Soon, I suspect, it will be time to get away from the hotel and explore the island a little, but not yet. I contented myself today by merely swimming to the other side of the bay and then walking back along th beach. Going to look at attractions or even getting a taxi to a different restaurant strikes me as being too much like having an appointment. Which is too much like having a job. In some ways it seems a crime to be in such a beautiful place and to not explore, but in other ways it seems like a positive to refuse to move and to leave life's worries behind.
Funnily enough by being in such blissful stasis the brain does begin to work in a way that it wasn't really doing when it was supposed to be. I got to the point as I lay on the beach this afternoon where I once again considered my insignificant place in the cosmos. I looked at the waves as they continued their eons old onslaught on the land and realised they would still be crashing against the shore eons after I was gone. I tried to imagine what this place would look like in a hundred years time, or a thousand or a million. And what it had looked like a hundred, thousand and million years ago.
I hadn't even taken drugs (I'd had one beer at lunch time), yet here I was attempting hackneyed thoughts on the infinity of time and the transcience of human life. But I enjoyed having the time to think and to realise that the world goes on even if I am not there to observe it. I wish I could travel, like the protagonist in HG Wells' "Time Machine" (which I am always reminded of on the beach anyway, because of the way dragged sun loungers leave marks in the sand, like the Time Machine did when the Morlocks dragged it into the pyramid) to see the earth's distant future, where the Sun will be huge in the sky (unless you follow the wisdom of Professor Andrew Collings - get tomorrow's podcast to find out more) and strange plants and trees are the Earth's only inhabitants (and let's ignore the fact that erosion and shifting land mass would probably mean that this beach would no longer exist). I went there in my imagination today anyway, like a child becoming aware of his own mortality for the first time and understanding the possibilities of endless time.
And then, like a child I dug a hole in the sand with my foot to create a reservoir to capture a portion of the incoming sea. I had to wait quite a while before a wave came in that far, but when I did I laughed at the water I had captured. "Not so clever now are you?" I told it aloud. "You are mine now! No more ebbing and flowing, just captured for all time. Don't look to your brothers to come and rescue you, they will only endanger themselves. You are mine. For alway!" I had no power over time, yet I had dominion over water.
I think my girlfriend probably regretted coming away with me at this point.
And the sneaky water managed to seep through the sand and escape that way in any case. There's no point in trying to outsmart water. Not with all the memories it has. It has been in this situation before and knew the best way out of it was to seap.
The beach was unfeasibly busy today as a lot of locals and ex-pats came down because it's Sunday and much of the island is closed. It didn't feel like such a secret hideaway any more and was a bit more like being at a tourist spot, rather than marooned on a desert island with excellent catering facilities and extant houses. There were lots of kids around, which I thought might be an annoyance, but their posh yacht owning parents were more irritating if truth be told. One of the kids had built an impressive sand castle, just beyond the reach of the waves. They'd put a lot of work into it and the towers tapered upwards thanks to the use of different sized buckets. Even as a 41 year old though, part of me wanted to kick the castle down - the kids had left the beach by this point and the turrets were starting to crumble. I resisted the impetus, but realised it was much to do with jealousy. I could never have made a castle this good and my urge to destroy it came from the frustration of not having the ability to create it.
You can probably tell a lot about a child (and a man) from whether they are a builder or a destroyer of sandcastles. Or if you a builder who then destroys. Or I suppose a destroyer who then builds something else on the ruins, probably something less beautiful but more commercial. Someone should do a study. I bet most arseholes in adult life were primarily destroyers. I know I was. I probably took most pleasure in destroying my own useless creations, which... yeah I think you can draw your own conclusions.
Oh yeah and you've got to check
this out. Hilarious!
