The Weight of Salt

There is a rhythm to the coast that has nothing to do with the clock. It is dictated by the wind, the drying of cloth, and the slow, inevitable pull of the tide. We hang our lives out to dry, exposing the fabric of our days to the sun and the salt, hoping the wind will take the dampness away. It is a fragile business, this living. We build our vessels and we cast our lines, yet we are always tethered to the shore by the simplest of things. A shirt flapping in the breeze. The smell of brine on a wooden hull. We think we are moving toward the horizon, but we are merely circling the hearth. What remains when the wind finally dies down and the clothes are gathered in? Is it the memory of the voyage, or the quiet fact of having returned to the same patch of sand?

Martin Meyer has captured this stillness in his image titled Dhow and Washing Line. The way the boat waits for the water and the linen waits for the air feels like a long, held breath. Does the sea ever tire of the shore?