The Stillness Between the Winds: Finding Peace in a Breathless Sea

There’s something both unsettling and profoundly calming about a still ocean.

When the wind disappears and the sails fall slack, silence takes over. And you’re left in a space where nothing moves.

No progress. Just the soft creak of the boat and the long, invisible swell that keeps rocking you — slow, aimless, relentless.

You’re not moving, yet the ocean keeps moving through you.

In sailing, we call it a calm. Or simply: Flaute.

You have two choices in that moment:

Start the engines, fill the air with noise, and chase the speed you think you need.

Or — surrender. Let go of urgency. Accept that you’re not going anywhere right now. And that maybe, that’s exactly the point.

My partner once said:

“When you travel slowly, your soul travel with you. But when you fly, it stays behind, trying to catch up.”

And in the stillness, I felt it.

That my soul had caught up.

That I wasn’t behind on anything.

That the sea didn’t need to perform for me. It simply was.

Photography helped me lean into this slowness.

No wind means no rush — just time.

Time to notice how the sky softens at the horizon.

Time to watch the Belt of Venus blush into being after sunset.

Time to frame the silence.

I began photographing stillness itself — the delicate textures, the shy reflections, the pure absence of urgency.

And I discovered that what looked like “nothing happening”

was in fact a quiet kind of miracle.

No drama. No storm.

Just a resting ocean.

And a resting soul.

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I’m Tali — an ocean photographer, visual storyteller, and the artist behind Maison TALI.

This piece is part of my slow art journal: a place where I write about silence, texture, waves, and what it means to be fully alive.

Thanks for reading. I’m so glad you’re here.

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