Ocean

There is no better natural pedicure than the beach. My feet get so rough and dry and callused that they are generally not too pretty. When I was nineteen I lived on 27th Avenue in San Francisco, within walking distance of China Beach. I used to walk there every week by myself and I would walk in the freezing cold water and through the sand until my feet were nearly numb. I would climb the rocks like a mountain goat and sit with my eyes closed listening to the crash and roar.

When I would return home my feet would be so smooth and soft, as though they'd been pumiced by an expert hand. Sea water is also healing.

We went to the ocean yesterday and the tide was out pretty far so I got to see the tide pools! Tide pools make me feel like a kid. There's so much of the underwater world revealed temporarily. The textures and colors are incredible. Philip, Max, and I had so much fun finding starfish, anemones, and fish.

Old big barnacles looked like ragged fossilized bones.

The anemones looked creepy and kind of perverse when curled into themselves. The colors were wonderful light teal and light pink. I love how all colors harmonize in nature.

Everywhere I looked there were patterns and textures that I could imagine being reflected in human design.

Just a little tweaking of contrast and splashes of color in a randomly organized fashion could be produced into fabric, or rendered in oils, or even just reimagined with the photographer's eye and tools.

My kid was alive with discovery as well. The ocean is a tactile place: sand between your toes, barnacles scraping your hand as you brush past exposed rocks, beetles with ridged shells land on ledges close to the deep crevice where small fishes are trapped until the tide comes in.

Things get washed to shore from deeper places. Things that look like other things and like nothing else at the same time. Sponges, pom poms, mops, and vegetables come to mind.

What a marvelous place a tide pool is.