The Boy, The Man

The Boy. Lively, energetic, full of energy, racing backwards and forwards along the seashore, chasing seagulls, scrawking out a cry of protest as they lift off the sand as he approaches. He gathers stones and shells, and hurls them at the seagulls. They wheel and protest some more while nonetheless accommodating to his stones and threats. A microcosm of what it is to be a boy. There is nothing in his world but himself. He’s not just the centre of the universe, he is the universe. The gulls, the stones, the sand, the sea are all there to satisfy his whim, his desire, whatever it might be in that particular moment. There is nothing aside from him, nothing apart from his perception, nothing aside from his identity, nothing separate from his identity.

The Man. Walking along the seashore. Carefully, thoughtfully, watching the lapping of the waves up on the sand, around his feet. Watching how not only the water moulds to his shape, but if he stands stationary in one spot, how the sand moulds around his feet as well. He looks behind him. For one or two steps behind, there are some dim prints in the sand, but disappearing rapidly, smoothed, shaped and generally lost by the gentle waves and the roiling sand. He realizes his own place is very small, a tiny little dent in an endless beach, accommodated by the sand, the sea, connected to it all, but nothing more than a part. He is a part, a tiny part, an infinitesimal part of all that is around, but integrally linked to it all. He shapes and is shaped by all that is around him.