online: 23 march 2009 modified: 13, 19 march 2009 13 march 2009 high tide
Pors Keriec
...sitting, just before high tide, beside a newly-built wall of large boulders intended to stop the land falling into the sea...
...the sea is calm the air is still and the waves from distant storms arrive as unbroken undulations of the water surface... they break on the rocks with a powerful gurgling sound accompanied by the crash of other waves which reach the white sand and every so often push the line of seaweed further up the sloping beach... this is at Pors Keriec, a little headland of rock and grass connected to the mainland of Europe-and-Asia (Eurasia) by a concrete ramp for launching boats which is itself sometimes under water... and perhaps it will be this evening... the latest wave came within a metre of the ramp and the one following approached my feet... the next big one may force me to move...
...another wave from the east side has now touched the ramp... and one wave from the west side has almost run over it... so i move to a different positon...
...on the western side the sun has set but is still lighting the dark blue clouds in red and gold... and now a wave from the west runs right over the ramp... and the headland of Pors Keriec begins its brief time this evening as an island... the lights are switched on in Perros Guirec across the bay and i can see several lighthouses, flashing red and white, further along the coast...
...and now, at the end of a week on this coastine, renewing memories of my early life by the sea, i realise again that there is something incomparable about the seaside... a conjunction of elements (land-air-and-sea, earth-air-and-water, solids-liquids-and-gases) which exists beyond city walls, beyond constructed culture, and is in the nature of the cosmos, the ingredients of everything... the harsh elements of freedom... a guide, perhaps, to the next great phase of evolution?
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