Acceptance

→ I used to go to Fire Island → on Long Island, which is a queer place, a mythical place. → It’s been a gay beach since at least the 1940s. There’s a poem about it written by Frank O’Hara (“A True Account of Talking to the Sun on Fire Island”). I loved going there, the kindness of the environment, the body-positive attitude of the people. There is a deep sense of acceptance in this community which I think also comes from the ocean itself. Fire island is quite wild + sometimes you
can see deer on the beach. It’s about 3 hours by public transportation from NYC. You get the ticket directly from Penn Station which includes the train, taxi and ferry rides.

C.G. Its immensity + its calm, the calm (of surface). At least that’s how it seems to me, always, when I encounter the ocean: it is calm. It is infinitely accepting. Not acceptance in its anthropomorphic sense but literally. Not a form of kindness, but the absorption of everything that comes in contact with it.

I felt as if the sea allowed me to be there. It rang true somehow (the colors + everything) the loneliness of it.

Now, as an adult, I feel I’m just reconnecting with the sea and how it used to make me feel. There’s something unconditional to just being in the proximity of the sea.

For me, the sea is connected to a certain psychological state → that has to do with growing up and becoming a person + finding a way to be a person. Believing that I had the right to become a person. In front of the sea I experienced an infinite acceptance of who I was, or of the fact that I didn’t know who or what I was.

T.v.A. Its vastness. Its colors + smells + earthiness. In Dutch, the word I would use is urkracht → in English it means “primordial force”. An acceptance from within the power of being. I think I felt safety also because of the huge contrast between my fragility and its generosity.

I love watching the tides. My relation to the sea is defined by proximity and observation. But its not about the sea surrounding me I’m just accepted in its proximity.