A marginal life

The shore line defines two worlds. For the mariner on his boat the land is a place to get away from, (apart from the dangers to his boat), its complexities and subterfuge, making living difficult when compared to the relatively isolationist world of living afloat. With a deep respect of the sea people who live and make voyages, even short hauls around the coast have a freedom that land folk can never achieve. The sea is simply an enormous force of nature which can only be understood if the rules dictated by conditions are followed to the letter. The compass of any voyage is limited only by the provisions on board and the knowledge of how to and when to sail. 

For the land based person the shore is a dividing line between the hubbub of the free-way, city and suburban life and the incomprehensible space of the ocean stretching to the horizon. People who live in this space on the edge of the water try to avoid convention, building their home on the edge of the beach looking out across the water into the distance. The sea with a life and a rhythm of its own, the bewitching sound of the waves rolling in, one after the other to dump on the beach reminds us of a force far removed from the relatively petty problems we carry with us, it reminds us of our mortality and how inconsequential we are. 

The beach is a marginal zone where marginal people tend to gravitate where respectable people tend to behave in marginal and eccentric ways, where even the occasional day tripper loses his inhibition and behaves out of character. Does the sea speak to him or her in a language that we all hold deep inside of us, a wish to free ourselves of conformity, to travel to the distant unknown, over the horizon, to find a new life and rid ourselves of the drop down dead weight of our own circumstance.