09/06/2022
After an hour and a half in the sea, I sat on the stony shore till the tide touched my toes. As the water moved up the beach, dry stones gray and sleepy from the sun instantly shone, moved with the white lip of the sea.
Ah, that sound of stones rolling over stones towards the sea, of the water gurgling down between hot dry rocks as the tide rose up the slope to my ticklish toes – that sound took me back to southern France, to my “camping spot” beyond the hazard barrier on the cliff edge along an abandoned seaside road when I first heard that crash and roll clattering of rocks in the shore waves, the hiss of water straining through stones, sucked back to sea. That sound was terrifying in the dark, unidentifiable. Then when I woke, legs splayed over my panniers and back on the earth, families were walking past me to the stairs down toward the turquoise waters and stoney shore that sounded so foreign in the black of night. I felt that – like the ashy stones high up on the shore would if they were wet – I would come alive, more vibrant color, more appealing in texture, complex and subtle, if I, too, were wet with those waters.
So I jumped in…
And… it was true.
I emerged glitteringly happy, my skin and eyes shinning, my body energized, refreshed. It was cathartic.
I brought home in my touring panniers several of those between-meatball-and-billiard-ball size stones. When I see them dry (sadly ashy and unremarkable) in my New Orleans apartment, compassion compels me to wet them that they may again be marvelously colorful and shiny.
After last night’s swim in an elegant Ridgetop pool over Hastings alone and naked under the stars and today’s sunny swim in the sea, I shine.
Hastings beach
8/6/22
(Delayed post because been busy exploring!)
