Words and Images: Where the Waves Meet the Shore
The ocean is breathing. With each inhalation, the waves pull back from the shore, leaving thin rivulets of water cascading over the small rocks and pebbles scattered along the beach. And as they recede, you hear the rattle and the crackle of the pebbles, and the swishing of the waves — sounds that make the back of your neck bristle, as if your skin was also made of thousands of tiny rocks washed over by the current. Then, all along the edge of the shore, in the space where the ocean meets the land, half-moon shapes begin to appear, scallop shells so perfectly drawn you imagine the waves are moving to their own secret rhythm. The ocean is resting in perfect stillness now, suspended in time, balanced in its own soft, timeless cadence … In the air, only the sound of pebbles singing to the waves, beckoning them to return, like the sirens calling to their lost friend — they just wanted to find her, not lure anyone else, but their songs were so beautiful, so full of longing that soon many others who heard them were drawn to their plaintive call, because they spoke of their own longing, their own unexpressed desires. Though, who knows, really, what they heard in the sirens’ songs, whether it was their own voices or the echoes of the secret yearnings of others … like the rattling of the pebbles as the waves wash over them again and again — it’s a mystery. Here you are, fixed in this perfect moment before the force of the incoming tide propels the waves back onto the shore and the cycle begins again — rattling, crackling, swishing, cascading — echoes of the sirens’ songs, the ocean’s lost voices, your own unspoken desires.
You’ve wandered along the edge of this shore before, in another life that is now also a distant echo, and you wonder if the waves were always calling and somehow you never heard. Maybe our lives are just a continuous mishearing, a confusion of sounds and voices and noise — it’s difficult to tell where it’s all coming from, how do we know when to stop and listen? Your eyes trace the arcs formed by the waves as they spread along the beach, far into the distance, and it strikes you that, maybe, what the ocean wants is a witness, someone to watch its unfolding, its slow and rhythmic back and forth, and sense the depths of a longing that is as old as the rocks, as old as the ocean itself, maybe older, before time, beyond time … You want to be transfixed, to be caught in this moment, this perpetual embrace of ocean and shore, but the moment itself wants to be held in suspension, made eternal inside your gaze. To bear witness, this is what you’ve been called to do. You have been summoned to this shore to create in the mirror of your undivided attention a space where the waves can delight in their own being, swinging to the rhythm of the tide and flirting with the pebbles, shifting, changing shape, leaving but always returning, drawn by an invisible force that is also the force holding you in this place, at this moment. Be still now and let the ocean rest in this glow of recognition. Be the ocean’s awareness and its memory. Capture this unrepeatable moment and hold it lightly, like one holds a glimpse or an intimation of something, a revelation that is so close and so elusive. Be still now. The ocean is calling.
