Went for a beach walk with friends at the west coast beach Te Henga / Bethells on June 22 last year which is during winter, so, too cold for a swim. But who knows, perhaps I’ll have a midwinter swim this year.

It’s been bothering me that the beach experiences are being told out of order. There’s been so much jumping around. Recent posts have consisted of a previous beach visit that is combined in a post with a beach visit that occurred on the same day as the write-up. I wanted things to be strictly chronological but it seems that the interaction between storytelling and life events just isn’t like that. The process of remembering is not chronological. I latch onto chronology as a way to organise my memories, my past, but this is really just a filing and shelving mechanism. Today isn’t today for very long. But, equally, every day is today. Today is all there is but I’m constantly finding myself in the past. Past experiences influence and filter the present. Zeus is the most powerful of the Greek Gods, and isn’t his father Kronos? The God of time? Or something like that. Perhaps if you control time (chronology / history) you control everything and become the ultimate God of Gods.

Walking at Te Henga, Bethells beach in winter

The people in the photograph are probably not still there, at the beach. Photographs give the illusion of permanence even thought we know they capture just a small slice of time. A micro-second, but this depends on the camera setting. There will be footprints on the beach right now, but not the ones in the photograph as those imprints would have been erased and replaced by wind and water many times over.

A while ago – several years, in fact – I thought of a calendar as markings in the sand. Some days of the year have special significance, particularly those that remind us of loved ones who have departed. We remember these days and mark them in our own sand calendar, but when we are no longer able to remember those special days they are erased by windblown sand. Memories of children who die fade with every passing generation. Imagine all the losses that are no longer thought about because those who thought about them can no longer hold thoughts.

Perhaps this needs a bit of cropping to delete that funny bit of rock at the top

Oh yes! These photographs were taken just after I joined a photography class and became a bit more adventurous, perhaps, although you’d have to work pretty hard to take bad photographs at Te Henga.

Wedding photo shoot in the distance