CREATIVITY// Mercury Silver

The difference a day makes to the light. To the mood. In some ways I prefer it like this. Steel grey, metallic almost. Mercury silver.

Like you can taste it. A rhythm like oil. Warm enough still, to let the ripples immerse you. Absorb you.

I understand now how people can walk into the sea and never come back. Calm, gentle, light glistening over every crest and dip.

I could sit here for hours, bathed in this soft glow.

The first gulp of salt water pervading the nostrils, burning at the back of your throat. Eyes gritty. Cleansed somehow.

I want to paint it.

It’s an oil, I think. Otherwise how do you capture that colour and movement.

The light across the clouds. Like paint, the words seem inadequate. They don’t do it justice. A pitiful attempt at portraying something so serene. Not vengeful or angry…a gentle simmering to match the sky.

The colour away from the light has shifted already…deepened, darkened, softened. The wind picks up and goosebumps adorn my flesh. Salt grains collecting haphazardly across my arms. I’ll find it in my hair later and the thought of it gives me comfort.

There’s a strip out there in the distance, shimmering like fish scales. Like a strip of LED lights. I wonder if it is like the end of a rainbow – unreachable.

More people trickle by, letting the wind bump them along.

It’s enough today, to sit here. To breathe. To let this ocean mood wash over me.

I should have brought a pen. I could go and get one from the van, but that would break this moment. A moment that will pass by too soon anyway.

How is it that the ocean lets my thoughts flow. The white noise drowns out the incessant chatter of ‘shoulds’ and ‘to do’s’. Gives me space. Space I desperately crave. I’m hungry, I could eat a packet of chips…or hot chips. Oil burning my fingers. Salt sticking to my lips.

No more line of sunshine in the distance.

I’m tired.

The seagulls need to work harder, pumping their wings. No coasting drafts to hold them high, suspended.

The mood is different now. Families have moved on, driven out by the wind and the temperamental shift of a changing tide.