It is incredible how much a trip to the beach can do for one's well-being. It seems to me the older I get, the more I need the sand in my toes, and the briny smell every time I open the boot of my car.
I suspect that sitting at the edge between worlds, perched on a flimsy umbrella chair displaces me from all designations, elevates me from who I am, have to be. I am erased from the corporeal world and reminded that the horizon I think I can see so clearly is an illusion of the most dangerous kind.
I grew up in a house with three stories, and the middle story had a swing, the central swing, the veranda around it cleared so it may be free. I am a Gujarati, and like a good cliche of one, I believe in benefits of swinging when the day stops climbing and begins descent. I remember swinging on it, watching clouds, kites, roof-tops, sparrows, pigeons, and tree-tops, and when I got up, it would be time for the afternoon tea.
Appropriately, this house was "Kshitij", or Horizon.
This loosening from the dream of life, as Jarrell calls it, is what the beach and my umbrella chair afford me.
I like to be reminded of the illusion of the horizon to keep things in a manageable perspective, and I'd like this reminding to be an ordinary thing, not the extra-ordinary, apolcalyptic "loosening" the poet talks of.
I place my chair just so, at the very edge of the incoming tide, where the sand is not yet blatantly wet, but remembers being so. The hooves of my chair dig firmly into the sand for proper purchase, and I bury one foot in the sand so it disappears. As the tide advances, my foot un-buries itself so it is not in the way.
By the time the moon rises, the water has been flowing under my chair for some time. The gulls and sandpipers are mostly done with their dinner and the breeze worrying the palm fronds smells definitely of the night.
I have a lot of places and actions that help me touch the timeless universe I inhabit, but I fear these beach moon-rises have brought too many harmonies, for me to be able to live away from the ocean.
I suspect that sitting at the edge between worlds, perched on a flimsy umbrella chair displaces me from all designations, elevates me from who I am, have to be. I am erased from the corporeal world and reminded that the horizon I think I can see so clearly is an illusion of the most dangerous kind.
I grew up in a house with three stories, and the middle story had a swing, the central swing, the veranda around it cleared so it may be free. I am a Gujarati, and like a good cliche of one, I believe in benefits of swinging when the day stops climbing and begins descent. I remember swinging on it, watching clouds, kites, roof-tops, sparrows, pigeons, and tree-tops, and when I got up, it would be time for the afternoon tea.
Appropriately, this house was "Kshitij", or Horizon.
This loosening from the dream of life, as Jarrell calls it, is what the beach and my umbrella chair afford me.
I like to be reminded of the illusion of the horizon to keep things in a manageable perspective, and I'd like this reminding to be an ordinary thing, not the extra-ordinary, apolcalyptic "loosening" the poet talks of.
I place my chair just so, at the very edge of the incoming tide, where the sand is not yet blatantly wet, but remembers being so. The hooves of my chair dig firmly into the sand for proper purchase, and I bury one foot in the sand so it disappears. As the tide advances, my foot un-buries itself so it is not in the way.
By the time the moon rises, the water has been flowing under my chair for some time. The gulls and sandpipers are mostly done with their dinner and the breeze worrying the palm fronds smells definitely of the night.
I have a lot of places and actions that help me touch the timeless universe I inhabit, but I fear these beach moon-rises have brought too many harmonies, for me to be able to live away from the ocean.
Some day, I must come experience the ocean with you--sounds lovely!
ReplyDeleteI agree. The magic is all in the water. More water, more magic. Waves, moon and centuries worth of lore woven into these elements helps too !
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