Letter from the coast
I woke up and sat with your words after three weeks of not being able to tune into much. I guess I've been feeling towards the world a bit like you described, as if its image was washed away.
Yesterday, like almost every day since I arrived, I went to the beach to see the sunset. It was windy again and big waves were breaking against the pebbles. In my childhood I'd see these pebbles disappear due to strong waves, leaving the village almost beachless. They were being pulled towards the belly of the ocean by violent currents I used to swim across as a child. I'm not scared of waves, it's just now I don't jump into them. I must have learnt how to watch from a distance.
The beach was almost empty but I could see someone taking pictures of the sea and the sun. He bent down, every time getting closer and closer to the breakwater. On his knees, the water almost splashing the camera, trying to arrest the mountains, to hold them just where they were, before they climbed the sky's reddening bindi. I did that when I used to take pictures, the contortions and all, back when my eyes were not mostly looking inward. Now everything out is looking too bright, as if overexposed. Washed, as you said.
I never told you that the people of this village lined up big rocks stretching from the pebbles into the sea. It happened many years ago. They broke the smooth line of the cape and I remember wondering in horror why everyone was so content about it. I was the kind of kid who liked - even if briefly - everything pretty and thought those mouldy boulders were stains on the landscape. Later I turned into the kind of person who would go to great lenghts to take pictures with the right shutter speed, never staying too long on a shore as imperfect as this one.
Maybe I have grown into the prodigal daughter now. The one who sits on the beach that she earlier abandoned and others stained... but saved. I must be here to learn the crushing lesson, because, my friend, you tell me what else I'm doing in this village.
Suddenly, while watching the photographer's pirouettes I found myself humming a song. It was this arabesque melody I hadn't heard in decades but that my memory decided to store, with lyrics and all. My voice as weak as my ear, yet the tune managing to come through like drops of glue out of a dry bottle. The song pinned the sun to the sky. The song pinned me to the pebbles. The song pinned the pebbles to the shell that keeps oceans and earth in their place. And as if by magic the beach and I were suddenly there, just for a few seconds, held, not to be washed away.
