I told the boy with the ocean spots, "I don't trust that shade of blue, it's too deep to discover. My name? I can't tell you my name. You'll drown it. Tell me what's inside those spots of ocean first." He responded in slow motion, in reverse and with a lapse in time. "If these are ocean spots, then those are land marks, and I've been searching for the perfect shade of brown. It's warm, unlike the vast blue. It's no wonder the ocean tries to climb onto land an infinite number of times a day, with manic and obsessive persistence. No matter how many times she pushes him away." Nature is so much more magnificent than us. Nature leaves us no choice. Blue and brown and the ocean and the land. I wondered about the land and her persistence and her refusal to let something as strong as the ocean change her mind. And that sunlit afternoon by the water, I envied her strength as I lost mine seaside.
So the colors dance through the canals, exchanging what felt like more than mere champagne induced fallacies. For the first time the sun and the clouds wanted to come down from up there, jealous of the ocean and the land. Eventually, as time would have it, they did. When they did the colors faded away. There was nothing to illuminate them. They became grey with the night. Grey as the truth. The shade of grey that can only come from trying to defy nature, from attempting to change the equation, from pretending to fall in love with something you cannot be with. There are reasons, the ocean and the land can never be one: Earth's rotation on its axis, the moon, the sun, the tides, the stars, gravity, work, emotional stability, defense mechanisms, fear of the past, fear of the future, not wanting to let anyone close enough to hurt you. The dark grey truths that no one really wants to tell one another. Finally the greys fade to black.
Who were we to plague the forces of nature with our childish ambitions of love. The impossibility of it all leaves me feeling small. One exhaustible particle on a planet full of rules that can't be broke and laws that we can not control. Or so it feels. Now I understand her work. I understand why the land does what she does: because she has to. Natural Law. She has to protect herself from the ocean drowning everything inside of her. Let the ocean brush only her shores, then send him away before he steals her warm brown surfaces and paints them all blue. The land and the ocean wrap themselves with the moon and surrender to its demands. All that is left to witness is the empty blackness.
