Everyday Canvas

Beaches

Prompt: Beaches are some of the greatest and most enjoyable natural features this earth has to offer us. Is this true or false? Why do we, as humans, naturally gravitate towards the beach? Does it have many positive effects on a person both physically and psychologically?

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True. Beaches are my favorite places, but then, also are the mountains. No wonder, I always move in contrasts, but then the first thing I learned in painting was contrast. We had a teacher who walked around repeating his watercolor mantra, “light against dark, light against dark, light against dark…”

In the past, I have scared many a people and later my husband by standing motionless on the beach, looking out toward the ocean. The air was always fresh, even if that freshness could be impenetrable and cruel on stormy days. I also liked the waves, their diamond spittle when they crashed against the rocks, how their foam bubbled feverishly and vanished almost immediately, how the water lapped the sand, feeling like silken underwear on the skin if I stood too close, and retreated taking away from under my feet some of the sand and other debris to bring those back again with additions.

It isn’t just the ocean but also the sea birds, gulls to be exact, the music of their cries and flapping wings as if they are trying to communicate in a language in extinction. These tie me to the beach, together with the tiny fortunes I pick like iridescent sea glass or seashells or the gnarled wood with twisting, snaky branches that the sea has borrowed from land earlier and stripped naked to return to the beach. Then, how about being mesmerized while watching the beauty of the moonlight rippling on the ocean?

I guess people in the past have been drawn to live near the seas and rivers for the security of easier trade and possibly because most of the percentage of human body is water and water gravitates toward water like the raindrops on windowpanes merging into one another. That must be true of me, for sure, as I have always lived on coastal cities and I have always loved the oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers.

The full moon casts
its shy light over the ocean
with the slight chill
of cold hands
forward onto the beach
where the water beats
offering itself like a heart
on the stilted world.