SEA
ROCK
EARTH
SKY

Every moment brings new leaves to you,

amazement overwhelming every other

fleeting joy: life comes on headlong waves

to this far garden corner.

Now you stare down at the soil:

an undertow of memories

reaches your heart and almost overwhelms it.

A shout in the distance: see, time plummets,

disappears in hurried eddies

among the stones, all memory gone: and I

from my dark lookout reach

for this sunlit occurrence.

- EUGENIO MONTALE -

Rocks form the basis, holding tight to the sides of the cliffs, while the five villages spill over them towards the sea. And the sea itself is the impermanent - the symbol of constant change, of tides and swirls and weather patterns. A dynamic ebb-and-flow that will outlast both you and I.

At the very brink, there is a surging power. Earth meets sea meets sky. 

And there, in sleepy towns, visited by hordes of colourful daytrippers, tradition holds on tight like a limpet shell. The coming of spring heralds a procession, priests passing carpets of flowers - Italian mandalas wrought on the ground by petals that flutter in the wind. One swift gust could scatter the pictures therein. Nature here holds a fine balance - a kind of to-and-fro, where people have burrowed into the cracks and crannies. 

I was all reverence on the cliffs - standing and imagining a beautifully tragic fall, a joining of me and the sea. The longing to belong filled my being then.