Wade In The Water
After five days of pancake pain and another three of banana peeling skin, I do believe I am sunproof, epithelielly. Inverse-freckles sprinkled on sun-toward shoulder blades. I am sugary milk tea. Waiting to be lapped up by scratchy feline tongue.
The tidal flat ridges under the span of my foot four or five at a time are, to some organisms, large as dunes on the moon.
Fall into bed at 19:00 last night, vowing to nap for only an hour before catching dinner. Laughable resolve. I wake up this morning at 9:00. Arms aching a bit, but overall feeling entirely refreshed. Still, after a few pages of Joyce I climb into the hammock for a nice snooze. For the first time I relax completely into the tie-dyed boughs. The oceanic breeze tittering through palm fronds sounds like rain lightly pattering on the sand. Distant manmade disturbances of the tranquility are masked by my restfulness. 13:30 I stir, full of Half Moon inspiration.
The sea is calm again. Looking across its flat expanse I can imagine what is only true – we live on a watery ball. A juicy fist-sized fruit. A huge convection cell must run all the way up to where, boiled by the hotplate of misting sand whose flame is the sun, the water turns Jacuzzi hot. Wading deeper, the sudden cold current bites my feet. Standing tiptoed up to my neck, I feel sliced into two dimensions, just at my fingertips. I float up into the warmth. Then I push the air out of my lungs and descend into the chill, stay in the reverberating mass listening for something until my breath runs dry. Remerge.
When I step out towards shore, again the sand ridges melt under my feet. I have just charted the known universe.