Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Ocean


Today is an ocean day. I could feel it when the sun glinted through the window and opened up the call of the ocean within me. The ocean has been calling me for some time. I realized yesterday that it has been calling me since I was eight years old and saw it for the first and only time. I stood on the rocky shore of Virginia with the wind against my face and hair and a hurricane brewing in the sky, and I was not afraid.

Every March or April when Spring is just around the bend and the wind blows in both warm and cool at the same time and the trees are bare but beautiful beneath the golden sky, this feeling comes. I can only describe it as an unexplained joy, the kind you feel for no reason at all. It makes you glad to be alive, fully aware of that moment and no other, when your blood is flowing healthfully through your veins and your nerves are conversing calmly with one another. I didn’t know it then, but it was the wind bringing the ocean to me in the only way it could.

That is how I feel in this instant. However, it is in the deep of winter, the cold is unrelenting, and I am inside so I can not feel any wind. But I can see the trees, and the clouds are silver and gold with bits of pale blue appearing gently above the horizon. And when the wind chimes ding softly, I am sure that it is an ocean day.

5 comments:

  1. There is something pretty about the ocean in the depths of winter. Just make sure to dress warmly. And no one is there (or at least next to no one).

    I like the beach in the winter. Well, I like the ocean all the time. Maybe you should trek out and see it.

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  2. Maybe I should have clarified...I live in Illinois! I wish I could see the ocean in the winter though. I would definitely go!

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  3. Oh, sorry. My proximity to the ocean (the Pacific) makes me forget that I'm in a minority. (Although, I don't go all that often.)

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  4. Aw, so lucky. At least you have the choice! About how far do you live from it?

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  5. I'm not sure. 3 miles. 5 miles. Something like that.

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