But I lay stretched out in the sun, my eyes level with the sea,
till I seemed to be absorbed bodily by the very materials of the world
around me; till I could not feel my hand as separate from the warm sand
in which it was buried. Or I crouched on the beach at full moon,
wondering, wondering, between the two splendors of the sky and the sea.
Or I ran out to meet the incoming storm, my face full in the wind, my
being a-tingle with an awesome delight to the tips of my fog-matted
locks flying behind; and stood clinging to some stake or upturned boat,
shaken by the roar and rumble of the waves. So clinging, I pretended
that I was in danger, and was deliciously frightened; I held on with
both hands, and shook my head, exulting in the tumult around me, equally
ready to laugh or sob. Or else I sat, on the stillest days, with my back
to the sea, not looking at all, but just listening to the rustle of the
waves on the sand; not thinking at all, but just breathing with the sea.
Thus courting the influence of sea and sky and variable weather, I was
bound to have dreams, hints, imaginings. It was no more than this,
perhaps: that the world as I knew it was not large enough to contain
all that I saw and felt; that the thoughts that flashed through my
mind, not half understood, unrelated to my utterable thoughts, concerned
something for which I had as yet no name. Every imaginative growing
child has these flashes of intuition, especially one that becomes
intimate with some one aspect of nature.
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