This post is actually something I wrote up an age ago, before I even left for France. So in this one, join me briefly on the Moana-Seaford coastline, for something I affectionately call The Standing There Club.
I’ve been thinking about it again recently, as I sat on the edge of the Rhine (or Rhein) river where it is passes through Cologne, Germany. I was sat eating the most delightfully crispy reibekuchen (German potato pancakes of many regional names), looking out over the water. I thought to myself, “What a perfect day.” It reminded me of Nice, sitting with violet and poppy gelato as I looked out over the Mediterranean Sea. Are all my favourite days destined to be good food paired with large bodies of water? Although my day in Étretat was perfect, and that was bad food and a large body of water…
My day in Cologne wasn’t really a Standing There Club, because the Club tends to be more focused and phone-free except for photographs. The river is central, and being there was more a point of convenience than intention. But it had an echo of a different day with different water. It reminded me of an old story I tell myself…
When was the last time you went somewhere just to be there?
Do you ever do that?
We live in a world where we are called human beings but are taught we must always be doing. When was the last time you just let yourself be?
I know that might sound like an annoying intro to a guided meditation where they’re gonna talk way too much, or like maybe I’m going to begin running a yoga session now… but I find that it helps sometimes.
Usually, I go to the beach.
I’m often in good company — the company of complete strangers who are also just Standing There.
We come to the ocean and we choose a spot. On the path, leaning against the rail. Down on the sand, digging our toes in.
We watch the waves mostly, and the seagulls. Occasionally we watch surfers – traditional surfers, stand-up paddle boarders, and kite surfers. But mostly, just the tide.
Today, down a ways, a parent and child play with their dog. Seagulls sit on the posts of the fence and handrail, soaring up suddenly when someone walks past. One tries to land on an already occupied post, and is shoved away like siblings fighting over who gets the bean bag. I can almost hear it: “Oi! Get your own!”
Half a dozen people sit in their cars. Content in the practice of being. You can still hear the wind and waves through the glass, pulsing around you. It is so loud — but the thing about a windy day at the beach is that it’s loud in the quietest ways.
There is so much packed into a moment of being. Observation is an underrated delight.
There are stories everywhere. I think in the hurrying and scurrying of regular life, I lose sight of that.
A dog runs along the sand, the delight palpable, even at a distance. And still, he pauses, turns, looks to see that he is not leaving his human too far behind, and then, again, the lolling gallop.
The kite surfer comes in more and more each time, fighting his way back over white caps out to sea. Against a tide always trying to bring him back in. The seagulls are not impressed, but the Standing There Club all seem to enjoy it thoroughly. An elderly couple are coaxed into getting out of their car to take a few pictures.
Finally, after seeming tireless, he lets himself come all the way in and sits down to ground himself and his board. Even once he’s on firm ground, he has to fight the wind to bring his kite down, and it yanks him stumbling, this way and that. It loses height, then bounces back up again, a little lower each time until it’s finally down and he can rest. Up on the footpath, collective shoulders subtly relax in sync.
.
To be honest, I so rarely do this. It never feels like I have the time. I wonder if my fellow observers do?
If they know the secret that you have time for what you make time for.
It’s not just about the stories on the shoreline though. I go to the beach to remember the world – and that’s a story I tell myself. I stand there and look out and I think ‘I could follow that tide to every other coastline in the world’. I look out and remember that the world is not one set of four walls after another, but something vast and thrumming with life, beating with a pulse dictated by the moon.
And if I don’t have time for that, if I don’t have time to remind myself of that story, so easily forgotten in the bustle of it all, well, I don’t think I am living right.
