Walking on loose sand in flip-flops builds character as opposed
to walking on tightly packed sand still being lashed at by the tide. Have you
ever noticed that the last and most successful incursion of the tide leaves
slight, wavy outlines drawn in slightly more grainy sand over other finer sand,
wavy much in the same way as the curves of the lines a child draws clouds in.
And that the sea when it goes back leaves a fine meshwork of lines in the sand
forming grids shaped like spindles or crescents or what have you, occasionally
pockmarked with the tiny burrow holes of the very small sand crabs which
scuttle around. As you walk around sometimes the tide will wash across your
ankles and calves and when you turn back you see that the footprints you had
left in the sand have been washed away which is absolutely fine with me, not
being much of a footprint leaver/follower anyway.
The first time I take the 30 minutes’
walk on this beach looking for a quiet place where I can just sit down and read
it is eleven in the afternoon and the sun beats down heating the sand under my
feet and the air around me and boils all the snark filled up inside of me so
that I feel a strange, selfish, and I am sure far from unique sense of
antipathy towards these people frolicking around, cooling themselves in the
water or tanning themselves on the beach. Those young men throwing balls at
each other and laughing their joy as the sand flies in sprays where their feet
hit the ground, the mother with their children standing at the very edge of the
surf and letting out Kilgorish whoops of joy as the sea laps at their ankles or
sometimes going as far up as their calves, the middle aged, the other children
who are running everywhere, occasionally bursting into sounds like firecrackers
set loose randomly, balding men who lie on deck chairs amid their rolling
layers of fat, like beached whales, their pale bellies generously slopped with
suntan oils/creams with spare bottles lying around just in case more is needed,
their mouths open, gaping at the world as if they are inhaling the sound of the
surf through their mouths- in that instant I hate them all. I hate them for
enjoying themselves so much, I blame them for the fact that their vacations
seem to be going just according to plan while I want just one simple thing from
my vacation and that is to read a book in a quiet beach side bar with a bottle
of beer at my elbow and for having walked for thirty minutes in this heat
without having found one quiet place to do so. At that moment I blame them for
everything that is wrong with the world. And a minute after that I realize how
mean and petty and cheap and selfish I am being and something that is very much
like shame seems to wash down on me. A few minutes after that I find my
quiet place.
Just for the record, the novel
I am reading is Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and as I dive into it, Stephenson’s
gleeful snark at pop culture while ironically writing a novel about major
factions of that pop culture seems to perfectly complement my snark from a few
minutes ago- right from the moment where he introduces his main protagonist as
The Deliverator to his descriptions of the pizza delivery industry as the most
intensely competitive one in the world to the moment where we come to know that
the protagonist is called just that: Hiro Protagonist.
But I started off writing this
not intending to make this an essay on what I feel about beach vacations or
Snow Crash. I like reading on beaches and do so whenever I get the chance to
just plop myself on the beach. My favourite adventure sport while on vacations
is plonk myself right there on a chair or just a towel, listen to the sea and
immerse myself into whatever book I am reading at that moment. The sounds of
the sea soothe me and mostly I don't mind even if there are people around,
though it is better if they are not.
I have always had an intense fascination for the sea, having
always found some sort of awful majesty even in the dirty waters of Juhu- I
have written awful poems about it, essays that do not express ten percent of
what I feel when there, I have read stories and novels which have attempted to
tell me what their authors feel about being there, but in the end listening to
the sea is something which cannot be done with someone else's ear- that is like
trying to have a spontaneous conversation with the services of a translator. Or
like listening to someone else read a book. The best way to know what it is
like, you have to go there and listen to it just like to really read a book,
you have to really read it. The sea tells you things, I imagine it tells all of
us of different things. The only way to know what it tells you is to go to it,
close your eyes for a moment and listen.
Somehow, I have always thought
it is the same with books. Someone (I think DFW) once said that every writer
begins with writing in someone else's voice, then slowly she finds her feet and
her voice becomes her own. I have always felt much the same about reading. When
we first begin reading, we read with someone else's eyes: either taking the
author literally as she has written it, or reading in the words of the author
the validation or condemnation of the critic whose review we read before
reading the book and then, finally, when we are really reading, we read the
book in its own words, with our own eyes and then the books begin to tell us
things. They begin to sing to us, their voices telling us stories which might
be found in the pages of the books but which are as much inside our head. Much
like the sea. And that is the secret of all things in this world, isn't it? The
secret of all things holy and what makes reading or going to the sea or writing
or living a holy experience? That going to a beach or reading a book or living
a life is not about going to the beach or the story of the book or the legacy
of our life at all. It is about the stories that form- what the sea tells us,
what stories that book leaves in our head, what we take in as we live our
lives.
P.S.: I might have
forgotten to mention that the female protagonist of Snow Crash is a girl
called Y.T. which stands for Yours' Truly.
