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The first summer after I came back to the US, Gabi came to visit from Slovakia. Our future together was still unsure. I took her to Lavallette, New Jersey, a sand-bar town between Point Pleasant and Seaside. It was the first time she saw the Atlantic. We walked after sunset, my favorite time to photograph because the blues just pop.

Here are the blues that come from thinking about the big body of water separating her from her family and the peaceful feeling of sea foam on toes, the reminders of mortality in every empty shell of mollusk and crustacean in the sand. All the things a melancholic slavic soul can feel at once and appreciate as a very special moment of life on earth.

It was a moment we were both aware of and completely in our relationships--humans and nature, humans and time, human and human.

All that and the smell of salt.