Breathe
By Edmée Pardo
I have just arrived at the sea. I change my cold clothes for a bathing suit and sandals. I walk to the beach. I want to fill my eyes with Aegean blue, my ears with whispers, my skin with sun and salt. I stop to observe. I have been coming to this place for 21 years and I notice that the landscape has changed: where there used to be stones now there is sand, where the wave used to end today it is the sea, where there used to be two umbrellas now it is a rocky path; the fresh water of the pool tastes like the sea. Climate change is this: a landscape modified in decades that before would have taken hundreds of years to transform. I stop to watch the horizon: the rhythm of the swaying, the buoys rising and falling, the force of the undertow. The swell is read and those of us who relate to the sea learn to decipher it in the midst of its diamond glitter, its columns of sun and the mirages it creates.
There are waves produced by the wind and others developed by the swell, which are the ones surfers love; there are waves that break to the left, to the right or in two peaks, in relation to the back of those who slide on a board; there are waves with sandy bottoms or with rocky bottoms; the waves that kiss the land and return to their body of water are called undertow or rip current. The height of the wave goes from the base to the crest, the length is the space between the crests, the frequency is the number of crests that happen per minute. I still don't understand the concept of a trough, but you don't learn to read in a day, and reading takes successive approaches, never immediate.
