The deep sea swirling underneath, with gray shapes flickering beneath. Tapping the waves with the twee tail, her blowhole's fountain hoists the sail. Criss-crossing the deep with her son, she swirled leisurely and suavely spun. The boy on the peak sprang with glee, and named her lovingly, my 'Destinee'. She waved at him with her dorsal fin, as he hopped to the clouds with pure grin.

Once upon a time, in a quaint coastal town, there lived a young girl named Lily. Lily had a heart full of compassion and a spirit that radiated kindness. She believed in the power of small acts of goodness and how they could create a ripple effect of positivity in the world. Lily's town was known for its picturesque beaches and vibrant community. But there was one thing that troubled Lily deeply - the pollution that was slowly suffocating the ocean. Determined to make a difference, she decided to take matters into her own hands. Armed with a pair of gloves and a determination to clean up the beaches, Lily started organizing weekly beach cleanups. She would wake up early every Saturday morning and rally her neighbors, friends, and even strangers to join her in her mission. Together, they would comb the shores, picking up litter and plastic waste, one piece at a time. Word of Lily's beach cleanups spread throughout the town, and soon, more and more people started joining her cause. What started as a small group of volunteers quickly grew into a community movement. People of all ages and backgrounds came together, united by their love for the ocean and their desire to protect it. As the beaches became cleaner, Lily realized that raising awareness was just as important as cleaning up. She started giving educational talks at schools and community events, teaching others about the impact of plastic pollution on marine life and the environment. Her passion and knowledge inspired others to make changes in their own lives, reducing their plastic consumption and adopting more sustainable habits. One day, a local artist named Mia approached Lily with an idea. She suggested creating an art installation made entirely from the plastic waste they had collected. Lily loved the idea, and together, they transformed the collected plastic into a stunning sculpture that depicted the beauty of the ocean and the importance of preserving it. The sculpture became a symbol of hope and a powerful visual reminder of the impact of human actions on the environment. It was displayed in the town square, attracting visitors from far and wide. People marveled at its beauty and were moved by the message it conveyed. News of Lily's efforts reached the ears of an environmental organization that was looking for young ambassadors to join their cause. Impressed by Lily's dedication and the impact she had made in her community, they offered her a position as a youth advocate. Lily eagerly accepted, seeing it as an opportunity to amplify her voice and create an even greater impact. As a youth advocate, Lily traveled to different towns and cities, sharing her story and inspiring others to take action. She worked with local governments, urging them to implement better waste management systems and promote eco-friendly practices. Her tireless efforts caught the attention of national media, and soon, Lily's message reached millions of people across the country. Years later, as Lily stood on a stage receiving an award for her environmental activism, she looked back at her journey with a heart full of gratitude. She realized that her small acts of goodness had sparked a movement that had transformed not only her town but also the hearts and minds of people everywhere. Lily's story serves as a reminder that every individual has the power to create change, no matter how small their actions may seem. It is through our collective efforts and the belief in our ability to make a difference that we can create a better and more sustainable world for future generations. And so, the story of Lily and her beach cleanups reminds us that the power to change the world lies within each of us. With compassion, determination, and a little bit of sand between our toes, we can create a wave of positive change that will wash away the pollution and bring back the beauty of our precious oceans.

On July 4th, who wouldn't be excited to celebrate festivities honoring our land of the free? A tumultuous day in Emerald Isle, North Carolina changed all that, ingraining a painful memory that cannot be erased, but is vital when one asks about an event that made you “stronger”. In other words, this day defined me in more ways than one, as well as opened my eyes to those around me and see that not all help is in the forms we think it to be. The sweltering heat made my mouth dry and my throat itch, but we continued to trek along the narrow, sandy pathway between the dunes to the beach. I would much rather be at the beach house with my mother, we would have been perfectly content sitting by the pool at the house, maybe reading and drinking a cool glass of lemonade. Wisps of loose hair from my ponytail began whipping my face in the seemingly increasing strength of the winds. Aunt Suzanne commented on how this weather is likely due to the approaching tropical storm expected in a few days. The waves, almost as if agreeing with her, concocted an exceptionally large wave that came crashing down on my cousins who attempted to ride it into the shore on their boogie boards. After attempting a short nap by covering my head in my towel, and getting mediocre results, I decided to ride some of the waves with a boogie board. I was the only cousin who hasn't gone out yet, and they have all just returned to eat and rest from the rough current that had depleted their energy. I went out by myself, but not too far, always staying in sight of the beach should the waves pick up their attack. The sun was beginning its descent beyond the horizon, showering small shadows every which way as the orange and red hues gave off a cozy light. I follow my cousins out as far as I could, but in comparison to the rest of them, I'm rather small. I went as far as my legs could go without lifting my feet from the bottom unless I had to leap over a wave. I saw a large wave coming, looking larger than the rest and decided maybe it was time to call it quits for the day. In my attempt to flee, I rode a wave in but failed. The wave and current took me down farther along the stretch of beach. I resurfaced, but then realized that more waves were coming…and I can't touch the ground. I kept pushing forward to the beach, but panic slowly started to seep in. Almost as if a switch had been turned on, the waves kept coming, but at a more powerful impact and the current was rougher than before, pulling me back into the depths of the ocean with newfound vigor. I called out for help, but everyone at our little beach camp was turned away in a deep conversation, as well as being too far away for my pleas to be heard. The beach I was on was practically deserted with no beachgoers, and no lifeguards either making it all the more dangerous. I still have the boogie board attached to my wrist and am desperately struggling against the treacherous current trying to make my way back to shore. My feet dig into the too-soft sand beneath me, to get some form of footing. After another wave crashes over me as soon as my head resurfaces, I realize the only way I'll get out of this is if I fight my way out of the current and back to the beach. The pain and fear inside me reside and are replaced by the distinct survival instinct in which everything else around me is tuned out until I am safely in knee-deep water. I don't stop though, because in my mind I could still be swept away if I give up at this moment, and so I carry on until I collapse at the edge of the water, visibly out of breath. When I come back breathing heavily, I explain as best as I can what happened. Much to my dismay, a shocking majority of my cousins and aunts move on quite quickly from the event. Maybe I expected them to be a bit more sympathetic, considering they almost lost me. I start crying after the whole event finally settles in my head, which in turn makes my mother get teary as well. She tells me that they only had their heads turned for a second, but so much happened in that time frame. We start on our way home and I turn around for one last look at the ocean for the day, seagulls soaring over the ocean waves as they crash against each other, creating a calm lullaby leading one to believe the waves aren't as dangerous as they seem. Who would have thought that the day we as a nation proclaimed our freedom, it could be taken away from me so suddenly? I learned the lesson that to find your inner strength, there are times when you can rely on those around you, but eventually, you will need to fight for yourself and that at times only you can be the one to save yourself. Sometimes I think that God may have had a part in my survival, halting the waves and current just for a moment to allow myself to flee. There isn't evidence or any way I can prove it, but that evening, my mind couldn't help but wonder if He did help me out, and if He did, I am forever grateful to God.

It's the first thing I see when I sink my toes into the warm sand of the beach in Cancun. Not the children I hear splashing around on the beach nor the shutters of a camera, coming to life with a startling burst that only lasts for a second. But the crash of the waves. The shimmering hues of blues and greens that bleed into each other seamlessly, extending outward in a never-ending path towards the horizon. Every inch of it basking in the sunlight. ‘The ocean.' It's breathtaking, and I can't help but gasp as I stare at it, the sight unreal as I take it all in. I've never felt so eager to do anything as I'm feeling now, wanting to jump into it's depths and let the ocean take me wherever it wants to go. So I leave my parents behind and run towards the lapping water of the ocean, tossing my slippers into the air and jumping into it. It's a magical moment, falling into the ocean's embrace. Feeling the pressure of the water as it greets me with a cold kiss. For the past two years the only body of water I'd seen was the pool that my mother and I used to go and swim at every week. But it was never the same. It was too calm, lacking the ferocity of the ocean that I'd cherished. ‘I missed you.' I surface out of the ocean, pulling out of its embrace. I feel the salty water trailing down my face as if wanting me to dunk my face back in. ‘Patience, I just need a breath.' But as I look ahead of me and see a series of waves rolling out towards me, I know that patience is the last thing on the ocean's mind. I smile. ‘I guess you don't think I've got the guts, ocean.' And so despite my father's yells to stay with him, I swim further and further from shore, a slave to the call of the ocean as it beckons me into its depths. ‘I want to go further.' It's like a rollercoaster as the waves lift me and I feel a rush of exhilaration as I let the ocean drag me into its depths. ‘I wouldn't mind if you just took me with you and made me yours.' But I quell this desire as I think about my parents. The future ahead of me. The ocean is one of those things that makes me forget everything around me, which is often why I have to remind myself to remember. The pain of my past vanquishing as soon as I set my eyes on it. The desire to dissolve in it as I relish it's presence, the feel of the cool water like a caress. ‘I've never felt so envious of salt.' And despite the fact that the ocean has taken countless people's lives, those that had made the mistake to succumb to its lull, it's one of those things that I would willingly leave everything to be beside every moment of my life. ‘I'm in love with the ferocity of the ocean.' I don't know very much about it, but I'm in love with every inch of it from the depths of my heart. And I've always had the desire to reach the bottom of it. To greet a humpback angler fish or a fang tooth. To see those beautiful and fascinating underwater creatures that everyone else calls terrifying. But how can we judge if when we haven't even met these creatures? It's kind of like how humans tend to view everything through a biased frame, one devoid of love or acceptance. But that's what I love about the ocean. Because unlike how Uranus banished the Giants, the ocean is accepting and generous to the creatures it gives home to, regardless of their characteristics. I reluctantly pry my gaze away from the ocean and let my eyes linger on the sky as I pump my arms to stay afloat. The bright sun has dipped lower into the sky and the path of maroons and violets that the absence of the fiery orb has left behind tell me all that I need to know. It's as if the sky was giving me a warning, a warning that's reaffirmed by my father yelling, “It's time to go!” When I turn my head, I see my mother waving at me, beckoning me to come back to shore. I feel a rush of sorrow at the thought of leaving the ocean, the thought that all I'll have of the ocean is a figment of my memory, of my imagination. ‘I just reunited with you hours ago.' I shake my head and ask my parents for a few more minutes but they say I need to get ready for dinner. I stay there and float in the middle of the ocean for a few seconds, feeling the salty wetness of the ocean all over my skin, but I relent when I hear my mother yelling my name. I feel the pull of the ocean on my clothes as I wade back to shore, as if the ocean doesn't want me to leave either. Waves start crashing madly against the rocks as I step back onto the sand. ‘I'll be back,' I think at the ocean in an effort to calm it. But I don't know if I will.

Chamber. Night light. Silence. Pain. A strange space that stretches to the deep heart. You know, sometimes you don't realize you're dead when you're alive, but isn't it weird that you feel alive when you're dead? It's hard to feel the million tissues of your body being torn apart and destroyed, to feel your heart pounding between the wood and the consolation.  My days were as miserable and hard as years. It was as if the clock had been taken away from me, and so was the air. Today, for some reason, I remembered the big river at the head of our village. When I was a child, my sister and I used to go to that valley. We played until the evening and took a bath. One day, because of the increase in water, for some reason I could not swim, and I began to drown. I could not breathe and was motionless. But I survived it. Even now I am drowning in imaginary water and I can't live without breath. In the face of the virus that is cutting me off from life, I am radiant and discolored as if the sun had been pulled from the sky.  I have decided today. I made a deal with my heart. It rises again and again and then ends in a long line. And I will stretch the threads of my life, not only to put an end to everything, but also to get rid of the pain and virus that eats me day by day. I was thinking about that. I believed that death would remember me very soon,  and bring me with it. When I think of death, for some reason I think of my grandfather's sunken saga. Maybe it's because I'm sure I'll sink into the ground just like him. The four walls of the room cut me off from all over the world, and I was searched all my life. What I researched not only seemed to be based on the theory of death right now, it didn't even seem to have been touched. It was as if my heart was freezing, and then I was burning again, and I could smell the warmth, the tingling, and the stench coming from me. At that moment, in my mind's eye, when I was a child (or clearly, my grandfather and I brought our seedlings from the market and plantet it in our yard, and now they are vehement), the poplars were burning one by one, as if I was being burned with a virus that I could not breathe.  I  have been burned. I have been burned for a long time. I was burned with a series of ghosts lined up around me, not hunters. They also said, “Let's go. That's enough for you to live, ”he said, urging me to break my covenant with life. I sank in the sea of ​​Covid, like a boat sinking in the middle of a big ocean. One day . I don't remember which day. But I will never forget those eyes and that voice. He told me that I needed to breathe now, that he would turn off the respirator, and that if I didn't breathe, it would all be over. And I was still careless, convinced that I could not breathe, that the virus had devastated me, and that the corpses of the village were waiting for me, and that the living would never catch me, so that I would not stumble upon it. But then something like this happened. "Samina," I heard her name mixed with tears. The voice was familiar. The voice led me to my home. In the room, the woman was rocking the cradle with dreaming, and in the cradle I was sleeping with enjoying. Then I realized that my mother was also covid. He was also in pain. He was in the throes of pain, and he was in the throes of a virus.  My mother's voice reminded me of her dreams. Beautiful dreams. In my mother's dreams, she led me to the altar, and in her dreams, the white dress I wore shone in the sunlight, and these lights faded into my dreams. Now I would start my daughter in the altar. Now, I was striving for a true breath from the air apparatus that had been taken from me, torn from me, for the power of a dream, a motherly dream. But my lungs were still weak. I needed to breathe for my mother, with a thousand struggles. I couldn't see his eyes, I could only feel the ceiling, and the ceiling reflected the dream, I was thirsty for the scent of dreams. Now spring was waiting for me behind the window, joining the birds and immersing my mother in God. For some reason, the crumpled pieces of paper in my room were full of songs about life and living. In the ward, still in a mask, the doctor struggled to breathe next to me, holding my trembling hands, leading me to the island of comfort, and giving my thirsty body a drink of hope. As I stared into his eyes, I could see the glittering tears in his eyes, which, too, were quarantined and tired of the virus, albeit weak, for me and countless patients like me, and these glittering tears made me strong and brave. From a distance, my mother's "Samina, breathe, fight!" His voice was faintly heard, joining the song of life, the dream.

In honor of World Ocean Day, I'd like to give a thumbs-down shout-out to our species for carelessly laying waste to the oceans of our blue planet. I'd like to also take this opportunity to remind everyone that the reason the planet is blue, IS because of the very oceans we are actively decimating. The next generations, should they somehow survive all this nonsense, will most likely call it the "brown planet” for all the rust and actual crap, or "plastic planet” for all the shopping bags flying in the radioactive winds. I live in Florida, which is basically a sand dune jotting into the ocean. It is flush with animals and plant life. Or was. Until a certain species arrived, this was an ocean-front replica of Garden of Eden, with the ocean and land and all the creatures within them living in glorious harmony in an echo system that was working like a well-crafted Swiss watch. Until, I'm assuming, just like the real Garden of Eden, a mad scientist husband-and-wife team arrived and spliced genes in snakes and apples and things, and thus, gave birth to two new life forms: Tourists and Snowbirds! These non-native invasive species plundered the natural resources like an unsupervised toddler going at a sundae cone. They bulldozed forests, destroying native plant-life, cutting down centuries-old trees, to make room for theme parks. Theme parks with artificial plant life! And, get this: plastic trees! Some after-thought was given to nature conservancy, though, and some areas, however tiny, were left alone. And then, thousands of acres of green spaces around were paved over so visitors could park their cars and visit these remaining few acres of green spaces left between shopping strips, pawn shops, and gambling casinos. And a few thousand gift shops with over-sized parking lots, hundreds of road rage incidents with casualties, and fifty or so theme parks later, the whole place started looking like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie. Like lava from an active volcano, this unfettered human pollution covered everything from shore to shore. And it did not stop at the shore, either. The mighty ocean got its fair share of abuse along with everything else on land. Actually, “the ocean got polluted” would not even be a proper description any longer. Now, it's more like “pollution got a little bit of ocean splashed on it”. Dolphins and alligators alike are choking on small white balls with weird dents on them, while panthers are drowning in backyard swimming pools. Black bears are starving next to the dumpsters behind supermarkets full of half-eaten food items, and the fish are buying up all the scuba gear and oxygen tanks just to survive the unlivable polluted waters. The catch of the day for the local fishermen is typically made up of golf clubs, meth pipes, refrigerators and worn-out flip-flops. And, the occasional fish. Clinically-depressed fish that chose suicide-by-fisherman over death-by-plastic-and-or-chemicals. Whatever damage levels achieved with land-based efforts like sewage, industrial waste and plastic garbage, was further supported and expanded with off-shore drilling with occasional oil spills on top of their regular pollutions. Off-shore sounds sterile until you do the math and realize it's still in the same ocean and only one ocean current or tropical storm distance from shore. Think gun-to-the-head execution-style versus sniper fire. Same end result: One fatally-shot ocean. It may not be too late. But we need a whole new species of mankind to enter the scene for a better result. One that respects the environment and not treat it like a distant relative up in age that we are mooching off of, who in all likelihood will leave us the entire estate in his will anyway. The very same estate we are burning down! Time to teach our children, the planet is sustainable, only if we choose to sustain it! So next time they ask you "plastic or paper bag?". hear this: "choke a bird or kill a tree?". And juggle your groceries to the bed of your gigantic truck that would better serve a commercial enterprise with heavy hauling needs, than a petite accountant working from home. Let us observe the “Ocean Day”, not to completely disregard the oceans for the rest of the year, but to remind ourselves that the oceans deserve our attention every single day. If we do not, then we might as well teach our grandkids to celebrate “Breathable Air Day” along with “Potable Water Day “only once a year, too. And hope that there will be enough air masks and rationed water to go around.

In the morning, when the sun first rises and warms the gentle waves of the Pacific, a great fog rises towards the mountains. It reaches forward through canyons and over ridges, fingers desperately clinging from one rock, tree, creek, to the next. The sun rises higher and brings along the day's heat. The condensation breaks and dissipates, and the mountains ride goldengreen on the sun's columns of light. Come nightfall, the sun disappears, now hugging the great Pacific, and the chill comes back, and the ocean fog rises again from its domain under and overtop the waves. Its crawl this time unhindered, for what celestial authority watches it now but the weary moon? Six of us in a five-seater truck, the pressure of our bodies pressed against the others more than enough restraint to make up for the missing seat belt. The goal is in no mind. The goal is to see, to feel, to drive. The engine turns over and the lights come up. We take the king's road 101 to County Route N9, Kanan: Promised Land. The gateway to that land stands before us in its physical form as a stoplight, and inside of us as fear and hope, and a million lives we will never live. The fog obscures, but in that obscurity, forms become clearer because a new perspective arises. We are silent in front of the fog wall. The great red eye deems us ready; green. The engine hum now roars, and the night is ours. The canyon run, up and down, winding, tapered road, widening; a tunnel, another. Thousands descend and climb these mountains every day, towards leisure or business. Us? Our business? Leisure. We are fast, we accelerate out of turns, and the wind comes turbulent through the windows, blowing into our eyes, making a maelstrom of our hair. And the fog… The fog is an apparition, a ghost, a thousand-thousand ghosts, standing side by side, staring through hollow eyes, reminding us; these mountains were here before us, and they will be here after us, and we too will be eyes in the fog, staring at our scion , making their own way through the fog. Eventually, the winding ends, the geologies calm down and the final descent appears before us. The road bends gently downward, and a breath releases. We reach the end of the fog bank, and we are revealed to the coast. The wind seems less, though the mountains no longer rebuff the wind from the ocean. We turn down to a small lesser-known street, on a beach where there is some manner of seclusion even when faced with the expanse of the sea. Here it sprawls. The great treasure of the state of medleyed paradise. The cliffs and beaches, which to us seem trite, but are true in their beauties of resplendence and age. Now for us, as that roaring engine shifts down to a hum again, we are greeted by the old rolling, the barrel-down crash of the waves, and the airy simmer of its foam and the retraction and the push again. It calms us down and kisses coldly our feet and threatens to chew and swallow if we get any closer. Quaint is the ocean upon the shore, but unconsidered are the terrors that lay miles out; the storms and shipwrecks, the abyssal depths and mountainous waves. We are content with our gentle rolling shore. We make our way down, to coves each more secluded than the last. Each time we move the coastal bluffs grow taller over us and the incursions of the ocean grow deeper, and our beach narrows. We are one-by-one, weaving between coastal boulders, moving as a snake joined, not dead. The surf grows too close and the only direction forward is upward. Up we climb, a boulder risen from the beach, uneroded by the eternal surf, standing there, against the odds of a million years. This boulder, this rock, must be more than, must be willful and strong. Atop the rock, watching the ocean pool around us now, reaching the bluff, flooding our means of escape. We thank the rock for standing there despite everything, for providing our pant cuffs protection from the saltwater eddy. The ocean swirls beneath and one of us lights the end of a cigarette, the moon and her ocean reveal a beauty that is hidden to us by our own smallness, our focus on finding privacy, shying ourselves away. That sky lays me bare and tears me open. The sky seems a reflection of the waves, both lit silver by the waning light of the moon, waning in influence, for the lights of the city keep getting brighter. It is the moonlight that sings to me, that almost calls me out off of my rock and into the waves. It is the moon, and her children the tides who make me cry private tears, and who, bows her head in mournful regret and clears the fog away. It is a clear drive home. There are no more ghosts in the mountains, only dim stars above, and streetlamps to light the way home. That night, that moon, those waves, how many before me saw that same sky, that same fog and thought as I did, that they had never seen anything so beautiful? How many more nights like that will I have that transcend the conscious mind? I think not so many… nor so few.

With the wind blowing in your hair and the sun shining on your face, one can find little to complain about. With the ocean colliding upon the sand and the shells spread around the beach, one should find peace. But there is no peace. As the mind forces thoughts, ones unwanted, on to the brain. And the body aches of pains of all sorts of origins. Bruises and scrapes litter the body. No one can be sure where they came from. Strangers don't stop to ask what's wrong. It may be strange for someone to be sitting on the beach on a cold winter day, but everyone has their own life. Everyone has their own issues. Nobody has the time to care. So, as you sit on the beach, with the cold air rushing through your hair and the sun radiating it's bright but frigid rays directly on you, you feel nothing. Absolutely nothing. As if the inside of you was just a cold bottomless pit. No end, no beginning. But empty. All that's inside of you is the dark nothingness that haunts you. It's like you don't have warm blood, circulating through your body. As you even feel cold to the touch. You could even think that your heart isn't pumping. Your lifeless. Motionless. Sitting there on the beach, anyone would think you were just mesmerized by the ocean. But your just trying to feel. Anything. You hope to be happy. To find something to enjoy. To fill the pit inside you. But it all seems impossible. How do you fill something that's endless? Something that doesn't even seem to want to be filled? The only thing you want to do is feel. But the easiest way to feel is through pain. So your left in what seems like an endless cycle of hopelessness. Nowhere to go and no way to get out. All you can ever feel is empty.

He sits alone in the night, there on the seashore amid the cobblestone rubble and tangled driftwood. A yellowy green and gray mottled full moon floats above the horizon like a giant hard boiled egg yolk. The luminous orb slides higher into the sky, shrinking, shedding its yolky hues, morphing into a blazing white disk that illuminates the nocturnal seascape in a silver light. He wades into the wilderness among the barnacled boulders, through the surge of seething windrows of percolated white froth and the rainy blast of cold salty mist spat from the explosive billows crashing toward him. The fizzing liquid roils about his body, heavy and torsional like a pool of serpents set aboil. He leaps onto his surfboard and paddles. He sits in the wintry Pacific Ocean bobbing about the tumult, rolling and pitching with the swells, the water's surface peened to the horizon before him with the moon's brilliant reflection winking across myriad facets of the agitated sea. Men have met grisly ends in the jaws of great white sharks not far from where he floats like chum along California's Gaviota Coast, lacerated by a phalanx of razorous teeth and drowned if not drained of blood in seconds. He is undaunted, thrilled more than horrified. Life is felt more intensely at no other time than in the ecstatic thralls of primordial existence, whether in the joy of love or the jaws of death. The macabre feeling is endangered these days in the Anthropocene. He appreciates that the opportunity to experience these ancient emotions still exists. Wave trains explode on the rocky shoreline behind him. The powerful Aleutian energy from a distant storm grinds the edge of the continent to cobblestones and sand like crumbs from a cookie. He floats up over crests and sinks down into troughs and waits. A set wave silently appears out of the depths of night, a one dimensional black wall growing larger. The big wave approaches in the vague form of a solid constant in an otherwise ceaselessly shifting realm of the darkened half visible. A quick shift to prone position and he is furiously paddling toward the oncoming wall of water. He digs deep and hard with each hand, fingers bent and spread, too cold to draw together. He springs up to a sitting position just before reaching the wave, leans back grabbing the pointy nose of the surfboard with his right hand as it thrusts skyward, his opposing free hand reaching out for balance as he shoves the board leftward riding it like a rodeo cowboy as it swivels around, pushing against the seawater with muscled legs and thrusting onto his belly and into a fierce paddle, chin pressed against the gritty deck of the surfboard, nostrils filled with the fruitiness of Mr Zog's Sex Wax. He affects a ninety degree turn in one fluid, masterly motion, the wave looming over his, crest curling like the snarling lip of a monstrous watery maw about to slam down with the force of a waterfall. Two hard grabs of seawater and the wave grabs ahold of him itself, pushing him forward, the back of his board lifting in the hooking peak of the swell as the nose plunges down towards the trough. He slides down the steep liquid slope on his belly for the briefest moment before pushing up and leaping to his feet. In a second he is standing with arms spread for balance and angled back as if to fly, mouth agape in concentration, eyelids pulled wide, tendrils of wet hair fluttering in the hissing scud blowing up the face of the heaving breaker. At home his family sleeps soundly snuggled in warm beds. His surfboard becomes a vehicle to a parallel universe, a magic carpet slicing a nick in the fabric of time as he enters another dimension for a fleeting moment before piercing back into reality. He slips into a liminal realm where the space between seconds stretches into something that matters. Where there are no barriers but the limits of nature and the extent of her skills. He is the supreme pilot of his existence in a moment of absolute freedom. All burdens vanish. There is no cold; no problems; no pain; no work; no responsibilities; no politics; no arguments; no fights. There is not a worry in the world. There is no world. There is only a single-minded focus on the wave and his relation to nature. And nothing else matters.

I sat alone on a isolated stretch of beach, knees pulled tightly to my chest, staring out at the vast, alluring ocean. I was mesmerized by the sunset kissed swells as the last breaths of daylight slipped past the horizon at my back. Wind whipped off the water and past my cheeks. The smell of salt induced nostalgia that enveloped me like a warm blanket. I reached down and grasped a hand full of sand, squeezing it gently. A controlled flow slid out of my clutch like an hour glass, each grain a tick of a clock as it spilled back to the earth. I've always loved the sea. It's beauty, the sound of the waves crashing, transforming the shoreline with each crest and fall. I remembered running alongside my cousins from the sprawling foam as it washed away our footsteps, leaving behind a beautiful, glistening clean slate, a fresh start, a new beginning. As a person grows many venture further into the water. Some dip a toe, others may wade out to their knees, but many go deeper. Unfortunately as beautiful and majestic as it is, the ocean can be both unpredictable and dangerous. A riptide can tear your legs out from under you and pull you out to where it's so deep your feet no longer reach the bottom. A huge wave may crash over you and send you through a spin cycle. You'll lose track of which way is up, down, left or right. When you finally reach the bubbling, white aftermath on the surface, you're gasping for air, your strength and will depleted. Simply praying there's not another one coming. However, If you know anything about waves you'd know it could have been different. You'd know that very same one which destroyed you, through strength, timing and embracing its power could have carried you all the way to the safety of the shore. You may skim your chest on the sand but soon enough the sun will dry your skin and in no time you'll be swimming again. Maybe you'll stay closer to the shallows but that's ok, you're different person now. The last of the sand trickled from my palm. I stood while rubbing my thumb and forefinger together until I felt the ridges of my fingerprints meet again. I walked slowely off the beach as the last crest of the sun dipped behind the bay. I took one final look over my shoulder as a wave receded. What it left behind was a beautiful, glistening, clean slate. A new beginning. And I couldn't help but smile.