I started the Ocean Lovers community on Hive because of my love for the ocean - those of you that have known me long enough here will know I have my tail fins in salt water and the rest of me on land, forever caught between the two. The ocean is my mother and healer, nourisher and nurterer. Whether or not it was a good time to start a community on Hive or not I don't know - it's sure hard, with the price low and perhaps a sense of ennui settling in. Just another wave, I suppose.

If nothing else, communities sure do create some writing ideas - from photography challenges to 'ideas' challenges such as provided by the Minimalist and other great niche groups on Hive.

This week's about your favourite ocean photo in your archive.

Whilst you might think this would be easy for me as I have so many ocean photos, it's actually way harder than you think, considering I've written so much about it over the years. Perhaps this challenge is thinking about why I separate this photo from all others. Perhaps it's simply because as I write, I bring a dead man to life, for a moment.

point addis, winter, 2024

I thought long and hard about this, wanting to post the most dramatic photo of this oceanscape, looking toward Anglesea on the Great Ocean Road. I'll get to that photo in a minute - it's the view we were looking at, after all - but the photo I'm choosing is something more poignant as it contains my father, looking at the lightning on the horizon with his long sleeved wave shirt. How the hell he made it that far with his lungs the way they were was beyond belief - the fact he'd got off the couch was incredible enough, but no one stops a grown man from being persistant, and nor should they.

He's old here, so white and weak, so flimsy and frail, so much so that Jamie had to help him into the car whilst great icy blocks of hail catapulted from the sky. Later he wouldn't even have the breath to tell his wife about the adventure, and be gasping so hard for the words to tell it that he'd look at me, imploring, as if I'd find the words to describe the electricity sparking, the swirling clouds, the contrast between earth and sky. I wonder to this day about this last adventure, and how I got to share it with him, fittingly, this elemental, monumental farewell to the coast that both of us knew was farewell, but neither saying it, and me left to remember it.

I wish I could say the photo he took was amazing, but it wasn't - it was out of focus, the colours off. A lifetime of photography can't compete with a brain ravaged by drugs and pain. There's so many photos of the last months that were awful, and there were so many times I had to sit patiently whilst he told me yet again how to use a particular setting, forgetting he'd already told me. I still haven't gone through his computer and all his photos, though one day I will. I'm yet to get courage to ask Mum to borrow his camera equipment.

But - him and that sky.

And it's true what they say - they find a way to be with you always. For me, of course, he's always in this ocean and these skies, every day I go down to the seas again and the running tide.

You know, these photos are almost enough for me to recharge the batteries for my Sony A 6300. Maybe there's more ocean photos to take.