Its back and forth, ad nauseum,ought to make the sea a bore. But walks along the shorecure me. Salt wind’s the best solution fordissolving my ennui in,along with these proteansadnesses that sometimes swiminvisiblyas comb-jellya glass or two of wine below my surface.Some regretswon’t untangle. Others loosen as I watch the wavesspreading their torn netsof foam along the sandto dry. I walk and walk and walk and walk, letting their haulabsorb me. One seal’s hullscuttled to bone stavesgulls screamwheeling above. And here… small, diabolical,a skate’s egg case,its horned purse nested on pods of bladderwortthat still squirtbrine by the eyeful. Some oily slabs of whale skin, or—no, just anedge of tireflensed from a commoner leviathan.Everywhere, plastic nurdles gleamlike pearls or caviarfor the avian gourmandand bits of sponge dab the wounded wrack-line,dried to froths of airsmelling of iodine.Hours blow off down the beach like spindrift,leaving me with an immenseless-solipsistic senseof ruin, and, as ifit’s a gift, assuranceof ruin’s recurrence.