I've spent hours, days, and often weeks, sitting on the rocky shore and just

watching waves in England, Ireland and Scotland. This area between the shore

and the horizon is a special place of transcendence for me. The offing,

 (the area of the ocean between the shore and the horizon ),

is traditionally a kind of magical place— an area of expectational viewing where, from time

immemorial, people have waited and watched with yearning for ships to appear

over the horizon with treasure and tales of exotic places.

The offing is a powerful metaphor that has long filled our language with such

expressions as "it’s in the offing" and "when my ship comes in".

Crashing surf in the late afternoon is evocative of a state when all objects

seem infused with light. In peripheral vision, wet pebbles become sparkling

gemstones and glittering foam transforms itself into long strings of pearls thrown up on the sand.

"Hesperian" (from the evening star) is a word to describe the late afternoon

and evening. It's a special time for me as it leads to twilight.

Carlos Casteneda relates that in the Yaqui understanding it is the "crack between

the worlds" where humans have a brief opportunity to enter into a new dimensions of consciousness.

In Cornwall, my first source of inspiration, vanished villages and abandoned

mines recall the mystery of bygone civilizations that are briefly seen in

splendor in this "crack between the worlds"— civilizations like the lost land

of Lyonnesse, one of the origins of the Atlantis myth. In fact Debussy’s

Sunken Cathedral was based on a Breton legend where the sunken cathedral of

Y’s would periodically rise from a luminous green sea replete with the

ethereal music of chanting priests and ringing bells.

At any rate, there is something archetypally satisfying about seeing our