So many words have already been used to connect the individual to his or her senses of the sea. I don’t sit before the Atlantic in total isolation, and I probably am not in from of one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve seen, but I’m compelled to write.

About the dappling cascades of foam that tumble onto the shore and are summarily washed away with similar constituents. How the water chaotically finds new places to crawl. How the angular, jutting rocks are made geometrically perfect and yet completely haphazard by the erosive sand, and how the sand is the rocks’ detritus. The salty, fishy smell. The occasional geyser of the breaking waves spouting up just as a whale would. How children barefoot never tire of watching their prints disappear with the coming assault of the ochre water inching towards them. The meandering and cresting. The symphony, the cacophony, the constant slosh and the waves that take a jazz solo into the rocks. The balmy, palmy winds that are strong but don’t take you by surprise until you can see the storm coming. The belief that this is peace. The disbelief that shores have been militantly stormed, that the punctured waves have been overtaken by the unfair trade of goods and persons. The fine of coarse pieces of the ocean’s floor that feel like they’ll never cleave from the crevices in one’s body.

But they always do.