Stories About the Sea

When I was 15, someone said to me, about some people who weren't very nice to me, don't worry, you'll meet them all on the long journey into the middle, that's where everyone ends up in the end.

When I was 21 the world suddenly became crystal clear in the sort of way that makes you so dizzy you can't see.

And so I tried to dream of beaches, and snow-covered mountains, and worlds without mysteries, or diseases, and worlds where nothing changed or altered or died.

It is only children who believe in such things.

And suddenly, everything was different.

I wanted to wrap myself in clean cotton, expanses of which went on forever, floating in a summer breeze. The smell of flowers. The way the sunshine looks just before it disappears for the day. The taste of jelly sweets. The smell of fresh-cut grass. Innocence. I read about the universe. I understood nothing.

Then my best friend got pregnant. I watched her belly grow and thought about life from nothing, and it how it doesn't really take very long. After 9 months her baby was born and she named her Alice, and something else changed. Everything seemed more alive than ever.

I told Alice stories about the sea, mysteries, and things that go on forever, always changing, tiny changes. I read to her while her mother washed strawberries, and she brought them out in a bowl and we sat by the summer swing eating them, with fizzing lemonade in a jug under the pear tree.

And I watched the lemonade fizz float, reach the top of the jug, and disappear. The journey and the disappearing a certainty, but nothing else, I thought.