Sarah Z. Creates

Every year, we go to the beach. Not pretty Caribbean beaches, where the sand is white and the water is clear enough to see the sand below.

We go to the beaches by Charleston, where the sand is gray and the sea shifts from green to brown to blue, depending on its mood and the sky above.

These are waters of mystery, where each found shell is a treasure and each step an adventure. Where you can walk out forever, it seems, and still be in water only up to your waist. Where the waves are typically small but rhythmic; the lazy pulse, perhaps, of the world. Or of history. Or of just days slipping by faster than you can dream them.

Sitting with your heels in the sand, watching castles made and swept away, is a lesson in impermanence. Nothing lasts. The water carves hollows and divots around you, but as soon as you’re gone, the sand moves in. Until the beach is once again smooth, all trace of your visit wiped away.

Those things the beach can’t erase, it buries: shells, shovels, sunglasses. The seagulls wheel and cry for the crumbs left behind, pesky birds that are so typical of the seashore and so annoying as neighbors.

I can dream here, listening to the ocean. It is never quiet. The surf, the wind, the cries of the birds are all too much to be ignored, but none of them demand that you think. You can get lost in that rhythm, pull it in to your own body until your heart throbs along to that slow pulse. Until you can hear stories beneath the waves.