The Sea and the Storm, and Me

Two nights ago, I sat above the edge of the sea on a wall of boulders eight feet up in the air.  The wind screamed, ripping at the rose bushes and crabgrass behind me, and wave after wave reared and crashed below in torment before being sucked back out into its successor, clawing the sand and pebbles back with it.  All of my surroundings turned alive with raging emotion.  In my mind, I knew I had two old friends snug and warm indoors no more than four yards away, speaking to each other on the strings of their guitars, creating a marvelous conversation of entwined feelings and words without words, but their music was swallowed by the wind and the waves.  So close to them, emotionally and physically, yet so far from where they were and what they were in that moment, I took a deep breath of the frigid salty air as it whipped around me and filled myself with this darkness and aliveness.  Sucking in its breath, I became one with the storm around me, yet I sat in stillness in the center of it all as it ripped and raged around me.  Together but separate.  Together AND separate.  At one with my surroundings yet at one within myself.