When busy just getting though life, much of the significance and meaning of your surroundings pass you by. Now though, for me it’s different. I have, out of choice, slowed down, simplified, stopped even. Stopped to take it all in, to put it down on paper. Now that I have time to think, to remember, even the air seems thick with significance. As I sit writing this I can see the sea, a sea I have swam in since I was a boy. I even see the cliff where I kissed my first love.
I walk to the lounge, to the open window overlooking the harbour. The usual ozone has been replaced by an earthy smell as the estuary rushes in to fill the space left by the low tide. Suddenly I think about my father, about the day I cast his ashes into the sea. Into the sea at the end of this pier, this very pier on which my home is built. As on that day, the sea has turned brown, but today it is with the earth from the fields. The sea smells of the land, it churns, like my mind, with all the things once buried, now rising to the surface.
© Paul C Siebenthal July 2012
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