There's the continual fizz of white wash on the sand above the rumble of more distant larger waves crashing. I can't help but smile. It doesn't matter that it's not my beach house that promotes access to this scene. It doesn't matter that it's not my car that whisked me down here before sunset. It doesn't matter that I don't have a man in my life right now. It only matters that I'm here and that the ocean exists at all.
In the same way that fireworks cracking into the sky burn out the sadness and disappointments within your soul, the ocean offers effervescent nourishment. Hearing it, the fizz. Seeing it, the glow, crash and wash. Feeling it, the carbonated water around me as I dive and dart underwater. Smelling it, more subtle but the scent of the beach is still unmistakably enlivening. This is why even swimming in the depths of winter is appealing to me. To me the ocean is about this effervescence. It's not simply about warm days and refreshing swims. Interestingly effervescence means bubbliness as well as vivaciousness or of high spirits. The ocean is mine, but yours too.
I am staying on Victoria's southern coast and driving into the first surf town out of Melbourne on our way here I had a sense of 'coming home'. But I've never lived there, holidayed there nor had any association with it. I think it simply means that I am called to the sea. I am happy there. I am happy here. My utopia is to have two abodes, in the city and beachside. Lucky I don't live in the 17th Century where such commuting would be an arduous affair nor in an undeveloped nation today, where such travel would be impractical and inaccessible. I am so grateful for my friends that grant me such luxuries, my job that permits such flexibility and my new demeanour that can derive instant pleasure from such simple adventures. I clearly need the ocean in my life. Glad I wasn't born in Kazakhstan.
