a summary, or a story of sorts

i traveled to rice beach, a beach i frequent for my photography. there, i found a series of flat rocks to sit down and write on. i brought an old notebook (or journal, i suppose) of mine, which for all intensive purposes was empty--because i had long ago gone in with an eraser and wiped away everything i had once written in it. i reused this paper, with ghosts of old thoughts left behind just barely to the eye. i wrote simple poems on it--things i was observing, had observed, was wondering about at the time. most of the words found their way back to being about the ocean.

i then took the pages and ground them down under the surface of the water, to be washed in the tide. i was trying to let the ink fade into the salt water. the waves kept rushing them back to my feet. then, i pulled them further toward me, soaking my shoes. i rubbed sand over the pages to try to cleanse the paper. bits of the words showed through the wet sand. i read them. pushed the sand around more. as i did this, the waves rolling in moved the pages around in the sand, rushing them back and forth, and over one another. i pushed the sand around more on their surface, and the paper became saturated. the ink stayed.

i then brought the pages out from the water, and back to the rocks where i had been writing. i rubbed the pages against the surface of the rocks, in small puddles of water and algae left behind from a higher tide--it felt much like i was washing sheets against a metal washboard. they collected dirt, algae and plant life. the paper began to give way to the strain.

i left the pages out in the sun to dry, and they smell distinctly of the ocean now.