Oblivion

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I stand at the boundary of Europe. Here, every cliff above the ocean reveals the yellow bone of stone and the ocher-red soil, looking like flesh; the bone crumbles under the blows of the waves, the flesh of the soil devours the tide. The ocean is so vast that eyes cannot encompass it. Here, Europe ends; the shore recedes, as if the continent was drawing into itself.

You came here out of the taiga and tundra in order to see the Columns of Hercules, to discover the world that gave birth to the Atlantes holding up the grim sky of your homeland, to breathe from the mouth of Gibraltar the life-giving air of the lungs of the Mediterranean—for those born in Russia this remains the limit of the inhabited world, as the ancient Greeks had thought.

This boundary has challenges: a new, different life lies only beyond the faceless ocean waters, similar to death; dry land is unfolding constancy, while the ocean interrupts this, demanding spiritual effort, a great goal for which you can renounce the familiar solidity of land and step onto an unstable ship deck.

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