8 Feb 2018

the whole world


It was a bright day. A pleasant breeze blew our hair onto our faces. The sky a Monet sky, a wintery blue, cool and forgiving, the clouds like freshly sheared fleece, a deliberate, artistic splash of whipped cream by mature hands.

My daughter wore wellington boots. I wrapped plastic bags around my ballet pumps! Which proved very inefficient, the jagged sea rocks quickly tore into them, and my shoes and feet were soaking. We walked into the shore, the waves had long receded. Like curtains pulled away from a magnificent piece of art by the proud creator, just for a moment, allowing us the privilege of witnessing the genius of the creation.

turning over rocks, we marveled at little green crabs quickly turning themselves into small tight fists, then burying themselves in a swift and dramatic tornado that temporarily obscured our vision of the rock pools. The Rosette Barnacles, numerous, resembling miniature volcanos that erupted long ago, that are now rusty and moldy with age and sleepy laziness. Villages, towns, countries of tiny marine creatures; Turban snails, Limpets and Periwinkles.  Every time we turned a rock, we uncovered a marvelous new secret. How many tens, hundreds, thousands of years have these rocks been left unturned? Uninterrupted? Unknow? Unseen? Undiscovered? So many lives, stories, miracles.

We touched, and prodded, and examined in awe, all the quietness, all the mystery of a superior and more intelligent world. An intelligence that existed millions of years before us, and one that will outlive us all. The magnificence and the complexity of an entire universe that remains hidden under water.

Returning every rock to its original place, I imagined the baby crabs going back to what they were doing, annoyed - a little - by our intrusion. The sharp rock edges cutting me slightly, and the salty water sharpening the pain. I looked up at the sky, another universe, a constant reminder of how enormous everything else is. Everything else?

Feeling small, irrelevant, and superfluous, I murmured to myself: there isn’t anything in particular that saddens me, only the whole world.