A BATH OF GLIMMERS
- Rentai Caroline MABY
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 14 hours ago
Hulali — a Hawaiian word: to sparkle, to reflect light; used of sunlight dancing on the water.
In summer at daybreak, it's common for the sea not yet to have settled into its rhythm on the shore. The night's high tide has come to wash away every trace of yesterday's bathers. The moon's caresses have soothed the murmur of the breakers. Rare still are the wakes traced out at sea, carrying their fractals to the water's edge.
I began practicing longe côte regularly, early in the morning — a coastal discipline born in France: walking chest-deep through the open sea, the whole body given to the water, braced against current and swell.
The completely incoherent reasons behind this new aspiration turned into an unexpected need: this solitary encounter between the sea and the clouds became my most beautiful contemplative interlude.
Entering the water while the sun is still low is like bathing in shimmering light. The colors are still dazed from sleep.
— Gold, sand, silver-grey, blue-green-grey.
It seems, then, that the day welcomes us with a celebration, a celebration of the phenomenon and of being-ness in the open. These glimmers, covering the surface like a sari of light, sing and exalt the joy of the world. Each particle echoes our own divine light. Each spark is an ode inviting us to create.
Perhaps Indra's net resembles this, these undulating lights that respond to each other endlessly and shimmer without expecting anything in return. Even when I close my eyes for a moment while continuing to walk, skimming the surface, they are there, behind my eyelids. Often I stop without realizing it, and merge completely, entirely with the flashes of light.
I am one, a thousand; they are me, a thousand-me, a thousand-you.
Nothing to choose. Nothing to change.
Sometimes a small sole quivers beneath my foot long before my weight can harm it, a jellyfish stings, a breaker topples, the sky opens. Kensho. It is all here.
Here is the space where finally, time no longer means anything — what a reversal on a life where I never stopped running, acting and thinking fast, believing I was behind in a race I would never catch upon.
WHERE THE TIDE MEETS THE CANVAS
Walking with ebb tide has its own gravity. With each receding wave, the whole body feels the pull towards the open sea— a gentle, insistent call to a tender dissolution. Extremely alluring. Jacques' hand releasing the cable in the Big Blue*, Ada's instrument drawing her entirely into the abyss* — familiar Neptunian sensations, a karmic echo each time the water calls me towards the sky of the world.
Each wave that pulls at me and withdraws loosens my grips one by one — nourishment through letting go. This emptiness is the raw material of the studio: attention, unburdened of all projection, can finally turn towards what is.
Then the tide reverses the movement and carries us toward the shore — toward the living, human and other-than-human, toward interaction. The call of the shore does not signal the end of an interlude, the exit from a world in-between worlds ; it has the weight of a vow. What has been touched in its greatest vastness demands to be worked in the studio, passed on, and offered in turn to the rising tide.
The high sun finally suggests that the first hour of walking has already gone. The lay of light has faded to reveal a marvelous transparency: in the sea : in a magical act, the lamé cloth has dissolved into the water, rendering it perfectly pure. How I cherish the slate-sky days when the sea is tinged with translucent emerald pigments. The coming of squalls and thunderstorms offer this.
This sweltering spring has instead favored subtle glazes that reveal the sandy depths.
Glazes. The word belongs to the studio.
this is how the sea paints — through layered transparencies that obscure nothing. Sand, shell, rock: each wave lets what came before show through.
Its depths are not the only revelation; the surface bears the whole sky — the darkness of the squalls, the gold of the morning, every cloud is returned back to the water. It speaks of the air, of its charge, its mood, even before it declares itself. And it strikes the senses without mediation: the cold, the salt, the surf against the legs — everything is an announcement, everything is presence given.
Nothing was hidden, a space unfolds in every direction, that's all.
The blank canvas lacks nothing either. What comes to settle on it is not "invented" — it is a revelation, a gift that one has consented not to refuse. Simply... there is nothing to choose, nothing to change, and something comes into being.
Tomorrow, the night tide will have washed it all away.
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