(I am large, I contain multitudes.)*

If you haven't been to the ocean for a while you forget. The smell of salt water in wide open air. The heaviness of your feet in dry sand and the way footprints begin to follow you where the sand turns wet. The way your face stings for a few seconds and how saltwater tastes on your tongue. The sound of the waves crashing in and pulling out. The sensation of slowly wading into the tide. Growing wetter around your middle with each step, the sand beneath your toes turns to rocks and then to nothingness. In just a step, you're without footing, set free out on the water. You are your own boat. Turning to see how far you've gone, you survey the distance between you and dry land. To be sure of yourself. To be sure you want to dive in all the way. Head first. Before going under, you think about how you're about to sink into something so vast, so endless, so much bigger than you and your life on land. Something more powerful than any seemingly significant problem back on the shore. You gulp. You close your eyes tight and go from vertical to horizontal. You let the water carry you. Coming up at the will of the waves, you feel tiny in the tide. Water stretching to the edge of the world, you look out at the expanse and take a deep breath before diving in again. And again. And again. So you won't forget.

*Walt Whitman: Song of Myself