Shoreline Rocks

Once you get a little used to a terrain cleansed of sense, you realize that there is amusement enough to be had here, and that only in its emptiness can the magic crystals of beauty originate.
― Michal Ajvaz, The Golden Age

The shoreline ingredients seem simple enough: rocks, water and sky. The simplicity eases me away from cluttered thoughts to one version of happiness, immersion in the natural world, a reunion with origins.

In another version of happiness I want to reach through the photograph to make an activity of modeling the ingredients with my hands.

 

 

 

Aesthetic components are well represented among the shoreline rocks. Chaos (Χάος, undifferentiated existence) and Cosmos (Kόσμος, the complex, orderly universe) abound. Incalculable power lies in repose. There are reasons for it all, order in the disarray. It is a theater of time.

A sharp and precarious cleavage suggests the potency of change. I draw close with vigilance.

 

 

 

Crevices recapitulate in miniature the evolution of vast landscapes. They undergird life's understanding of its planetary origins and the fundamentals of its expression in art. They feature lines of teasing trails over slopes and plateaus, possibilities and trepidations. They challenge the random and the familiar.

I need to organize the experience of looking at it. I put a frame around it to absorb the harmony in a manageable scale.

 

 

 

The rocks exist through an endless geologic dance of form and movement. They contain and release minerals essential to organic formulae. They give platforms for anchorage and ambulation.

I need relief from the dynamic geometry, the fractures and smooth-pummeled edges, the relentless grays and browns. An incidence of life pioneers across the rocks in signature green.

 

 

 

At times I notice my preference for certain curves and proportions, textures and sheens, repetitions and singularities, evidence and mystery.

I wonder whether these discoveries are static or eventful, reflections of compositions within my own body and mind.

 

 

 

They draw me back into the recesses of experience and forward beyond horizons.

 

 

 

Rocks confound the logic of degradation and beauty, of disintegration and coherence, of irrelevance and unity, of restlessness and harmony.

For a moment I am hypnotized by mutual animation. Then I move on to satisfy my desires.

 

 

 

Rocks define the shoreline, the ceaseless inventions of the sea.

I come and go, seeing the rocks at different tides. Passing clouds change their appearance entirely, as does the track of the sun. The rocks wait and I wait. Sandpipers fly in.

 

 

 



Sanderlings

We stand on the rocks with our separate shoreline business in the outgoing tide. The marine rocks wear an obscuring overlay of flora and fauna as the uplands do.


 

In the zone between soil and sea rocks are on full display. They form panoramas that prompt visions and vocabulary for the aesthetic world.