I like it because it hurts.
The beach. The shore.
Where crashing wave meets burning sand and at this one juncture the extremes finally agree- they speak in unison a promise. The promise that there is no hope of finding comfort, no middle ground. Hot or Cold, there is not between. On this they agree and little else save Death.
The extremes each are Death, after all. Eternal, vast, and uncompromising.
And yet there is life. Ugly, pitiable life that seems to live just to spite the death around it – to spite the laws of the universe that forbade its existence. Somehow it lives all the same and even thrives on that which should be anathema to it. The life of the shore is more vigorously alive than any other: it is not killed by the extremes; it is not left breathless on the vacuous horizon of burning salt-laden air; nor is it beaten and smothered under the weight of the all-encompassing tide.
Instead it draws power from these opposing extremes that it exists between- a battery of life. The raw power of it all is shocking- unharnessable- but usable still if only you stop grasping at it.
The tide rolls in, and out. Heat. Cold. Air. Water. Death in many forms.
And standing not against, but atop it all, is life itself. Stupid, stubborn little souls, straddling the ragged edges of death to steal for themselves a chance to live.