| Down the dead end road between the mansions of the Golden
Age of wealth and decadence and
onto the forty steps to see the sea for the first time—all silver-blue-gray
like the slate and granite hills and the eyes of the ghosts that haunt
the oldest parts of the city, and the sun shines from a point always
in front, sliding over the edge of the world as the day, the short day
scented of falling leaves and coming winter, drifts into the dark that
curls around the light like a lover
Starting out on paved walks that edge other people's homes, homes too
big and too close to the
sea, homes that should be lighthouses and the homes of lighthouse keepers
and the corners of stone bring you round to face the unimpeded beauty
of the place, the inescapable wildness just below the surface, not quite
hidden by the mansions all along its edge, the manicured lawns that
sear too green in the pervasive gray, the veneer of something civilized
Corners pass and you're surrounded—vertigo-far-off down below the
scrubby naked shrubs and
the sea growls and grabs at the rocks that were once volcanoes, fire
conquered by water without trouble, and all around is the light, the
white, high, perpetual-evening light bleaching the wind that freezes
your lips and the tops of your cheeks and brings tears to your eyes,
only half caused by the brutal glory of it—here you can feel how
small and bright you are, you can feel the insignificance and the wonder
of yourself in the face of the sea as it always was, not a tropical-green
sea, but a sleeping gray, a sea that will not rest long, will never
rest long, a sea waiting for you to fall so it can swallow you up and
never return you
Onward, and the path narrows, the fence sinks down to knee level, then
down into
nothing—cement beneath your inadequate shoes gives way to gravel,
then to mud, then to bare rock, behemoths of granite, marble, basalt,
fitted together in shapes as solid as time and as man-made, and you
can see the seeking fingers of the sea between them, see the waters
hollowing out the underlayers, making your footholds illusory and unsteady
even as your weight makes no impact, causes no shift—and you imagine
what it would be like to fall, to tumble with the rocks as big as cars
into the sea and become another sea change, another loss that the sea
gave before life was anything but finny and can take away whenever it
pleases—you wonder if you'll know when you change, if you'll see
through the pearls that were your eyes
Wild, it makes you, and it calls to you with a voice older than your
mother's, a mother further
back than any human mother, and you long to answer, but the sheer drop,
the sheer silk of surface tension that can't hold you, the sheer weight
of all you don't know about the ocean and all you do know pushes at
you with the wind that wants you to fly, but you're not made to fly
any more than you're made to swim, and it's a beautiful cold death it
taunts you with
At long last an end as the tide and the weather turns, and you pick your
way down to the tiny
tidal beach that smells of sushi and blood and tears and pick through
the rocks for a few treasures you can pry from the icy hands of the
waves, but every time you reach, it reaches for you, and you jump back
with a start, a jerk that goes deeper than the fear of getting wet in
such cold, the fear of a slow hacking death as you drown in your own
infection—it's the fear of being taken against your will, and
the gulls laugh and cry above you, little off-tune flutes and pipes
above you, voices of both air and sea
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