Morning dawned here in Sanya in a haze of dusky dawn. The sun filtering its shafts through the roof of the sky. There was just no time to waste. None at all. To the beach.
Jane’s Backpackers Hostel has to be among the best places I have ever stayed in. “Just a 3- minute walk to the beach,” she says, pointing out the road from the reception window. 3 minutes? Erm, sure. It turned out to be a 40-minute walk. Not because it was far. But because as usual, the obvious road isn’t always the easiest to take. We turn round, roam through a supermarket and a summer mall, trudge through a sun heating its way on to a delicious day before we find the beach.
For me, the sea is an invitation to surrender. To view life from its shores. To frolic in the waters of the sea I love. But the after effects of that frolicking I detest. Wet sand clinging to wet clothes. Pieces of the sea that I carry back home with me. In faraway Sanya, I cling to the beach. Perhaps, the disinclination to get myself dirty was a factor. But now I realize that the only true motive was in reflecting the sands of all that time I have carried through – to view its waves that have ceaselessly lapped through me for all these 27 years – to surrender those moments and watch as the sea gently carries my life to a horizon I can visualize but never reach.
I still carry sands of the sea in my mind. This day that Birdie looked so delirious and dare I say it? Retarded? Grin. To surrender to the sea – I, in my mind, and she in her self – a day that can never be again.
Sleep and siestas later, dinner at a La Mien restaurant and night falls, I still could hear the waves lapping through the walls.
