sensations

I'm sitting at a computer on the opposite side of the world from where I usually sit, in a chair that, ironically enough, just like mine, doesn't fit the desk in front of it. Outside my guest room window are tall trees that swish about like an echo of the sighing of the nearby sea, and there are many different birds, with their sweet chirps and shrill calls, and an army of cicadas with their deafening whir, and even a sleepy koala or two.

My hair is a touseled mess of saltwater curls -- and I like it that way. Now and then I try to run my fingers through but they only get stuck, and I shrug, and leave it be.

It is early yet, and cool outside, the sky shrouded in a veil of low clouds.

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I cannot, will not get over the singular sensation of walking straight into the ocean; the push and pull of the tides, altering gravity's power, the sliding sand beneath my feet, bits of seaweed slithering slimy past my skin. The prickling fear of jellyfish and sharks. A quick prayer to whoever is listening, that I might emerge with all limbs intact.

I like to wear my two-piece bathing suit to the beach, so that I will feel sun and water against as much of my skin as possible, without baring all; but the ocean sees no sense in my silly modesty, and the waves attempt to take it off again and again. At times I am tempted to let it; if only there weren't so many people.

The waves slap and tug and push and pull, and resistance only earns you a more deliberate buffeting. For so long as you try to oppose the sea, you can never hope to win. But if you give in, if you let it do with you what it will, then you become a part of it, and all its strength becomes your own.

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Bike riding in the afternoon. The warm sweet smell of summer air, hibiscus and frangipani and a dozen other flowers I haven't got names for. The sound of silence and of falling leaves, crack of snapping twigs, husshhh of grit and sand beneath rolling rubber tires. The everpresent sighing of the trees and of the sea. Muscles moving and straining beneath obligingly supple skin. Push, push, push! Nearly there...

Achievement. Ache.

Lovely view, lovely company, lovely air rushing in and out of lungs.