A ragged cliff marks the place where Land concedes defeat to Ocean. The cliff stands stoically, a monument to the effects of time: crumbling; weather beaten; eroded. Overhead, iron clouds hang heavy and foreboding. The light that passes through them is pale and insipid. Nearby, a family of seagulls drifts on a strong breeze; beaks and beady eyes turned towards a grey and turgid sea.
There, on the rocky foreshore, a man stands alone.
The chill of the day, the movement of the sea, the keening cry of the seagulls, fills him, envelops him, wraps around him, and gives him peace. There, in the midst of the world at its work, he stands and meditates.
He feels his blood pumping through him; the warmth inside his gloves; the chill on the tips of his ears, his nose, his cheeks. He feels alive.
The sea is wild that day. It is a mighty leviathan beneath an enormous grey net. The man feels this, feels the movement of it hypnotising him, bending his will to its unyielding purpose. The man feels the sea’s anger. It is the kind that brings calm and focus. He feels its hunger. It is the kind that fills a man with force and purpose.
He feels the line of the sea extending beyond its natural boundary. It passes through him where his nose meets his forehead, permeating him and becoming one with his mind and thoughts.
He feels the wildness of it, the aliveness of it, the freedom of it. The force that keeps the sea moving is the same force that keeps the blood flowing in his veins.
The bracing breeze that comes from the ocean winds around him. It winds around his muscles, binding him and holding him. It makes him stronger, squeezes the miasma from his lungs and fills them with fresh air: cool, salty, and alive.
He has come to this place in search of these things. It was these things, the essence of life that he is here to fill up on. He will lock these memories away, ready for the joyless days ahead of him. He will store these feelings in his heart, and, one day, he will close his eyes and return to this foreshore, to this land, and he will remember. He will remember.
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