Mark 
“What We Leave Behind – A Dérive on the Edge of Serenity”
The dérive brought me here, past tourist shops, past shuttered cafés, past even the dunes, into a theatre of emptiness. The beach at Ouistreham is vast and wind-swept, haunted more by memory than by people. And in the centre of it, this strange sentinel: Serenity BOX.
It promises peace for €0.50. A safe place for your valuables while you bathe in the tide, as if the sea hasn’t always taken what it pleases. But today, no one is swimming. The air is too sharp, the sky unsure of its mood. Some of the locker doors are ajar, as though opened in a rush or never properly closed. What did they hold? Sunglasses? A book? Someone’s trust?
There’s something deeply unsettling about a structure placed in the wilderness. This box, a bold symbol of order, sits surrounded by the unknowable. It dares to say, “Here, you are safe.” But we know better. The sea is out there. So is history. And whatever you lock away, you carry with you still.
I stood there for a while, listening to the wind rattle a loose door. The empty blue pathway behind me felt ceremonial, a procession route to some quiet reckoning.
Sometimes a dérive reveals not just place, but metaphor. Sometimes serenity is a promise in a box we can’t quite close.
Join me on my Next trip to Ouistreham
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Image Details
A cylindrical locker unit, boldly named Serenity BOX, stands on the wide, empty beach of Ouistreham. Its bright yellow doors contrast against the muted tones of sand and sky. Some lockers hang open, as if abandoned mid-thought. A thin blue path stretches from the horizon to the box, slicing through the dunes and leading nowhere visible. The sea, distant and cold, waits beneath a troubled sky. The air feels paused.
© Mark Stothard MA ARPS
