aqua vida

When I was younger, I used to feel differently about the sea. Then, it

was a kind of uncontrolled hunger, a recklessness that would

take hold of me at the sight of the first gull. A longing that I couldn't

suppress, but that was fufilled so infrequently that it seemed to

leave a void in me. Today, it is quiet and internal, but for that, somehow

even more desperate. Instead of wading thigh-deep into the surf

and soaking the sea into my skin, it seems it is all I can do to look at it,

to try to take it in. It's too much, too surreal. The wonder is still there, but

my childhood indifference to logic is not. To see, to touch my toes

to the edge of the swell as it fans across the sand, to stand under the

burden of the lead gray sky, I feel as though I might burst, something

inside might break, just at this tiny taste of that vastness.

What was once intellectual quarry now spans to

emotional sustenance.

Even as the waves disappear from sight behind the trees, and the ocean gives way to the shelter

of the Sound, I find inexpressable comfort in the knowledge that I am near the water.

Many profess that they were born in the wrong time or place, and

I've come to understand that for me, it's both.