The Endless Beach

Today, as we strolled along the endless beach collecting rocks, our outing turned to allegory. How much like life this is, strolling around until a rock, a tiny universe, catches the eye, stopping to cherish it for a moment. Savoring the part from the whole, the moment from the multitude of moments. Deciding which rocks are worth their weight to carry along, and trudging over millions we leave behind unexamined. Developing the eye, scanning for glinting crystals to the textured crunch of footsteps on pebbles. Sensing the quivering possibilities flowing by us every second, persistent as the ocean breeze.

We find beautiful rocks, scarred with crystal veins and glittering caverns, some swirling with color — hues glowing in the surreal cloud-light. As we stop to examine potential gems, sometimes casting the unripened ones into the sea, our dog weaves around us, taunting with his stick. Perusing and pausing, the bucket of chosen stones grows heavier, and as we walk, I wonder if they will keep bursting with quartz and color after I’m long dead.

I remind myself again to appoint someone the responsibility of giving my rocks back to the sea when I die. As I’m only borrowing them, same as my borrowed life, full of memories, immaculate as crystals, swirling with color. All of them destined to be cast into the unrelenting sea which Melville said permits no records. And this beach is long, but not as endless as it seemed at first. If we keep walking, we’ll reach the end of it eventually, and awe at the vastness of the way we came. Astonished at our own footprints, that we were ever a part of it.

I think to myself that I hope this is what death is like, at least at the last moment. I hope its like getting to the end of a really long beach, and marveling at the way you came. The patterns of your tracks, the rocks in your bucket, and the great existential vista, of everything you loved and became in the midst of it all. One last look, before you’re erased from the scenery forever, your footprints vanishing with the next tide.