Life's a beach
Sunset at Liw-Liwa.
Many of my happiest memories happened at the beach.
Within our first few dates, a skimboarder I met in the city took me to her favorite beach; I fell in love with the place, and that woman who would become my wife. After a few years of being together she would end up quitting her city job and taking me back to that same beach to live for a few months (as she helped manage a beach hostel we'd become regulars at). Soon after we moved for an even longer time to another small beach town on the island of Siargao, where we spent one of the most extraordinary and interesting seasons of our lives.
I love the smell of sunscreen, the clear, blinding blue skies, the heat on the back of my neck, on my shoulders, lying under the hot unrelenting sun trying to see how much of it I can stand before either flipping myself over to tan the other side, or moving to the shade, or going for a quick, cooling dip in the sea, cold beers, warm breeze, my body and consciousness dissolving, reconnecting with sky and sea towards the bright endless horizon.
Time passes differently at the beach. Each moment seems to take its sweet time. A drop of sweat takes forever to roll down your back, as beads of condensation pool slowly at the base of a bottle of beer. Nothing much seems to happen — the sun and the sand simply exist out there, constant and constantly changing — and your thoughts also gradually come to a natural, easy standstill. When you come to the sun is already setting, and those few minutes of magnificent oranges, pinks, and purples pass by all too quickly.
It seems to me, too, that people who live by the ocean are more laid-back, relaxed, free of the city-dweller's constant tension and discontent. I like myself more when I'm at the beach, it feels like all pretensions are forced to drop away and I can once again interact with the world as just myself, just another body in beach shorts enjoying the sand between its toes, bobbing with the waves, feeling tiny yet infinitely connected.
This essay is part of a month-long series of 30 essays.