“It seems universally accepted that the ocean and its unrelenting tide is a source of comfort and peace. The Pacific Ocean is, after all, named the Pacific. I myself find it boring. But boredom is a kind of comfort, and a modern luxury. Boredom can be pacifying. What does the ocean really do, but deliver one predictable wave after another? In this way it’s like life. Every morning my body wakes, crunches, shits, cries out for food. Then it aches and moves and works and tires, eats and sleeps again, setting up the same for the following morning. This is a kind of tide. It isn’t calming or pacific.”