When you meet the Pacific, you will find the ocean peaceful and gentle. The waves rush toward you and absolutely throw themselves at you like over-enthusiastic children, caressing you, engulfing you in love. You begin to think of the ocean as your friend, and you accept its ecstatic embraces with open arms, falling gratefully into its bosom, trusting it to carry you a few feet further toward the shore.
Then suddenly the waves twist viciously underneath you, grabbing your legs and shoving you along like some panicked crowd of humans would. Sometimes when you're under that swirling madness scrambling like a cat on a slippery floor, you feel that same thing you've felt on a thousand carnival rides or when the heat of summer erupts suddenly into a violent senseless game between two knived young men too close to you; the possibility of dying is thrust upon you unwillingly, and a frozen quickening of your heart informs you that the control you have over your life has just been ripped from you by a power which dwarfs you.
And that is the romance of the ocean -- that fascinating, tempting, irresistible duality of pleasure and danger, of tranquility and passion, of eternal rhythm and unpredictable-ness, of life and death. The conflict of these great primal forces is what I see when I walk along the sand at the edge of this continent and search the horizon for truth.
-Colleen Lloyd
1985, Venice Beach, California
Then suddenly the waves twist viciously underneath you, grabbing your legs and shoving you along like some panicked crowd of humans would. Sometimes when you're under that swirling madness scrambling like a cat on a slippery floor, you feel that same thing you've felt on a thousand carnival rides or when the heat of summer erupts suddenly into a violent senseless game between two knived young men too close to you; the possibility of dying is thrust upon you unwillingly, and a frozen quickening of your heart informs you that the control you have over your life has just been ripped from you by a power which dwarfs you.
And that is the romance of the ocean -- that fascinating, tempting, irresistible duality of pleasure and danger, of tranquility and passion, of eternal rhythm and unpredictable-ness, of life and death. The conflict of these great primal forces is what I see when I walk along the sand at the edge of this continent and search the horizon for truth.
-Colleen Lloyd
1985, Venice Beach, California
I took that picture of the pier at Imperial Beack, California on my last visit last year. Thinking of Michelle, Jackson, Michael, family, all the people whose lives and destinies have mingled with mine over decades of cycles of tides and travel and seeking out dreams.
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