The Old Man and the Sea

To escape my dissertation work, I took a swim in the ocean. There was only one other person in the water, a sturdy madame, and then a few people on the beach.

I was floating in the surface, looking at the blue sky and feeling the bobbing of waves. A silent feeling of terror arose in me, when just next to me, the grey back of a whale-like fish emerged, only to disappear a second or two later. To my knowledge, nobody has ever been eaten at the shores of Denmark, but might I be the first? Had climate changes made our waters livable for new types of human predators? I hoped it was a porpoise and realized that there was nothing I could do about it all. Simultaneously, a feeling of awe ran through me. Nature was passing a message along: You are all part of me.