Restless

I wrote this rather interesting piece sitting on a bench, watching the seals bask in the sun, at the Coves in La Jolla. If you've ever been there you know what I mean when I say it is indeed a magical place. Magical in that not only does it portray a perfect Southern California setting, but also in that nature does abound. If you write often like I do, you can really let your creative juices shift to overdrive since the place is conducive to writing just about anything. This piece is interesting to me in that I wrote it as a symbol of the discord which exists between Man and Nature. It is about how we became insensitive to the natural world's needs and how we exploit our natural resources to the point of depletion. I used to be a biology major before I went to Med school and if you are a product of the UC system, you are heavily influenced by research. I just got off from an afternoon of reading at the Salk Institute of Oceanography and drove down to La Jolla Coves to write.

The eternal blanket of azure in front of me beckons and I engage it with a lie. The ocean greets the shoreline in a cadence so protean and ethereal it seems almost lucid, like being trapped in somebody else's surreal dream. Time meant nothing for the gesture was and still is a sole reminder of eternity. The waters would greet the jagged rocks only to seep through and reach the sands in foaming whispers. It was as if they were disclosing secrets but in their hurried state to return to the sea, the words despairingly lose meaning. I sit humbly before this procession for hours on end. In the sea I am humbled. In the sea I find my soul, the core of who I really am, who I really was meant to be. Yet as I peer to the horizon I can't help but feel sad for the lost humanity in all of us. The sadness looms over me like an unbreakable silence. In the waves I hear a distant longing, older, perhaps, than any primal human emotion; the need to belong and respond harmoniously to the universe around us. I search for the meaning in their message but lose myself in the translation.

Why are we really here? What sort of means and, more importantly, to what ends do we serve? It is not everyday that I find myself unhinged from the ideals and virtues I hold to heart dearly. Swimming in an ocean of desperate questions I find, oddly and true enough, nothing but dissonant answers.