Sea Level By Sean Ripple www.flickr.com/photos/flatlife It was a pointed remark, meant to make me feel stupid no doubt. May I say that you succeeded... like an unexpected pull at some of my armpit hairs, the remark stung instantly. What was most surprising about your slight diss is that I don’t even really know you, which leads me to think that your strike had to do with your own feelings of ineptitude or inadequacy… like you were waiting for a moment to pounce on someone you perceived to be beneath you as a means to acquire a small amount of admiration of your intelligence and biting wit from the group who played witness – I mean you did come to the party solo, and I’m sure you felt pretty awkward being seated with a bunch of couples. The fact that my significant other and you used to date helped cock the pistol I’m sure. Days later, on a hunch that sea level elevations might vary based on a location’s general elevation (surely Galveston’s coast isn’t as elevated as Ventura’s based on the fact that Ventura’s general elevation in comparison to Galveston is higher, just as the Himalayas are higher in elevation than the Rockies... just as some points on the ocean floor are more elevated than others even in such cases where the point is a “plateau”) I went searching online for some justification for my thought that you so condescendingly shot down. Maybe I didn’t have the right strings of words in the search bar or maybe such a thought has no scientific merit, because as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t find any justification. Apparently, in accordance with your understanding and my lack of finding reinforcing evidence in regard to my hunch on the point, I made an idiotic remark. Maybe one day a team of scientists will prove that sea level is relative to the general elevation of a beach’s location or maybe one day I’ll find the right string of words to enter into the search bar which will yield results of studies on this subject which I can understand and which substantiate my thought... it’s not very likely I know. A small digression as a means to illustrate deep idiocy: I really wish that a magnet and a magnetically attractive element, when placed on a table outside their magnetic pull to each other, would eventually pull each other close by the force of their own nature, but I am told this is not possible. Still (and this is where the idiocy proves deep), I question whether or not this assertion is accurate. What if it's just a matter of the amount of time the magnet and magnetically attractive element sit just outside their pull to each other? Maybe after X amount of time the two begin to draw closer little by little so that eventually they behave as they usually do when in close proximity, fulfilling an as of yet unobserved destiny?