To be near the Sea

On the train from Paris going out to Normandy, going to the conference in Cabourg, I may have told you, forgive me if I have... It was way past Évreux where the landscape is overwhelmingly lush with fields, tree banks, scattered farms, estates, calendar pages of the beautifully managed French landscape. I'd been thinking of where I'd end up after the year was done, where I'd live, whether I would stay in France or return to California, knowing full well that returning would be the choice. But where?

I rode along and dreamed. I liked the look of Normandy. Summer here was cool and pleasant. I imagined my father were he alive sitting in his chair watching a football game asking me as I told him of my trip, if I'd been to Normandy, why hadn't I gone to Omaha Beach? I would have answered there was there was no need, the sense of conflict could be touched through the glass of the train windows. I imagined Panzer formations coming through the trees, knights chasing peasants, Golo chasing Genevieve de Brabant, I thought of all the bones in the fields and under the dirt along the tracks, I was close to Deauville or Trouville.

The train came over a hill, passed through a dark copse through which a vector of the sea opened up, a view of water appeared through the hills, a puramid of darker blue water below an inverted pyramid of lighter blue sky, the two forming a diamond with the afternoon sun sparkling through the gem like the bright reflection from a much greater light behind the sun, a light shining from a very great distance, a great light of the universe surrounding everything, and all the green vegetation was blurred by the moving train, branches and twigs whipping past but pointing forward to the pyramid of the sky and the sea....ah, home I thought!

So yes, The Coast. Even as the sea rises and eats Venice and Carmel. We will sail out on the tide.