We look to the intangible for solutions and bits of hope. Horizons, rainbows, stars, the internet, the stock market, a higher power.

We are connected by waves. Radio waves, ocean waves, mobile radiation, television waves, electromagnetic waves, economic waves, waves of pop culture trends.

There’s a bunch of land that’s filled with stuff and then there’s water. There’s a lot of water and that’s filled with a bunch of stuff too. But different stuff. Slimey stuff mostly. And then eventually all that water slowly ends. That’s where I am most in awe–where the water meets the fine rock and mineral particles known as sand. Earth and history.

Isn’t that spot amazing? The edge of the States. If you wiggle your toes enough you can become firmly planted in the damp sandy earth. When the water crashes against your legs, take pleasure in knowing that behind you is 3,000 miles of stuff. Three thousand miles of people and politics and garbage and gardens. EVERYTHING that has ever happened in the United States is behind you and to the sides. Lincoln was shot back there. Thoreau and Emerson had some sort of playdate in some forests waaay back there. Your ancestors abandoned everything in the east and dreamed of arriving exactly where you are (even though they didn’t really know where you are existed yet).

But not in front of you. Before you is a bunch of water. Resting on top is a clear horizon. But you know better! That isn’t really there, is it? No, because beyond the murky depths sits China. And the rest of the world and its stuff and its politics and its people and war and every love story that ever existed if you wrap around to your back. Just beyond that water sits the rest of the world.

But none of it matters.

In this moment, the waves are sloshing up your ankles and the States are behind you. Earth is still. Salty air coats your skin and absorbs the hard week you just endured. Nothing matters but the air you take in. The ocean and its distant horizon rest as they have since the moment of life’s conception. In this moment there is nothing yet everything. The world is there, but intangibly so; we are connected, but by what?

Water and stuff; hope and waves.