Like the Incoming Waves [Shirokuma Literature Club: Theme "On the Beach"]

Komaki-san, thank you for the theme. Please find the text following the attached article.

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On the Beach I picked up a broken branch and tried drawing in the sand. The incoming waves immediately washed it away, and the beach returned to its original state. On a morning after the rain, I headed toward the shore. I had no particular purpose. I just wanted to be blown by the wind.

These grains of sand, which might have once been a massive bedrock, were worn down and polished to their current shape, carried here, and piled up to eventually become this beach. When I think of those endless ages, the time I have spent walking while carrying my own agonies seems like a moment too small to observe, not even reaching the interval of a single incoming wave.

A tiny, meaningless existence tossed about by trivial daily life. And yet, an existence that is infinitely precious. While laughing at my own philosopher-like thoughts, I immersed myself in that feeling for a while.

Perhaps some of the accumulating sand will eventually become geological strata. For example, through the Earth's crustal movements, the ground might shift over long periods, or it might sink to the ocean floor due to magma eruptions and become the surface again through uplift.

Human language is sometimes boorish. It cannot simply express the time that flows calmly, or at times, surges. The more words I spend, the further I drift from the truth of the scene before my eyes.

It is through such frustrating mediums that we connect with one another.

That is why words are both vexing and dear. Just like the people who use them.

The beach before my eyes, which will never be recorded in books, has waves that come and go. That cycle, which repeats regardless of me, is actually the source of my own life.

Taking form, changing that form, being broken down into invisible molecules, and those molecules gathering together. People, human society, and the third planet from the sun that sustains it all.

Separating and gathering again.

In the flow, we are on an eternal journey.

I wrote this while listening to this VTR.

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