From My Spot Up Here

Sunrise at Sunrise

We are lucky enough to live right on the beach. That’s if you can keep your eyes high and not look down on the road that bisects Sunrise Beach into “the beach side” and “the other side”. One serpentine line of black, with white dashes like the ‘cut here’ line on a voucher, creating a distinction of around a million bucks

During the day there is a fairly constant stream of tin-machines being propelled along the bitumen, scurrying from one commitment to another, and from my eyrie I can close my eyes and imagine that the swoosh of rubber on road is just the sweet sound of swell picking up.

In the early hours as the sun lifts herself over the horizon, and then again at night when everyone retires under the blanket of evening, the cars stop their scurrying and flurrying, and all we can hear is the repetitive whoosh of the waves, and, if the wind is just right, the distant sound of some neighbour’s wind-chimes as they herald the arrival of the cool air, wet, with dissolved salt and smell of something elusive and free.

From my spot up here I can track the passing of time and seasons, not by the calendar or the clock, but by the way the ocean heaves, the intricate mix of sweet and sour in the air, and the look on the face of the sun as she gives me the first wink of the morning.

From my spot up here, I can watch the tide of people as they flow to all of their places, I can see how busy they all feel by the way their engines rev up the hill, and the blur of red brake-lights as they hit the suburban 60.

From my spot up here, I am detached from all of the concerns of time and endings, of forms to complete and places to be, and all that I know is the eternal rhythm of our place on this planet, a sphere who wakes before us each morning, and outlasts us every night.

…From The Ashers