See The Watery Part Of The World

Barley, a dog, sits at the edge of a grassy precipice and looks out over a heap of broken concrete slabs and across a salt-water sound.

As much as Barley seems to orient toward the smell of the sea when it drifts inland, she pays surprisingly little attention to it when at the water’s edge. Presumably, walking along the shore, she feels immersed in that salt-water smell. The water itself, its stretching out to the horizon, holds no great interest. She is much more drawn to the specific splashes of specific waves than she is to the rippling surface beyond. I wonder if she looks out at that vast expanse and sees it as featureless, a kind of blue void lacking any of the interesting motions that would signal a nearby object of interest.