I've started going to the sea to swim

 I've started going to the sea to swim. There's something about being on the edge of the world, between the waves, that makes my skin tingle from a sensation that stems from more than just the cold. Although the cold itself is, I admit, biting. 

There's something too, something specific, about the smell of sea salt in the air, and about climbing down to an empty beach in the middle of winter. No accompaniment but a towel and a bag of warm clothes by your side. 

The bay itself doesn't feel caged in by the steep cliff faces that tower up almost on all sides. Instead, it encases you, offering shelter, and a sense of safety from the elements and the people above, on a level with the vastness of what lies before. The Marl Slate Formation of the rocks promises layers upon layers, literally, of history, packed and compressed and towering. Each life set in place and preserved by the movement of the ocean millions of years before you would ever come to see the sea. 

Above, the wind whips you around, and also, more obviously, around you. Great big gusts that mean that although spring is coming, there's waiting time yet. Down here, though, you can place your face to the wind. And breathe. 

Down the last of the stone steps and sinking as soon as sole meets sand. Shoes off and hopping from one bare foot to the other on grains so cold they feel hot beneath your toes. But it's a coldness that fades to a relative nothing when, after psyching yourself up and stripping off down to only your base, you run and 

Finally submerge your body in the sea foam. Wary of the pull that beckons you out, further still, and even more so of your own resistance that begs you to retain a sense of sane contact with the land that you struggle to stand on. A resistance to the paleontological potential of the pull of the ocean, even as you stand to seek a new kind of geology. One which, as you close your eyes and plunge your shoulders beneath the surface, offers new depths to your understanding of the formation of yourself. 

You are layered and fossil like. You are part of the coming and going of the tide, of the rolling of the waves and of the footprints you leave on the shoreline. You make and create and live and breathe life into all of these things. You are the making of the formation of all kinds of histories. At the same time, deliciously, you are nothing more than a drop in the ocean. 

Back up the beach and skin red raw, pricked by pins like nautical needles and with a head full of the joy of being. Scampering up the sand away from the salt on the shore, with a sense of what else to call it but glee as you take in big gulps of the air that's always been there. Shivering from the cold, or is it the exhilaration, and the feeling you've been lacking of being alive. 

On your way back to your belongings. Colder now than you had remembered was possible. You had forgotten, like usual, that the outside has more levels than you can possibly imagine. 

Today, towelling off to traipse back to the top, to take the train back to town, and from town to tower block, you've found yourself at another. 

Tomorrow, who knows? Away from the waves and the scene of the sea that's shrinking smaller and smaller behind you. Maybe tomorrow, maybe you'll find another level, another fossil, another reason for being. Maybe you'll have to wait. Maybe you'll sea.