Close your eyes. Write about what you see.
February 20 prompt, “A Writer’s Book of Days”
Azure water.Golden sand. Brown sand saturated by surf. Bold yellow ball high in the sky. Sunny.
Kids shrieking in their fear and their play in the water. I stand where the water surrenders its fierce rolls into laps before disappearing into the wetted sand all together.
I advance 4 steps. My soles sink in as sand becomes like quicksand. Froth and undertow nibble and wrest for a hold of my my ankles. I stand firmly, unafraid. The water is my friend. My element.
A man floats the watery crescendos lying on his belly and paddling offsides like a dog. He’s maybe 20. A grown-up in the eyes of a 12-year-old.
An orchestra in weird harmony. Continous high-pitched shrieks and blows of shootings from kids, like horns from the whale’s blowhole, contrasting with the rhythmic roar of the ocean.
For my petite and skinny stature, I am a strong swimmer. Unusually strong even. I have no fear of the water, even now after I’ve ventured in fully. I understand the water and respect it. Even at my young age, I understand the power of water and her undertows and not to challenge them. I would lose as would most anyone.
Deeper into the ocean, the currents twist and turn and change directions abruptly. There is no policeman or traffic control beneath the surface of the water! Their willy-nilly forces tumble as they will. No man can destroy the forces of water neither should he try. He shall be defeated, ultimately, even fatally.
I plunge head first into monster waves. Well, monstrous enough. They’re not the 50-footers of Hawaii but they’re certainly big enough for fun rides. I love the science of riding the waves. Treading water, studying the wave out there as it comes closer and closer to shore. Rolling. Gaining swell. Gaining momentum. Each pull only pulling more and more for or speed and height. As if water’s imploring, “hey everyone, come along on this ride!!”
Sheer delight. As the wave forms before my very eyes, anticipation only mounts! The dynamics of waves formation are fascinating to watch! But, much as I’ve got an astute observant researcher within, it’s not the researcher who’s here to play! It’s me!
I await that moment where the base of the wave is at its maximum swell and its curve at maximum height but not yet broken into its inevitable fall. That moment where all forces converge into a stellar harmony. A symphony of the sea.
I plunge forward — a dive into glory! Head, arms, legs, feet, all given over to the wave. I let go. The wave flings me up in her forceful arc. I’m a bird in flight! Alighted atop the curve of her neck, I ride, effortlessly. Then all too quickly the flight is over. She thrusts me back to earth, speedily and in no uncertain terms! Unmerifully even! Suddenly I’m a sock in the washing machine. My eyes are shut and mouth closed to keep from gulping rushing salty water. It happens sometimes. Oh well. All in good fun!
All in the world is tempestuous churning water. That is all that is in my world! Her roar fills my ears. No sound but the apex of her symphony.
Gradually, predictably, her frothy wrath — the sea only SEEMS angry, she’s really not — subsides, unwinds, calms into the inevitable meeting at the shore. There, the wave may leave her mark as bubbly froth along the shore or vanish into grains of sand, never to be seen again.
I may gallooop out but only briefly to regain my footing, turn to face the sea and press back in over and over and over! There is no joy like the ocean and merging with her waves! Better than any ride at the fair or a carnival!
Am I an amphibian trapped in a human body?! Or part fish and part bird?! Perhaps! Kinda like the mythical phoenix who rises time and time again from the ashes of fire … only in my case the water instead of fire? Very probably!
When I close my eyes, I see the place from which I came and from which we all originated, mammals that we are. I see too the place to which I’ll return in the form of ashes, when my time on Earth is up.
I’ve no fear, only the greatest respect and regard for the water who birthed us and nourishes us still. She is my orchestra of ever-moving and seemingly clashing forces all come together in one marvelous, outrageous, divine symphony that not even Mozart could write — though he may well try!
When I close my eyes, I see the place where I began and the place where I’ll end up before I resume my astral journey in other galaxies. I see a symphony. I am at peace as the waves thunder in my ear.
Allelujah, Arizona! 