The sea

And now I will walk to the sea and when I am there I will hear the waves and it isn’t because I now live in a city where you can walk to the sea that I bought and brought Virginia Woolf’s “The Waves” and it isn’t because I will see the waves that I will be reminded of the beautifully made video I saw recently, the cruelest video I ever saw, cruel not only because of its content but more so because of the attention and love that was put in shooting it and editing it. A video in which waves feature, one in which 21 people die in a horrible way. 

I don’t have to see the waves to remember. I can already hear the waves now, sitting behind my desk, writing this. I heard them the last couple of days, ever since I saw the video. I heard them in Amsterdam, I heard them in the airplane, I hear them now. The sound of the waves in the video carved itself into my memory and I know that for a long time, whenever I hear waves, I will be reminded of those 42 men. Of the vulnerability of men. Of the extreme cruelty of men.

Before I saw the video, looking at the waves in this new city made me happy. Now it will make me sad. But the waves aren’t to blame. They are what they are. It is being one of them that makes me happy and sad. Being a human being. Being capable of anything.

“But our hatred is almost indistinguishable from our love.”

― Virginia Woolf, The Waves