The Beach

It is a white piece of paper, dabbed with light blue on top along with circles of white cotton. On the bottom of the page, there are clear green waters that form white flowers as the waves goes through ebb and flows. I am at Panama City Beach.

I have live inside a box for too long that I am not quite sure what to do with the newly found freedom and space. As I try to fit myself somewhere in this vastness, I can only sense the smallness of my figure slowly compressing and reducing, finally into nothingness and completely melt into the picture. The evaporation of my physical form tastes sweet like the syrup that drips into a hungry mouth. I belong here. There is no past, no future, no routines, no stress, no jealousy, and no competition. There is only now, only the present. Time stills. My mind stops thinking and is swallowed whole by the ocean.

The tide comes, and the playful waves run after one another in the race to the shore. They push themselves over my arms, tumble through my legs and gently crush in the vicinity around my body. The rhythmic beats sound like a stream of continuous confirmation. They are saying “Yes, Yes, come to me, stay around”. Their beckoning works like the lullaby songs that the mother uses to lull a child to sleep. I fall prey and lapse into a dreamy state until I trip over in the waves. I push myself up and continue to look around for shells that are left over from the tide. There are not a lot of whole ones, but a lot of broken pieces of various colors. They are fragments and remnants of what they used to be, but they are treasures to me. There is so much that the beach and the waters have to offer that I cannot swallow it whole, but have to resort instead to examining them in pieces and fragments, like the broken shells.

I walk over to the sand dunes and involuntarily flick sand onto the back of my shin as I trudge forward. The seagulls standing on guard flutter away in a diagonal line and disappear into the clouds. I look back to the sea and suddenly remember a phrase I have recently read on beach therapy.com; it goes, “Don’t grow up too quickly, lest you forget how much you love the beach”. There is most definitely a child in all of us, and the beach brings and blows out the inner childishness of everyone on a trumpet to announce it to the world. Except no one cares enough to hide it. Several adults are lying on their children’s surf boards and trying eagerly to catch the waves. They are competing to see who gets carried off the farthest. An old lady with an orange polka-dots swim suit staggers as she chases after the shells along the shore. Two women in their late-twenties are burying a man in the white crystal sand, leaving only his wavering toes and mustache.

In the distance, the sea oats perform belly dance to the ocean breeze. I want to pick them up and sway with them, but then remember that they build and anchor the sand dunes; so I retreat. Apparently, the sea oats develop “new roots on the recently buried stems as sand piles up around the plants”, which helps to trap more sand and allow the sand dunes to grow. Like the sand, my feet are glued to the ground as I admire the scenery in awe. I am scared to move any further in the case that if I am not careful, the transparent layer that is separating this surreal dreamland and the outside world will peel often, and the picture will shatter to pieces.