Guest Ranting Bastard writes:

I'm sitting here, watching the patterns that the tide and the wind make in the water. The street lamps illuminate from a block away; their yellow halogen glow only penetrates so far. I'm sitting, over the water, while a single headlight shows me what lays beyond the fluid surface. The tide's coming in.

I cannot see across the water. I know the headland lays across the waves; an estuary, the waves start a lot later than in the ocean. The lights are what frame this nullity of vision; pilot lights of red of green and the stars above. A city boy can look up at the stars and not recognise a damn thing.

The waves come in repeditively; I know not their pattern. I should know their pattern - I studied them enough in high school. There's something about REALITY that strips the rules and formulas away, where it becomes the lapping of the ocean, the regular pattern of a world so many of us do not care about.

I'm a two hour drive from anything that I would consider "civilsation"; "We have a supermarket, a cinema, and a Subway - we're REAL now!". Daylight will touch this place the same as any, where is the ligitimacy? Is it for you to decide? Me? I hate this place as much as I hate where I live - wherever I will live - but I ask, is this any less of an existance as any?

There are fish in the water. I know this, as I can see their ripples in the water. Not my ripples - god forbid I ever step foot in actual LIQUID - or my cigarettes or spit or drink. Real creatures. Things that are born, live, and die in this water. Fish, as I was told, are too small to catch with nets - they just pass straight through. And I find this amazing. When was the last time you walked outside and saw life that was not influenced by your way of life?

It's the fireworks and the sound of cars on the road that give it away. The sound of people, of their spawn, and merriment. The doppler effect of automobiles down a roadway; and all the progress that comes with it. And for just a moment, just an instant; it all goes quiet. All I can hear is the wet slap of the water against the sand, and the lone echo of some animal against the wind. And for just a second, I can lose myself - no-one was ever here, and no-one will ever be. And enjoy it. Enjoy it.

It's a humbling experience, archiving twenty years of snapshots down to an explanation. How many people can describe the life of something by twenty years? When one sees something from conception, through it's fumbling beginnings, to growing adolscence? Every year, you say "Every year, it just seems to be growing bigger"; but what do you actually feel?

The patterns in the water are what makes it so captivating; these waves, arches and speckles which dance on the sandy floor. The waves coming off the tide, the wake off the last boat, the interferance from the lay of the sand below it, the fish living within it. And what makes it the most interesting? Being here. Being a part of it, and being able to watch it, partake in it, influence it.

I'd like you to think about that.

- N for Nihilism