One thing I never want to do with the sea is swim in it (too wet). And I definitely don't want to lie next to it and cook myself in the sun (too hot). Mostly I just want look at it (perfectly Jewish) and take pictures of it. Which is why every day we walk to the sea and every day I come home with a dozen more photographs of its rocky shoreline. All of these pictures look exactly the same. For the most part, I take them without thinking and never look at them again.
I'm not sure where this compulsion to document the sea comes from. Part of it, I think, is that I'm from Kansas and any body of water larger than a swimming pool feels like it should be photographed as proof that such things actually exist, just in case the folks back home don't believe you.
But the sea is spellbinding in a kind of primordial way, too, and I want to capture that (from a distance, with my phone). The sea means faraway places (Odessa in this case) and hidden worlds. The sea is cryptic, frightening and exciting. It's Homer, Melville, Hemingway. But also peace and calm: Wrote Rilke: "I go to the sea…and the sea cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused." No question, whoever this Rilke is, he absolutely nailed it.
The sea makes me feel thoughtful in a way that I am not—namely a philosophical/literary/intellectual way—and it gives me something to gaze at, distantly. Sometimes, when I'm really lost in it, Katya will ask me what I'm thinking about and I'll just keep on staring without saying anything (honest answers might include "lunch" or "coronavirus" or "the Seinfeld where Kramer hits a golf ball into a whale's blowhole"). Then I'll take a picture of a kid trying to collect water in a shopping bag and reflect on the futility of it all.
Oh well and say “la vee.” As long as I can walk up to the water, make sure it's still there, take a few pictures as proof, maybe google a sea quote or two, and leave, I'll be excited to do it all again tomorrow. As the great Cousteau once said, and to which I can attest: "The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever!”