“And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have, in our veins the exact same percentage of salt that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch it, we are going back from whence we came. “ (J.F.K, 1962)
The sea has always held a lure for me. When I was a child, every summer was spent in Italy. Like Christmas or my birthday, I counted the days until we would finally all get into car and drive down to Elba, a small island off the Italian coast.
The house we stayed in sat just on top off a cliff, a narrow set of stairs lead down to the little pebble beach which on most days, we had just for ourselves. I loved spending hours in the water. Swimming, diving, collecting little shells…
My brother and me slept in what we called the “garden house”, a little refurbished shack closer to the cliffs edge than the main house. At night, we had the windows open and I would fall asleep to the sound of the waves crashing onto the little pebble beach below.
There are many happy memories I treasure from my childhood, but nothing comes close to those summers by the sea.
As I got older, we no longer went to Elba but I made new memories by the sea. I learned how to scuba dive in Croatia, spent four days on a boat in Indonesia, snorkelled the Great Barrier Reef and come to spend every summer in Malta, where my family now lives.
Wherever I’ve been to the sea, it’s always been different. The Pacific and its big big waves humbles me, the calm waters of the Mediterranean sooth me, the plastic pollution in sea round Indonesia shocks and saddens me while hearing the whales sing off the coast off Africa reminds of the sheer miracle of this planet. There are many different qualities of the sea yet something always stays the same. Nothing calms yet energises me like being in the water. Its where I can feel at peace, where I can feel at home, connected to the world within and around me.
This is what I tried to capture in photos below. The softness of the water during calm mornings on a paddle board. The light on the surface, when sun is high up in the sky. My dad, with whom I share so much of this love for the sea. It was him, who rolled away the big rocks on the little pebble beach in Italy so we could get into the water more easily.
Wherever this life will take me, and knowing one thing about myself, that could be anywhere, I also know, I will always come back to the sea.
