Once again, I find myself sitting and praying in the salted temple of my subconscious.
There is no place that draws me more to presence than that which churns with gales and tides. Rugged coastlines is the term that gets thrown around a lot, but I don't find ruggedness here. I find sharp edges in the cities that are too loud and the beaches that are too tranquil. Those edges lacerate me with an unease that rips and drips into my psyche. Instead, there is an expansiveness here in the living static of Neptune's breath. The roar of the waves is powerful and immense. White crested tips now extend far offshore, a sign that the winds are growing in strength. I hold onto the railing so I can lean a little closer, saltwater crashing upwards, fresh water raining downwards. I feel something subconscious growing in strength. Not just the smile stretching across my face but something deeper shifting, flowing, moving back and forth with the tides before me.
For every one of us there is a unique landscape that harmonizes to something deeper inside. It is the place where our soul can reach out to find shared understanding, the natural crevice we sink into to feel the Earth's grip. I have known friends who find their sanctuary in flowing rivers, in sheer mountain ranges or in the open dunes of a sandy desert, what makes them drawn to those places I can’t say, but what makes me drawn to my temple I can explore.
I never truly understood my connection to the cold, heavy tides of southern Australia till I marched out and found those same tides off the coast of Cornwall in 2024. Heading outside the calm waters of Melbourne’s bay was something I did regularly as a child. Every fortnight I would travel to the Victorian suburb of Ocean Grove. It was here, by my father's house a few minutes' walk from a grey water beach that I first became transfixed by the visions of water too dangerous to swim but powerful enough to find inward expansiveness. Winter brought the most complete feeling of closure, a feeling that made all the more sense when I felt the cold winds of my family's origin, the west coast of Britain.
Cornwall's coastline is punctuated by worn-out sea cliffs just as much as is by carved-out tin mines. Ocean waves have sculpted this land just as much as pickaxes and explosives. Amongst the coasts barbed and twisted paths I hiked, one foot in front of another, one subconscious memory preceding the next. It was eerie to feel my first footsteps in a landscape as ones I had known before. I found a familiarity in the earth, in the air ,in the liquid expanse that slowly chewed into the cliffs that supported me. My connection to here was what I found in the swell back home. A wildness that extended from the eastern shoals of Australia to the western crags of Cornwall. Liquid memories I found amongst the turbulent tides.
Where is home in such circumstances?
Home cannot be defined to a specific point but only the expansiveness between. An open abyss shouting with the wildness of Neptune's call. This is what I find here in these waves, in these twisting torrents, a land that I have barely stepped amongst but a land I know all too well.
Cornish Coastline photographed during storm Storm Isha
