Ripples

Ripple is a word with emotional baggage; hitched to a thousand variations of the same inspirational quote about small acts having huge consequences.

But when I hear the word ripple, I think of ice-cream. Specifically, a double scoop of Tip Top boysenberry ripple ice-cream, bought from the dairy opposite Narrow Neck Beach. I think of running across hot tarmac in bare feet, madly licking a melting pink mess from cone and fingers.

I don’t have any photos of ice-cream.

And my photo of rippling water is less an illustration of a small act, than of something holding still amidst change. Something with enough mass not to (yet) be swept away by an incoming tide, and able to deflect and deform the moving water.

I feel a bit like that sometimes; dreaming of ice-cream and the kind of Kiwi childhood that has disappeared in the tide of economic “growth” and environmental degradation.

Maybe there’s an inspirational quote in here somewhere. One about being a shell holding out against the tide — eventually swept away but not without changing the course of the water just a little. And about how we can all be such shells; singly moved on, but eventually finding our way together to form a beach.

Posted to Ragtag Daily Prompt | ripple