thought, without malice.  Sustaining, enrapturing, encompassing.  A literal ocean, with only tiny points of light reflecting in it.  It makes me think of random lines from Shakespeare: Out, brief candle; if we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended; We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little lives rounded by a sleep; Oh, gods, why do you make us love your goodly gifts and snatch them straight away?;   they say the owl was a baker's daughter, we know who we are, but not who we may be!

And then the moon rises, breaking the coolness and quiet with its  own water-like beams, splitting the infinity, making the mist glow as if illuminated from within.  And then I turn from the waters, and start to walk home, a little quieter but a little more alive than before.