{"id":2301,"date":"2025-09-28T15:28:32","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T15:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scarletline.com\/ashepherd\/?p=2301"},"modified":"2025-10-11T07:01:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T07:01:12","slug":"the-art-of-walking-on-the-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.scarletline.com\/ashepherd\/2025\/09\/28\/the-art-of-walking-on-the-beach\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art of Walking on the Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The beach is a special place, a narrow path
between heights and depths, created by water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Precipitous cliffs on the right – concrete, huge, looming
their weight makes them feel acute and real, like pain.
It’s often said that life is pain – it is,
but lasting pain is only an illusion
created by the myth of lasting self.
But so too is happiness – same logic
applies.
Avoiding one and chasing after other –
a looser’s game.
You stop the chase and acquiesce to pain.
It lays quiescent
and underpins your joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enormous sea on the left – deep, silent, inchoate,
seamlessly transforming into sky.
Three container ships in undifferentiated sea-sky,
like ducks over the fireplace.
Familiar, ridiculous and safe,
creating anchor point
for frightened gaze
that’s lost in space and finding you in time –
the time of progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So you progress –
you walk along the beach,
twixt depths and heights,
abandon and despair,
between deficiency and excess,
the middle way, the golden mean of Greeks.
Temerity-timidity
not much
to choose between –
one consonant, two vowels.
The trick is not to chose or compromise
but merely to tread between the two,
not enter the extremes,
keep in the middle,
create the path anew with every move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What you really need is a thin line of firm sand,
between loose dry and slippery wet,
easier to walk on.
Someone to hold by the hand,
to not have to look down for solid footing,
to see all that beauty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Extremes are always ugly,
beauty is
in golden mean,
in-sink
and in-between,
a pattern in complexity, a path
that unifies variety and us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The beach is a special place, a narrow pathbetween heights and depths, created by water. Precipitous cliffs on the right – concrete, huge, loomingtheir weight makes them feel acute and real, like pain.It’s often said that life is pain – it is,but lasting pain is only an illusioncreated by the myth of lasting self.But so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[55,365,20,73,19,364,134,23],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scarletline.com\/ashepherd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2301"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scarletline.com\/ashepherd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scarletline.com\/ashepherd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scarletline.com\/ashepherd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scarletline.com\/ashepherd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2301"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.scarletline.com\/ashepherd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2307,"href":"http:\/\/www.scarletline.com\/ashepherd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2301\/revisions\/2307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scarletline.com\/ashepherd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scarletline.com\/ashepherd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scarletline.com\/ashepherd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}