Must a Violence

This World

110 This World The sailboats are out on the river. The colors are out; all the leaves are out; the blue sky, cold and clear. There’s an amphibious vehicle driving from the land straight into the river—the people aboard are all cheering. As for us, we’re driving to the ocean today, the edge of the whole continent. When we arrive, it’s high tide and the island a little ways out from the shore rises from the choppy surface of the water. The land bridge is underwater, and I can only imagine the starfish are marching across for an afternoon in the tide pools. On the beach, a lone teenager is trying to fly his kite. He’s old enough to have made the choice to bike here, just himself and his kite and his determination to buoy it in the air. 111 At a distance away, a man practices with his sword, stark movements on the sand, a discipline of exact movement, exact stillness and repetition. There is a house poised at the edge of the ocean. On the very top floor is a single square room with one window on each side, a crow’s nest looking out over the rocks where the water breaks, where the crabs gather. Damp channels are left carved in the sand as the tide pulls out again. A dog sits down in the low waters and lets his squeaky toy get pulled in and returned to him again and again by the waves, following it with his gaze, just watching— ...