The first time I stood on a beach, and saw the sea, endless
and magnificent. I was about seven, and it was like being smacked full in the
face with a metaphysical, heavy-bottomed frying pan. I was on a day-trip to Blackpool, home of seaside rock and beachfront misery, and wasn't really expecting to have such a life-affirming epiphany. Mostly because I was only about seven. My life revolved around colouring-in and Vimto.
The steely, grey-cold plane of water, stretching into an
infinity made me feel like I was standing on the edge of forever, staring into
oblivion, facing down God*, and both growing in strength and shrivelling in
fear simultaneously. It was a feeling such as the Romantics would later term The
Sublime, but at that undeveloped age, with my small vocabulary and limited
knowledge of classical French philosophy, I merely stared, and, pointing to the
edge of the world, said to my mother, ‘There’s the sea’.
I was always perceptive.
I’ve loved beaches, and the sea, ever since. They are reminder of the unfathomable
possibilities of life on Earth, of the journeys we might take, the places we may
visit. The sea in particular invokes a
sense of connectedness, as the water which leaves Blackpool is the water which
laps the shores of Brighton, crashes into New York harbours, purrs around the
sunny shores of South America and imprisons the convicts of Australia. Staring at the sea is staring at the world,
and remembering that we all live here, now, on this rock, at this time in the
history of the universe, at this pinprick in the scope of existence.
And, while I genuinely love a sun-washed party-beach,
fringed with ramshackle bars selling cheap unidentifiable booze and banging out
soulless, plastic techno-pop, I’ve reached an age where the dark melancholy of
Northern English beaches is coming into its own.
I took the old mother of earlier
Blackpool fame to Formby beach for a Mother’s Day outing today. The sky was
thickly grey, the sea sheet of heavy
black. A cold nip needled the air, the
sand was damp and chill. It was gothly lovely.
As when I was seven, the sensation of being strangled by the enormity of
existence fizzed around, and the sea, the same sea I saw thirty five years ago,
held all the above meaning, but more.
Because I realised that the seas
had been there for billions of years, in one form or other, and probably would
be for many to come. But the time here for me, for everyone else on that beach,
in Formby, in Liverpool**, in the world, was very finite. And I realised that
the attraction of the beach/sea combo is a paradoxical one – one of feeling
connected to the universe, and one of knowing that our place in the universe is
very, very temporary.
And it’s at these spots, reminders
of our mortality, our worthlessness, that we choose to spend our free time,
that we spend our hard-earned***money visiting.
We actively go out of our way to be reminded that we’re nothing and we’re
going to die.
I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
Because if we realise we’ll eventually
be gone, but the world will continue, and hundreds, maybe thousands of years from
now, other little boys and girls will see the sea for the first time, and they,
too, will marvel at the hugeness of everything, and feel the connectedness with
all that lives on this planet, and all that has come and will come, maybe we’ll
stop fucking up the planet and the people who live on it.
And if not? Well, the sea will
surely survive.
*On which note, God, if you ever
want a scrap, I’ll meet you on the grass down the bottom of the park. I’ve got
a few bones to pick.
** To be fair, this particular
detail didn't feel quite as serious.
***Or stolen, inherited, found
etc
