I have a complicated relationship with the beach.

I have never liked slathering my skin in suntan lotion and sitting under the hot sun while it's at its highest point in the sky. The people at the beach are too loud and they move too fast; and there are far too many of them, all with unnaturally perfect bodies. The water is unpredictable, cold, and not nearly transparent enough. And the sand, my god the sand, it's everywhere, sticking to your skin, taking shelter under your fingernails, in your bag, and on your towel, just to remain there forever.

But sometimes I do love the beach; it was three years ago when I first realized this.

The night had settled, we just finished dinner, and we were laughing. Laughing, laughing, laughing. I don't remember what we were talking about or if anything was funny, but what does it matter? We sat, outside, at a restaurant on the beach.

I left the table with my cousins but as I walked, they were forgotten behind me. I took off my shoes, held them in my hand. I walked across the beach, feet swallowed by the sand with every step. Water hit the shore steadily washing over my bare toes.

I walked farther than I could see. The sounds of waves and the faded sound of an acoustic guitar drowned out the world. I felt small, looking out onto the endless water and endless beach, but at the same time, I felt present and important. It was just me, the waves, the sand, the music, and my thoughts. 

The fresh smell, blown at me by the strong winds of the sea, cannot be even close to replicated. At the end of the beach, it was a cluster of large, jagged rocks. There the water was even more intense and beautiful, especially when it turned white against the rocks. I found a flat slab and climbed my way on top to sit on it with my legs dangling above the crashing waves. 

I looked out and found that I couldn't see where the water ended and the sky began, it was all a black abyss. When travellers used to think the world was flat I suspected that this was what they expected to see. 

There was no distance, but somehow it was all distance.

I was nothing, but I was also everything. 

I thought time ceased to exist. But, of course, that was a mere illusion painted by the beach when it was dark and void of people. I hadn't forgotten about the people, they were just in the distance, where I couldn't hear what they were saying, just see their heads thrown back in laughter.

Eventually, my name was called and I cursed having to return to reality. But I decided that, yes, I loved the beach.

Author's note: Worth mentioning that I wrote this for my mom on her birthday.

Even to myself, I am no one until I am someone. Whether I like it or not, I am nobody until I'm somebody to another consciousness that makes up this reality. By myself, I'm merely an idea, a network of concept thoughts of possibility waiting for actualization.

Alone (away from the world,) what I say and do remains nothingness to everyone but me, like a flower blossoming inside an uninhabited dried out log. Only if that flower grows tall enough to peak out of the log to be seen at a distance, or makes enough fragrance to be smelled from elsewhere, will its existence be known, unless an observing animal (human or otherwise) happen upon it for discovery, on the way to somewhere or something else. 

Even in my present, I am a memory to most who've known me at all-- only someone during reflection of past events-- otherwise, often irrelevant. Like a book they've forgot they read.

Solo, in the shower, I am water-usage.

By myself, in bed (in the dark) I am a heat signature.

In solitude, reading, I am an unknown observer, a ghost in another world.

I am always me but the context of who I am only has depth in the presence of a sentient mind. When I boil it down, I have to share myself to be someone. Share my presence in places others are, or will be. Share my thoughts and feelings when there's sentience to give me substance in the living world.

After all, alone behind stone walls in the silence of my own being, I am only ever who I was to those who knew me, because there's no external context to who I am in that moment (religious & spiritual beliefs aside.) In the corporeal world with which I reside, living isn't the same as existing. Who I really am only has weight and meaning when engaged or in the presence of other life, without it, I may be alive but I may as well, not exist.

I'm the kind of person who thinks about these things...

|| another_proser ||