Yesterday, we took a walk in the rain. Yesterday there were leaves being carried down the street in a stream alongside the curb, and there was beach sand there under the water. There was a big white dog with kind, regal eyes who ambled alongside us obediently even though his fur was collecting the drops and making him unhappy. There were stones and pebbles to crunch with each step, the smell of rain on the asphalt and the fallen leaves beginning their death into the sweet earth. There was an ocean, majestic in its cold, crashing life that calms you through its wisdom and fills you with dread at its ancient, wild, depth. Like palest jade and icy milk the waves would rush toward us over the rain-dimpled sand, pooling into a small lake upon the beach and then retreating hastily to fold into itself once more with an insistent attitude and kind of need. But it isn’t ignoring you; the white will foam and rush and move in a desperate communication of something, something. It wants you to understand and is frustrated that you don’t.
I tried to listen and I heard myself, my memories, my comfortable house of heart that is there in the sea. I think I heard that Someone had been there with the waters, far ago when the spirit of God was hovering over them and before they were enlivened to breathing, skipping, oratory waves by the creation of a moon. But the sea is so alive on its own now, just like bodies with the breath of life in them. What was it like before? The sand was cold and sloped in sensuous lines all down the beach, interrupted by one dark black arch of driftwood, granite rocks, a hillside of brittling trees with leaves slippery in the rain. I splashed through the water but was careful with my footsteps; I didn’t want to ruin the stoic dignity of the sand and shore.