Power

L.J. I like that it’s wild and free and so beautiful. It takes the place that it needs. It’s very powerful. I think of the ocean as a very powerful + strong woman. I have great respect for her. She’s amazing. She’s full of life. She’s Untamable (→ that includes all of it.) I would like to be like her:

Wise/Wild
Powerful
Young
Always changing
Beautiful while she’s just being herself.
I think of her as both very playful + strong and in her element.

The ocean has enormous power as an entity which has agency, that decides. The word ocean is male in Portuguese. The Atlantic is never something that is a given, that can be taken for granted. Being in relation to it is always a fight. It performs its agency quite loudly. It is not a background. It is quite a force. You don’t fuck with it, you have to check it first, you cannot just go in. Boys would do it. They would play with it and its aggressiveness. They would go in and be smashed by the waves.

The ocean has enormous power as an entity which has agency, that decides. The word ocean is male in Portuguese. The Atlantic is never something that is a given, that can be taken for granted. Being in relation to it is always a fight. It performs its agency quite loudly. It is not a background. It is quite a force. You don’t fuck with it, you have to check it first, you cannot just go in. Boys would do it. They would play with it and its aggressiveness. They would go in and be smashed by the waves.

On the back beach of Byron Bay, the undertow, or pull of the tide, is so extreme that when you stand up to your knees in the water, it feels as if some giant is pulling one's legs out from under with incredible force.

P.H.I would like to mention the power of the ocean. A power that has different facets:

It’s such a power → it’s a huge thing and this gave me some kind of safety. As with every minority connecting to a majority → It gives you a sense of safety.

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.

T.v.A. Power (on the one hand) – don’t want it to be the power, not the power that comes.
Approachability /friendliness. But the sea is not friendly, at least not in an anthropomorphic sense.
Completeness. So complete that it represents so many things at the same time. I think that’s what attracts me so much.
→ It’s Depth. But a depth on all levels. It resonates on multiple levels/there’s a complexity.
It’s impossible to know it. Like the spot where I take the photographs: I don’t know anything about it + I have been there 150 times. You think the sea is predictable but it’s totally not. Even though all those things are true, I don’t feel frightened by it.