I’ve come to make plans. To sit on the beach in the afternoon and shuffle the thoughts that are taking up so much space in my head and then, possibly, decide something. I’m not sure what I’m deciding, but as a start I am planning to make plans. I’ve come to walk along the sand and throw ideas into the waves just to see which ones come tumbling back to me and which ones don’t.
My head is full of possibilities and I am intent on organising them.
As I sit down, wondering whether to walk first or write first or just sit with the inside swirling, I notice the ghost crab that is playing jack-in-the-box from its little hole beside my towel.
There’s the perfect overhanging shade from the tree, on the edge of the dunes, up high from the waterline.
The log at my feet, allowing me to push my soles hard against its roughness. Immoveable.
The breeze. The ceaseless noise of the ocean. The heat.
The real world. The solid world. Is intruding.
The washed up pumice, shells and sticks. The fine white sand trickling over my feet as I burrow my toes.
If I lie with my cheek on the sand and look at the ocean from just the right angle the entire surface twinkles. It’s scattered with stars dancing on the water and playing in the sun. Waiting for the sky to darken and night to come, so they can rise up and play some more.
The beach is long and deserted. In the distance I can see the lighthouse on the headland, announcing the presence of the multitudes of shoppers and surfers and human movements that pulses through the tourist town at its feet. On this length of white ageless sand, that knowledge is inconsequential. Nobody exists.
I’m happily drowning in the soothing combination of solitude and ocean energy.
The energy that always sustains me in the times when I don’t feel like I can sustain myself.
Within minutes the idea of planning seems ridiculous.
There is only joy. So much beauty to connect with that has nothing to do with my mental rummaging.
I open the top of my head and carefully take out my brain, plans, ideas and all. And place it gently under the shady tree, in the safety of my upturned hat.
And run mindless, into the waiting summer waves.