Origin

The first time I saw the sea I was five years old. My dad took my brother and me walking along the breakwater, all the way to the end. Later he told me that his idea was for us to feel like we were entering the sea, to feel the force with which the waves crashed against the rocks. And that’s how it felt.

I remember mainly the roar and the smell. I can imagine being there, but I’m not sure if the image is a memory from that time, or from so many other times I’ve been in similar places. I remember the emotion mixed with fear that left me breathless. Literally breathless: an asthma attack in front of that infinite movement.

We went back to the beach and sat in the sand. My dad told me to calm down, to breathe deeply, to relax. He assured me that nothing bad was happening. Years later I would remember, while practicing yoga, the importance of breathing to regulate our emotions.

Perhaps that’s where it all began: my love for traveling, for water, for the vast. My impulse to discover.

I also think that life began in the sea. Maybe that’s why every time I return I feel like I’m going back to the origin. That’s why so many of us are drawn to water, and floating in it we feel so at ease, like at home.

Or maybe, in my case, it’s just the return to my own origin, that first memory where emotion overwhelmed me and, even so, I wanted to move forward.

This photo was taken at Carmel Beach, during a trip along the West Coast that Lesly and I took together. Unlike my first encounter, here the sea felt calm, pleasant, almost dreamlike. The mist over the sea made the horizon line fade away, almost increasing the sensation of infinity. I liked the way the foam caressed the sand, almost like a natural carpet, and the contrast between the dark sand, the light foam and the grayish blue sea that grows deeper.