She draws a line in the sand with her stick, the wood scraping over the wet grains. "See this?" she says. The students stare at it hungrily. Smiling, she continues. "Who knows what we do next?"
Hands of the scattered crowd raise slowly, eager students with eager tongues.
She smiles encouragingly and points at one with the stick. It's practically a small tree, but she wields it like a knife, with precision and care.
The student takes a step forwards. "Ma'am! In order to live, we must first build a house. Brick by brick, safety is wrenched from chaos."
Her eyes narrow slightly. She offers the stick. "Show me."
The student reaches out, plucking a fork off the stick to make a smaller and more practical tool. With practised movements, he adds three more lines, making a large square. Standing inside, he moves the stick in a circular pattern. "Through these walls, I build safety. The pattern echoes through me and protects the inside from the outside, as it protects the outside from the external. This is my house and I shall live it."
The surf hits the beach gently, waves rushing in the distance. Some of the assembled students nod, sweat dripping off their brows.
The teacher smiles. She steps up to his lines and places her hand against the walls. "But a house is only a house if it has a door, is it not? You have constructed a prison." Kneeling, she blows gently on one of the student's lines. Where hers was deep and broad, coloured the darkness of wet sand, his lines were bright and thin, only scratching the surface. The air cascading from her lips scatters the grains and his lines erase themselves from reality, the rhetorical structure collapsing.
Once again, there is but a single line on the beach. She smiles at the student, who sits, dumbfounded. "Your metaphors must be careful. A house is not a place of safety. It is a place of rest. Your walls are only as strong as you felt they were and for a moment, you felt comfortable."
The student nods sadly. Standing, he returns to the crowd, his head down slightly. The others pat his back gently and encouragingly, murmuring words of support.
"It was a good attempt," she said, loudly. "But I think it was the wrong approach entirely. Refocus. Ask yourself what your purpose is." She smiled warmly and gestured to the line. "Who else would like a turn?"
A few hands go up, fewer than before. She points at one of them and the student approaches. Clutching a tiny twig, she stands cautiously before the line and speaks. "I posit that the purpose is to hold back the ocean. There is power in the divisions between the land and the sea."
The teacher raises her eyebrow ever so slightly, but doesn't interrupt.
The student bends down and begins to draw. "To mold the separation, the line must be longer." She walks away down the beach, extending the line as she goes.
The teacher calls after her. "Do you intend to walk the full length of the ocean?"
The student pauses and turns slightly. "If I have to."
Laughing, the teacher raises a hand and the ocean swells, a wave lashing up the beach, flowing between the student's toes. When it retreated, the student's line was gone entirely. The teacher's remained in place, thick and dark as ever.
"Practicality!" she called out as the student trudged back slowly. "A powerful metaphor may call for more work than you can achieve. If you could encircle the ocean, perhaps you could bind the tides. But such an endeavour would take thousands of lifetimes."
The students nodded slowly. This made sense to them.
"Now," said the teacher. "Practicality and care. These are important. But without purpose, what can you ever hope to achieve? You guess at my purpose and thus you find yourselves lost in it. Either find mine or make your own.A house can keep things safe and a line can keep things out." She gestures with the stick at the cloudless sky, the burning sun, the infinite sea before them. "But isn't it beautiful? Why would you want to separate it? That should never be your purpose. Study it, don't run from it." She gazed at the students levelly, seeking comprehension in their faces. "Who wants to go next?"
Only two hands go up. She considers them both and picks one. He strides forwards to the line silently and confidently. With his own hands, he begins to write along it, words in an archaic language. Gazing over his shoulder she reads along. He carves a poem about the beauty of nature, describing the soft motions of the sea, the calm freewheeling of the birds overhead, the delicate rustle of the trees.
"I capture the moment," he says after he finishes. "The line is through time, not space. By constructing a single second, I appreciate nature. The purpose is to learn to see, as I have demonstrated."
Everyone read the poem together for a moment. The teacher's eyes trace the horizon. She smiles. "But why capture a moment when you could look up and see it?" She bends and runs her hand along the narrow words. "Time flows continuously and yet you capture but a single moment. How can you frame any moment as more important than another?" The words wrap around each other, writhing like snakes. Tangled up, they dive deep into the sands of the beach and vanish. "It takes longer to read a poem than to admire a sunset. If you cannot admire the sunset, then the poem has value. But here, now, it is easier to simply look up."
The student nods sadly and returns to the group.
She smiles at the group. "Anyone else?"
No one moves. Curiosity is etched on their faces.
She nods. "Very well. I'll demonstrate then. First, we must figure out our purpose. What does the line divide?"
Hesitantly, the students begin to call out. "The beach?"
"The land?"
"Us?"
She laughs. "I'm not so sure. Do those things need dividing?"
The students glance at each other.
The setting sun frames the back of her head, her hair glowing in the golden light. "The line divides nothing. Remember this, students. The best thing to do with a line..." She trails off as she moves, sweeping her cloak over the sand. "The best thing to do with a line is to erase it."
The beach was as pristine as when they arrived. The students stare at it.
Twinkle in her eyes, she finishes the lesson. "My metaphor is empty. The only untouchable concept is one which does not exist." She tosses her driftwood stick back on the beach where she found it. "Now come. It's time for dinner."